You could invest in Scout Radar vs Mineguard...or similar... and see me coming from a long ways... it's all about the choices you make.
Oh yeah, forgot how broken Scout Radar on vehicles is. 100m radius and it will show everyone around you and nobody even has to be in the vehicle? And that's balanced?
I second this. Can't even cover a road's width with 2 (or 3) mines. Increasing the number of mines is useless without being able to carry more. Also, reduced damage = more mines needed. As long as you can place 3 mines inside a range equal to a vehicles width, that's ok. Otherwise, mines would be useless. (remember reduced damage suggested) Nope. (remember reduced damage suggested) I second this. I'm not sure on this one. If you stick a mine to an enemy tank does that tank trigger it once the mine activates? I second this. This is the reason mines are almost always thrown directly under vehicles and never used defensively. With all the shells flying around in a battle (and the mediocre accuracy of many people), mines don't stick around long enough for any vehicle to trigger them. I'm not sure on this. Maybe have different trigger types unlockable? Replacing the proximity trigger with a movement trigger for default might help a lot with the whining about 'omg, people placed mines under my vehicle when I was watching youtube instead of my flank/back'. (Then again, vehicles slide = move always. That issue would have to be resolved first.). Pressure triggers could come in different sensitivities, e.g. from sensible enough to trigger on a MAX, to insensible enough to only be triggered by MBTs. Also... If you stick a pressure triggered mine to a tank, does that tank trigger the mine? Afaik, only Flash and ESF have scout radars, all other vehs have proximity radars. Anyway, three things I'd like to see: - Being able to pick up mines. - Being able to replace the mana turret for either ammo or more mines. - being able to hold 'use' on enemy mines to disarm them (similar to generators/terminal hacking). Disarmed mines should be added to your inventory if you have the same type equipped and space for them.
Yes, and it's not very difficult to hide a Flash in some corner that's within 100 meters of the base you're assaulting. Also, mines can already be disarmed with the repair tool.
Snipers can be countersniped. Libs can be shot down (though I think the devs have failed abysmally when considering aircraft counterplay.). You want to know what the difference in all of these is? In every one of these scenarios, an enemy player is directly causing your death, and he's right there, you saw what he had, and you can go pull a class to deal with it. With mines, (presuming you use them as mines and not demo charges) you can place a mine, and get a kill an hour later, and not even know it. You can get killed far from an allied base or Sundy, behind enemy lines, and if there was nothing you could have done about it, somebody's going to show up on the forums and cry about how cheap they are. Mines effectively become PvE elements once they are laid. It's a fair point. It's part of why AA is so criminally underused. I'm not dismissing it. I'm just saying that as a mechanic, defensive mines basically become PvE elements, and you have to think about that. Also, remember, you can actively sneak around and suicide rush right now, and that's the best use for mines. If defensive mines become viable, you could lay down a bunch of mines, then go and earn XP in a gunners seat, as a Heavy, as an Infiltrator - etc. Mines deployable in a defensive fashion are capable of gaining you certs while you gain certs from another source. Neither do I think the grand leap of stacking an explosive on another explosive is a fantastically deep gameplay decision. I don't want a mine strong enough to 1-2 hit a vehicle, but I do want mines that will 2-4 shot a vehicle, so that a vehicle that rolls into a field has a split second to stop or die. You'd be surprised how many drivers do not stop in time. You'll notice that I'm not arguing for a 1 meter exclusion zone either. If you want to make a pancake stack of mines and use it to oneshot a vehicle, that's fine too - but I want the ABILITY to cover a large area with mines. Which means being able to deploy 10+, which means they need a matching drop in sheer power and resource price. This vastly differentiates them from C4, rather than making them a cheaper, better C4 vs. specific targets.
Why do you think I would be surprised how many drivers don't stop? You do realize that the argument you're making here is: "because some opponents are bad, it's okay to make something useless against decent players"? The problem with mines is the same as AA (although, in the mines' case they're probably not as strong as AA is against air): everyone can do it. Yes, most people will not do it, but they CAN. It actually takes quite a bit of time to place down mines, unless you, for some reason, tend to hang around areas a lot of enemy tanks rolls past, meaning that you're in that location probably ALONE. I watch streams and I see that a lot of them do have AT mines and the resources to use them, but they don't, because they are never on the ground in locations where you would actually drop them as mines. BUT, the problem comes with organization: if there's a large outfit and they all decide to put down mines they could cover a giant area with them and make something pretty much hell to approach if those couldn't be destroyed in some great manner. THAT is why they cannot just willy-nilly increase the mine count while not making adjustments to what a single person could carry. Perhaps they have to limit a certain number of mines in a large area. Eg 50 mines in a hex, if you place mines beyond that limit they will only stay there for 60 seconds (these aren't good numbers!), but there's some kind of notification before placing them down. This would still mean that if you saw an armored column coming you could drop your mines down even if you're some random, but it would make it so that organized outfits couldn't just minebomb an entire area. Of course this only bears any value if mines weren't so easily seen and destroyed AND you could carry more of them.
The way I see it, if the enemy is that oblivious that I get to plant AT mines right under their Sunder before they realize I'm even there, they deserve whatever happens when those mines go off. In one case, the Sunder drove right past me going the same direction and stopped and people piled out to cap a point, still ignoring me; it blew me away.
So, I finally got the fabled C4 and utility belt. Guess what ruined it? Stupid Flash, exploding and all that. Well, I guess that person has weapons lock for a year or something. See, if I had used mines, that person might not have, you know... TKed his entire team... and his Sunderer...
Is that a rainbow smokescreen? Sweet. I'd like to thank everyone who participated in this discussion, which was... more civil than expected. Even though I would like to dispel any claims this was a glorified whine thread. If anything I was projecting the combined whines of the vocal vehicular minority and attempting to resolve these perceived/imaginary issues. ... Which would make it a partial whine thread... Derp. - I'm sorry, I have no idea how a pressure based mine system would be implemented, or even work. Not sure why I even added it to the list since it's such a anachronistic throwback solution to a non-issue. Egalitarianism, maybe. - I apologize for being unclear, I did not mean I sucked with sunderers/Combat engineering, I meant I've never used either... Ever. In any combat capacity. <]= MAX suit prostitute all the way. Which would probably be a foregone conclusion that I would be terrible with them if I ever gave it a try... To date I have never had a engie jump me in my tank, so count my blessings. - I felt a limitation on the number of mines one can carry was necessary because mines are currently the most powerful anti-vehicular device on the market. IE: potential damage, which would scale staggeringly with every number of mines on ones person. But I digress, I am bad with graphs and potential dps calculations. - It's fairly clear that since Planetside is a combined arms game and thus, everything is inexorably linked. That just looking at one item, or from the point of view of the induvidual, is not very helpful to the whole picture... A picture dominated by rocket pods at the moment. But a picture whole nonetheless. - And finally, I apologize for not participating more in the thread in its short lifetime. Winter holidays, yannow. Everyone who contributed to this discussion and elaborated more on your thoughts as well as raising very valid points without devolving into base ad-hominems on each other. Have a complete strangers sincere thanks. The rest of you know who you are. Happy belated end of Mayan Calender Day.
