Re-Balancing Tank Mines

OP looks for mines, when surrounded by infantry, and doesn't see them.

He doesn't run the implant that would see them.

He doesn't run the armour that would protect him.

He than tells everyone else they're not listening, and that they're children for running the more expensive and technically advanced platform.

I can't see this being a position likely to change with argument.

As infantry (which is all I play) I see tank and AI mines easily enough. But I have been blown up as a passenger in vehicles from time to time, by mines I never noticed even though I was looking out for them. Perhaps the vehicle was going too fast and we were on top of it before it rendered or got noticed or something. That said, I am astonished how many enemies run into my AI mines even though they must be able to see that they are there. Perhaps inattention is part of the problem with tank mines as well? Perhaps mines sometimes don't always render quickly enough for avoiding action when you are going fast, perhaps I sympathise............checking..............nope. I love my mines of both varieties. Whether in real life or in this game a tanker is just canned meat to infantry who can get close enough or prepare an ambush. And that works for me. Stay a long way back and spam (pun intended) shellfire like normal.

We both know that this would cause a flood the likes of which have never been seen before.
Considering the "High Explosive" shells our tanks lob at the enemy this would make a damage increase of 1000%, if not more AND it would leave a minefield.

I rather like PlanetSide Classic's elegance of having "one mine" (okay, it had two mines, but this latter one just caused a Jammer effect). The Heavy Explosive Mine acted as both an anti-vehicular mine and an anti-personnel mine when out in the field and that meant that Infantry and Vehicles had to deal with each other's issues and help one another at some level. When is the last time you saw Armor and Infantry advance at the same time, or the former hold back a bit while the latter secures the terrain before they both advance?

I argue that mines have to work the way they do now because of the way users play the game - recklessly. There might have been a time, previously, where they could have been adjusted to bvehave slightly differently, but we've moved beyond that point.

This sounds sensible, to a degree. The main problem with more extensive minefields is that most bases are in an unobstructed line of sight of each other and that means it's really obvious where mine fields would be created from the "distance." Additionally, because that "distance" is so short, there's little time to manually set up a deliberate field of more than a few mines, even if we were given more mines individually, because the enemy will already be at your doorstep. Working in a group just makes the effort more obvious, of course.

id be fine with them being 10x more visible if you could not just blow them up. jack up the visibility but make them immune to damage, and can only be disarmed by an enemy engineer with the level 5 tool. the point of a minefield is to deny mobility to your enemy.

he's writing a rage thread on that one now.

Oh OP. You're funny.

Have a package of changes:
1. Lowered damage
2. Drastically decreased resource cost
3. Drastically increased carry and deploy limit
4. Small no-deploy zone around each invididual mine to prevent stacking
5. "Land vehicle deterrence" XP for mines that successfully damage a vehicle
6. Extra "Area denial" XP for successfully killing a vehicle with mines
7. Decreased size (no more huge pizza)
8. (Optional) Shooting a mine disables (and removes) it, not exploding it

And perhaps we can see mines being used to deny entry to a route or an area, instead of being an one-time OHK cheap kill that does squat to the overall battle outcome, or used as makeshift C4 with gunfire/grenade as the detonator. The 8th change also makes mines safe for friendlies of all sorts and enemy infantry to drive/run over.

I am never going to oppose an idea to add cool (albeit treaty banned) kit from real life militaries; instead - lets talk how to implement it fairly.

First; why stop at artillery shells that disperse AP mines? We have them that dispense AT mines too. Or are we forgetting fun kit like the RAAMs?

Second; You've said it a dozen times. I've said it a dozen times. No more "barrel shell selection". Let tankers change shells like infantry change fire modes. There are a dozen different ways to make this work on the ammo backend without making the game "laborious" like Planetside 1 "was" with those "dastardly" inventory systems. (Despite the fact we both know this is a fun, and effective, solution).

Third; Since we have multiple shells, can change shells like a real tank, and can determine the mix of shells we take, make them cost resources. My Vanguard can fire a shell that disperses 5 Bouncing Bettys over an area? Bouncing Bettys cost 75 each for an infantryman. But he gets to tactically place them, so we will give the tanker a 25 nanite discount. That shell costs me 125 nanites; and like an infantryman placing a Betty I am not charged my nanites until I do the deed (fire the shell).

We can even faction flavor this smuff up a bit. Vanguard's Betty Shell distributes 5 Bouncing Bettys over a randomized area for 125 nanites. For 125 nanites, the Prowler gets "two shots", each distributing 3 claymores in a random pattern and facings. Thats right - they get an extra mine AND can spread them out more - but they get a bigger "discount" on each mine because the claymore is more reliant on correct placement. The Magrider? Four Proxy Mines distributed for 125 nanites, but in an exact pattern. They get less mines per shell, but can more reliably put them into effect.

Tank Mine shell would be the same kit-and-kaboodle; just more standardized. Because it is, afterall, a nanite systems mine. Four tank mines a shell sounds reasonable (two each for the Prowler). Tank mines cost 50 nanites, and are less deployment dependent. That is your 200 nanite shell. All three factions tank deploys the same; four tank mines in a random area.

The amount of spread on the various shells can be left to be determined.

Finally; Introduce a way to track your current deployables. We all know this was a great thing in Planetside 1, but in Planetside 1 you could have enough deployables to loose track of them. What about Planetside 2? Well - increase the deployable limit to 750 nanites worth. Every player can have up to 750 nanites worth of deployables at one time. That is 15 tank mines. Or 10 AP mines. Or some crazy combination of the two.

For our tank shell example, that means one Vanguard could fire 6 AP Mine Canister shells - which means 30 AP mines distributed.... somewhere! Well gosh. I almost got to the exact figure you had. Fire a 7th shell at some point? The oldest 5 AP mines or tank mines poof. Leave your tank and put a betty somewhere as an Infantryman? Your oldest AP or Tank mine poofs. Vice Versa.

Get a sundy, cert in mine resistance, and then see how many mines it takes to kill it at max level

This reminds me of when I joked that, considering the relative explosive performance between hand grenades and HE shells, our factions would be better off stuffing their tank shells full of as many hand grenades as they could hold.

Per my previous post you would have the framework to do this as well.

Frag Grenade Shell or Sticky Grenade Shell? 200 nanites for a random dispersal of 5 nades. Flash Grenade Shell? 125 nanites for a random dispersal of 5 nades. So on and so forth.

Could even get super cool about it. Driving a tank as a light assault? Get access to flash grenade and smoke grenade shells! Driving it as anything else? Tough luck! We already have the ability to limit a function based on class (Wraith). Wouldn't a revive grenade shell be cool? But who drives a tank as a Medic? Good thing we have Nanite Auto Repair for tanks!

7

or 1, and 2 c4.

miss the days when that didn't despawn.

should stay there, just not remote detonate

got 3000 ish kills with AV mines, love them.

got 5000ish land vehicle kills

predominately play infantry

leave it how it is, laying them is a bit of an art, and even that can be defeated to some extent with graphics settings.......

A while back there was a video showing that the implant didn't work so well..

has that changed now?

works pretty well for me, the issue is that if you're going too fast you get insufficient warning to stop, whatever tier implant.

Sure. And it doesn't have to be limited to tanks either... really anything that carries a large enough weapon should qualify. For example, aircraft should be able to carry a limited number of cluster munitions as well. AI, AV.

I guess the only thing that can't really be hurt by mines are aircraft. That's because we don't have AA mines yet, which is odd because they currently exist in limited form today:



About a 200m range, it pretty much exists to automatically shoot down low-flying aircraft. More like a single-shot sentry turret. If added to PS2, these would OHK light aircraft within, say, 80m. Two would kill heavy aircraft like Liberator or Galaxies who happened to swoop down within 80m.

Mineguard is largely irrelevant as a practical option since it's way too specialized against an uncommon attack type and occupying the same slot as many vastly more useful options (defense slot).

For a Sunderer in particular, Mineguard is practically meaningless since the biggest mine threat a Sunderer faces comes from plant-and-detonate engineers while deployed, and deployment shield already covers that plus all other damage types. In any other situation, the low amount of deployable mines for individual engineers means that there's never a minefield, only a small stack of mines at one chokepoint to kill the first unlucky vehicle to pass over (if they aren't discovered and destroyed first), and it's unreasonable for anyone to sacrifice options that are much more useful just to nullify that very, very uncommon risk.

And it's similar for other land vehicles since they aren't supposed to sit at once place and tunnel-vision for so long that anengineer of all people can creep up to them and do a plant-and-detonate attack. Regular armor addition or NAR would be a much better defense slot option.


For Mineguard to truly become relevant, the utility/defense slot split needs to end and simply turned into "Slot 1/Slot 2" for players to mix-and-match current utility/defense options to their heart's content. (The Sunderer might need to maintain that split in some form though, or we'll be seeing things like Blockade-Shield uber-AMS, Ammo-Repair hybrid logistics, Blockade-Ammo/Repair reinforced logistics, Blockade-Mineguard anti-everything and Blockade-NAR cockroach Battle Bus builds)

There certainly isn't a reason why the concept can't be expanded to other platforms. I remember when Reavers used to troll tanks by sticking tank mines on the front, flying over an armor column, and then rolling the aircraft to "bomb" the tanks with the AT mines.

And an AA "mine" is certainly a novel way to combat hover-spamming/farming. I vaguely remember there being something similar in WW2 that fired a cluster mortal shell. It burst in air and had a bunch of contact explosives on parachutes. Fire in the path of a plane doing a strafing run, ???, profit.

Certainly with future technology this can be adapted to detect incoming aircraft, track, and launch as the aircraft passes overhead in the engagement window. Basically the Russian shaped charge system you link.

Physically these devices would likely be larger in size than their tank mine counterparts; likely a happy middleground between current AT mines and a spitfire. They could be deployed from the ACE like AP and AT mines. It takes two AT mines at 50 Nanites each to outright kill a 450 Nanite MBT without Mineguard; so two AA mines at 50 Nanites each should sufficiently kill a 450 Nanite Liberator without composite armor.

The damages and resistances could be scaled so that composite armor affords the same level of benefit to aircraft that Mineguard does to ground vehicles. Alternatively we could add a new defense slot item for aircraft, a "ground fire plate" if you will. Functions like mineguard in that it only reduces damage from mines, where composite armor is the equivalent of one of the tanks directional armor options (or lighter vehicles choice of composite armor) providing lesser all-around protection from all sources.

Aircraft will then have to decide between starting their engagement further out, creating a larger engagement opportunity for ground forces, or to ground skim / hoverspam near their target. Reducing the engagement opportunity for ground forces but increasing the risk of tripping a mine.

I do believe scaling the damage so that 2x AA Mine gibs unarmored Liberator the same way 2x AT Mine gibs unarmored Tank would create a similar Recourse/Mine balance for air vehicles that exists for ground vehicles. Which is only fair. I personally feel the rang

As a tangent related to the difference between composite armor and the tanks directional armor - given that composite armor is available on all aircraft and affords reduction from all damage sources... don't you think it might be fair to combine the top armor and mineguard for ground vehicles into one item?

Mines are annoying in every game. Dota2 Techies, PS2 AV, AI mines, hell even in bomberman. But once they are part of a game...

i usually just put mineguards on all my vehicles, with a possibility of taking 5% less dmg from plating it just doesnt seem worth it to have anything but mineguards in my opinion. can run over 4 mines with my prowler n still live