22 Reasons to run Mineguard on your AMS

I find it easier to deal with ppl with rockets with a couple others defending the sundy than engies dropping out of nowhere with tank mines. Rockets you can rep against, you can hunt and kill rocketeers, but honestly I almost never roll an AMS without mine guard.

With that said and with the spirit of this video, we need another video made. I got 99 problems but a mines aint one, if you got mine problems I feel bad for you son.....

I have yet to see the words "Just buy mineguard" followed by any logical explanation as to how this is good for the game. If mines were a threat only some of the time, such as on roads or in bases, mineguard would be a very valuable option depending on what you planned to do with your vehicle. As it is, mines are a threat at all times and in all places, which makes mineguard mandatory. People can't seem to understand that this is a broken mechanic.

Mines should not be able to be used in place of C4 to instantly kill stationary vehicles. If a vehicle is left undefended or if a defender slips through the defenses, he should have to DO SOMETHING in order to kill it. Currently all one has to do is REACH the vehicle in order to kill it. It's the same as running into a base, going to the capture point, pressing E, and taking over the base. There is a reason base capture doesn't work this way.

at this point suicide attacks are so rampant you can't really win. if you happen to get mineguard they'll just crash a galaxy into you or send multiple LA's to C4 bomb you. but the way it's playing out then mineguard is really the only viable cert choice. feels like blockade armor was a waste of certs when you can just get suicide AT rushed. they might as well just remove the other cert options.

c4 will only kill your sunderer if unattended, unless the engineer has certed heavily into carrying more than two blocks. Really if you value your sunderer just defend the damn thing, mineguard ensures it doesn't get one-shot by pretty much everybody. If you can't kill the engineer before he places 3 c4 and then detonates, there really is no hope for you.

Absolutely.

I feel if they just made the standard sunderer with a small amount of resistance to mines would be best. What I mean is instead of taking two mines, it'll take 3 mines to destroy that same sunderer. Run back resupply and another two would take out a mine guard sunderer.

AT mines are the most powerful items in the game at the moment. What destroys heavy armor faster than an AT Mine? Nothing. Not even a Dalton equipped Lib.

If you have an underslung grenade launcher it can be done with 2 c4 and can also be done with LA(or pretty much any class other than infiltrator). It does not take much more time and effort than using AT mines. AT mines are preferred because they are cheaper in terms of certs and resource cost and do not require rear armor impact but you can also very easily instagib a sundy with C4. Many people in this very thread have stated that when up against a sundy with mineguard the response is to then go at it with C4.

You still have not yet offered any argument as to why one side of the equation must put in so much effort and teamwork to safeguard the sundy while the other side does not in order to destroy it. An objective as important as a deployed sunderer should require real effort to both protect and destroy from both sides. Right now the situation is all the real effort and risk management is on the part of the protectors of the sunderer and little to none on the part of the attackers. There is no drawback to repeated suicide attacks because if you fail you respawn and try again and if the defenders fail just once they lose. That is not the best game design.

Exactly what I've been saying for weeks now just better articulated.

If they nerf the tank mines maybe they can nerf the sundies themselves down a bit. Why should a MOBILE spawn point with a tiny power source be stronger than a STATIONARY spawn point with a giant power source? Never did see the sense of that.

1 reason why mineguard isnt a requirement:

Because you shouldnt be a brain-dead moron who puts his sundy in a stupid place and cant or doesnt defend it. Considering how important a sunderer is to a platoon is.

not sure if trolling or stupid.

21 reasons. 1 was a C4 kill, unless I''m missing something in that clip.

LOL most of those sundies are parked in god awful spots, and most of them are vacant... nobody around to shoot at you?

PS- how do you live with that extreme tearing?

Not sure if trolling or just bad.

See i can do it too.

There are plenty of sundies in that vid that show light defense at the bus was not able to stop a sprinting jumping kamakazie from dropping 2 mines on the bus. The argument of "post a guard to defend your bus" is willful blindness of the current state of the design.

...and here Is ONE reason to -NOT- use Mineguard:
100m radar Flash.

You're making a pretty generalized statement there. Don't put your sundy in a stupid place. I contend that with the current state of the game, every place would be a stupid place, by your logic. Wherever you park your sundy, I can get to it with my engy and destroy it instantly.

Lets say you figure you're on to me and put 4 people on that sundy to defend it. Well, not only am I already ahead because I just effectively took 4 people out of the fight for my one, I'm also going to bypass those defenders by hopping in a flash or lightning, driving up while I'm still rendering and then hop out. While you guys are all looking at the flash/lightning trying to take it out, I'm dropping mines on your sundy. Evidence of this is shown in the video.

So now you figure, MOAR DEFENDERS (6), SNEAKIER SPOT! Cool, I'm still going to run around the map and find you, I guarantee it. If my above tactics fail, I'll hop in a scythe, fly up to high altitude, then dive straight down at your sundy. At the last minute I'll pull up, pop my vertical thrusters a bit to slow, then drop in on you folks and mine your sundy.

MOAR AA! Cool, so now in addition to the 6 defenders you have there you grab a couple AA maxes to stand there too. Now I'm keeping 8 of you pinned on your sundy and not attacking the objective. You can counter my ninja, flash, lightning, and scythe tactics. Guess there's nothing I can do now... oooh wait! I can pull my galaxy and fly that giant bus right over to your sundy. Good luck stopping that before I can drop in and mine your tank.

One final step here... lets say you've got enough defense to stop all of my above mentioned tactics. Now me, a single guy, is holding darn near a full squad of your players at bay defending your sundy just so you can maintain your platoon's push, who are now getting throttled because they're out gunned. I'm actually probably not going to even bother taking down your sundy at this point because it's just a giant farm and my team is gaining a huge benefit from it, but lets say we want to push you guys off and go somewhere else.

The final thing I can do, which you can do absolutely nothing about, is to grab a spawn beacon and go behind a hill somewhere and place it. Now I go die and drop right on top of your sundy and place my mines on it. Boom, sundy done.

Finally, you might be thinking, AP mines will stop you! Perhaps on a few attempts. But then I'm going to start leading with a grenade when I'm on foot, and it's not going to matter when I come from above. Your AP mines won't help when I'm dropping mines on top of your sundy from an air drop.

As you can see throughout this progression, defence on the sundy keeps getting more and more complex, requiring more players and a diverse amount of classes and teamwork. Meanwhile, offence continues to require one guy simply suicide running into your sundy. Furthermore, I can do this as much as I want... there's almost no cost. I can even rotate the above tactics and do them indefinitely. Maybe I make an attempt every few minutes, just to give my timers a chance to finish and to keep you on your toes. In all cases, I'm a single guy who has the ability to thwart an entire team.

This is the problem with the current state of AT mines. It takes massive team effort to defend against, but zero team effort to accomplish. All of the above is with a single person working alone to kill the sundy. Imagine if I pulled in a buddy and we worked together. How much defense would you need to stop that? At what point does your offensive fail simply because your entire attacking squad is holed up on your sundy trying to protect a spawn that is now irrelevant?

I hope you were able to read that, and I hope you can understand why it's not a simple matter of sundy placement or defence. AT mines killing sunderers is simply too effective right now. There is no effective counter. It needs to take more mines to kill a sunderer than a single person can carry. Whether the solution is to make sunderers stronger, or make engineers carry 2 mines instead of 3, it doesn't matter.

Something needs to be done.

Just buy mineguard. Or not.

You could park your Sunderer in the middle of an open space and defend it. This makes it practically impossible to reach on foot for an engineer, but leaves you open to tank shells and rockets. You could take barricade to help limit that too. You have a choice there.

See, despite mineguard being "mandatory", we see hundreds of threads that attempt to make a case that avoids saying "I don't want to use Mineguard". Because they recognise it's powerful, but also that there are other threats. That there are other useful things they would like, yet they've made the calculation as to what the major threat for that role is and specced accordingly. I can't think of a better description of cert's done right. You'll note we don't see all that many threads insisting AMS come as standard, because it's practically mandatory. This is because it's not - it just changes the role of your Sunderer.

All you have to do is find and melee the gun laden vehicle that's key to the oppositions current offensive, on foot. Yeah, it's pretty easy, mostly because people drop and forget, because there are faces out there that aren't going to shoot thermselves. And yes, bases should be a more solid foundation for spawning. Because it's a base. Imagine if Sunderer's became the unassailable castles people are asking for. What would be the point of a base beyond it's resources? A Sunderer would be superior in almost all cases. It should be hard to keep a spawn point inside the enemy base, because assault should be harder than defence and because they're easy to bring en masse, to hide and to defend. Providing you're not assuming it will magically be ok without any protection.

Okay, here's an explanation:

Ammo and Repair are NOT for AMSes; they are for armor support unless that AMS is providing a spawn point for infantry support for an armor push. These AMSes are in little danger of being mined anyways.

Blockade armor is best for battle buses (obviously) and field AMSes. These AMSes usually have wide open firing lanes around them that make solo mine attacks easy to stop with gunners, and so the extra safety net of mine guard isn't as valuable as the extra protection from tank shells and rockets.

Mine guard is best for high-risk AMSes deployed against a wall, inside a vehicle bay, behind the shelter of a building. These AMSes are (if they are smartly placed) well-protected from direct enemy fire, but the amount of cover nearby also makes them vulnerable to mine and C4 attacks.

The Sunderer can do a lot more than AMS, even though acting as a forward spawn is its most important role. Even as a forward spawn, mine guard isn't always the best option -- it IS the best option for people's favorite deployments, which are the high risk ones right inside or next to a base that make your Sunderer the favored spawn. Moving a spawn back a little bit removes the advantage you get from having your troops spawn 50m from the objective, but that's what medics are for and in either case it's better than having your AMS quickly located and destroyed.

Someone can spend a lot of resources finding elaborate ways to kill something that cost you a lot of resources? You don't say.

They can do it solo? It's not like you needed to gather a team and hold hands around the vehicle terminal in order to pull your AMS.

If you're more worried about being featured on someone's creative Sundy killing montage than you are about enemy armor or rockets, get mine guard.

Max mineguard is 7 AT mines to kill, normal engineer is 3 mines max so you need 3 engis 2 of whom need at least max AT mine certs.
Only way to kill with 2 AT mine engis is to have 1 with max explosive bandolier to carry 5 AT mines which prevents him having Flak armor on, and 1 normal AT engi.