Galactic Battlegrounds has many new and unique ideas. You can train and control many new unit while playing this game. Since Galactic Battlegrounds is a real time strategy game, it can be vital for you to learn all services, and to send them into action against the proper enemy service in the right moment. I wanna introduce you the grenadier droid service in this article, and also my custom grenadier droid, here at CustomStarWars.

The grenadier service is very new in the world of games, which is pretty weird knowing that service has and will have a bigger importance in the reality. This service is able to launch highly explosive ballistic charges above walls, trees, and other kind of landmarks, right in the neck of the enemy troopers hiding in cover. It was first deployed in the 2nd World War. You may remember those small grenade launchers, in which the soldiers loaded some grenades, which loudly screaming flew up in the air, and fell in the trenches, in the ruins of houses, or in the forest. The grenadier could modify the trajectory by changing the angular offset of the launcher. These grenade launchers were often loaded with a "srapnel" charge, which made its effect more powerful giving it a bigger damage in the target area within a bigger radius. It was a small weapon, but everybody feared it, there was no place to hide from it! As I can recall Call of Duty and in Hidden and Dangerous second World War games that was a mission to get rid of those grenadiers, who were keep bombing our men. So other games use these special soldiers, but for some reason Star Wars games haven't applied this unique service. Yet.

Till Lucasarts finally gave a chance for the grenadiers in the game Galactic Battlegrounds. They use different grenades, these are not the usual and known handgranades. Thermal detonators and other handgranades are common in the Star Wars games. The handgranades need to be thrown by hand. These are very similar to the Galactic Battlegrounds grenadier service, but still not the same! Because Galactic Battlegrounds' grenadiers carry their grenade launchers on their back, which they place on the ground when the target is close, drop a grenade in it, and start bombing the enemy. The grenade launcher can be precisely programmed, so it can deploy grenades with great accuracy from a large distance, too. The clones couldn't do that, couldn't compete neither the accuracy, nor the distance. A single grenadier droid is surprisingly able to deal a serious damage on the armored clone vehicles! Of course only the AI has such powerful grenadiers against the human player. I have tried to convert a AI controlled grenadier with one of my Jedis, and turned him against his former fellows. Guess what! He dealt five (!) hit points, despite he was dealing fifty against my men previously... So the AI is a big cheater!

The grenadier droid arm can be trained in the troop center. Their price is 90 food and 40 nova each. You can see their training button in the picture, I point it with the arrow cursor. A pop up menu will inform you about their advantages and disadvantages, and also it will tell you what upgrades will be available for them in the future, and which buildings have effect on them.

Like all other kind of droids, the grenadier droids have 5 mayor features, that can be upgraded. The first is their programming itself, this declares, how "smart" is the droid, which means how quickly, and how they can react the combat situations. You won't be able to upgrade this software in the Galactic Battlegrounds game.

The second main feature is about the armor. The droid is not cheap, so it needs to be protected, so upgrading and applying a good armor on them could be vital. The grenadier droid have a thick armor, since they often get into the line of sight of enemy units, can suffer incoming hits, and often get damage from their own grenades, or the detonating debris of the destroyed enemy units. The armor can be upgraded in the war center.

The third mayor feature is the speed. The thick armor must not slow the droid. You will be able to upgrade the droid's speed with 5 percent in the game. It is clear, the droid's speed will determine how quickly will the robot be able to move, so no matter how fast is the controlling software, the robot has to be able to execute its drives fast, and reliable. The whole thing is similar to a PC, a fast processor calculates the date in a microsecond, but if the hardware can not execute the routines so quickly, the processor will send the date into the memory, and has to wait till the video card, the peripheries, or the other units are working. So the droid has to have fast "reflexes", and needs to be fast, and has to act rapidly, not rarely in a rush.

The fourth feature is the firepower. So you can upgrade their grenades, too. It is getting a bigger damage radius, twice as big as the initial. Also, it will be more powerful, causing a larger scale of destruction amongst armored vehicles. You can even develop a faster grenade launcher, which can launch grenades 10 percent faster. A marching line of armored division, or a bigger group of fighting walkers in a small place are ideal targets for the grenadiers. They are ineffective against walls, and not to effective against infantry, because they can strafe away from the ballistic charges quickly. And, the range of the grenade is less then a totally developed rifleman, so as everybody else, the grenadiers are effective against a certain service, while they are vulnerable from an other one. In our case they are very good against armored vehicles, and walkers, but (as the grenadiers don't have any hand weapon) they cannot protect themselves (too well) against long ranged infantrymen, and bounty hunters. While they cannot do anything against the airplanes. So it is easy, you can attack them with your fighters from above, and clear them from the battleground before they can approach your armored vehicles, because a fully upgraded grenadier can destroy even your strongest walkers!

The fifth feature is the attack range. There is an example in the next screenshot. The mounted droid trooper has to go right next to the building, he is only able to use his flamethrower if he is adjacent to the target. The speederbike can stand a bit further, to shoot the building, while the battle droids stood a bit further, but grenadier droid has the largest line of sight of all. The grenadier droid has a bigger line of sight then a basic battledroid without any upgrade because they are a ranged unit. This often means in the world of games that you won't be able to use them on adjacent enemy targets, they need a distance between them and the target. If the enemy gets to close to them, they stand up, and retreat a bit, to maintain the needed distance. Later they will get an extra Line of Sight upgrade in the troop center, but that will upgrade all troop center units with +1 range and LOS, so the difference between them stays constant, until other battle droid developments get available, after that the difference disappears, and the battledroids gets the advantage over the grenadiers, especially that the basic droids can fire at adjacent enemies, too. The grenadier droids has an other disadvantage, namely if they shoot at an enemy who is next to a friendly unit, the grenade damages our men too, so you mustn't let the grenadier droids fight on their own, instead you can keep the targets in front of them with a cheap unit like a speeder bike, and while they are attacking it, and stay in front of your grenadiers start bombing them all, no matter if we loose the speeder bike, they will loose more, or bomb them behind the line of your battle droids.

You can play with these grenadier droids in the basic Galactic Battlegrounds and in its Clone Campaign. They have many funny, unique, and robotic reporting-ins when you click on them, or when you send them to a location to attack an enemy unit. Here you can hear some cool grenadier droid MP3 comments, and reporting-ins from the game Galactic Battlegrounds:

WHEN CLICKING a Grenadier droid, we'll hear these reporting and sentences! Listen to the Galactic Battlegrounds grenadier droid MP3 sounds!

Awaiting authority input.
Grenade droid present!
Grenadier reporting.
Grenade droid here.
What is your command?
Overpowered!


ATTACKING with a Grenadier droid:

Optimized!
Input subroutine initiated!
I'll reboot them!
Command received!
Finding my target!
they'll soon be offline!
I'll clean their processors!


I wanted to immortalize them, so I custom made an yellow colored grenadier droid from the Galactic Battlegrounds Trade Federation droid army, who is kneeling by its grenade launcher, and targeting the enemy. I built a wooden stand for him, which makes it even nicer. The stand is covered by grass, sand, and little stones, to imitate the ground. There are name stickers all over the sides of the stand. The droid's armor is grey. The yellow areas on his armor differentiates his legion, which can be set by the gamer by selecting his/her favorite color, making your army more special, and unique.

Please take a look at my yellow custom grenadier droid!