The Mine And Light Vehicles

[LordReaver]

So, I was thinking about how light vehicles get their asses kicked by mines. Here is a simple solution.

Just make each vehicle group take a certain percent of damage from a mine. So a tank would take 100% damage, where a buggy would take less. You could think of it as armor specific to mines.

Alternatively, you could just have a hit box on the bottom...

[Peacemaker]

It'd be better if Mines were not set off by light vehicles.

[Geist]

I was under the impression that the reason mines existed was to destroy anything stupid enough to go through them and block off areas of attack until cleared by infantry? Why should light vehicles get special treatment? I mean, it kind of defeats the purpose of mines if only certain vehicles were affected by them.

[Furret]

In my opinion, all vehicles should get their asses handed to them by mines.
They should have to be very strategically placed, but once you put them down, no vehicle should get through.

[LordReaver]

If mines were uber, then vehicle battles would slow down to a crawl. Everybody would be afraid to go beyond a few miles an hour, since everybody and their mother would be planting minefields.

They have to be balanced like every other weapon in the game.

[Redshift]

In old PS 90% of my vehicle time was spent in an ATV, and mines were not an issue, sometimes i'd get caught out, mostly they can be avoided by being sensible.

[wildcat140679]

I never really had any issues with mines.

Pretty much everybody had their flora turned of meaning you could spot them before you stepped on one as an infantry unit.

As a vehicle pilot, you learned / developed a sixth sense in knowing where you could expect mines and either steered around it or reduced speed so that you could stop on time.

But I do have to agree that the fast vehicles where suffering the most from mines.

Mines play an important role in slowing down vehicles rolling in to your base, I don't believe that tweaking them so that they do less damage to one vehicle type and more to an other is a good idea.

Forumside has been crying for anti-vehicles mines ever since beta, instead of one mine to deal with everything.
Don't feel like digging up one of those links, but I do recall it was always about Proximity mines and Magnetic mines.

Proximity Mines, explodes when you come to close to it. Effective against infantry, slightly less effective against light vehicles (Quads and buggies), but has little effect on the more armored vehicles like tanks

Magnetic Mines, are drawn to metallic object like tanks and deliver a focused payload, but are not set off/drawn to light vehicles or infantry/MAX units.

[FiftySeventh]

i think the purpose of all mines is to cause serious problems for all vehicles

its like saying " lets give everyone nerf guns so it doesn't cause problems to infantry"

[Peacemaker]

Id be happy with Mines for Light Vehicles and Mines for heavy stuff.
Anti personnel mines ala Claymores would be awesome.

[SavageB]

Umm this thread makes no sense...wouldnt a tank be able to take more dmg then a light vehicle from a mine?? Sorry but these ideas make no sense and id prefer it being like it was.

[Hotohori]

Don't be hating on engineers!

[BorisBlade]

I like how you guys think its a bad idea when this is already in game in a similar form. All the buggies take less damage from mines than other vehicles. If it wasnt like this then buggies would be even more useless then they already are. You go so fast that at full damage you would hit like 2 mines and instantly blow up, tanks can take alot more mine damage and go slow enough that once you hit em you can stop and back up or clear the mines. So yeah they do need to take less, prob not be immune but less yes, maybe even less than they do now. The idea of % damage is very good. In fact it would prob end up about the same as it is now but would be more consistant. Buggies still would have to be more careful since they usually eat multiple mines before they can react versus a single or maybe two at most for slower tanks.

[Lonehunter]

I just want to point out I've never seen a whole continent covered by mines.

I've also never seen a stretch of road mined for longer then 100 yards, and even that's rare.

Most of the time I trigger mines it's because I'm going into a base, around a tower, or by a choke point.

You're most likely going to encounter mines when there is an actual tactical reason for them to be placed there. I honestly think if you gave some vehicles immunity it would very unbalanced.

Now, if traps worked well, I would say they are a good balance to occasional immunity.


Don't be hating on engineers!
But really thats all my thoughts break down to

[Peacemaker]

Umm this thread makes no sense...wouldnt a tank be able to take more dmg then a light vehicle from a mine?? Sorry but these ideas make no sense and id prefer it being like it was.

Why would I beable to dump a salvo of rockets on one infantry guy and just barely kill him when those same rockets can take out more than a 1/3rd of the armor of a tank? Its a game, things are balanced for balance, not for realism.

Like someone else said, mines kill light vehicles because they move WAY faster than tanks, once you hit the first one your lucky if you can stop before the next 2.

[Lonehunter]

mines kill light vehicles because they move WAY faster than tanks, once you hit the first one your lucky if you can stop before the next 2.
and that is the hazard of a LIGHT vehicle. Heavy Vechs have more firepower, durability and move slower.

I just realized, this whole discussion probably wouldn't exist if you could see mines from a much further distance then you can now. Is the current view distance intentional?

[Senyu]

Why not introduce multiple mine types?

Normal Mines:Good against light vehicles, somewhat against infantry. Does some damage to heavy and MAX

Heavy Mines:(bare with the names for examples) Are effective against heavy vehicles and MAX's while infantry can stroll over them and light vehicles if remaining on the mine for more than a few seconds are destroyed.

Personnel Mine: This mine does explode from vehicles doing minor damage but is effective against infantry and good damage to MAX suits. The explosion is a AOE spread of fragmentation dealing damage to infantry nearby. Vehicles causing the explosion however prevent this spread and only the vehicle takes damage. Vehicles that take numerous of these explosions have their speed reduced each time as to prevent 1 vehicle clearing large amounts of these. Enough could make it immobile until repaired. The amount of speed reduction should be discussed for balanced play.

[LordReaver]

The problem with mine fields, is that they don't actually give players enough chance to avoid them in light vehicles. Heavy vehicles don't have this problem, because they have armor to spare. Keep in mind, that even an OS gives you warning. Increasing the draw distance would help with that, but at the same time it would decrease the point of minefields. The idea of having different mine types does the same thing ultimately. I had considered this before. It would add slightly deeper tactics, but I was trying to keep dev time down. So having it be vehicle based damage is probably the most simple solution.

[Senyu]

Random input from vehicle engeering thread, upgrade should be sensors, high lights nearby mines on your hud

[Peacemaker]

New take on it:

3 types of mines Cloaked, anti Infantry and anti vehicle. Anti Infantry mines can be destroyed by simple jammers, and shooting them. Anti Vehicle mines cannot be destroyed by shooting them. A mine clearing vehicle or infantry with a special piece of equipment is needed. EMP/ jammers do not effect these. They should be considerably powerful (more so than todays mines). Third is the cloaked mine, similar to todays mine it can only be seen with dark light. It cannot be detonated by light vehicles or infantry. Susceptible to everything current mines are.

Increase draw distance of anti vehicle mines.

Result: Mine fields bottleneck enemy vehicles, and are a pain to clear a path through. Less kills from these normal mines, unless deployed in blind spots. Anti Infantry mines would get nice kills for engies and traps could be laid for tanks with the cloaked mines.

[Canaris]

Can we at least get a special attachment upgrade for the tanks?

When engaged the mine sweeper has the tanks speed down to a crawl, leaving it vunerable to AV and Aircraft
http://thumbs.imagekind.com/member/04e02d8a-aa74-48ef-ba94-9bc8f601fb05/uploadedartwork/650X650/371ebdaf-b930-487c-922a-656312797b74.jpg

[BorisBlade]

Can we at least get a special attachment upgrade for the tanks?

When engaged the mine sweeper has the tanks speed down to a crawl, leaving it vunerable to AV and Aircraft
http://thumbs.imagekind.com/member/04e02d8a-aa74-48ef-ba94-9bc8f601fb05/uploadedartwork/650X650/371ebdaf-b930-487c-922a-656312797b74.jpg

Honestly no one would use that, give up your weaps for mine clearing when you have no idea if there are mines? Now if mines were unable to be cleared by other means then maybe but do you want to see spam like "we need a mine sweeper asap so we can get in the cy." To me it seems like its not adding fun or complexity or anything but a layer of annoyance.

BUGGIES ALREADY TAKE LESS MINE DAMAGE. I hope everyone knows that, because despite me pointing that out in this thread im seeing many posters who dont know this. Does the damage they take currently possibly need lowered a bit more, probably. But unless you can come up with some new mine systems that improve gameplay, not just needless complication, then the current system is perfectly fine once its tweaked right.

Having said all that the current mines are prob about right versus vehicles, maybe a tweak based on % damage would work better for gameplay. You can always say its because these lighter vehicles move over the mines faster or have undercarriages designed to deflect blasts or whatever. In real life there are plenty of tanks that would be killed by a mne that a much less armored vehicle could withstand due to the undercarriage design, if you want to go that route.

If you want various mine types then for an AI mine, they must change gameplay somewhat, not just a simple "does more damage to infantry" change. Possibly a bouncing betty type of explosion. When tripped it springs up and explodes mid air blasting shrapnel that does alot of AI damage but very little av damage in a decent sized area,much bigger than a current mine. So if you are too close to someone, it will take you both out. Currently mines rarely ever get more than one person on foot, the larger blast radius defines it as AI. It would be deadly to infantry, but vehicles could mow over em and clear em out without takin much damage, 1/4 a normal mine. It encourages you to place em where infantry will be, not vehicles. Adds choices and flavor.

Also, to compensate, AV mines would be redesigned to do less damage to infantry. And possibly have them still explode when destroyed by weapons, but with their smaller blast radius you could easily stay back enough to take them out when on foot. Think of it as a concentrated blast to get thru armor.

So you would load the courtyard up with AV mines, areas near doors could be AI mines, with some AV if vehicles can get close. Base walls would be AI mines. Adds some tactics to it. Keeps the AV mines deadly but gives ps an actual AI mine which it doenst currently have.

[Raymac]

Am I mistaken, or did they used to have different mine types back in the day? I seem to remember they had AI mines and AV mines, but ended up combining them in order to streamline things for engineers.

I only say this because although I like the concept of having multiple mine types, I think 1 type might be a heck of alot better for actual gameplay...especially if this is an issue that the original PS dealt with already.

[Canaris]

Honestly no one would use that, give up your weaps for mine clearing when you have no idea if there are mines? Now if mines were unable to be cleared by other means then maybe but do you want to see spam like "we need a mine sweeper asap so we can get in the cy." To me it seems like its not adding fun or complexity or anything but a layer of annoyance.

BUGGIES ALREADY TAKE LESS MINE DAMAGE. I hope everyone knows that, because despite me pointing that out in this thread im seeing many posters who dont know this. Does the damage they take currently possibly need lowered a bit more, probably. But unless you can come up with some new mine systems that improve gameplay, not just needless complication, then the current system is perfectly fine once its tweaked right.

Having said all that the current mines are prob about right versus vehicles, maybe a tweak based on % damage would work better for gameplay. You can always say its because these lighter vehicles move over the mines faster or have undercarriages designed to deflect blasts or whatever. In real life there are plenty of tanks that would be killed by a mne that a much less armored vehicle could withstand due to the undercarriage design, if you want to go that route.

If you want various mine types then for an AI mine, they must change gameplay somewhat, not just a simple "does more damage to infantry" change. Possibly a bouncing betty type of explosion. When tripped it springs up and explodes mid air blasting shrapnel that does alot of AI damage but very little av damage in a decent sized area,much bigger than a current mine. So if you are too close to someone, it will take you both out. Currently mines rarely ever get more than one person on foot, the larger blast radius defines it as AI. It would be deadly to infantry, but vehicles could mow over em and clear em out without takin much damage, 1/4 a normal mine. It encourages you to place em where infantry will be, not vehicles. Adds choices and flavor.

Also, to compensate, AV mines would be redesigned to do less damage to infantry. And possibly have them still explode when destroyed by weapons, but with their smaller blast radius you could easily stay back enough to take them out when on foot. Think of it as a concentrated blast to get thru armor.

So you would load the courtyard up with AV mines, areas near doors could be AI mines, with some AV if vehicles can get close. Base walls would be AI mines. Adds some tactics to it. Keeps the AV mines deadly but gives ps an actual AI mine which it doenst currently have.

umm the guns would still be attached, just like in the picture, where did you get the idea they wouldn't be?
This being a more advanced type of tech the sweeper could be retractable, just another way for clearying mines, not the only one. Seriously you jump to conclusions like a horny dog jumps on legs :p

[BorisBlade]

umm the guns would still be attached, just like in the picture, where did you get the idea they wouldn't be?
This being a more advanced type of tech the sweeper could be retractable, just another way for clearying mines, not the only one. Seriously you jump to conclusions like a horny dog jumps on legs :p

Bleh, sorry man, not sure how i misread that. Although it would have to be somethin additional you added on the vehicle when purchased that had some downsides to it such as speed or loss of one of the weapons or whatever. Dont want every tank just having a mine sweeping mode. Even if it slowed you to a crawl when usin it, it would still negate mines way too easily unless you were givin up somethin permanently as mentioned above.

If you think about it, the sunderer variants are already mine sweepers with that EMP blast and the bazillion armor (twice that of the most heavily armored tank, 2.5x as much as a magrider). They are intended to be breaking thru shields, clearin out mines and takin a ton of damage to get your forces in close to the tower or inside the cy. It works beter than a tank with a sweeper on it and its still rarely used well. Although that may have more to do with lack of coordination. If we had that back in the day, i would have had my squads usin it alot. Thats prob the extent to which i would use anything as a mine sweeper, cant see much else gettin used if not even this gets used and it does more and does it all very well.

[Senyu]

Dont think we need a vehicle to clear mines.......I really cant imagine that being used as much as intended.

Better implementation of current mines or a new form would probably be much better

[Lonehunter]

Any heavy vech with an engi is fine for clearing mines, and this is another reason I like the way mines are now. With a good driver you won't die, and with the engi cert you can forget it every happened.

[Slamscape]

Possibly a better idea might just to have the light vehicles have "enhanced sensors" and increase their mine detection range slightly to give them a little bit more time to avoid mines altogether, or at least start turning to avoid some of the other mines.

It would still keep mines effective since, really the whole point of mines is not to get kills in random spots on the map but to funnel your enemies into a certain area, or cut off travel routes.

[Furret]

I'm thinking minefields should be much more obvious, but much harder to deal with.

The main point of minefields is to force enemy armor to take a different route, so if you mine a narrow choke, vehicles either have to go around, or the mines have to be cleared.

If the mines are going to be very obvious, they have to be a lot harder to get rid of.

Two solutions for getting rid of the mines:

One: Run over them.
Very effective and quick, but obviously not optimal as far as resource efficiency is concerned.

Two: Engineers can dismantle the mines individually, a process that takes about two seconds per mine; just enough time for a sniper to pick them off.

These mines, used in conjunction with a good sniper squad would effectively nullify all ground passage through the area. And if the decision is made to keep rolling armor through the field anyway, at least the empire will have plenty of notice before the enemy can breach the field.


As far as this relates to buggies, they wouldn't enter areas that are minefields, simple as that.

[Senyu]

Defining the role of the mines im sure would help this debate more.


Simply put, should mines just be something you set and forget about hoping someday a person or vehicle will run into it and you getting a kill.

Or a more active temporary tactic in placing mines quickly to narrow choke points and delay movement very effeciently.




Should the mine be as it is now a small pain that gets kills now and then just rolling over them just to clear. OR an active tactic that can be deadly and giving good cause to A. Avoid them, and B. Spend time disarming them.

[opticalshadow]

i see no reason what so ever a vehicle with almost no armor should take less damage, or worse not set a mine off at all. its a mine, and your vehicle still weighs quite a bit.


if anything light vehicles should be out right destroyed by a mine while tanks should be hurt less.

mines worked fine in ps, the risk of taking a light vehicle was less armor, the perk was mobility, changing that seems silly.

[BorisBlade]

i see no reason what so ever a vehicle with almost no armor should take less damage, or worse not set a mine off at all. its a mine, and your vehicle still weighs quite a bit.


if anything light vehicles should be out right destroyed by a mine while tanks should be hurt less.

mines worked fine in ps, the risk of taking a light vehicle was less armor, the perk was mobility, changing that seems silly.

Because its about gameplay not realism. The buggies are pretty useless right now, and mines were buffed to take out tanks better. That in turn made buggies crap, as mentioned a million times you cant start into a mine field and then back off after eating a few like a tank can. You just go in, eat more than the tank does because of your speed and die because of your 3-4x less armor. Its terrible gameplay. Yes the resistant to mines thats ALREADY IN GAME actually makes it work well. But also keep in mind that in a PS sequel, the buggies will most likely move much faster compared to tanks than they do now, the speed is partially a tech limit with the current CSHD system. They only move at 78kph which is 48 mph, a magrider (heavy tank) moves at 40 mph, so this 8 mph is supposedly my "enhanced mobility" that is my tradeoff for 3-4x less armor and far less firepower?

Realism doesnt work in a game. In real life we have to deal with money. We dont get that uber armor, uber powerful vehicle or weapon beause it costs too much. So we use the inferior vehicles because they are cheaper, we just might get a few more of them to make up for their weaknesses and limit their missions. Cant do taht in a game. Everything is free, people are about the only cost you have. Number of passengers needed to function is about the only monetary cost. So in short you have to make every vehicle good in its own way with everything having its own place and advantages/disadvantages. I should want to use the buggies for some things even if the tank is free. Thats not the case atm. Look at Battlefield, if i can get an M1-A2 tank or the humvee, its not really even a choice, you always take the tank. I dont want a game like that.

The point of the thread is to come up with some good ideas to deal with the issue so we can debate and discuss them and work off each other's ideas to get some solid gameplay improvements. We want the best gameplay, if you want more realism there are plenty of terribad games out there for that.

[DviddLeff]

I think in the upgrade project I have buggies only setting off 50% of mines...

Edit: I hadn't, but I just added that in. I think that its a fair compromise between realism and game play. Realistically you would have infantry scouting an area before any vehicles rolled through, which is damned time consuming and most of the time boring for everyone concerned, especially in a game when its supposed to be fun, not frustrating.

[Baneblade]

Double the damage of mines.

Double the minimum spacing.

Halve the total number deployable.

Make them completely invisible without a special handheld device.

[CutterJohn]

I would prefer mines to have detrimental effects. They have to be too damaging to be effective, so you get little time to respond to them. Plus they made choke points far too dangerous and easy to defend. Vehicles would have a hard enough time pushing across a bridge without them.

I personally just don't like automated turrets and mines in games. I think players should be the ones pulling the trigger every time, and if you want to kill others, you need to be paying attention. So I'd be fine with being able to place lots of boomers. Instead of damaging mines, I'd prefer placeable fields that mess with vehicle systems. They don't kill, but they also don't get used up.

[opticalshadow]

Because its about gameplay not realism. The buggies are pretty useless right now, and mines were buffed to take out tanks better. That in turn made buggies crap, as mentioned a million times you cant start into a mine field and then back off after eating a few like a tank can. You just go in, eat more than the tank does because of your speed and die because of your 3-4x less armor. Its terrible gameplay. Yes the resistant to mines thats ALREADY IN GAME actually makes it work well. But also keep in mind that in a PS sequel, the buggies will most likely move much faster compared to tanks than they do now, the speed is partially a tech limit with the current CSHD system. They only move at 78kph which is 48 mph, a magrider (heavy tank) moves at 40 mph, so this 8 mph is supposedly my "enhanced mobility" that is my tradeoff for 3-4x less armor and far less firepower?

Realism doesnt work in a game. In real life we have to deal with money. We dont get that uber armor, uber powerful vehicle or weapon beause it costs too much. So we use the inferior vehicles because they are cheaper, we just might get a few more of them to make up for their weaknesses and limit their missions. Cant do taht in a game. Everything is free, people are about the only cost you have. Number of passengers needed to function is about the only monetary cost. So in short you have to make every vehicle good in its own way with everything having its own place and advantages/disadvantages. I should want to use the buggies for some things even if the tank is free. Thats not the case atm. Look at Battlefield, if i can get an M1-A2 tank or the humvee, its not really even a choice, you always take the tank. I dont want a game like that.

The point of the thread is to come up with some good ideas to deal with the issue so we can debate and discuss them and work off each other's ideas to get some solid gameplay improvements. We want the best gameplay, if you want more realism there are plenty of terribad games out there for that.

its not about realism, if it was, then a single rocket would take them out. its about game play. if light vehicles were to mow though fields liek that ce would become useless, if they go faster in a sequal then they can race past the tanks into a courtyard that cant be protected by ce from them, and mow down infantry.


and as far as useless right now, yes they are. but during year one they were useful. useing the tr buggy i had no problems taking out mag's and vannies. if you had a really good driver who could predict and dodge the slow RoF, you could out gun them.

[Tiberius]

Every time you get in a buggy you run into something you can't deal with, that's why nobody uses them. They need to combine the buggies into empire specific super buggies that can take more mines.

By super buggy I mean a skyguard anti-air/anti infantry gun and an empire specific AV weapon. Just imagine how much it would be if each empire had their own marauder with an AA cannon on it: Epic buggy battles, engineers racking 3 man vehicle kills, tank crews with something inferior but challenging to fight, and buggies not getting completely owned by reavers/tanks/mines. Win-Win scenario.