Proximity Grenade
The portable mine, this little beauty uses a weighted base and ultrasonics to set up a 3-meter detection circle with a 5-meter explosion. Exceedingly useful for mining corridors in base defense missions or "softening up" aliens emerging from UFO doors.
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Earning Experience The Hard Way
Unlike other explosives, the Proximity Grenade does not give Firing Accuracy experience points for hits to the person throwing it (although this will give you Throwing experience). Instead, it gives Firing XPs to the person who triggers it to explode.
Unfortunately, the accompanying pain and death make it a dubious choice for earning experience, especially early in the game (when you don't have the armor to go near one). For more on experience points, see here.
Among the aliens, Mutons can survive the explosion handily. Keep a few snipers around so they won't live long enough to benefit from the experience.
Mining UFO Doors
One of the most popular uses of the Proximity Grenade is to place one just outside a UFO's outer door. Aliens emerging from the craft will take a faceful of HE, commonly killing weaker species such as Sectoids, Floaters, and Snakemen, and weakening most others.
The grenade must be thrown one space away from the door, in the location marked "G" in the diagram at right. If the grenade is placed immediately in front of the door, it will detonate when the alien is still on the other side of the door, and the alien will take no damage.
This technique is particularly effective around Turn 20 of combat. Aliens have a known habit of emerging from their UFO right around Turn 20. Some may remain in the craft, but several can be killed in the space of a few turns.
It is also recommended to have several troops facing the UFO door (from a distance), to kill any aliens which might survive the blast. This technique is detailed in depth at Reaction Training.
This technique has a few drawbacks: aliens killed by a Proximity Grenade will not earn your troops combat experience, and the grenade will destroy most nearby objects on the ground. If you have already killed one alien this way, its corpse and equipment will be lying outside the door, which will be destroyed by a subsequent explosion.
This problem can be addressed by posting a "looter" just around the corner from the door (see the picture to the right for placement). After a grenade detonates, the looter should pick up one or more valuable items, retreat around the corner again, and another soldier can throw a new grenade, if desired.
Proceed With Caution
Proximity mines can often cause "friendly fire" casualties. It is easy to forget a grenade placed several turns ago and to stumble into it, killing your own troops. An undetonated grenade can also cause the "phantom grenade" bug described below.
It is therefore best if you deliberately destroy undetonated grenades. This can be accomplished easily by throwing a standard armed grenade on top of one. It may be necessary to destroy Proximity Grenades left outside a UFO door as well, if no alien emerges after many turns.
Proximity Grenades can also be removed through the use of Flying Suits. A grenade will not detonate when a unit moves into its square vertically -- so a soldier in a Flying Suit can safely approach the grenade while flying, drop down on top of it, and pick it up. The grenade will remain armed, but it will not detonate unless it is dropped and then triggered by movement.
Buggy Behavior
In some versions of the game, a bug causes armed-but-undetonated Proximity Grenades to transfer their properties to a different item in the next mission, which may then explode unexpectedly. If an explosion goes off just as your first soldier steps out of the transport, you have fallen victim to this bug.
This bug is most easily remedied by saving the game at the beginning of Turn 1, before any soldiers move. If something explodes, reload your game; the phantom grenade will be deactivated.
A different bug, common to all versions of the game, is that all Proximity Grenades lose their "armed" status when restoring from a saved game. (This bug is what allows the "fix" for the phantom grenade bug.) If the player so chooses, this bug can be exploited to disarm unwanted grenades.
Tips & Tricks
- On higher skill levels, many aliens can survive the blast of a proximity grenade. Mutons always shrug them off, some Snakemen and even the occasional Floater will survive. Even when a prox grenade doesnt kill, they are still useful to soften up targets and-- perhaps more importantly-- acting as burglar alarms. When you see a prox grenade go off, it will alert you to an alien in the area.
- PGs detect movement into, but not out of, the eight surrounding squares, meaning you can walk away from a mis-throw.
- PGs can safely be picked up by entering their square vertically (e.g. with flying suit).
- The mine can be destroyed by explosives. However, it's only advisable to destroy the mine if there's no alternative. Even with armour, the explosive should be set off as far away from the soldier as possible, as your under armour is by far your most vulnerable spot. Make no mistakes.
- Just like every other live grenade in the game, it's safe to pick up an armed Proximity Grenade -- if it is already in your square. It is strongly recommended that armed Proximity Grenades not be used in the Grenade Relay manoeuvre.
- If all else fails, and you are trapped with nowhere to move and no way to defuse the mine: just stay still. Don't move and wait until the bomb squad arrives (i.e., wait until the mission ends).
-- Collection of NKF-Sensei's posts by --JellyfishGreen 12:50, 25 Apr 2005 (BST)
- Not so tricky to use really, and very useful. Certainly for a base defence I suggest you should use these instead of regular grenades. If you throw them at aliens they function in effect as if they had a timer setting somewhere between 0 and 1 - going off after the end of your turn but as the aliens move. They are significantly more powerful than regular grenades so especially useful against armoured aliens and/or those with high health.
- Using them to defend a position, make sure to drop each one more than 2 squares away from the previous one. Otherwise, all the grenades will blow up together (sympathetic detonation). Usually what you want to do is slow the advance of the aliens and make sure each grenade takes out at least one alien. If they all blow up together you will have 'overkill' of one alien, and your defences are all gone.
- Of course, in certain circumstances you might want this 'overkill', to kill a particular tough alien or group of aliens.
- With proximity grenades it's important to be aware of the BUG in the game - proximity grenades seem to disarm themselves if you resume a saved game. Makes load/save tactics impossible in a game where you are relying on proximity grenades.
--Spike 19:48, 3 June 2006 (PDT)