[Suggestion] Make Mines more Useful

Since the move to two implants per troop, mines have become much less useful. Now it's pretty much a given that someone on your side will have Sweeper 5 enabled so mines are much less of a hazard. This is a good thing overall IMO as random deaths are never fun.

Mines could be altered slightly to make them worth their slot. They could become area denial tools if they weren't as easy to destroy. Especially tank mines, perhaps they could become immune to small arms and blast damage. EMP would still work.

That's actually a really cool idea. Also let the engineering tool disable them by default. Possibly add a mini-game where you have to time a few button presses or you blow up, just to add a little tension to the process. Maybe combining mine guard, sweeper, and a new utility slot would let you become a mine sweeping tank or sunderer.

I really like this idea. Less effective, but harder to remove mines, and maybe more of them.

I'd just remove Sweeper from the game though, encourage people to actually pay attention, give more mines (2-3 without the extra mines suit slot for engi) but reduced lethality so they're actual flanking warning+defense instead of instant kill cheese around corners.

I would rather have mines take an new role. Currently its fire and forget, you can run to the other end of the map if you want to and they'll go off. I would like to see mines deal damage but only kill damaged players so that the one placing them has to be there to finish the Job (or damage the opponent beforehand). To prevent players just dumping more mines on one spot they will have an area denial for nearby other mines. In return for the loss of power, mines get cheaper and you get the ability to pick up your own mines again. This makes mines an area denial weapon but without the fire and forget.

Harassers / Flashes with anti mine armor can just drive through a bunch of AV mines already.
Why would I waste 3 times the time with dropping the mines, guarding the area, hunting down the enemy when I can instead just use a C4 Light Assault and bomb the target from 100% to 0% or come at them with either LA or ***** Flash ?

Imo AV mines need a buff. As vehicle health has been buffed I'd just increase the total amount of AV mines carried by +1.
The main issue with AV mines is that they're just dropped on the ground in a true "I hope no one sees them there." fashion.

Solution: AV mines become invisible but just and only to vehicle users that use seats on which their character is completely safe from outside sniper damage. The anti mine armor should be capable of partially lifting that restriction, by allowing the crew to regularly see enemy AV mines within a certain distance no matter the seat, with armor rank and vehicle type determining the distance covered (better armor = higher distance; faster & lighter vehicle = higher initial distance). The anti explosives implant shouldn't work outside the range of this applied limitation, which means it shouldn't work at all inside tanks using anything but anti mine armor, as the limitation isn't lifted the least bit there.

No change for Harasser rumble seat / Flash / infantry / MAX, just for soldiers using vehicle seats on which they're fully protected from bullets. Goal: to grant AV mines a greater chance of dealing with the enemy they're supposed to deal with despite the anti explosives implant and mine drop on plain ground. People that'd want to avoid the AV mines or want to make use of their anti explosives implant would then have to use the proper armor for the proper job instead of using the implant to be like "Fúck that anti mine armor. We don't need it.".

Because C4 fairying is an entirely different method, and I wasn't just talking about AV mines but AI mines as well.

You could also give AV mines additional abilities, such as nerfing the vehicle that drives over it with reduced speed and the like. Similar things for AI mines, to set them farther apart from C4.

The main issue is them being placed in the auto-drive area without the player being able to stop the vehicle, and the fact that most of these mines are placed in places where you can't spot them in time like the edge of a bridge. And since mines still have problems with being spotted, down to having to spot a mine I'm almost standing on with crosshair on top 3x before it registers, it makes it all the worse for driving unless you have anti-mine armor.

No, bad idea. AV mines don't need to be an even more annoying "cluck you" instakill through harder to see mines. Area denial is where it's at. With additional benefits such as slowing down enemies who drive over it regardless of mine protection it is a viable method to deal with Harassers and vehicles trying to quickly attack you.

While sounding cool in theory you can't actually know if, when and what will eventually run over how many of your mines. So any potential effect that allows hunting down a target boils down to a may / may not happen situation of the matching / wrong target and waiting for things to happen is like using a sniper from inside a spawn room: ineffective, boring, lame.

Players who blindly pull a vehicle from a vehicle terminal and fail to check if there are mines ahead of the roll out area deserve to die, except for areas where no easy line of sight check from the vehicle terminal to the roll off area is possible.

A bridge is a rather obvious place to use AV mines. I know there are a lot of stupid people who don't understand that a single, narrow access path that vehicles have to use is the perfect place for AV mines and drive away carelessly. What could go wrong ? Everyone else will actually Q-spam a suspicious area and check the ground. It's more the unexpected places that surprise these players along with the distraction of the battlefield. AV mine success is often just a result of the failure of others to either think, open their eyes or teamplay with another (spot & destroy) but not of the good design concept of AV mines as the only good thing about them is their damage while everything else s*cks.

AV mines aren't hard to spot. Q-spamming works very well, some sniper scope checking of obvious road paths that can be checked well works pretty well often too. Using a sniper rifle or engi archer rifle to destroy them then is pretty easy, except for larger distances but the marker helps with that a lot, even if the actual mines aren't really visible any bit well. The only AV mines that are hard to destroy are those with no line of sight to so that they can't be destroyed from a distance and either an EMP, a vehicle with fitting anti mine armor or some soldier(s) are required to do the job.

AV mines slowing vehicles down isn't even a working concept on paper as tanks are already slow enough, except for the Magrider. That'd just make catching Harassers easier. In terms of the MBTs a Prowler might just anchor and put up a fight, a Vanguard might just use it's shield, only a Magrider would suffer. Not very fair either.
If AV mines aren't well usable to counter Sunderers and tanks then they aren't really worth the effort of resources and time spent using them. They're already in a passive role in which their damage is the only good thing about them. I just don't see any actual reason that screams "We need to nerf them because of that.".

The anti explosives implant nearly slipped it's required attention due to AV mine debate:
This thing is OP easymode vs any form of mines and needs to be changed in functionality. It always counters time and resources spent with placing mines while not requiring any time or resources itself, not even skill as it's permanently active. So I thought: What about making it ping the area for explosives around only if standing still for ~3s instead of permanently ? A wholly different approach to that. The implant's range could then also be higher at the lower rank as a ping timer could be the main setting to be tweaked and the bonus range the minor setting to be tweaked when upgrading the implants' ranks.

Mines are in a bad place. They're basically troll weapons or a replacement to c4 to circumvent Sundy health gains. EOD has made them near useless in a mine's traditional role. I like the area deterrent role, but being insta-gibbed out of nowhere is just annoying. So how about EOD only lets you know the generic area of mines on your mini-map when you're in the vehicle instead of spotting them. It could give more and more accuracy the closer you get, but never enough accuracy to pinpoint them. It also shouldn't spot them for other players. You can't shoot them and you have to be an engineer to disarm them. To keep players from just driving around them they could greatly increase the trigger/blast range, that way open fields would be easier to secure. There should also be a delay in detonation, that combined with not being able to shoot them would ensure they don't replace C4 as Sundy killing weapons.

On Harassers, you don't actually need to have the mine armor equipped to survive land mines. Land mines have a delay before they go off, and with Client-side being what it is, the delay is even worse.

All you really need to do is use turbo as you're approaching the mines and you'll fly over them with them detonating behind you. Myself and my armor guys are pretty familiar with this tactic, as it is an effective way to clear a field of tank mines before friendly, more unsuspecting armor starts to push in.

I agree with some of what you say, in fact my own idea is a harsher nerf to EOD hud. Instead of telling the player even the general location of mines it should serve only to warn them that there are mines somewhere in their vicinity. Similar to Counter-Intelligence there should be a visual cue that the mines are there (possible with an audible ping too), it could be made such that a lock on style heads up warns how many mines are detected... that could even be a lvl 5 bonus.

The point of this would be to make mines a threat again, something you need to actually find, otherwise someone can just fire HESH into the mine field and be done with it.

Now I'll admit that I used AT mines instead of C4 for a LONG time, the fact that you could die and they'd remain was a huge plus side for me. However I don't think that it's that bad that they are a replacement to C4 in this regard, only Engineers can use them so it's not like you'll have AT fairies dropping the mines in. Further, they need to be triggered by a grenade so need to be clustered while C4 can be placed one brick at a time then detonated to kill sundee defenders.

As Kazure states below. Mines are already ineffective enough against fast moving targets.

They need to be adjusted so that the damage they do is done t the player or vehicle although it was still in the triggering position. Essentially removing the lag wizardry. This would aalso make VS and NC infanty mines more useful because at the moment they are WAY too easy to dodge, I say that as a TR who has almost never actually died to those mines unless I was already wounded or the were rigged in a pair.

EDIT: just looked it up 173 Bouncing Betty deaths and 181 Proximity Mine deaths. I have 1675 Claymore kills.

I think it would be better to make mines more area denial than they are. Instead of making them more potent, make them deal less damage per mine and make more mines carryable. Such as, cut each mines damage to 1/3 their current damage but allow 4 mines per "level" certed. Youll get more overall damage but you can then spread them out over an area. Giving you much more coverage.

A watchful vehicle will still be stopped and forced to clear out a field of mines rather than 1 or 2. Slowing down their advance significantly. A reckless vehicle will plow straight into a minefield and die. With Mine Carrier that gives a total of 20? Mines.

I would also change the mines to detonate instantly. Give them splash resistace and/or immunity, but also not detonate when shot with small arms, only fizzle out. So you can still remove them by shooting them with bullets or defusing them.

EMPs would remain unchanged and detonate the mines as on live.

Just my two cents, but i believe mines would be way more useful this way. Mines are supposed to create areas of denial and slow down or change enemy movement.

I do like this idea, it's what Mines are supposed to do in a real war, although I'd want a careful analysis done on the effectiveness of this area denial ability. Currently it takes 2 At mines to kill an MBT or Lightning truthfully I don't drive MBTs enough to know how badly damaged it would be after just one (current) mine.
I reckon that your new mines would each do 25% damage to a Lightning which I could definitely live with as both a tanker and a mine user. MBTs might take 5 mines to be destroyed but hey if you have 20 That's no fear

3-4 Engies could scatter a field with 60-80 mines with this making it a proper minefield denying an approach to a base.

If this system was added along with either my or adamts01's proposed EOD hud nerf it would revolutionise armoured combat on Auraxis.

Th primary issue I see with it though is the fact that there would be so many more objects on the battlefield and it could cause performance issues.

There's really no point to that. Mines are already stacked to achieve a one hit kill as it is. You'd just get people stacking 6 mines instead of 2, or whatever. I think their damage needs to stay, or even be buffed, it's their mechanics and EOD relationship that need an overhaul.

You could mitigate this by adding a small exclusion zone on each mine. Only a few feet, to prevent mine stacking. Wide enough a part that a MBT could still hit 2 mines if hit head on per row. As id assume with so many mines theyd be placed in a gridlike pattern to maximize damage and coverage.

Mines should have never been stackable to begin with. Its just silly.

Off topic, but I just wanted to make this note in case it wasn't known:

The reason for that is because the Claymore directs all of its damage in one direction (the area with the hard-to-see green lines coming out of it), but not from any other side. Prox mines and bouncing betties have a 360 degree radius, so their damage isn't quite as much unless you are right on top of the mine. Sprinting away can save you from an instant death, but only if you react fast enough.

TR Claymores allow people to sit behind them and take no damage, but woe be to you if you are on the side where all the damage is directed, because you will drop dead before you have time to realize there's a trap there waiting for you.

Good contribution but one thing is missing: I assume your suggestion includes making AV mines cheaper and not just weaker while more can be used at once.
With many mines comes one issue: Counting them. The interface would need an info area for that then as otherwise engineers would have to count the AV mines each time some were destroyed one way or another just to know how many they can still use without pointlessly wasting nanites and making other already dropped AV mines disappear due to the mine limit per player.

The good thing about your suggestion would also be that engineer AV mine runs vs Sunderers would be far less beneficial as it was always a stupid mechanic to shower an enemy vehicle with AV mines that are then destroyed by the one doing this opposed to using mines as mines would actually be used.

Yes, and the same counts for laying current mines, or laying ambushes, or walking around anywhere in the game. Your point?
You can pick up your mines again, so you only place them in advance of an incoming attack, wait the alloted time until you know you the attack won't take place, then pick up your mines again. If necessary you could even add ways to pick up mines without leaving your vehicle.

So any potential effect would be the same as with any other laying of mines, ambush or walking around anywhere. Difference is that when the mine hits you don't get a free kill, but have to actively make sure to finish off the opponent. Since the opponent will be nerfed upon hitting the mine (and damaged) you have a better chance at it.

Victimshaming, how classy of you!
People who fail to check if there are mines ahead of the terminal don't deserve to die. There's too many area's without an easy line of sight from the vehicle terminal, too many places where the vehicle terminal can't be easily reached from the vehicle pad meaning you need to redeploy making it a large waste of time, there's the unfairness of the quick-spawn from the mapscreen that never allows you to spot the mines in advance until you spawn, there's the fact that you can spot the mine upon spawning, but not do anything about it because of an unnecessary feature that auto-drives you onto them and doesn't allow you to exit, shoot or change direction.

There's too many reasons to allow the status-quo to exist. It needs changing, it has needed changing since launch. The simple act of giving us the ability to stop the auto-drive and take control upon spawning would be enough.

A bridge is a rather obvious place, and as I mentioned there's no way to ensure that you actually can spot the mines either visually or with Q-spot. That's a bad thing as it allows for OHK's that couldn't be prevented because the systems in place were inadequate.

AV mine success if more often than not the success of the one placing it doing so in an area where the mines cannot be seen or Q-spotted in time to prevent a detonation. Or those smart people who place them in an area where the enemy will be looking at the enemies while charging onto the mines. It has nothing to do with people not being smart enough to spot and circumvent the mines.

No it doesn't, and as player who spends a lot of time in a vehicle I should know. You are just downplaying things, probably because you like you crutch too much.

Key words: "checked well". That's the places where mines don't make kills and that's the places where dumb people place them. Again the reason why most kills are made by people who use smart placement abusing the crooked way spotting works and how miniscule terrain features such as bridge edges can hide your mines, if they don't just bug them into the ground.

Hmm, and what would happen the most do you think, the first situation or the last? I wonder...

Yeah! And a Prowler doing Anchor mode isn't tauted as the sitting duck who will be almost insta-killed!
I named slowing down the vehicle as one option to nerf the vehicle. There's others ofcourse but you don't want to hear that my idea has merit, you just want your crutch to stay that way.
Also did you even think about how it would affect different vehicles? Since the Magrider is reliant on it's mobility to aim it would be hit the hardest, that means to make mines fair the other two tanks would need a turret-rotation nerf on top of their mobility nerf to balance it out.

And finishing off a damaged vehicle who just drove over your mines as the vehicle won't have the option to get back into cover fast enough in all likelyhood. Alternatively it might give you the maneuverability advantage to get to the opponents back and screw them over.

Yeah! Some things might happen! Your vehicle might randomly flip and explode! Let's never use a vehicle again! Wouldn't the Magrider be the best off as he can overcome the maneuverability limitation with it's afterburner? Wouldn't you just be capable of adding a temporary block to all abilities when you hit the mine? Are you really incapable of thinking beyond the one example I gave?

That's why they would be cheaper and you can carry more of them, so that they are worth the resources and time spent using them.

And with the change they are in a passive role in which their damage+nerfing abilities is the good things about them. duh.

It does require a valuable implant slot for something that you don't encounter every life. Additionally, making the mines an area-denial weapon would be perfect to counter these implants, as it takes more time to clear out such a minefield and gives the owner of the minefield a chance to engage the player on his terms. Think of those mines in a point-defense scenario for example. If the enemy rushes, all those enemies get nerfed and easier targets, since you can place a bunch of them throughout the room rather than only one or two at key locations the total effect is larger. Players who try to clear out the mines require a lot more time and effort that can be exploited by the mine layer and any nearby allies. Means the mines work perfectly!

Just a little issue, but mines are meant to deny an area by killing whoever enters. Not wounding someone. You don’t set a mine field then leave a squad behind to make sure the mines are doing their job. It’s counter intuitive. And counter productive.

Not at all because of real life, as I don't think that plays much a part in balance in a game where we can only see 800m, but for gameplay reasons I agree with you. Mines should be an area denial weapon, or at least slow down the aggressor. They should be lethal, or at least OHK anything short of a MBT, which it should set on fire. I'd also be fine with each mine an engineer drops actually set down a 10x10m cluster of mines, or let that mine have a 10m diameter trigger/blast radius. They should be able to protect your flanks while you focus elsewhere. Or cause an armor column to stop while infantry moves forward and clears the way. That's how I see it anyway.

I really like the idea of a cluster mat.