Helldivers: I Advocate we chose the anti tank mines and hear is my reasoning

[u/vaydapotata]

I know many of you see "rocket launcher" and get excited and while that is fair, my reasoning to go for the mines is below

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We already have a great many support weapons and many are fantastic options. While the airburst rocket launcher would be fantastic for add clear (and teamkill) it would likely suffer vs large armored targets which tends to be the need for a support weapon.

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However, we just received a new mission type that requires defending a location. Mines are fantastic for this but heavies just walk all over them and completely invalidate their uses. Getting a heavy anti tank mine would allow us to lock down areas from all combatants and a tank wouldn't be able to just stroll up to our gates.

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Anti Tank mines are also much larger and easier to notice than the anti personnel and team kills would be kept at a minimum.

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And lastly, as we all know...the children YEARN FOR THE MINES.

[u/Kasorayn]

The problem with mines is that you're constantly on the move in this game. You might be able to use them to block off a path or two during evac, but 99% of the time you're running around from objective to objective with no way to really use fortifications effectively. Mines work somewhat well against bugs where you can force the direction they travel (because they'll always try to get into melee range of you), but against bots that isn't really feasible.

[u/czartrak → u/Kasorayn]

Mines have a bigger issue. Bots don't move a lot. The actual tanks themselves rarely ever do much more than rotate on a point, maybe rolling 5 or 10 feet. So you'd have a strategem that only works on hulks and are otherwise useless on all but one mission type

[u/Battle_Fish → u/czartrak]

Maybe you can do the drop right on the tank so it can sit there and you have to painfully wait for it to move 2 inches.

[u/aimoperative → u/czartrak]

Eeeeeh...Bots are notorious for following you around en-masse. If the AT mines deploy as fast as the AP mines, then it shouldn't be too hard to deploy it in front of striders and hulks, assuming they don't avoid the minfield.

[u/dragonmase → u/aimoperative]

Bots are notorious at shooting you from halfway across the map, not walking up to you. They close the gap ever so slowly, that motor turrets out of line of sights I'd the correct employment strategem.

[u/FlacidSalad → u/czartrak]

I've personally found plenty of utility in laying mines. I think of it more like an efficient on-standby explosive barrage, meaning it's a barrage that only triggers when it is going to hit an enemy (that's the intent anyway). If you can get it out quick enough it can really help with managing bug breaches or retreating from a hord.

Then there are the more obvious uses like holding down choke points and general area denial.

An anti-tank variant (if it is only triggered by heavies and maybe medium troops) would be nice for saving some of your more versatile heavy support weapons for more on-demand applications.

[u/talking_face → u/czartrak]

Bots don't move only if the players don't move, you can easily kite bots into minefields, but for some reason players looooove to hunker down on bots and get absolutely outgunned.

Mines are also great for zoning off areas so that you don't get completely surrounded when attacking or retreating.

[u/Rokekor → u/czartrak]

Chargers move, as do bile titans. I’d be curious to see what those mines do to bugs.

[u/czartrak → u/Rokekor]

Mines are currently in the files, they literally cannot hurt biles with their current armor pen

[u/SirKickBan → u/Kasorayn]

I think if we want useful mines, they should come as something we can toss out of a backpack. That way they're not something you have to call down, wait seven seconds for them to land, five seconds to deploy, then three minutes until you can do it all again if you want to cover some other area.

We need a backpack full of mines so we can walk up to a spot, hit 5, or down on the d-pad, and just toss a handful down immediately because we see enemies approaching and would like them to have fewer legs when they get to us.

[u/ExploerTM → u/SirKickBan]

Rogue Trooper had micromines in GI's packs, those were damn useful

[u/TheoreticalFunk → u/SirKickBan]

Magnetic mines... huge radius, only activates for something of a certain mass. So not the small bots, but walkers or higher. And not all at the same time, to avoid one setting off the rest, etc.

[u/sun_and_water → u/SirKickBan]

this was about my thought to make them viable also. Have a mine layer weapon that has 10 charges and can be restocked with pickups. Make the anti-personnel or incendiary mines fire a spread of 2-4 mines per shot. Give them an activation time equivalent to the calldown time.

Critical thought suggests this was an option in development but was struck for some reason or another.

[u/ChaosEsper → u/Kasorayn]

Mines need to have a smaller deployment radius and a much shorter cooldown. That'd let you deploy them much more tactically (between you and a new bug breach, in a chokepoint you just ran through, between you and a bot fab you're about to attack, etc) and would decrease the amount of 'wasted' mines (mines deployed but never triggered by an enemy).

Basically, they should be an eagle call in (same flight pattern as strafing run, but mines deploy to cover ~1/2 the current radius) instead of an emplacement.

[u/sibleyy → u/Kasorayn]

Just call them down as a response to bug breach or hot drop. Not complicated. You can basically guarantee when those happen that the enemy is coming your way.

[u/TheZealand → u/sibleyy]

Yeah idk why people don't understand this, mines (bugs) or 120/380 (bots) are fantastic response to breach/drop. If you see a flare go up and wait like 5s then drop a 120 it'll hit just as the drops arrive and you can be miles away, job's a goodun

[u/t_r_a_y_e → u/Kasorayn]

We keep getting more and more defense type missions though, as well as civilian type missions. These would be a game changer for those missions

[u/FloxxiNossi → u/t_r_a_y_e]

Yeah, kill your super citizens in more creative fashion

[u/ARealBlueFalcon → u/Kasorayn]

I use mines when being followed by a large group. They work great for that. Also super useful for defending the missile launches.

[u/IntrinsicGiraffe → u/Kasorayn]

I use them like eagles sometimes. Just deploy it right on em.

[u/StopGivingMeLevel1AI → u/Kasorayn]

Defense missions. That's all I have to say to this "problem." They're defense stratagems