Weights of explosives, .1 kilo = .4 kilos? Options

[xizor]

Seeing as the how shadow run system works. The explosive force is based on the weight of the explosive.

Now why on the sixth world does a .4 kilo hand grenade have an explosive force = to that of a .1 kilogram mini grenade?
I mean I understand how the game mechanic works, but shouldn’t a .4 kilogram explosive have a wee bit more explosive force that a .1 kilogram explosive.
And I think that the excuse of it has more metal shrapnel is relay stupid.

[Arethusa]

It should. Game is stupid. No sense in complete sentences anymore. House rule at your discretion.

[Austere Emancipa...]

I guess they first decided that a "grenade" should do 10S. Then they remembered there are those darned things called "grenade launchers", and they figured they'd fire some specific types of "grenades" which would still do 10S. And then they heard something about grenade launcher grenades not being as big as hand grenades, so they named them "minigrenades" and dropped their weights, but didn't bother with the Damage Code for some reason.

You are absolutely correct that the explosive effect of a 0.4kg grenade should be greater than that of a 0.1kg grenade, of course. A defensive hand grenade will have a lot more explosives and a lot more shrapnel than a HE grenade launcher round.

It's not particularly broken, however, but it's one of those things that are really easy to house rule if you wish. Make all "minigrenades" explode immediately, just like all gunfire, and drop their Damage Code to 8S. Or raise hand grenade Damage Codes to 12S or even 15S or something. If it really bothers you, that is.

[TinkerGnome]

You could just consider the explosive in the mini-grenade to be a more potent explosive. Possibly the same explosive in hand-grenade form would be unacceptably dangerous to the user (ie, if it's four times as powerful, then you'd have a mighty big handgrenade blast).

Or something.

[xizor]

But I what the holy anti-dragon hand grenade of DOOM.
so much esier to hide than the rocket launcher.... and he wouldnt believe i was just going the range for target pracice....

[TinkerGnome]

In theory, a 10S minigrenade would turn into 20S if you made them both out of the same materials (using the damage = rating * sqrt(kg) formula). And a minigrende out of the same material as a 10S hand grenade would yield 5S.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Of course, the 0.1kg weight of a minigrenade is a bit as well. What grenades weigh 0.4kg, by the way, are they in CC? The hand grenades in SR3 weigh 0.25kg.

[Nikoli]

If I recall, there is enough space in a standard hand grenade to make it far more powerful. The US Army doesn't for one simple reason. A human being cannot throw a grenade far enough to make it safe.

Grenades are very powerful explosives, the movies and tv shows in general have it all wrong, there is no toss the grenade into teh window and stand against the wall. If you did that with a real grenade, you'd become really familair with that wall as it either passed through you or pushed you a few dozen meters away.

That said, it would be possible to pack the more powerful explosive into the mini grenade since it will have greater range than a thrown grenade. There is a very good reason why they have a minimum range listed (though the SR range makes little sense, 10 to 15 m would make more sense)

[toturi]

[Nikoli]

But what about the 'stronger' explosive bit?

[Austere Emancipa...]

[TinkerGnome]

The .1 kg 10S would equate to a .25 kg 15S or 16S, depending on how you work your numbers ;) That's using SR rules and assuming explosive material is the full mass.

Given that the actual ratio or explosives in each type will be different, and beyond my expertise, you're on your own.

[Nikoli]

So, what we have here is another example of designers watching movies or reading books where special effects were taken too literal and rules tryign to outline them were written. Gotcha.

Love the game, just wish they had done better research on things.

[Bearclaw]

Wouldn't the easiest way to fix the rules be to just make the hand grenades .1 Kilo?

[Arethusa]

But that would be insane.

[Phaeton]

At least people would start to rightfully flee from grenades. :)

In the words of just about every enemy from Red Faction II..."GRENADE!" :grinbig:

[Austere Emancipa...]

My experience is indeed that putting standard defensive (fragmenting) hand grenades at 15S -1/2m does provoke a decent amount of fear, especially when paired with the Grenade/Explosion Damage Optional Rule on pp. 119-120, SR3 and Over-Damage all the time.

0.1kg hand grenades would be, like Arethusa said, insane. At the current size, they'd actually fly worse, because they'd be more affected by wind resistance, and that wouldn't leave any meaningful possiblity for large area fragmentation effect. Instead, you could put Minigrenades at 0.25kg, which is really close to what 40mm LV grenades weigh these days.

Anyway, if you're actually bothered about the damages, you should do something along the lines of "Mininades: 8S, no delay; Handnades: 12S, delay as per canon", and put the weights somewhere closer to 0.2kg and 0.4kg instead of 0.1kg and 0.25kg. That's both believable and balanced, and requires minimal fiddling of the rules. While not completely realistic, it's still more so than canon, if that's something you're interested in.

[Panzergeist]

Actually, I think the minigrenade has less shrapnel and more explosive.

[Austere Emancipa...]

It cannot possibly have more explosives than a corresponding hand grenade, however. It weighs only 40% of what a hand grenade does, and ~50% of the weight of a fragmenting hand grenade is the explosive charge. When you also take the propelling charge and the case into consideration, the actual projectile in a Minigrenade weighs already much less than the explosive charge alone in a hand grenade.

[Panzergeist]

I meant more explosive power, not mass. It could have a stronger chemical.

[Austere Emancipa...]

That still wouldn't cover it, not by a long shot. Of course it would help if there was someone here who could make an educated guess about how the field of explosives will advance in the next 60 years, but with current technology that wouldn't make any significant difference. Since the differences in explosive power between different compounds are, as I said, somewhere around 20-30% at best, it would only mean that the grenade launcher rounds might possess ~0.4x the explosive power of a hand grenade instead of ~0.3x.

And that still wouldn't leave any space/weight for the fragmentation, which is absolutely necessary for casualty-production over a large area (anything bigger than a meter or two with these kinds of explosives).

In Shadowrun, the difference between TNT and C-4 is 4 (four!) times the explosive power, measured by how much of each you need to break through a barrier. IRL, the difference between TNT and C-4 is around 1.19-1.37 times the explosive power, depending on whether you need impulse or pressure.

[Nath]

For some data, the M67 handgrenade weights 400g, including 185g of "Composition B" explosive, with a casualty radius of 15 meters and a killing radius of 5 meters. The M203 grenade launcher 40mm ammo weights 270g, including 45g of "Composition A5" explosive, with casualty radius of 5 meters.

BTW, the US Army considers the CS grenade M25A2 weighting 225g can be thrown at 50m, to be compared to 40m for the M67. So a weight reduction could be considered without loss of practical range at least down to that weight.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[TinkerGnome]

Looks like the problem is less to do with the power of minigrenades and more to do with the power of grenades. There's no way a 10S (-1/m) is going to scratch someone in open terrain at 11m, much less 15. Raise the power of normal grenades and leave mini-grenades alone?

[Austere Emancipa...]

You can reason it in any direction. If you want to keep minigrenades extremely light (near the 0.1kg mark), that means they're likely to be small LV grenades in the 20-25mm range, in which case 10S -1/m is very optimistic. On the other hand, if you raise the weights of grenades, then keeping minigrenade Damage Codes as they are and increasing hand grenades to "IPE" ratings makes more sense.

Whatever you like most.

Of course, like I already admitted, I have no clue how explosives technology will advance in the coming 60 years. Maybe, just maybe, they will find some super-explosives which pack several times the punch of TNT, in which case even a 0.1kg hand grenade could be very formidable. And again, it comes down to how you like to think of the future, because it's unlikely your players will drag you into a long debate on the technological advances on a field such as explosives if you just use a lot of nice scientific terms and show a few tables.