Explosives Discussion

[dudeman]

First I would like to ask that we try to leave loot and mafia size discussions out of this thread.


Can we talk about something else besides the M4A1 and 499?

All right, so I did post this in a thread about a certain mafia size. However, if I remove the mafia size implications I think explosives are still an interesting topic. For now I will just repost what I already posted about the cost of Stun Grenades and see if this thread actually goes anywhere.

Some of the recent discussions on the forum got me wondering how much Stun Grenades actually cost me. It is difficult to come up with an exact number without recording everything that happens over a period of time, something I am not planning to do, so I will settle for an estimate based on a bit of logic.

Stun Grenades (0/6): $3,000 each

$3,000 X 500 = $1,500,000 (x2 if you overstock the way I do. Get 1000, don't worry about it, restock whenever I want.)

If and when I lose Stun Grenades, on average I lose 2-3 at once if lost the fight, and 0-1 if I won the fight.

I have (edit: had) just over 2300 fight losses, most of which occurred before I started using defense explosives. However, let's assume I have been using Stun Grenades at the current price since day 1.

2300 fight losses X ~2.5($3,000) = ~$17,250,000

Assuming I had been using Stun Grenades since day 1 and all fight losses were lost in defense, the cost of defense explosives would be ~$17,250,000/Level 155 = ~$111,290.3 per level.

If all of my losses had taken place within only the last 40 levels (rough guess on when I started using defense explosives) the new cost of defense explosives would be ~$431,250 per level.

In reality, all my fight losses did not occur only within the past 40 levels, and I haven't been using Stun Grenades at current prices since day 1, so I would estimate the true cost of defense explosives to be much lower than that.

Even if they cost $300k/day, that's 100 Stun Grenades, the cost of which can easily be robbed from rivals.



What do other players experience regarding explosives costs and consumption rates? Other explosives related topics I would like to discuss are attack explosives consumption rates, how skill points affect explosives, and pretty much just explosives strategies in general since it doesn't get discussed as often as some other (repetitive) topics do.

[white frog]

I'm currently at level 41, so I take 205 mob into battle. If they were all equipped with Stun Grenades, the initial cost would be $615,000. If I was no banking, and lost a few attacks (assuming I don't have the explosives), this amount could be taken from me in by just a couple of people per day.
If I equipped my mob with Stun Grenades and didn't lose, but won an average of 10 fights per day, I would lose about 10 grenades. This would total $30,000 per day to keep them equipped. My current daily banking fees would be over $150,000 per day, so I would gladly pay the 30k if it will put me over the defense line to where I don't need to bank anymore!

So the question to ask is "will the Stun Grenades get you to the point where you don't have to bank anymore???"

[Ramshutu]

You should really ignore the exact cost of explosives and think about things in terms of 'effective cost', which is the cost of buying and maintaining n x explosives.

I have 200 or so stun grenades, which I generally maintain when I loose them. However, as my stats are pretty good compared to most people attack or raid. I end up loosing ~20 grenades a week.

This means, for me, that the amount of cash spent on grenades is (200 + (52x20)) x $3000 /200

Which for me, the effective cost of a stun grenade over a year is $18,600. I chose a year arbitrarily as it is sufficiently far in the future!

However, There is a catch-22 with explosives, which as follows:

If you need to boost your stats, explosives are effectively more expensive than if you have higher stats than people who attack you.

I believe this is because you tend to loose explosives at a higher rate when going up against some with better attack than others.


Now, the above 'effective cost' of explosives make atk explosives almost untenable. This is because I tend to attack A LOT. This means loss of atk explosives will happen at a far greater rate, thus making the effective cost ridiculous.

[Sir Daniel]

Explosives I think are relative, serve a good purpose but can also be a dangerous game. I am kitted out with 460 land mines and 460 napalms, this adds 10-14K to my A and D stats. Right now at level 138, this has pushed my stats way above the competition and I have not lost any (or fight/rob) for quite a while. So for me now it's good. Give it a few levels and this will not be the case, I know I will loose millions in land mines. Levels 150-170 will have players that offer little separation in A and D than me and my bombs will pop.

Moral of this storey is that they are usefull if you can top your opponents by 30+ % assuming you have enough cash. But there will be a point where you need to bolster stats elsewhere as higher bracket players get sight of you.

Safest bet is to buy attack only explosives, you then get to choose when to loose them.

Even safer bet is to buy gold non explosive explosives if thats your cup of tea of course.

[Nicholost]

This would total $30,000 per day to keep them equipped. My current daily banking fees would be over $150,000 per day, so I would gladly pay the 30k if it will put me over the defense line to where I don't need to bank anymore!

So the question to ask is "will the Stun Grenades get you to the point where you don't have to bank anymore???"

This is the right question, IMO. If you're spending game money sustaining consumable explosives and still banking, you are worse off than you would be by just banking and losing attacks against you a little more often. In fact, if the cost fending off robberies is equal to what you would be losing if the robber had been successful without using explosives, you might as well not use explosives. Like banking and losing attacks, sustaining explosives and losing robberies is more expensive than just losing robberies, unless the rate of successful robberies against you is significantly decreased because of explosives.

[Ghost818]

This is a good analysis, BUT, imo in the higher levels you cant include the no banking into the analysis because there are a lot more strong people example the guy who hits me every day just for being neutral, "Thy who shall not be named" is the name I call him. This is solely the reason I don't bother with explosives waste of money if you ask me. I rarely lose any fights, I would lose none if it wasn't for receiving a daily beat-down.

[Max Power]

Now, the above 'effective cost' of explosives make atk explosives almost untenable. This is because I tend to attack A LOT. This means loss of atk explosives will happen at a far greater rate, thus making the effective cost ridiculous.

You have to remember in that you can choose whom you can attack, but cannot on who attacks you. That swings things quite a bit. I have maintained a reasonable level of attack explosive for some time. Being careful about attacking ensures they will last a lot longer than defense explosives.

[Swearengen]

Very interesting discussion. Recently a higher level player suggested I invest in some atk explosives but not def explosives, I assume for the same reasons Max Power just mentioned in terms of picking your attacks and keeping your explosives around. Seems like explosives overall might be good at lower and mid levels but maybe too fragile at the upper end.

[MajorOffensive]

This is the right question, IMO. If you're spending game money sustaining consumable explosives and still banking, you are worse off than you would be by just banking and losing attacks against you a little more often. In fact, if the cost fending off robberies is equal to what you would be losing if the robber had been successful without using explosives, you might as well not use explosives. Like banking and losing attacks, sustaining explosives and losing robberies is more expensive than just losing robberies, unless the rate of successful robberies against you is significantly decreased because of explosives.

You might have fewer robberies due to the deterrent effect of an inflated defense stat, but this is impossible to measure. Based upon my experience, explosives don't seem to do much other than inflate defense, unless they are useless in defending against robberies. Apparently, 20K defense with 460 stun grenades can't stop someone with 14K attack. This wouldn't be surprising, given how cagey Funzio is at explaining the role of anything in attack and defense calculations for both attacks and robberies.

[Nudie]

I only maintain attack explosives for the reasons already posted. Defense explosives are a huge drain on game money and there is no controlling who or how many will attack you.

[Bala82]

The thing with defensive explosive before you buy you need see how often you get attacked during the day and than look at it from a week perspective. Once you see that it give general idea whether it's worth it or not. if your only getting attack 3-5 times a day and you can afford small quantity like 10 than fine but you are get attacked on regular basis just bank the cash. Please note this new player opinion so i am sure more experience player might disagree with this.

It's how you experiment to finds what work -you need put bait money out see how long it takes someone rob you or attack you. For me once i get more than $1000 i get attacked more often than when i have a couple of hundred. :confused:

[msjo]

At what level does it make sense to stock explosives? I'm down at level 36 and it looks like most of my rivals don't have any, but maybe it would give me an edge to start keeping some. I hate to spend money that could be reinvested in my economy at this point, but maybe it would be useful as a deterrent on the defense side. I think I have enough attack points right now that I'm able to find rivals I can beat pretty easily. then again, investment in some explosives might be a relatively cheap way to break into the more well-defended no-bank hoods I see sometimes.

I haven't invested much in equipment -about 15 nvbs, a couple of lower level respect items bought before finding the forums plus have mostly relied on pvp loot plus a few extra nail bats farmed from auto row.

Level 36, 66 mafia
Att 1375
Def 1485
Profile iph $12600
Actual iph ~$6700

[Dravak]

Here 80% of my explosives are bought from robberies or fights ...
Since it wasn't my money anyway , I don't feel the pain of the loses .

You start out with offensive explosive anyway , then defensive ones , only buy multipurpose ones if you are able to restock from your own cash flow .

[dudeman]

At what level does it make sense to stock explosives? I'm down at level 36 and it looks like most of my rivals don't have any, but maybe it would give me an edge to start keeping some. I hate to spend money that could be reinvested in my economy at this point, but maybe it would be useful as a deterrent on the defense side. I think I have enough attack points right now that I'm able to find rivals I can beat pretty easily. then again, investment in some explosives might be a relatively cheap way to break into the more well-defended no-bank hoods I see sometimes.

I haven't invested much in equipment -about 15 nvbs, a couple of lower level respect items bought before finding the forums plus have mostly relied on pvp loot plus a few extra nail bats farmed from auto row.

Level 36, 66 mafia
Att 1375
Def 1485
Profile iph $12600
Actual iph ~$6700


Here 80% of my explosives are bought from robberies or fights ...
Since it wasn't my money anyway , I don't feel the pain of the loses .

You start out with offensive explosive anyway , then defensive ones , only buy multipurpose ones if you are able to restock from your own cash flow .

+1. When starting out with explosives I only used stolen cash to stock them. Like Dravak said, not my cash to start with so losses are nothing to worry about. Easy come, easy go.

One you are fully stocked with 500+ of whatever attack explosive you like, then look into defense explosives if you are still interested.

Contrary to Dravak's advice though, I would never buy the multi-purpose explosives, but that is based on personal preference only. I have attack explosives and defense explosives, I don't need multi-purpose explosives that I won't use anyways.

Recently I also decided to stop replenishing my defense explosives. I haven't noticed any significant changes, so that tells me either I didn't need them to start with or they weren't doing anything for me except burning through my cash.

[Dravak]

you need the multi purpose ones as a buffer for the more expensive explosives , that is untill the next casualty rates unannounced fix is coming ..... >.<

Same as always when you finally figured something out , they just change the game again .
So what works yesterday might not work today !
So basically yes the IED don't bother , the time bombs presently are being skipped for smoke bombs and stun grenades , before they saved the stun grenades .

[Dreno33]

I liked reading about this, learned a lot considering I've never bought an explosive on this acct or my old one. White Frog's thoughts made most sense, IMO. But then Ghost seemed to bring in a valid point about the HLs.

New question about this: Are the Defensive Explosives worth the daily cost to maintain in the High Levels if you are just going to be banking anyways? Like, why add to your already 10% loss?

[Dorian Gray]

What type of buildings you have will also come into play when thinking about def exploseves.

Someone with a lot of 1hr and 3hr buildings that they don't collect on time always is going to be at a much bigger risk of losing a lot of def explosives.

Someone with all 12/24/48hr buildings that they collect on time will not have to worry about someone coming through their hood and burning up 100s of explosives at a time.

[JaceD]

Explosives seem like a waste of money so I've never bought them (I'm at level 136). All they would do is boost my stats, but robberies would still be able to get through so I'd lose explosives and money. I don't lose attacks very often as is but when I do, all that happens is my fights lost increases. I don't lose any $ since I bank, so why would I want to buy explosives? Even if I lost less fights as a result, I'd still be at a loss overall because right now I'm losing nothing, and if I had explosives I'd be losing something.

Am I thinking this through the wrong way?

[murf]

At what level does it make sense to stock explosives? I'm down at level 36 and it looks like most of my rivals don't have any, but maybe it would give me an edge to start keeping some. I hate to spend money that could be reinvested in my economy at this point, but maybe it would be useful as a deterrent on the defense side. I think I have enough attack points right now that I'm able to find rivals I can beat pretty easily. then again, investment in some explosives might be a relatively cheap way to break into the more well-defended no-bank hoods I see sometimes.

I haven't invested much in equipment -about 15 nvbs, a couple of lower level respect items bought before finding the forums plus have mostly relied on pvp loot plus a few extra nail bats farmed from auto row.

Level 36, 66 mafia
Att 1375
Def 1485
Profile iph $12600
Actual iph ~$6700

I find attack explosives very useful as you are able to choose who you attack. I choose people with defense of <70% of my attack and I lose a handful of explosives a day (less than five). But, if you aren't having problems finding people to attack then don't worry about it.

I think defensive explosives are only useful if you have a very strong defense already and getting them with make you invincible. Otherwise, you will burn though them way too fast and they really won't provide any additional benefit. So, if you are only losing a few attacks/robs a day, and you could swing those to wins with added defensive explosives then go ahead. But make sure you don't pussyfoot into using defensive explosives. Make sure you equip your entire mafia at one shot, otherwise if you slowly build up, you haven't meaningfully improved your defense yet, so your explosives are more exposed to being consumed.