With the release of Hossin, the forums have all but erupted with complaints about various mechanics that grant an advantage to one weapon / faction or another, and while I personally dismiss most of these as typical forumside activities, one complaint in particular has stood out for me. Tank mines on Hossin. With water on Hossin, it is possible to stick mines almost anywhere... in many cases, not even EOD hud will display them due to ground sinkage, graphics clipping, etc. Ever since the nerf of the UBGL, my Solstice SF has been collecting dust. What would the rest of forumside think of some sort of mineclearing oriented UBGL? Something with, say, an explosive radius of ~15-25 meters or so, with a damage type that effects exclusively placed explosives. (No damage to infantry, but firing it at placed C4 / AI / AV mines will blow them nicely) Firing them at the ground around a vehicle pad would at least help with the giant blobs of mines typically found around pads these days.
There is a thing called mineguard, its a fairly powerful but underrated attachment that reduces explosive damage from mines to that of an anti-vehicle grenade. It seems to have its use on Hossin given that there are many spots to hide mines there now. A sunderer with maxed out mineguard is quite capable of eating up quite a few mines before taking any serious damage.
Yep! I said it in another post ,but apparently neglected to say it here. I frequently rush to terminals following base caps in an attempt to pull my maxed-out mineguard Sundy before tanks start spawning. Usually, I don't loose more then half health before the blob of mines that typically inhabits the swampwater in front of vehicle pads. Last night, my mineguard bus detonated before I could cancel the forward momentum following spawn - there were over 20 mines that EOD hud didn't pick up due to mines sinking through the terrain. I have mineguard, I use it, it helps - but not enough, not when mines are rendered undetectable when underwater, or when they sink through the ground - mines that were placed when you are out of hex are especially guilty of this, AI and AV like to fall through the terrain if you weren't around when they were placed. I mostly see this in Esamir / Amerish bases, but Hossin seems to be guilty of it as well.
Well if there were more than 5 mines (I'm sure a sundy can eat up 5 with maxed mineguard) than you were facing a rather organized group that wanted to keep people from pulling vehicles. Its not really the mine's that's the problem if the mine spamming gets a bit excessive in one area, just that group of guys doing it. I personally pulled out a vanguard, I don't have mineguard but I do have a good eye, every few meters I moved and there was a 3 mines tightly grouped, I got through 2 groups which was 6 mines, but I ran over a 3rd group which the engineer who placed them was hiding somewhere with an AV turret waiting for the kill shot. Personally mineguard is a little bit weak of an attachment, really should be combined with something or improved in some way. The mines use to be quite noticeable but the difference in terrain seem to make the change in how stealthy they can be quite a buff to it. Though as said before, its not really the mines, its the people and how they used them. Mineguard can only do so much when you have 4 engineers with max utility pouches laying down a minefield inside a pond or a swamp path.
In most cases, I agree - since hossin released, i've been seeing more and more random mines at vehicle pads, this is partially due to people not seeing that there are already mines there, thus, they place more. This leads to oodles of mines in random clusters. I'm guilty of this myself, it's free certs, especially due to the 'chained explosives +exp' bonus. Agreed - it's not the fault of the mines, nor the mechanics they use - my complaint here is that they can become completely undetectable. Short of pulling out my HA and spending 3 minutes lashering the swamp around the vehicle pad, or lobbing a pile of EMP grenades - once they sink into the swampwater (and occasionally into the ground beneath) they become undetectable. Yep! I'm getting close to tank-mine auraxiam, only 200ish to go, i've gotten fairly good at pizza box use. There are certain types of terrain and topography that make mines hard to see until it's too late. The corners of most building interiors, for example... you know those grates that line the floors along walls? Pull a flash, drive around in a building... your wheels sink right through the floor if you press yourself against the wall. Mines of all types sink through those grates just fine as well. Now, try putting AT mines and AI mines together in these grates - now you have invisible anti max traps. Do this before a base defense / attack, and you can net 30+ kills if an organized platoon finds a few of these traps with clusters of infantry. Every inch of hossin's swampwater works in this manner, and swampwater is in front of most bases' vehicle pads. I'm not suggesting a major revamp, just a better way to be able to clear ground without lashering everything in sight. It's a nice light show, but it does get boring
I have both, please tell me how to target them when they are physically below the terrain and not showing up on EOD hud due to being out of 'line of sight' when below ground.
Transplant? You managed to break your implant, and now you're using the EOD HUD of some implant donor? Seems rather inconvenient in this age of spawn tubes...
This is probably the only solution really, tier 3 implant would help, bit of an energy hog but it works. Its either that or throw emp grenades (Their blast range is larger than a frag) or just do what your doing. They made them less detectable because they were just so easy to detect, though it could just be the fact that the continent has some bugs or something.
Yep, it's a problem inherent to the game engine - thinks like to sink through certain terrain types, and will occasionally stop rendering entirely - most often when they were placed while you were in another hex. This is more of an issue on Hossin due to the swampwater - EOD hud helps in general, but not when mines are undetectable due to sinking through the ground. Ever seen floating terrain in game, or in screenshots? (not my screenie, found via google, but this is what i'm talking about) Bugs like this are caused by clientside loading errors, your game client literally thinks rocks, ground, trees, terrain, etc are in the wrong place, or don't exist at all. In these cases, you can actually crash your vehicle into nothing - if your client thinks a rock is there, it is there... but only for you. I've crashed galaxies into rocks that no one else saw, resulting in a flaming wreck of spandex and debris. Terrain loading issues of this type are also how mines sink through floors. if you load an area with mines, objects populate based on the priority assigned to them, and in many cases... your client thinks mines begin existing before terrain, thus they fall to the default "ground level" of the area. Several ms later, the terrain graphics load over the mines, obscuring them from view completely, and in a manner where your client simply will not show them to you by any means whatsoever. Despite this, explosive damage can still hit them, due to how it penetrates terrain graphics. (This is also how you can be damaged when inside buildings - if someone fires a rocket at the wall you are against, it can still reach you. ) TL;DR Random off-topic blob of info about client loading issues.
