Out From Under The Shadow of the Bomb; Or: Some Ways to Nerf Explosives in Best Case Scenario

I have run and played in a number of sessions of friend of the blog deus ex parabola's game Best Case Scenario:

Player's Guide
DM's Guide
Kickstarter

And one thing I've noticed is that explosives are very strong - to the point that a squad I made equipped with only explosives was able to more or less blitz a scenario deus was running for us (and a scenario I ran for friend of the blog bamzolino was likewise somewhat trivialized by them).

So this post is going to brainstorm some ways to re-incentivize diverse load-outs:

Eye Level

This one is baked into the game - "eye levels" are the covertness of an operation, what sort of load-out you're allowed to bring and how much attention you're allowed to draw to yourself.

Copying over the eye levels from the DM's guide, they are:

CLOSED-EYE, for missions civilians should never even realize happened. Plain
clothes, silenced weapons, small groups, absolutely no rocket launchers.

OPEN-EYE, for missions where fireteams can operate openly while under false
pretenses. Strap on your revolver, slide a cowboy hat on your head and a fake
badge in your wallet, and get ready to say "nothing to see here folks".

THIRD-EYE, for missions where there is no danger of civilian involvement, or
where the stakes are so high that civilians become expendable.

So CLOSED-EYE's a pretty definite "no explosives", OPEN-EYE's a maybe, and THIRD-EYE's a go wild situation. 

Tight Spaces

Explosions... have radiuses. Radii. Whatever. If you're caught in them, that's bad news. You are probably going to die.

So if you're engaging with the enemy in tunnels or a similar environment, with no long hallways to chuck a grenade or shoot a rocket-propelled grenade down, then explosives would be tricky to use. You could probably still get away with timed explosives and mines and such.

Hostages/VIPs

Of a similar stripe to tight spaces is if the enemy is in proximity to hostages and suchlike. Depending on the mission parameters, you may not want to blow them up along with the enemy.

Fragile Environments

You probably don't want to set off a bomb aboard a space station, or at least not until you've left. Condemned buildings, rickety old mines, aquariums where all the fish are demons from hell, and suchlike sorts of environments are also not conducive to free explosive use.

Incorporeal

I'm using "incorporeal" here as a grab-bag term for any ability or condition or so on that would render an enemy resistant to explosives. Perhaps they are a big blob that can absorb the shockwave of an explosion, but are vulnerable to being frozen and shattered, or having their pseudopods lopped off, or whatever else. Maybe they're a ghost - but in a case like that, where they're likely resistant to conventional weaponry in general, I think it would be against the load-out selecting appeal of the game to require a Ghostbusters pack or somesuch in order to harm the ghost... perhaps instead give it an anchor that must be destroyed to exorcise it.

Splatter = Bad

Perhaps the enemy isn't resistant to explosives, but rather using explosives on them introduces some new danger that would disincentivize it - it spreads infectious spores or a swarm of parasites or evil goop or whatever else.

Supply Issues

From the man behind the game himself: "We ran out of explosives. This mission is about stealing explosives from a Yemen-bound CIA shipment" - what I take to mean: the Organization is having supply issues and can't give you explosives right now. In a longer campaign structure it could be interesting to start with a restricted equipment list, and X-Com (or what have you) style have to complete certain missions/objectives to unlock more stuff for your squads.

If you can think of some more ways to reasonably limit the use of explosives in Best Case Scenario scenarios then smash those like and subscribe buttons and sound off in the comments.