Wimpy Weapons

[Angstromicus]

Well, perhaps the expire/death explosion should be the same as the detonation.

[OvermindDL1]

That would be good, therefore if someone did lay a tight minefield then when the first counter expires then they would all detonate.

[Steeveeo]

Minefields are easy to kill with mortars, because of their wide damage radius plus the chain reaction effect mentioned by anomaly, just have two sabres or archers take out a section of the minefield or your units to go through.

Also, I just had an idea for a very interesting bomber payload.

It would be a modded carpet bomber that drops spraybombs that turn into mines instead of splinters, instant mine fields! It would be interesting to see what would happen if you dropped it on an enemy base...

Anyway, back on topic, I say a minute and a half for combat mines and 1e6 for assault versions on minelayers or something.

[mrtwosheds]

Well, perhaps the expire/death explosion should be the same as the detonation.

hmm, mines are available right at the start of the game, Think "how would you like 20 of these on you recycler spawn point"....

[bigbadbogie]

thats a good point - maybe make you and the recycler invincible for the first 5 seconds after it has spawned

[Red Devil]

There's a Recycler Invulnerability slider in 1.3 strat Extra Options that has a range of 0..15 minutes.

The Prox mine I posted has a damage/triggerRadius of 15 meters, so if you spread the mines farther than 15 meters apart, they don't daisy chain.

I remember in BZ1, there were a few Bolt Mines at the end that didn't expire, but they were pre-placed.

10 minutes sounds reasonable to start with.

[bigbadbogie]

maybe make the minimum invunerability for recyclers 5 seconds - it would mean that if mines have been pre-placed at your spawn point they would detonate before the recycler can be damaged

[anomaly]

Okay, how about this: Make the expire/destroyed explosion just powerful enough to kill other mines within its field.  That way even if they do plant them all over your base, you don't need to worry about them hurting your buildings when you shoot them.  And don't give then a lot of health; say, about as much as could be taken out with two at-stab shots.

You could also give them a bit of a longer shot delay so you can't make a large mine field quickly.  But, then again, I don't see team members sitting around spending 5 min making a mine field as being more productive than securing and guarding pools.

[mrtwosheds]

Damage to the rec is not the problem, At the start of every mp strat game what happens is a dogfight, invariably 1 team will loose all 4 scouts and have to build some more after the commander has a few scavs out, if the other team then mine their rec, with mines that last 10 min and keep doing it (they will) all the empty scouts, pods etc that the dogfight loosing team makes will be damaged or destroyed, and they WILL loose the game. 30 sec is short enough for the mine to expire before the campers can return to lay some more mines, the harmless expire explosion enables a pilot to shoot it without causing to much damage.
Weapons available at the start of the game need to be wimpy.

[Zero Angel]

I agree with 2 sheds, mines were not powerful as in version 1.2, but they were powerful enough to be useful as a somewhat rarely used scout weapon in DMs (where the enemy is not affected much by VIR, ie: doesnt use shadowers and targets/watches radar). A longer life would be useful but maybe only if it lasted 50% longer as opposed to twice as long or more than twice. Sure it would prevent laying long-lasting minefields and lower 'realism', but that at least lowers the chance that the weapon will be exploitable.

I was also going to propose an alternate version of the assault AT and SP stab weapons (with grenade physics -- the AT stab better vs light units whereas the SP would be stronger vs buildings) but I found a bug in the way assault tanks use the weapons. If you tell an asstank to attack an enemy and that enemy is obstructed by terrain then the tank will refuse to fire (instead, trying to point upwards to no avail).

You can see this bug for yourself by downloading this test version of the SP-Stab (A)

[Red Devil]

Pretty sure that's been fixed in 1.3.

How about mine upgrades?  That way you have the wimpy mines at the beginning, but can get better ones as the tech increases.