Throwing an IED

[mandru]

Want a little more punch than a grenade but can't get in close enough to set up an IED? This might be what you need.

This may belong in funny tips as it's a bit weird but the process is not funny although used to it's full effect the out come can be quite humerus. Flying mercs always make me laugh.  ;D

Also a quick note to say that I've searched the forums trying to see if this has been covered and I can't find it anywhere so I'll add it and our illustrious master of details Art will be able to point out where it's been covered if that's the case.  :P

I've noticed that if I want to drop an IED right at my feet I have to face straight forward and release it from chest height. There have been times that I've wanted to place an IED in a precise spot on the shoulder of the road to try to get a offset blast to cause a big truck or AT to do a twist as it's in the air but I've noticed that the more directly I'm looking at the ground when I drop an IED the further it flies out away from me. Usually it's not far enough to detonate it with out getting caught in the blast.

It only recently occurred to me that if I stood on the lip of a cliff over looking a road or GP or if I'm on the roof of a building that has a smooth edge (no lip to catch the IED as it flips away) then I can get quite a bit of extra distance because of the outward force of thrust added to the higher elevation of my position and where I am trying to get the IED to drop to.

Give it a try. With IEDs equipped, find a cliff ledge leaving just enough lip to look down and see the rock in front of where your feet should be, face the direction you want the IED to fly and over a few IED drops get a feel for how far out the IED will go as determined by how sharply bent over you are when you release it.

OK, yeah an RPG will do the same thing but sometimes some improvisational techniques are nice to have in your bag of tricks.

Have fun! ;)

[PZ]

Good one, mandru - unless my memory is even worse that I remember, I don't believe this technique has been posted until now.  ;D :-X

[Art Blade]

As far as I know, it hasn't :)

Nice tip, and now I understand why this happens when it happens. I usually bring IEDs to Port Selao and climb the church tower, then I try to hurl some down at the street below. Sometimes they drop to the window sill and won't fall off (bugger) and sometimes they flick away.

Cheers, mandru :)  :-X

by the way, you still made it into funny tactics and tips  ;)

[fragger]

Neat tip mandru, gonna try that one. I too enjoy watching the antics of aerial mercs :-X

Speaking of which, I was in the Dogon villiage the other day, up on one of the rooftops, when I noticed no less than seven mercs had gotten together to confer on my whereabouts. I managed to lob a grenade in among them without any of them noticing. They took off like a flock of seagulls ;D

Wish I was quicker on the screen capture, it looked hilarious!

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting. Of course, if you want to place an IED exactly, even on the ground, you can crouch, look at the spot you want it and hold the fire button, and it will place & lock. Of course, there is a distance you have to be and there's no indicator when you're close enough.

[mandru]

Here lately I've gone off story line and just been terrorizing the game characters with random rampaging because I've finally been able to get the command line cheat for ignore to w@&k.  I've spent a lot of time playing with unfamiliar weapons and I've worked my way around to this topic again.

We have three distinct IEDs types in our inventory, the pipe bomb, mortar shell and the landmine. With extensive play testing, the landmine variety will fly 2 to 3 times farther than the other two.  I'm almost convinced a properly thrown landmine type IED provides better range of cast than my best grenade toss.

Quick recap:  Standing, not crouching.  Face directly where you want your mine to go.  Bend forward as far as you can to look at where your feet should be and drop the IED.

It also helps if you stand up quickly after releasing and watch to see where the IED flies off to so you can be sure you've managed to make a good placement.

I'm also pleased to note that I have enjoyed a fair level of success at standing on the rail of a bridge and dropping an IED into a patrolling boat (Swamp or fishing).  When I get a direct drop into a boat the IED may bounce but it catches on the gunwales and deflects back into and remains in the boat.

Even a near miss on a boat if triggered quickly enough will do its job and take out the boat due to proximity of the blast but make sure that it is a high enough bridge that you yourself are beyond the effects of the detonated IED.

Where the landmine IED has the quality of flying the farthest, it has given me the thought that each of the other two landmine types may have a property that it also excels in but as of yet I've been unable to find proof of that.

I guess I need to go back out and do more field research by blowing up mercs in new and creative ways.

Oh! On a parallel line of thought, when you are in pure ignore mode it's probably best if you don't swim out to a swamp boat, climb in and plant a IED on the boat's motor.   :(

The merc skippering the swamp boat will stand up the instant it's installed and pin you in the back of the boat so you can't get back past him without shooting him, which you could have done from shore and saved yourself the extra effort of the swim out.  :P

[PZ]

Nice research, mandru - the ignore_player cheat brings an entirely new dimension into playing the game.  :-X

[Art Blade]

Yes, well done, mandru  :) :-X It has never occurred to me to check out the variants of the IEDs as to how they behave differently. Regarding FC2, you are a perfect mixture of borderline genius and sick mass murderer  ;D ;D ;D :-X

By the way, the effects of the explosion you described are known to me simply as "splash damage" or "blast radius" which may help you cut down your descriptions of what to do and what not to :)

[mir24]

Hi guys, thanks for the great tips here and I'd jsut like to add a couple of things I found as well.

1) When "locking" IED's into place, it seems you don't have to press the detonator to blow them up. I was doing a convoy mission in Bowa and I chose the perfect place for an ambush: the bridge south of TaeMoco Mine.

Cleared out the GP, placed three IED's on the bridge and a jeep at one end of the bridge to block the convoy. When the first convoy jeep arrived, it stopped and the other vehicles stopped in succession, too. Then all the guards got off to inspect the blocking jeep and- WOOOMF!!!

Everything blew up without me touching the detonator. It does my soul a helluva lot of good to see all them jeeps and the truck cartwheeling in the air. I even saved it right there so I can replay it time and time again...  :P

2) Apart from throwing IED's, one can also roll them down a hill. Did this at another convoy mission. Just as the first guard jeep passed by me (conveniently crouched on a slope which overlooked the road), I rolled the mortar IED down and hit the detonator as the truck passed over it. Instant fireworks again!

On another note, does anyone know what triggers a locked-in-place IED? Is it when someone steps on it?

[JRD]

Never heard of self-detonation or detonation by other means than you pushing the trigger!

There`s always the case of chain reaction when one blast sets off the rest, but that`s not the case!

Don`t remember if anyone here ever tried to shoot an IED and successfully made it go off... as soon as Art reads it, he`ll tell us!  ;D

[fragger]

Never heard of self-detonation or detonation by other means than you pushing the trigger!

There`s always the case of chain reaction when one blast sets off the rest, but that`s not the case!

Don`t remember if anyone here ever tried to shoot an IED and successfully made it go off... as soon as Art reads it, he`ll tell us!  ;D

I've never heard of self-detonating IEDs either, you may have had a lucky glitch of some sort there, mir24 8)

I don't know about shooting IEDs either, I have a feeling that they don't go off if you do that. They will blow up without a detonator if you drop them into a burning barrel though. Of course, the blast will get you too (special thanks to mandru for that bit of info) :)

[fragger]

Oh, and mir24, I forgot to say - welcome to OWG!

[Art Blade]

I just read it and indeed I shot IEDs and indeed they do blow up :) It's one of the first funny tips... I also made them go off by setting the environment on fire... ;)

http://openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=212.msg1556#msg1556

I haven't got any idea why IEDs would go off by themselves or what might have caused that. Well, one idea: something else blew up first and made the IED react to that blast.

[mandru]

On the subject of IEDs being shot to set them off I'll give that an affirmative.

If you drop an IDE while under heavy fire as in an example where you are backing away quickly and trying to set up a surprise for anyone chasing you, if the IED is hit by enemy fire as you are dropping it you get your nose hairs singed.  :'(


Also, I once tried to set an IED into one of the burning barrels that are scattered throughout the game thinking I had found an additional way to rapidly spread fire to confuse a bunch of mercs in a GP.

I quickly discovered that my plan had a conflict between design and function.  :-\

[Art Blade]

which confirms that setting them on fire does blow them up ;)

[mir24]

Oh, and mir24, I forgot to say - welcome to OWG!

Thanks fragger! Nice to see this small yet thriving community of FC2 fans. There's been so much negative criticism about FC2 that it's refreshing to find a group of people who are willing to overlook the shortcomings of the game and instead, discover what it can offer us instead.

[PZ]

A belated welcome from me as well mir24!  We all agree with you - it is refreshing to see a group of fellows that are more interested in discovering the features to appreciate in a game rather than to blast it with criticism.  :-X

[mir24]

Never heard of self-detonation or detonation by other means than you pushing the trigger!

There`s always the case of chain reaction when one blast sets off the rest, but that`s not the case!

Don`t remember if anyone here ever tried to shoot an IED and successfully made it go off... as soon as Art reads it, he`ll tell us!  ;D

I've never heard of self-detonating IEDs either, you may have had a lucky glitch of some sort there, mir24 8)

I don't know about shooting IEDs either, I have a feeling that they don't go off if you do that. They will blow up without a detonator if you drop them into a burning barrel though. Of course, the blast will get you too (special thanks to mandru for that bit of info) :)

Could've been a glitch I guess. I tried it again and it didn't w@&k the second time.  :(

Then again, maybe, just maybe, that first time, someone stepped on the IED or drove their vehicle on to the IED... Either way, the pressure set off the munitions that destroyed everything...  :o