The Cobalt Grenade

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

So, for a long time I had assumed the grenade Louie lobs in Crisis Point was some sort of IED. However, (oddly enough) the new 'HD' transfer made it easier for me to see there is an obvious 'On' button he presses before tossing it. Now, the grenade goes from exposed components to fully clad in a shell between scenes, which makes me assume its designed to be taken apart. In fact, upon closer inspection, the grenade's shell clearly has 2 halves that look capable of being separated. Furthermore, Louie does something to fine tune the grenade, even remarking to Angelo that "its a delicate operation". I think this is, in fact, the Cobalt Grenade.

After talking with Pete Walker about it, the tuning of the Cobalt Grenade maybe akin to the yield on nuclear devices where it can be dialed up or down. Want a bigger boom? Increase the yield and hope you throw it far enough. And yea, it appears to be able to do a good deal of damage to the Bioroid Invid Fighter (strips the armor off the lower leg/foot area...may in fact take the foot completely off, though that is a guess at this point).

One additional bit of evidence that weighs in favor of this being the Cobalt Grenade is that a few minutes earlier, before Zor Prime was rescued, Angelo and Musica have this exchange:

Episode #56 Crisis Point
ANGELO: We'll, I'll be. So what you're saying is that this chamber is the whole shooting match. Tell ya what, if we throw a couple of Cobalt Grenades in there, we'll bring this ship down so fast it'll make you dizzy.

MUSICA: You must not do that! If you destroy this system, you'll be destroying thousands of my people.

ANGELO: I hate to break it to you, but your people and mine are at war.

BOWIE: Angelo, she's right. Anyway, our first order of business is to find Zor and rescue him.

ANGELO: Zor? Forget him. He's one of them. Let's start blasting!

Cobalt Grenade Extended Scene

Just as an aside:

Episode #74 Annie's Wedding
SCOTT: The rest of you, I want enough Cobalt Grenades planted on that dam to blow the whole thing sky high.

Of course, they use Cobalt Limpet Mines (Mk.I model) instead. So Scott either misspoke or they changed the plan off-screen. Either way, Louie's grenade, as Prez Cannady put it, is a DIAL-A-BOOM. Adjust the yield to give yourself a bigger blast. Either way, the setting he placed it on did significant damage to a mecha, like Anti-Armor level damage. Certainly not Anti-Personnel range (which we see they still have Frag Grenades that Louie tosses in Catastrophe)

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

So, about the other 2 Cobalt munitions: the more common Mk1 Cobalt Limpet Mine and the rarer Mk2 Cobalt Limpet Mine, both have significant destructive capability. A series of Mk1s were set up to trap Corg's unit in Birthday Blues. A whole bunch of Armored Scouts got reduced to spare parts in the resulting explosions, going so far as to lift one and hurl it against the building holding the Bio-Emulator. An Armored Fighter-Scout weighs ~5 metric tons. And Corg's Gosu Battloid has its leg severed in the explosion behind his mecha at about a dozen meters (give or take).

The Mk2 is used by Rand to reduce the Synchro-Cannon to scrap in Reflex Point, sending shrapnel flying in all directions for dozens of meters (and likely causing fratricide losses among the Invid Armored Fighter-Scouts flying around it).

By contrast, Rand and Annie set up a pair of Mk1s on the Protoculture Sensor in The Fortress and when they go off, they're standing only maybe 2 dozen meters (and that's being generous) from the blast. The 2 Protector Infantry guards, on the other hand, are right next to the blast and have holes in their armor where shrapnel/fragments got them.

So, like the Cobalt Grenade, the Cobalt Limpet Mines appear to be "dial-able" for effectiveness. Up the dial, bigger boom/blast radius. This allows for some interesting questions regarding how safe these munitions are compared to modern anti-tank weapons. The fact you be only a few dozen meters away from a blast that could rip a mecha apart is something. Or, you can make the explosion powerful enough to do severe damage to a heavily armored Battloid and reduce many smaller mecha to scrap. I think its time to revisit the damage rules (which, I know, we can't post here).

Incidentally, this should also apply to the Satchel Charge in the New Generation Sourcebook

[glitterboy2098]

given you have to attach them to a target and they have only a single size limited facing of contact, i'd argue they aren't anti-tank munitions, but rather demolition charges used for bringing down bridges, breaching walls and armored doors, and so on. sure you can pick them up and throw them, but that probably isn't their intended use.

a grenade type weapon designed for anti-tank use would have a much wider point of contact to increase the odds of the contact patch landing in the correct orientation and sticking, and would likely be designed as a directional charge, instead of omnidirectional blast.

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

Maybe I wasn't being clear. I'm not saying Cobalt Limpet Mines are anti-tank weapons, but that they are anti-tank grade weapons, or in the case of the Mk2, something that would completely shred a tank like a missile from a fighter-jet. Of course, the Cobalt Grenade COULD BE an anti-tank weapon since its designed to be lobbed at a target and its clearly powerful enough (stripping off the armor on the Invid Fighter's lower leg, if not taking it off completely). Also, the Limpet Mines as shown in Birthday Blues could be set up in such a way as to destroy an armored formation, doing to tanks what Scott's group had done to Corg's with their trap.

[taalismn]

"And so much more convenient than Davy Crocketts, don't you think?"
"Well, aside from the throw range and that they're easier to get hold of or lose than tac nukes, yeah."