Alright, I have a couple questions.

1) Can grenade launchers kill enemies in a reasonable amount of time? The GL-06 in the gameplay videos went from being an insta-kill weapon to only knocking people down, so how many grenades would it take to kill....a medium with a health buff? Having to reload more than 4 times to kill someone with it will probably be a death sentence.

2) Will direct impacts using grenade launchers be an instant incapitate, or will they just fly through character models and/or bounce off?

3) Can engineers buff grenade launchers to give them the special ammo effects (incendiary, armor-piercing)??

4) Do grenades/grenade launchers knock people down per hit, or is there a limit to how fast someone can be knocked down? Bad wording, but let me give an example: You fire your automatic grenade launcher at an enemy medic to keep him from reaching his teammate. Because the grenades knock him down each time he is hit, you can keep him on his face aka stunlock him. <---- Do grenades work like this??

well, i think on lights to un-buffed might be insta to close to insta-kills, i believe the assault class will be able to buff GLs but that is all speculation.

1) From what I've read / seen (could well be wrong), grenades are supposed to be a kind of AOE crowd control ability. In team vs team fights, stopping half the opposing force from being able to manuever, heal and fire back effectively for a second or two I can imagine would be a huge advantage to the outcome of the battle. To use an MMO anology the CC allows the DPS on your side to do the damage (where having AOE CC and high DPS in one package is never done for very obvious reasons). Makes sense as a change, given how devastating grenade launchers are in CQB style games (especially with more than one, spamfest city) with all the advantages of indirect fire and enclosed areas. For lone wolf tactics, I'm guessing that one GL, then quick swap to a secondary weapon / close to melee range would be the best tactic to use.

2) No idea, but I'd bet good money it would be an instant incapitate / knockdown, can't see Splash messing up the collision detection. Could be a minimum arm time though, not needed on FF enabled servers, but FF off it stops the good old cheesy tactics of firing at your own feet to kill / incapacitate enemies who are close (or they'll go for FF being always enabled for self inflicted damage).

3) No idea.

4) No idea, but I would assume no as having a weapon that can perma AOE stunlock IMO would be a terrible design call and open to excessive abuse.

Perhaps they were intended more for support roles like the Light Rifles - rather than being deadly, they just cause significant damage and help the rest of the guys in your team to put the enemy down quicker or easier.

In one of the gameplay videos it was OHK with the grenade launcher (I hope I am mistaken).
and I think the whole idea is completely stupid seeing as when a sniper headshot isnt even an OHK. How is that balanced? Better luck sniping with a grenade launcher than a sniper rifle. Isnt the grenade launcher a secondary weapon too?

That was a very early video, before they went back and re-balanced everything. And no, grenade launchers are considered to be heavy weapons. As far as I know of there are currently two - the single shot GL-06 that is open to medium body types and the automatic one that only heavies can use.

Good luck pleading your case, it's not going to get anywhere.

1) That vid was with god mode on (invul, extra damage etc) Also depends if its single shot or full auto.

2) I doubt they isn't incapicitate

3) They buff teammates guns, GL's are guns.

4) The big draw is they can knockdown multiple people. As for stunlocking with grenades we have not been provided by SD.

What do you mean you "doubt they isn't incapicitate"??
And my first question was referring to the single shot GL-06, the one you have to constantly reload. Also, I didn't just take those two examples of it from one video. I used the Container City video and another of the Airport game-play demo.

It was Container City with god mode. Also I doubt one GL shot will instantly incapictate.

Well, do you know what the current damage spread is? How much of your health would one grenade take away?
I suppose that I should also ask whether or not grenades fired from a GL act the same as thrown grenades do, as far as damage/blast radius goes. I already know that all 'lethal' grenades provide knockdown.

Kind of also brings to mind an idea of a useful universal ability - Avoid being knocked down by grenades, but take more damage as a result. I'm thinking somewhere around the range of 35-50%?

No idea to be quite honest, SD has provided no specific % or I would have heard about it. I would expect GL's to have knockdown just like grenades.

It would be an interesting ability.

It could've been the current balancing though. A grenade won't incapacitate you in one hit, but it can knock you down.

Thanks, now I've got two of my questions answered. Unfortunately I still have no idea on the first or last one, and those are the real game-breakers.

the GL is going to do more damage than a hand grenade, since the hand grenades are meant for fragmentation and shock wave, the GL 40mm rounds are so far HE variants, made to make a bigger explosion. i guess that the HGs are going to "pepper" and knockdown players and the GL is going to do more "peppering" with a higher chance for a incapacitate with a larger blast radius.

You base this on what exactly?

just a theory, until the developers say or show any new signs of the damage tweaking, it is all speculation. i am basing mine off of the different post and a little knowledge on the workings of Grenades and GL. if i am wrong i will stand corrected, i am just speculating that they are going to do more damage, i should have pointed it out in the last post.

If I had to guess, I would say regular hand grenades would deal more damage than GL's.

Reasoning? Cooldowns - regular nades are on a cooldown, whereas GL's can be fired as fast as the reload speed and ROF for the weapon allows, which leads me to believe that normal nades do more damage.

See that's what I was thinking too, but to be honest I have no clue. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with being able to just knock people over with a well-placed grenade from my launcher, because that alone would be enough for me to help my teammates, even without any damage. I'd just appreciate it more if I was able to kill people without having to use all my ammo.

This is basically what I was thinking.

Good reasoning, but the other side is that everyone has access to grenades and to have a GL you have to use up a precious weapon slot...

I can imagine GL's are gonna be very tricky to balance, too weak and their pointless, too strong and you get the old 1 or 2 GL spam fed by an ammo dispensing guy turning a choke point into permanent instant death scenario.

I guess we have to wait and see to find out.

Players should get the time to notice a hail of grenades being deployed at their possition and be able to haul out of there to escape tactical retreat (severly) wounded and mourn the loss of their less armored friends.

In cinna's post (as well as Dev interviews) nades were said to not do much damage, they are mostly crowd control. Knocking people down to make kills easier, or so you can rush in while they are disorganized. So as far as nades being able to "kill in a reasonable amount of time" ...probably not, sounds like you will have more luck using a nade then useing a firearm to finish the job.

Stunlocks are a more elusive question, but I haven't heard anything to imply that you couldn't, but considering the fact that people can shoot while knocked down and you are making a hell of a lot of noise firing that many nades, I'm not sure how practical it is.