Blaster Launcher

Blaster Launcher

The man-portable total destruction device. Fires the football-shaped Blaster Bomb which can hover and route through up to ten programmable waypoints before detonating on impact with a small explosion. 'Small' being a relative term for battlefield nuclear weapons. A safety radius of 10-20 meters is a good guideline. Blaster Bombs are outside toys.

Stats

Blaster Launcher:

• Size: 3 high x 2 wide
• Weight: 16
• TUs: Aimed: 80% TUs, Accuracy 120%
• Manufacturing: $90,000 for parts, 1,200 Engineer Hours, 1 Alien Alloy
• Sell Price: $144,000

Blaster Bomb:

• Size: 2 high x 1 wide
• Weight: 3
• Strength: 200 High Explosive
• Manufacturing: $8,000 for parts, 220 Engineer Hours, 3 Elerium
• Sell Price: $17,028

Tips & Tricks

• Right-click to set waypoints. To guarantee detonation, the last two waypoints should guide the bomb towards something solid such as a wall or floor.
• BB's can be reaction-fired, but then the empty casing "dud" must be unloaded before using again. Same problem if only one waypoint is used.
• BB's can break open a single section of UFO outer hulls, with enough power to detonate the nav modules on the other side of the wall
• To go through a ceiling hole, must travel at a slight angle (eg. from square next to hole, to square under hole) rather than directly vertically. Pure vertical movement is buggy.
• The vertical movement bug causes the BB to fly off south instead of down. If it exits the map cleanly, but there are at least two more waypoints to go, it will reappear at the next waypoint and continue. EG inside the UFO. [NKF]
• Aliens are not good at understanding the vertical-fire issue, and have been known to blow themselves up because of it.
• Soldier does not need to face target or waypoint when firing.
• BB's & fusion balls will always pass through waypoints but may drift slightly while travelling between. Watch those narrow corridors, as it may scrape the sides and detonate! Over long distances in open terrain, send the BB flying well above the soldiers on the ground to avoid fratricide.
• BB explosions have an 11 tile radius. A soldier on the 11th tile can still be killed as BB's do average 90 points damage at the edge of the explosion.

Blaster Launcher tactics: a brief guide.

Building: Nuke it.

Orchard: Nuke it.

Underground bases: Nuke large rooms first.

UFO: Punch a hole in the bridge, then send in a second bomb to nuke it.

Base Defence: Use waypoints to hit the rear side of your entry lift. (helps avoid destroying adjacent modules!) Send another through the resulting hole to nuke the lift contents. Now nuke the hangars.