[Suggestion] Redesign tank mines

So, the current problem of AT mines is that they are way too good as short range AV grenades. This is not their intended use, this is what you should use C4 or the HA AV grenades for. Second part of the problem is that even when used properly, they are not used as a defence but rather a free tank kill against a advancing enemy, unless said enemy have MG, in which cases those mines are completely worthless.
Here are the changes I would like to see made to tank mines:

Prevent mines from being placed too close to one another (like current ammo pack)
After putting down a mine there is a several seonds delay before the next one can be deployed.
Greatly increase the maximum mine carrying capacity and deploy limit of mines, reduce or remove cost of AT mines.
Dealing damage to a vehicle as infantry will now award xp (like the G2A xp)
Remove mineguard fromlightning and MBT.
Change sunderer mineguard to utility slot and make it more powerful. A sunderer eauipped sith this cert eill be awarded xp for running over mines.

The first change is to prevent mine stacking. Noone likes dying instantly to a threat you cannot see, and currently you will do just that to the occasional mine stack, or you will cert mineguard and mines will become useless against you. This forces some very rigid gameplay where either tank dies instantly (no fun) or mines do squat and all those rescources you used was for naught (no fun). With the minimum proximity a driver going at low speed or with fast reflexes can brake or turn away after hitting the first mine, giving good players a fair chance to combat mines. However, there is no cheap mineguard option availible, so even if a engineer does not outright kill a tank he will still delay him greatly or force him into another path.
Second change. Suicide engineers are currently the most dangerous thing for vehicles in the game. If SOE want to give engineer AV grenades that is fine by me, but when the most effective use of mines is running up and showing it i. Your opponents face something is horribly wrong. You can still run up to a unwary vehicle and drop the first mine for some serious damage, but said vehicle will then have plenty of time to react before you toss the second, making you think twice before doing that suicide run. You will still be able to blow up undefended sunderers, but you will no longer be able to rush a flash into the middle of a atacking zerg and take out a sunderer before anyone can react.
Third change. Being unable to stack mines, engineers NEED to be able to deploy proper minefields for defense.
It makes sense to give xp for damaging vehicles, even detterent actions is still a great contri ution to your team and should be rewarded.
As I've mentioned before, the relationship betwen mines and mineguard feels really cheap. You either don't have it and mines destroy you, or you have it and mines become useless. With the changes to mines deploy radius I think it's reasonable to remove this option completely from tanks. Flashes can still use it simce they will otherwise die from a single mine.
Sunderers can give up their AMS ability for the ability to become a very potent mine-sweeper, forcing people to acctually use some teamwork to properly clear mined areas.

I believe this will change the mines from its current role of AT grenades into powerful defensive tools, demolishing quickly advancing tank columns, and greatly slowing down more wary tanks

It has been suggested before, but your explanation is well-detailed and answers all questions. I wholeheartedly support this change.

I don't like any of these AT mine change threads. AT mines are my primary counter to prowlers. You can't really hit prowlers with HA's anymore because the adjusted velocity has made them infantry snipers. Setting up mine fields are not practical because mines are expensive and your mines will most likely get blown up (not run over). I do like the idea of making AV grenades more robust. I could trade current mine functionality for a similar AT grenade (But carrying one grenade is not going to cut it).

I like the current of functionality AT mines and I hope the devs don't listen to these threads.

Mines working as intended.
I vote no change to mines.
There are many options in game to defend against them. A game mechanic change is not one of them.

Problem is, that is the role C4 is supposed to fill but in some strange twisted way mines are superior to C4 for everything except killing maxes. By redesigning mines you add more variety to the game and make base defense more complex then drop 2 mines. Get kill sometimes later (or don't if they have mineguard)

and why would your mines get blown up? If you set them down in the middle of a firefight then there is a high probability yes, but I want to shift mines into a more defensive role, away from being used offensively. You set them up pre-emptively, not in the middle of a firefight.

That would be the C4. . .

My problem is not that there aren't options for dealing with them, my issue is that it creates cheap gameplay.
Throw down two mines. Get kill in 5-20min.
Counter mines? Buy a cert. There, done, mines are now useless.

Please do not use "Working as intended" to describe balance.

Working as intended is a hotword developers use to describe glitches that QA may find that the developers don't feel they have time or resources to fix. (And rarely, keep a really cool glitch in game.)

Aka "Its not game-breaking enough to fix, so we will say its a feature instead of a glitch."

Balance issues are dedicatedly NOT glitches.
They can be discussed, and brought up a million times, even if their current state was intended.

The second wave of submachineguns having large capacities was intended, just like the first wave having little capacity was an advertized feature.

Does this mean it is fair and well balanced?

That is completely untrue. IRNV lets you see mines quite clearly and then you are able to remove them.

mines are perfectly balanced, they are literally exactly where they need to be. The onus is on you to protect yourself, not the devs to play for you. They have showered you in ways to defeat mines 100% of the time. It is YOUR fault if you dont do so.

None els.

Nothing should ever be perfectly balanced to the point of mirror imaging. Without diversity in gaming, we have ample proof of what happens...

World of borecraft (infantile level of difficulty)
Rift ( a paraplegic rock could exel at this crap)
swtor (LOL)
The list goes on....
Do yourself a favor, an go read the dev blog on "Camelot unchained" Garriot explains exactly how games are meant to be, an its something all devs could learn from.

I think you're missing the point of my post

What matters most about balanced is how it is balanced.
The level it is balanced at, (Hard or soft, progression based VS skill based, levels of symmetry.)

Well balanced depends on what it is, and mines have nothing to do with symmetry. Tank mines are tank mines.
We have a right to discuss their balance as much as we want, regardless of how intended their current role is.

In an Asymetric game, the most important balance factor is making sure that one side isn't only able to be allowed to use their advantages when the others let them.

Hence, why our "ranged infantry" faction has by far the most varied infantry machine of the bunch. We can only be beaten at range when we give the enemy the chance to gun us down at range. We can have armor around us in long range engagements, and be foot soldiers in close quarters scenarios, thus the ranged infantry faction needs to be more flexible to fairly compete with other factions that may deny them the ability to make use of their excellent range using things like armor.


Do not take me for a common grade fool who doesn't bother understanding balanced, saying "Nerfs are bad, stop all re-balancing!" or "Nerf all the things."

only thing that need to be changed is.. if i want to plant all 40 mines in a base wasting my resources i should be able to do so, (you would still have to resupply each time) i miss mine fields you had to clear before entering a base....add onto that i miss EMP grenades being able to disable vehicles for a few seconds or take out mine fields.

if not 40 something more realistic like 10, something to whittle down their armor.

I think mines needs to have a balancing act, I support the OP.

If and only if you increase the number of mines we can carry. Like double or triple it.
So instead of 5 you could put down 10.

These changes are invalid and redundant until major gameplay changes are in effect that will completely change the pace of the game.

Right now there is no point to garrison a facility or defend it. Bases change hands so quickly and so discretely that making some random minefields in some arbitrary location is completely and utterly redundant. On top of that every player can get a vehicle so unless your suggested changes would include mines that are literally capable of oneshotting every vehicle, I don't see point to it.

Making a minefield with 20 mines that could score you 1 kill if you are extremely lucky and the enemy is extremely dumb is completely pointless, unless all you want to do with them is troll.

Nope. Big thumbs down until game pacing is slowed down.

You could argue that there is no point at all for either atacking or defending in the current state of the game. This is a problem unrelated to mines. If we start balance the game around the current state of the game, chances are we'll be stuck with the game as it is instead of advancing it towards more atacking and defending. Mines would become another layer of defense that atackers would need to pass through similar to base turrets and shields, giving more flow to the battle.
Bases does change hand quickly, but with the ability to set up minefields at smaller outposts you would be able to slow down zergs and give more time to react to base captures.

As for mines becoming useless, you're making an aweful lot of assumptions about my suggestion. In my mind the spacing would be laege enough that a slowly advancing tank could deive over one mine and then have enough reaction time to break before hitting the next, while a tank going at full throttle (flat terrain, no chassis) would be unable to respond before detonating the second, fatal mine.

I am not suggesting any numbers (well, close enough) since I do not want the discussion to get side-tracked. It's more about the concept, if it ends up being up or op will be decided by the numbers.

Yeah I'm getting annoyed on how defensive equipment can be used in this game.

AV mines should have a deployment radius so they cannot stack and need to actually be laid down (not thrown). These two changes will fix them completely. No more ramboing engineers, no more insta 1-hit kill on vehicles.

I do believe that if a mine hits a tank or sunderer the engineer should get EXP credit for it though.

Right now C4 kind of takes a back seat to the insta-deploying AV mines. That's just not right.

Personally I wouldn't mind having mines be reduced in power by about 1/4th and allowing engineers to deploy 4x the amount of mines that they can now. Proper minefields can be created that way. However the layout of the maps and the number of players on the maps makes that a pandora's box of problems. I can imagine not being able to drive anywhere without taking mine damage because there are so many mines around ever base.

Still, Planetside 1's combat engineering was actually a lot of fun to use and to counter against. You had a fair chance to counter against the CE as well as it had a fair chance of killing you and preventing your faction from effortlessly conquering terrain. I would love to see the mines and turrets be reworked to have more of the Planetside 1 mentality rather than this insta-kill mentality.

False.... TL;DR the rest..

Changing the mechanics around the core without changing the core is bad. First you fix the core gameplay, then you fix the rest. Currently the flow of the game doesn't allow/have use for minefields.