Currently breaching charges require mini engineer pamphlet and are available only through requisitions and thus are rarely seen in the game. I think they should be available in squad prep special ammo vendors in small quantities and useable without the engineer pamphlet.
They’re a cool, relatively low power tool that the game could use more of - it helps remove unfun chokes and encourages pushes, which is something the game desperately needs.
I don’t believe people who want to use these will usually want to bother with any other engineering work and it feels counter intuitive that they require pfc+ skills to begin with hence why the pamphlet change.
Edit: for those unaware, engineering pamphlets are available in requisitions, so the charge is in no way restricted to any role.
Gameplay: Does it feel good to use?
ye Does it feel good to play against?
ye, they’re fair Does it affect other systems?
not really
Roleplay: Does it increase immersion?
Yeah, feels right for marines to use these Does it increase communication/interaction between players?
Not directly, but I’d count it as teamplay so maybe.
Simulation: Does it fit in the CM universe aesthetically?
N/a Does it fit in the lore of CM?
I think so? Does it make sense “realistically”
Yeah, it doesn’t seem like something that’d be particularly difficult to use.
Breaching charges trade their ability to destroy xeno tunnels with a much faster setup time, safer frontline usage and a chance to deal damage to targets on the other side of the way. I’d say this makes them useful side grades but the loss of tunnel clearing abilities really hampers their usability.
Increasing their availability or decreasing their purchase cost from squad vendors might be a useful change, but I think that’d be unbalancing for frontline combat.
I disagree with the idea they are a low-power tool, the ability to quickly clear away R-Walls is a powerful ability though. Xenos live and die by chockpoints and hard cover, so making the ability to remove walls either long or expensive seems fine.
Really, the main issue with C4 is how it is tied to removing xeno tunnels. If the xenos have an active burrower, you will quickly exhaust your explosive supply just clearing out tunnels let alone breaking chock points.
Play the game. Marines deploy with several ammo boxes every round, you can clear R-walls in a few seconds with a bipod at range, both costless, free of risk and at a better inventory slot to walls broken ratio.
Golden, if your communication strategy is to denigrate and insult other players who dare offer a negative opinion towards your idea, you’ll find yourself without supporters.
Ammunition is a resource like all else. If req is incompetent (not unknown) then even being resupplied with ammo can be a constraining ammo for clearing out walls.
Furthermore, C4 and Breaching Charges can destroy a lot of walls in a short time whereas shooting down walls on the frontline is time consuming and gives more visual warning to the enemy.
The funny idea that you require the support of anyone but the dev, or that support of changes should be tied to eceleb status and not the merit of said changes aside - where were you insulted? I said you don’t play the game because your opinion shows you lack game knowledge.
Being able to clear a single wall with a limited tool that requires you to stand close to said wall and takes an inventory slot is by no means powerful when any PFC can call a mortar or CAS strike clearing an entire row of said walls from 2 screens away.
Ammunition is entirely negligible, look at 40+ empty mags on the delta prep floor every other round, you don’t even need requisitions to exist to be guaranteed infinite ammo. I dare not count the sheer time it would take a single marine to fire enough bullets to empty the 2 ammo boxes he can bring with him. I’ve yet to see, in all my years of playing CM, a situation where ungas had no bullets to shoot.
You simply do not run out of ammo in this game if you do not want to run out of it - something anyone who plays this game knows. It’s entirely dishonest to pretend you can run out of it and anyone who argues otherwise should probably play the game before wasting time discussing things he has no clue about.
Similarly arguments that req might not exist or be so dumb that they can’t send ammunition, or other such “umm what if queen has no keyboard so she can’t screech” are - while plausible situations - entirely pointless to discuss in terms of balance as they require severe, rare incompetence. You don’t balance HEDPs around the fact Pvt Charlie blew up his squad.
You’re smart enough to not bother me with such nonsense so please don’t unless you’d rather if I just didn’t waste time addressing concerns.
The relative speed and lack of lasting warning (you need to see the marine plant it, which you likely will in the case of charges) are the only advantage they have, but it is by no means enough to make them strong tools in comparison to everything else.
Besides, how often do you see their advantage matter and be leveraged properly? I’ve only seen this once with a c4 breaching the hive for a WP RPG rocket over a year ago. The truth of the matter is that marines do not have the teamwork nor skill to use these tools and they require too many stars aligning (xeno positioning, wall positioning, being able to even walk up to said walls without getting lunged) to even allow a push - as opposed to JTAC which always clears the surrounding area for a charge - so any mediocre strength they might’ve had is even further diminished making them nothing more than a cool, low power, fun feature or a case of the 1% robustos pulling through.
I won’t drag this into a endless debate so I’ll just leave my final opinion.
Making breaching charges more accessible would be a negative idea in my opinion. Right now they are a very strong utility tool for Engineers and specialist roles (SLs, Synths, etc), with its big bonus being you don’t need to stand around for a huge amount of time to set the charge and risk getting grabbed by a warrior or otherwise attacked, as well as decreasing the risk of FF incidents on the frontline.
Allowing everyone to be able to use them would just turn them into an overpowered tool.
You can get the engi pamphlet and the charge from req as a pfc so no, they are not. Everyone already can use them and there’s always a surplus - I’m merely proposing making it less of a hassle to do so and putting it in the view of the average CM player.
C4 or a bug related to shrapnel - I’m not sure if the charge could kill a runner through one wall let alone two.
I might be wrong about the wall thickness but I distinctly remember breaching charge shrap gibbing a full hp hivelord; mostly because everyone in dchat was pikachuface and saying how broken breaching charges were after lol
I got 100-0’d as rav once when walking past a wall but when I tested it on private it barely dealt damage, its some rare bug related to how the shrap spreads I guess - probably running in front of it at sufficient speed causes you to take the entire 3 tile spread or smth.