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The explosives have blast area - you roll against each in the zone. There is hardly way you can do that with normal weapon, even when fired in autofire. Therefore the power of the explosives is the area effect and damage.

Also, depending on your style of game, certain amount of explosives will kill anyone outright.

I find explosives a bit weird also.
Grenades are particularly useless by RAW.
I'm tempted to augment Damage and range, and have the person next to the charge at Crit 1, and further away at Crit 2.
The low BLAST could also benefit from bonuses in some cases. Regarding grenades, they don't explode on impact, there is a delay, so you could argue that is reflected by the low Blast. People have a second to get the hell out of there.

But I agree, some HR are needed.
But be careful, if you make explosives too realistic, then everyone dies all the time and it's no fun... Enemies will have grenades too...

I've thought the same, so me and my players hacked it a bit.

Here are my houserules:
Throwing a grenade is the usual ranged weapons roll as normal (yes , that means you can make a quick shot with it, if you dare).

• Rolling a failure (no sixes) allows the GM to spend 1 DP to dictate where the grenade hits.

• Rolling a limited sucess (1 sixes) means you hit something, but not everything you wanted - your blast radius includes half of the people you were trying to hit (so limited success with a group of 4 enemies mean you only hit 2 of them).

• Rolling a success (2 sixes) means you cover all the combatant you wanted.

• Rolling an exceptional success (3 sixes) adds another +1 damage to anyone who recives damage from the explosive.

• Blast Power and Size works the same way as in the core book.

So far it has worked fine for us, but we don't have an extremely tactical game, so it might work differently if your game is more Mass Effect than Blade Runner.
I also think that allowing +1 damage for any sixes above exceptional would also be ok, it might make explosions more crazy, but ... they usually are, so why not? and its damage, not crits, so while it could be leathal, it won't mean every grenade is an autokill (I think).

Dont you miss the explosive effect?

A cluster granade has explosive effect 6, dam 2 and crit 1. I roll for my ranged combat as normal and get one 6, i hit with the granade. It does 2 dam plus 6 dice expolsive effect (possibility to get max six 6s for extra dam, crit or whatever) at close range.
A cluser granade only works at close range because to the explosive effect is reduced with 6 at short range.

But I agree that they are a bit underpowered

A cluster granade has explosive effect 6, dam 2 and crit 1. I roll for my ranged combat as normal and get one 6, i hit with the granade. It does 2 dam plus 6 dice expolsive effect (possibility to get max six 6s for extra dam, crit or whatever) at close range.

Interesting take. But I think by RAW, the blast effect IS the attack. So if you roll no sixes, you miss. Basically, it gives you a 6 dice attack against possibly more than one target. The RAW is very vague about how to play this, and your interpretation is very good as well. I might use that.

And I'll stress to my players that the typical grenades are low powered as to make them useful on the battlefield. Less chance of killing yourself, or friendlies. Made to root out enemies in dug ins and such.

Thanks!
Thats how interpret the rules as it, in the swedish version, says "you use ranged combat even when you throw a rock at someone" so why not a granade? Also if you use a granade lanucher you use ranged combat.
The fun part is if a PC fail thier roll you can as GM use a DP to let them fumble and drop the granade at thier feet.... or make it bounce in the wall etc. One of the PC lost his leg that way. Lucky for him cyberneticts isnt that expensive =)
Or when another PC used his granade lancher in a fight on a shuttle, failed his roll, missed the target and the granade went into the cockpit...

If you place an explosive you use Technology. I use the same rule here.

I think it works well and also as someone said, in some situations explosions kill right away.

Still can't decide which house rules to use for explosives...

I do want the player to roll Ranged Combat, to throw the grenade at the target's feet. And I want to have those sixes count.
Some people just treat it as a normal Ranged Weapon, and add the blast roll to the damage. With the stronger explosives, that could become overpowered... A typical PC can have 9 dices in Ranged and then get 9 dice from the blast damage? That's 18 dice... With no real drawback!

So here's a houserule I'm toying with:
1- Roll Ranged attack to throw the grenade. Any sixes give +1 to the Blast roll. So 3 success with a frag grenade will cause a Blast 9 damage roll to all in Close range of the target.
2- If the Ranged roll fails, the grenade scatters, as per GM fiat. Or roll a d12 for direction and 2d6 for number of meters.
3- If the Ranged roll fails, GM gets to spend 3DP and have the grenade fall at the characters feet. Roll a standard Blast damage effect for the type of explosive.
4- Only targets in Close range of the explosion get the full damage as stated above, others receive the base Blast damage, without the added sixes from the Ranged Combat roll. (To tone it down some more, you could say only the designated target gets the full brunt, any secondary target only gets Blast damage.
5- Blasts start losing power BEYOND the stated range value. Example: A breach charge with Short will cause 3 dice of blast damage at Long Range. I would roll individually for all targets, or by group of targets.
6- Always remember to apply cover values for any intervening terrain or objects. A standing body gives Cover 6. So a friend could sacrifice himself to save another.

So that's that!
What do you think?

A typical PC can have 9 dices in Ranged and then get 9 dice from the blast damage? That's 18 dice... With no real drawback!

I mean, they are explosives...