Advice For Mine Use?
CrazyEddie
Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
I'm a terrible shot. I'm getting better, but I'm still terrible. In the meantime, since shotguns are basically a waste in my hands, I figure the best use for my early-to-mid-game pres is to mine the snot out of the Marine bases.
Anyone have any advice on how to most effectively use mines?
Anyone have any advice on how to most effectively use mines?
Comments
Which is also nice because I know when a location is being hit when I see a mine kill. I always place them in an important spot to hold, so it's a bit of a warning system too.
PS: Be aware that lerks, gorges, and skulks can all hit them with their ranged attacks to destroy them. Try to avoid placing them in places where they can sit way back and hit them.
As far as where to place them I think it depends on the situation. Use your best judgment on where the skulks will go and what is the most important building to defend at the time.
Stand just in front of them
Wait for a skulk
Die in glorious hellfire
Offensively dont place them on walls. Good skulks dont travel on the floor much, but all marines stand on the ground. Mines aren't great for suprising skulks (as alien vision exists) they are placed to give your team mates a safer spot to stand on or retreat to while reloading.
Placing them around corners is a trade off - you might kill a few careless aliens but the trade off is that any marine standing near it as a point of safety wont have great lines of sight.
Most importantly tell your team mates to stand with your mines let the few that miss the tips screen know they wont lose a leg.
They have a narrow window of usefulness because of bile but if you'll still have 15 res for the essential jetpack and welder and you cant shoot at all then you can put all your res into them for the whole game and still cause damage.
ie: The backside of an RT or next to an Observatory, IP, Prototype Lab, Armoury.
If you place the mines well, their model is partially hidden by the structure you're trying to protect.
Mines will set each other off, so space them out a bit, and keep in mind mines are more area denial/a deterrent than a "free kill".
Stand just in front of them
Wait for a skulk
Die in glorious hellfire<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sadly before I knew your own mines could kill you I put 3 around me and stood still goofing around.. not 5 seconds after I did it a gorge came and tossed 1 bile bomb at me and took me out. I about died from laughter.
In an attacking mode, they are also fantastic (as already mentioned above) when placed under your teammates' feet. Place a mine, swap places, shoot aliens. Nice.
They're too buys saving for Exos.
I am still very terrible at shotguns so I spam all my pres into mines.
So indeed basics...
* Ip
* cc
* obs
* armslab
* vents
* rts
* phasegate
* and even power nodes
* anything where you see a lot of kharaa movement & is not infested
So much to choose from, I usually run out mines fast.
In competitive games, you can rely on your commander to jump out and place his mines around the base. (I like 2 near IPs, one near the CC to cover commander jumping out)
Else, when you're on the field, you have a few choices. You want to use two mines for defense, one mine for offense. That means something like-
1 in a vent
1 behind an RT's blind spot
and then if you're attacking a res tower, throw it at your feet when you hear skulkies about to ambush you
The BEST places to put mines are in vents. You destroy skulk resource harassment routes, and if you're lucky you can get a lerk kill if a skulk didn't detonate the mine. Putting it behind resource nodes is good- when you come back the skulk can't hide behind the RT and will be easily sniped.
Never understood the fascination with super-early welders, especially in a pub setting where 95% of players aren't going to use them correctly (weld friendly armor). Whereas Mines and Phase tech you're definitely going to see some strong value out of them as your first couple upgrades.
Most of the time when welders would actually be useful you can research them while the skulk is chewing on the phasegate and you're telling the team to phase through, at which point welders are ready the moment they're actually needed. The benefit of course being that you'll have researched other more important, directly-usable technology earlier in the game (like getting phase tech slightly faster and saving towards Arms Lab stuff.)
Mines are early game and don't require a robot lab.
If I not comming and am on the ground, I make sure that the base is well mined and then make sure to place them around the forward phase gates. If we have a forward armory, I usually place them around that room to help with defense.
Because I use most of my p-res on mines, I usually don't get to play with the heavy equipment, but I make sure I always have enough p-res for a welder so that I can support my buddies in the exos.
<!--quoteo(post=2066548:date=Jan 25 2013, 01:05 PM:name=Hockeybeard)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hockeybeard @ Jan 25 2013, 01:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2066548"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Mines are early game and don't require a robot lab.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is true to an extent. While bile bomb negates mines, without gorge support they will help during a small engagement at a forward outpost as fades will not only have to worry about shotgun blasts, but also avoiding mines.
<!--quoteo(post=2066442:date=Jan 25 2013, 11:03 AM:name=Frothybeverage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Frothybeverage @ Jan 25 2013, 11:03 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2066442"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I research mines first, but nobody other than me places any.
They're too buys saving for Exos.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was comming a game on veil a few days ago, we got a good base in pipeline going and I ask "Hey, can someone place some mines around the phase gate?" After a few minutes I notice that there are no mines placed so I request again. Still, nobody did it. So then I start asking specific people if they could place some mines. One guy told me "No" So I jokingly said "fine, you get no medpacks" so I find another guy and specifically told him to place mines, he also says "No". I start seeing red at this point and and told my team "###### it, you guys are on your own" and immediately quit. As a comm, you just can't fight the aliens, as well as your own team.
The TRes you spend on a sentry farm (not to mention a robo factory) could be Armor 1 + change. For example, armor 1 benefits all marines and helps them survive longer, whereas a sentry farm sits in base and flails uselessly as skulks ignore it (or use a sentry gun as cover against the other sentry guns, like I do).
The TRes you spend on mine research could ALSO be armor 1, but the difference between it and a sentry farm is it doesn't require a robo factory, it's cheaper by 5 res. And the most important part is that it leverages your team's PRes (and you can hop out of the chair to buy a pack of mines yourself), leaving the TRes exclusively for upgrades that your team needs. Mines can hurt multiple aliens all at once, and they greatly stack the odds in favor of marines holding a hive location until PGs.
Obviously mines get 'used' up as aliens step on them, and some mines never get triggered at all due to poor placement. Mines also become near useless as the game progresses. But in the early game - before lerks are even up - mines are borderline OP vs base skulks with 70hp/10a, no upgrades and no leap.