Or: Why I Can Never Tell If Land Mines Are Worth It. In a recent game, i decided to take advantage of some rocky terrain between me and my enemy and build a few combat fabbers to lay minefields! In the course of the game, however, my enemy never attacked my base with his considerable land forces. This led to my victory, but i don't know whether or not the mines played a part in that. My question to you is: does land mine deterrence work? Have you ever used them successfully? Has an enemy dver blundered into your trap, or just thrown units at you to stomp through them despite the danger? Tell me your experiences, because I'm curious to see how they might fit into new strategies.
I understand that radar detects landmines. In games that have some form of possibility with radar not being used, which is seldom, landmines might work.
Hence why I said deterrence - not masterfully crafted ambushes. Unless units can shoot land mines (which they can't, as far as i know) knowing the position of a minefield does little to make it any easier to cross.
They can, AND they have no health. So, they literally skitter across them shooting a path to clear. Now, a lot of them occupies time shooting at cheap targets, you could opt to use them to sponge shots mid-battle...
I really wish landmines weren't detected by radars, or were only detected at half the range that regular units were Would be a nice surprise if you're being attacked by one of those guys who just spams dox all around your base and kites any units that you try to kill them with, so you just grab all of your tanks and rush his base, he rushes yours and runs straight into a minefield
landlines should be mostly stealthed, or we should not be able to shoot them. also, stealth works the wrong way. if you can't see it up close with visuals, radar is NOT going to spot it from KM away.
Welp, I learned the hard way that mines are currently useless... I should really do my research before making a thread. Having mines only appear in the first half of the radar detection radius is a great idea! It'd elegantly solve being able to see mines in an enemy base with radar in your own base... a similar mechanic might help for sonar, by making "stealth" units hide from radar at a certain range as a general rule.
I think that they should be kept as they are but only removable via reclaim. Forces the other player to have some of their own combat fabbers. But as a balance reduce the proximity of mines to each other so you cant have hundreds of mines to remove to get any where!
We can shoot mines now? You should see what it's like when you can't, way too exploitable. I kinda feel like the counter to a unit should not be that unit. It's boring. One of the reasons why the current dox meta is dull.
I always like to think mines as a deterrent works if you can reclaim them but can't attack them. They become too powerful if you can't attack nor reclaim them. A little while back, someone on YT thought it was funny to suggest to me the solution was just to send units to their death to find minefields. xD I told them to come to the forums and suggest it, hoping someone here could break through them. Combat fabbers see use in the field by repairing friendly units. There's literally nothing an advanced combat fabber can do on the field to make the cost of it viable. Even the heaviest units like the Vanguard are better supported by normal combat fabbers that cost way less and heal faster collectively than the advanced one. Also, they have multiple lathes as per multiple units. Since multiple units get hurt through splash, multiple combat fabbers would be more viable than a single advanced because the area damage could kill it, and you'd have none left. All your eggs in one basket, you know? What if the advanced combat fabbers could reclaim mines, but unable to build them? It gives them a field role as well as keeping their primary task. They can repair nearby units or structures (assuming the structures are already finished building), and should do so at a faster rate than the basic version. Would making advanced combat fabbers the only unit able to reclaim mines make them viable? Should they be able to build mines as well? If they reclaim mines, should they cost so much? Are they even viable now? What do you guys think? Edit : cuz wording
But even if you can attack the mines they are doing their job. They either slow the enemy down as they blow up the mine field so your static defenses can pick them apart or you can get your blob over to them OR they ignore the mine field and run through it, thinning their numbers so your defenses or blob has a better chance against them. OR they just go around the mine field, which you also accounted for to funnel them in to a more defended area. That being said, choke points are a lot more effective at roughly the same job. I think mines are just when you have a high value base in an open field.
Yeah, mine's do their job even when they're attackable, but it's not very effective at doing so. Most unit compositions can kill the entirety of any mines in front of them without slowing down at all, and plenty of them are still available to fire at defenses in front of the force. That's the problem I think. If mines had more than zero hp, units couldn't one-shot them. Mines, while technically underground, would still be set off if enough force exploded on the top of it, would it not? So in this respect, giving them a 'decent' amount of HP would also cause them to do a similar job as what they should, without being completely invulnerable. As long as you can't run units at full speed through a minefield while taking no damage, then the minefield is doing a job it's meant to do, and that's a good thing. Perhaps the mines from TA would be a good source of inspiration. They had some medium and high damage mines with quite a bit of area damage to them. Even nuclear mines at the cost of a pretty penny, but I don't know how viable those were, to be honest. TA never had area build for mines, so they weren't great, but since PA does, the idea of TA's high-damaging and medium distance minefields would be a perfect deterrent. Edit : Also, the ability to turn on and off mines at will would be immensely useful. Kind of like putting down a single nuclear mine and waiting for the bulk of the force to be above it before turning it back on so they set it off. (Don't even need a nuclear silo to build a nuclear mine!) You can still keep heavy mines and large-area mines active all the time, though.
