This column is not about either removing or limiting mines![/i]
One of the most annoying ways to die in et, apart from being crushed by the truck/tank, is by the landmine. Now for many of you it is doubtful if there is any skill in a weapon such as the landmine and as such if it even deserves a place among the weapons in et. Now In this column I will not debate whether or not we should keep the landmine or not. What I will try to do is propose a slight change to the landmines in general which I hope makes especially the more obviously placed ones ( front entrance to tank on goldrush springs to mind) less of a nuisance.
At this moment in time the landmine threat is basically an invisible threat. Most of us know where in general landmines are placed and thus are, to a certain degree, able to avoid them. There is of course the nemesis of the landmine (the covert op) but he has little usage in et and generally only used in specific game moments. However my impression is most teams won’t run a covert to spot mines, it’s just not worth it. We’d rather take some deaths by landmines and hopefully be able to prevent them from being replanted. In fact the most commen approach to deal with the blocking of a choke point with landmines is to simply run through and either sacrifice the 1 player or hopefully get lucky. Now, this is not an ideal situation since this makes the success or failure of a push (when landmines are involved) to much depended on luck and not on a well executed attack.
My proposition is simple, although not easily executed without bani’s help. At this moment in time you can clear landmines by letting a covert spot them, and then throw a satchel and/or grenades on them. I propose to lift the requirement by the game to spot them first. This means that if I suspect a landmines I simply throw a grenade at the spot. If there are landmines this will destroy them. Again this without the mines being spotted. This gives players the choice to sacrifice their grenades in order to clear a passageway, The downside of this is that they know where you are coming from, but you could use it as a diversion as well.
The main argument against this is that this might make the landmine useless and thus underused. Since all your carefully placed mines are easily destroyed. However I feel that this will mainly prevent the laying of minefields, since 1 grenade will destroy all mines. But the unexpected mine will still get kills.
A second argument against might be that this gives the covert ops even less reason of existence. But since the covert ops is only used on specialized situations anyway and never run solely to spot mines I don’t think this is to much of a concern.
Finally I think that with this adjustment players will have some sort of counter against the landmine instead of just trying to avoid or run over them and thus it’s a bit more about skill and a bit less about luck.
If this idea has been posted before credit will go of course to the original poster and I will remove this asap. However I can’t remember seeing this before and look forward to tossing this into the snake pit that is xfire commenting.
Oeglie
One of the most annoying ways to die in et, apart from being crushed by the truck/tank, is by the landmine. Now for many of you it is doubtful if there is any skill in a weapon such as the landmine and as such if it even deserves a place among the weapons in et. Now In this column I will not debate whether or not we should keep the landmine or not. What I will try to do is propose a slight change to the landmines in general which I hope makes especially the more obviously placed ones ( front entrance to tank on goldrush springs to mind) less of a nuisance.
At this moment in time the landmine threat is basically an invisible threat. Most of us know where in general landmines are placed and thus are, to a certain degree, able to avoid them. There is of course the nemesis of the landmine (the covert op) but he has little usage in et and generally only used in specific game moments. However my impression is most teams won’t run a covert to spot mines, it’s just not worth it. We’d rather take some deaths by landmines and hopefully be able to prevent them from being replanted. In fact the most commen approach to deal with the blocking of a choke point with landmines is to simply run through and either sacrifice the 1 player or hopefully get lucky. Now, this is not an ideal situation since this makes the success or failure of a push (when landmines are involved) to much depended on luck and not on a well executed attack.
My proposition is simple, although not easily executed without bani’s help. At this moment in time you can clear landmines by letting a covert spot them, and then throw a satchel and/or grenades on them. I propose to lift the requirement by the game to spot them first. This means that if I suspect a landmines I simply throw a grenade at the spot. If there are landmines this will destroy them. Again this without the mines being spotted. This gives players the choice to sacrifice their grenades in order to clear a passageway, The downside of this is that they know where you are coming from, but you could use it as a diversion as well.
The main argument against this is that this might make the landmine useless and thus underused. Since all your carefully placed mines are easily destroyed. However I feel that this will mainly prevent the laying of minefields, since 1 grenade will destroy all mines. But the unexpected mine will still get kills.
A second argument against might be that this gives the covert ops even less reason of existence. But since the covert ops is only used on specialized situations anyway and never run solely to spot mines I don’t think this is to much of a concern.
Finally I think that with this adjustment players will have some sort of counter against the landmine instead of just trying to avoid or run over them and thus it’s a bit more about skill and a bit less about luck.
If this idea has been posted before credit will go of course to the original poster and I will remove this asap. However I can’t remember seeing this before and look forward to tossing this into the snake pit that is xfire commenting.
Oeglie
