In the competitive mode of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the attacking team must plant an explosive and the defenders must defuse it. And just knowing that the timer is set for 40 seconds after planting and being near the explosive will bring death isn’t enough.
CS.MONEY here to tell you all the secrets of the C4 in detail!
Mechanics & Numbers
In the scenario with explosives, which applies to every competitive map in the game, one of the attack players is given the C4 at the beginning of each round. This player is selected randomly by the game. With the C4 on hands, the player can select it, drop it, or plant it in the specified area.
The running speed with the C4 in your hands is equal to that when moving with a knife — 250 units per second, the highest speed that can be achieved while running. The C4 can be thrown away, and if it lands outside the map, for example on Vertigo, it’ll be teleported back. A C4 dropped to the ground can only be picked up by attack players. Defenders can neither pick it up nor move it in any way.
Finally, planting the C4 in a special area will trigger the countdown. In normal mode, the timer is set to 45 seconds; in competitive mode, it’s set to 40 seconds. After planting, the explosive emits a loud squeak and flashes. C4 detonation ends the round with the victory of the attack, regardless of the number of surviving players in any of the teams.
It takes approximately 3.2 seconds to plant the explosive. You can start planting the C4 by selecting it as a weapon and pressing and holding the left mouse button or the “use” action key (E by default). When planting, your character crouches.
Detonation
One second before detonation, the light indicator on the bomb changes its color from red to white. The explosion deals 500 damage, but the value drops with increasing distance. The damage is able to pass through walls and other obstacles. The default damage radius is 1750 units, or about 45 meters, but it was reduced for Vertigo and Nuke.
Armor reduces explosion damage, with half of the resulting health damage dealt to it. A player with full health and armor can survive a C4 explosion at a distance of about 20 meters. For instance, B Site on Dust 2 and Inferno is large enough to be able to survive the detonation without losing sight of the C4.
Players killed by the explosion aren’t included in the killed statistics. However, they still get one death in the results table. In addition, such a death, just like a regular one, makes the player lose all weapons, grenades, armor, and equipment that they’d carried.
Defusal
To defuse the C4, players must be in close proximity to the explosive. The beginning of the defusal will be marked by a characteristic sound that is heard by everyone. It takes ten seconds to defuse the C4. If the player has a defusal kit, it takes five seconds.
Some actions during defusal will interrupt the process. Players can’t move, attack, or turn the camera away from the C4 too far. However, players can still finish an attack, such as throwing a flashbang, or rotate while looking at C4. The rotation speed is limited. If you rotate the camera too fast, the defusal will be interrupted.
When there’s no time left for defusal, even with a kit, a radio message with a warning is heard. A player standing directly at the C4 will only have very low chances of escaping. However, if initially at a distance of a few meters, there is a good chance to avoid death if you select the knife and start running away immediately.
Learn more about knife speedruns here:
Useful Tips
Both planting and defusal of C4 can be interrupted at any time. Since both procedures aren’t accompanied by any sound hints, it’s only possible to tell at what moment the process was interrupted visually. You can use this to deceive your opponent and lure him out of hiding.
If you press the grenade throw button, start defusing, and then release the button, the character will perform a throw. You can use this and throw a flashbang under your feet, preventing your opponent from interrupting the defusal.
An explosive lying on the ground as well as the player carrying the bomb are marked on the radar with a special symbol. It’s visible even if the mark is off the radar. Thanks to this, you can quickly determine whether defenders detected the C4 or not, and if they did, where exactly it happened.
