Okay, I'm missing something here. I keep hearing about this "Caitian Jumping Exploit" in regard to mines. From what I can piece together, at some distant point in the past, Caitians were able to avoid mines by jumping over them. This was somehow considered an exploit, for some bizarre reason. If this is the case, I think I pretty much abused the hell out of this exploit back in Vietnam, which is why I'm still alive today.
Chroniton Mine Barrier used to suffer from a very high drop-off in damage as the target was further away from the explosion point. Caitians, with their increased jump height, were able to drastically mitigate the damage of the power by jumping over the mines. They would trigger the mines due to their horizontal displacement, but their vertical displacement reduced the damage significantly. The damage drop-off was removed to counter this. The result of this, however, is that triggering multiple mines (which is usually what happens) means you take full damage from all of them, and the damage is pretty significant when you take the total from all the mines that went off, especially since it partially ignores shields. If it was as simple as the Caitains avoiding the mines entirely by jumping over them, it wouldn't have been as much an issue, avoidance is a reasonable tactic when dealing with mines. But they were effectively acting as the bomb squad for the rest of their team who couldn't use that tactic.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
First of all, mines are crazy strong. But something will always be OP. If only it was a perfect world (hehe pwe get it). But since it reflects real life where things aren't fair, the thing is to adapt. If you're PvPing an engineer that's using mines, out range them or fight mines with mines.
On a side note, star trek canon says that Klingons love their mines. How many tons of them were used to mine the wormhole during the impending Dominion invasion?
That still will not change that it is a dull and ill imagined ability. Mines are historicly a defensive weapon but the speed and arrangement of their deployment makes them into a mega powerful offensive attack that is used as a crutch by the laziest of engineers.
There is a deployment delay of a few seconds. That said, when I used mines before, I did it aggressively with Fuse Armor to prevent the enemy from running and giving mines time to deploy. But...
Gonna be honest, glad I moved to Equipment Technician kit a long time ago.
... I decided to move to ET as well because most experienced players know how to and will avoid mines. I've been far more successful with ET, but I admit I'm gonna take the 'Mines back when the Kit Revamp comes. For one thing, they keep those pesky Lunges away.
On a side note, star trek canon says that Klingons love their mines. How many tons of them were used to mine the wormhole during the impending Dominion invasion?
Uhm...I don't remember ever hearing about Klingons loving mines. Besides, it was the crew of DS9 itself who thought of mining the wormhole, not the Klingons.
... I decided to move to ET as well because most experienced players know how to and will avoid mines. I've been far more successful with ET, but I admit I'm gonna take the 'Mines back when the Kit Revamp comes. For one thing, they keep those pesky Lunges away.
I totally understand that one. I mean, aside from the awesomeness of simply having Mines plus Equipment Diagnostics in the first place, the Explosives skills boosts both the mines and your OS/OCB. So ED, then OS/OCB, then mines = very dead.
And that ain't even including what everyone else is doing.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
That still will not change that it is a dull and ill imagined ability. Mines are historicly a defensive weapon but the speed and arrangement of their deployment makes them into a mega powerful offensive attack that is used as a crutch by the laziest of engineers.
Mines can totally be used as offensive weapons. You should see some of the more amusing ways we've come up with for using claymores. You're just too stuck in your historical "stuck in the box" thinking. With an attitude like that, you wouldn't last very long in a warzone.
Uhm...I don't remember ever hearing about Klingons loving mines. Besides, it was the crew of DS9 itself who thought of mining the wormhole, not the Klingons.
The Klingons attempted to surround the entire Bajoran system with cloaked mines in Sons of Mogh.
Perhaps the mines should have a "summoning time" during which a mine is placed in an o'clock position every second that the player is locked in the "summoning". This would not only allow for more mines to be generated and place them back in the defensive category but also allow for the mine barrier to become a mine field. If the "summoning" is interrupted by the player or damage it ends.
I don't play an engineer but mines only tickle my science officer.
Maybe spend some points in armor and wear something with good physical resist?
Alternatively - hear me out here - don't stand in a minefield, just run out when they spawn.
Mines do kinetic damage, not physical. Even so, an engineer who's dedicated to eventually taking you down with mines, can, and will do everything they can to do so. Sure your sci (presuming you are running the medic kit?) can laugh em off, but most engs and tacs, and even some scis cannot do so quite as easily.
An eng isn't just gonna lay em out and expect people to run into them unless it's a defense against something like a cloaker trying to flank them; they are gonna hold somebody down, probably with Fuse Armor, and lay the mines under them, then BOOM, all while they are unable to run usually.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Ok, the problem is an ability with a 20 second cooldown and a 2 second deployment time is cable of dealing 2,200-4,000 damage every 22 seconds in a very large area of effect. Engineers are capable of having two of these fields active at any given time. Players have a maximum of 667 health and these mines cover a very large area. You can easily get an extra 140 damage/second out of these mines alone. Toss in a quantum mortar for an extra 150 damage/second. That is all before factoring in actual damage from the engineer's weapon. Mine Barrier paired with 100% uptime Quantum Mortars is the reason Engineers, the shield tank class, are dealing three times the damage of Tactical Officers. Tactical Officers are supposed to be the damage class, but they are outclassed by engineers with over double the amount of survivability options.
There is also a bug that allows engineers to stack all five mines on top of eachother to make the entire minefield look like a single mine. Next, we have buggy map terrain that will make the mines invisible to all players...except when they walk past them for massive damage. It only takes 2-4 mines from a field to kill at the moment. This was never the intended purpose for an ability that was made as a spammable attack. A team with 2-3 engineers can very easily make a map impossible to maneuver with the sheer amount of mines they can deploy on top of their mortar spam.
Ok, the problem is an ability with a 20 second cooldown and a 2 second deployment time is cable of dealing 2,200-4,000 damage every 22 seconds in a very large area of effect.
An eng isn't just gonna lay em out and expect people to run into them unless it's a defense against something like a cloaker trying to flank them; they are gonna hold somebody down, probably with Fuse Armor, and lay the mines under them, then BOOM, all while they are unable to run usually.
I get so tired of having to shrug off engi nubs preying for the mine 1 shot...
Perhaps the mines should have a "summoning time" during which a mine is placed in an o'clock position every second that the player is locked in the "summoning". This would not only allow for more mines to be generated and place them back in the defensive category but also allow for the mine barrier to become a mine field. If the "summoning" is interrupted by the player or damage it ends.
Yeah, that happens in real life, too. Usually we deal with this by adding shrapnel, which significantly increases the effectively dangerous range.
Generally speaking, that's what was done. The effective range was increased by removing the damage drop-off. But getting hit with 5 chroniton mines at full strength is fairly non-trivial in terms of damage, and a huge increase in what the ability used to be capable of and was likely balanced around.
In real life terms, adding shrapnel does increase the range of a blast, but you still take more damage at ground zero than if you were just struck by the shrapnel alone. Chroniton Mine Barrier currently does full damage regardless of where you are within the blast radius.
Yeah, there's a thing for that in real life, too. Still not seeing the problem.
Yes, bomb diffusal squads exist in real life. However, I'm pretty sure they don't just detonate the mines and take reduced damage by being slightly further away from them than others so nobody else has to. Yes, they often times purposefully detonate explosives, but they generally have specialized equipment and take time to set up, usually shielding the blast as much as possible or getting behind cover. Caitians were mitigating the mines too easily by just jumping over them.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
If Cryptic will not change the FAW mechanics so no talent hacks can just spin in circles while pushing the magic "I WIN" button that is the (seemingly) only power in ANY MMO ON THE PLANET that hits every target in range without even AIMING, what makes you think they give 2 frells about a ground mechanic? :rolleyes:
Mine barrier usage was of course going to go up with the introduction of mine barrier IV with a mortar on the same kit. Biggest problem (pvp wise) is not being able to tell them apart in fed vs fed matches. Resistance seems high enough to me that it's a rare occurrence to get one shoted by them. Damage gets significantly reduced by the shield before it hits the armor resistance. I've often seen the log say things like:
Xxxx does 100 (800) kinetic damage with mine barrier blablablah.
Pointing at raw damage as a reason for them being op is a bit misguided in my opinion. Like anything else it depends on the situation. Shields are down it's going to hurt more. If a player isn't wearing armor with good kinetic resistance they'll die faster etc.
The problem pve wise is more the stupidity of the enemy npcs and that they just run right to them or don't even try to avoid them.
I do think that the mine engineer is very active and not lazy as stated in this thread. Taking a smart player down with mines requires good timing and smart deployment.
The issue is the combination of it being a very very simple strategy to use, that works for practically all the content in the game. Its like having a character in a beat 'em up game that has such a powerful attack bound to a single key attack, that there's no point learning the rest of that character's abilities. Whats the point in learning higher dps strategies that are more complicated to execute if the easy to execute one will complete the game?
From the pve perspective I'm not sure how much of a pressing concern it is. While it is true that the neut kit engineer is the first choice to play when you intend to solo or to carry a random pug group through an stf, its also true that its the least desireable class to have in a speed run group when the entire team is composed of experienced, well geared players.
Also I think we've kinda missed the chance to talk about this with the expectation of getting a change in the current kit pass. Hawk did his lets talk kit powers thread back in late December.
Generally speaking, that's what was done. The effective range was increased by removing the damage drop-off. But getting hit with 5 chroniton mines at full strength is fairly non-trivial in terms of damage, and a huge increase in what the ability used to be capable of and was likely balanced around.
And yet the amount of damage taken is zero if you simply don't step on them. Unlike real-life mines and traps, these are not and cannot be hidden in any way. All you have to do is not step on them.
In real life terms, adding shrapnel does increase the range of a blast, but you still take more damage at ground zero than if you were just struck by the shrapnel alone. Chroniton Mine Barrier currently does full damage regardless of where you are within the blast radius.
Well, sure. On the other hand, real explosives have an effective radius of more than about 2 meters. They also don't magically distinguish between friend and foe. I'd say removing that alone would resolve most of these issues.
However, I'm pretty sure they don't just detonate the mines and take reduced damage by being slightly further away from them than others so nobody else has to.
That is actually the operating principle behind the "mine roller".
Caitians were mitigating the mines too easily by just jumping over them.
I've seen that technique used in real life, too. Mines are often designed to detonate with a delay after triggering, to allow the victim unit to move over them so the mine detonates within the unit instead of only on the first person. Someone sufficiently spry and acquainted with this particular behavior can thus intentionally trip them and causing them to explode mostly harmlessly.
If Cryptic will not change the FAW mechanics so no talent hacks can just spin in circles while pushing the magic "I WIN" button that is the (seemingly) only power in ANY MMO ON THE PLANET that hits every target in range without even AIMING, what makes you think they give 2 frells about a ground mechanic? :rolleyes:
Clicking on something does not constitute aiming. I would be happy to have a weapon that I actually could AIM by myself, since the auto-aim is terrible and capable of missing a target that occupies the entire firing arc of the weapon.
The issue is the combination of it being a very very simple strategy to use, that works for practically all the content in the game.
Well, the solution is to make the enemy AI less moronic and less prone to mindlessly stepping into obvious mines. It should be simple to have enemies treat mines as "no go" areas much in the same way they avoid plasma fires. Only dumb, non-sapient entities should fall for this. Enemies intended to be sapient beings should avoid these.
As someone said earlier, mines are far from the most effective thing in PvP because players who aren't idiots quickly learn to stop stepping in them.
I understand that players do not want to give up their "I win" button" on their engineers but the fact remains that the power needs to be reworked. No class should have some power that allows them to 1 shot a group of mobs every 20 seconds.
Perhaps the mines should have a "summoning time" during which a mine is placed in an o'clock position every second that the player is locked in the "summoning". This would not only allow for more mines to be generated and place them back in the defensive category but also allow for the mine barrier to become a mine field. If the "summoning" is interrupted by the player or damage it ends.
And yet the amount of damage taken is zero if you simply don't step on them. Unlike real-life mines and traps, these are not and cannot be hidden in any way. All you have to do is not step on them.
That only applies if the mine doesn't detonate. The mines WERE detonating when Caitians jumped over them. It wasn't simple avoidance. If people were simply going around the mines or jumping over them without detonating them then yes, that's fine. But that wasn't the case.
Well, sure. On the other hand, real explosives have an effective radius of more than about 2 meters. They also don't magically distinguish between friend and foe. I'd say removing that alone would resolve most of these issues.
Caitians may have a jump height boost, but it definitely isn't 2 meters. Why shouldn't they be taking more than insignificant damage? They weren't avoiding the mines, they were purposefully detonating the mines and getting hit. As for same-team damage, that sort of thing in general has issues in PvP play outside of STO, and with the wide variety of AoE ground abilities would lead into more problems than solutions. Cryptic already removed the friendly fire from Plasma Grenade, I think they're trying to avoid friendly fire issues.
That is actually the operating principle behind the "mine roller".
Going back to "specialized equipment." The Caitians were not using specialized equipment, they were purposefully detonating the mines and they were NOT outside of the range of the mine, they were just taking significantly reduced damage, nor were they using protective gear outside of standard-issue body armor and personal shield systems. They were not outside the "effective kill range" of a real-life mine, why should they take such insignificant damage from these? The main complaint is that they removed all fall-off damage, they didn't just reduce the penalty.
I've seen that technique used in real life, too. Mines are often designed to detonate with a delay after triggering, to allow the victim unit to move over them so the mine detonates within the unit instead of only on the first person. Someone sufficiently spry and acquainted with this particular behavior can thus intentionally trip them and causing them to explode mostly harmlessly.
Chroniton Mine Barrier does not have a delayed blast timer, just a setup delay timer. The mines were detonating immediately when a Caitian got within range if the setup timer was already over. The Caitians WERE getting hit, but for far less than they should have been given their proximity to the mines.
The main problem was the entire removal of the fall-off damage. The damage went from trivial-to-moderate to fairly severe.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
Well, the solution is to make the enemy AI less moronic and less prone to mindlessly stepping into obvious mines. It should be simple to have enemies treat mines as "no go" areas much in the same way they avoid plasma fires. Only dumb, non-sapient entities should fall for this. Enemies intended to be sapient beings should avoid these.
This at best deletes the power, and at worst turns it into a noob trap power that does negative team dps and causes bugs.
I understand that players do not want to give up their "I win" button" on their engineers but the fact remains that the power needs to be reworked. No class should have some power that allows them to 1 shot a group of mobs every 20 seconds.
Theres an important point that is being missed in this thread. Mines are powerful, yes. But they are not the one power to rule them all that has all other classes bowing to their awesome.
As player skill + gear progresses class performance looks vaguely like this in a team environment:
Noob
> Uber
Sci
Weak
Ok
Helpful
Strong
Powerful
Eng----Weak
Strong - Strong
Helpful
Helpful
Tac-- Hinderance - Weak - Ok
Strong
Uber
Engineer powers do not scale up well with player skill. They noticably lack buttons to be pressing in an assault situation, which all STFs tend towards because of the nature of the maps being something you progress through under timed conditions. Being overly reliant on one assault power makes their performance drop off when there are fewer opportunities to activate the power.
What is an issue is that players easily fall into the rut of never learning to use their scis and their tacs effectively because engineers get to the strong position so early in their development, and they can just carry the team to a mediocre completion that probably still gets the optional. This also combines with people actively wanting to avoid investment in ground traits so they can use the slots for space.
Spanking the engineer with a nerfbat without also addressing the other issues is unhelpful.
I love my mines and bombs, I love blowing up borg units on Defera in "Hard" missions. The satisfying "BOOM" gives me a smile and warm fuzzy feeling.
I enjoy working through a mission the first time, figuring things out, having to actually work for it. But when I have to do it over and over and over again to grind through end game content for not only personal reputations, but fleet projects as well. I want my "kill all and get on with it as fast as possible button". I like being able to complete the "Peer Pressure" mission without having to work at it, over, and over, and over, and over.
Sorry if this bothers you. If we ever were to randomly be in a pick up group on Defera, I'd totally be willing to work with you, and not set mines at all the borg drop points so you can go pew pew pew with other weapons and not kill things instantly.
Because hey, I like working WITH people instead of trying to take away their fun too.
I enjoy working through a mission the first time, figuring things out, having to actually work for it. But when I have to do it over and over and over again to grind through end game content for not only personal reputations, but fleet projects as well. I want my "kill all and get on with it as fast as possible button". I like being able to complete the "Peer Pressure" mission without having to work at it, over, and over, and over, and over.
Sorry if this bothers you. If we ever were to randomly be in a pick up group on Defera, I'd totally be willing to work with you, and not set mines at all the borg drop points so you can go pew pew pew with other weapons and not kill things instantly.
This says it all. The mines are lazy and OP for pvp and pve.
Perhaps the mines should have a "summoning time" during which a mine is placed in an o'clock position every second that the player is locked in the "summoning". This would not only allow for more mines to be generated and place them back in the defensive category but also allow for the mine barrier to become a mine field. If the "summoning" is interrupted by the player or damage it ends.
This says it all. The mines are lazy and OP for pvp and pve.
You realize your suggested change to the power would have literally no impact on how joshglass runs the Defera Invasion? The Borg down there generally don't react until the player initiates combat, giving Engineers time to deploy mines. Don't use a poorly designed combat scenario as an example about how the power is "lazy." Tactical officers and Science officers are equally guilty of taking advantage of the Borg's lack of attention.
The problem with the Defera Invasion example returns to the Engineer's lack of offensive powers. Quantum Mortar and Phaser/Disruptor Turret have semi-random targetting, you can't directly control where and when they fire, so while you're trying to prevent a Deferi Citizen's assimilation, your fabrications might be targeting the nearby Borg attacking a Deferi turret. Seeker Drone is slightly more controllable, but not by much. That leaves Chroniton Mine Barrier and Transphasic Bomb, which are significantly more reliable under the circumstances.
And why do the Engineers get all the long setup powers? Everything Science and Tactical does is near instant-use, with the Tactical grenades having a slight delivery delay but not generally impeding the player's actions and movements. Engineers have at least 5 kit powers and a class power that root them for several seconds. That trend does not need to continue.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
He just wants everyone to play his way and QQ at anyone who doesn't. This ain't the first thread he's made like this and I doubt it'll be the last. *yawn*
The Borg down there generally don't react until the player initiates combat, giving Engineers time to deploy mines. Don't use a poorly designed combat scenario as an example about how the power is "lazy." Tactical officers and Science officers are equally guilty of taking advantage of the Borg's lack of attention.
To be fair, Borg are canonically kinda dense like that. They WOULD readily become victims of mines.
This, of course, doesn't explain why putatively intelligent enemies with self-preservation desires like, say, Voth, also blindly ram into mines. It should not be hard to upgrade their AI so that they will avoid these things like players do.
I agree that that mines were unbalanced when Cryptic removed the damage fall-off over distance. I agree with dareau's suggestion to restore the damage fall-off, but only in the horizontal plane. This solution essentially returns mines to their previous state; the only difference is that it fixes the jumping exploit.
Perhaps the mines should have a "summoning time" during which a mine is placed in an o'clock position every second that the player is locked in the "summoning". This would not only allow for more mines to be generated and place them back in the defensive category but also allow for the mine barrier to become a mine field. If the "summoning" is interrupted by the player or damage it ends.
Let me see if I understand you correctly. You want the engineer to sit there for 12 seconds deploying one mine per second? During those 12 seconds, the enemy would have ample time to attack the engineer from a distance or flank him. Of course, the mines would never finish deploying, because the engineer is constantly being interrupted. If I were a tac and I saw an engineer sitting there deploying mines like that, I would just lob a plasma grenade at him.
I'm not sure where this notion that mines are purely defensive comes from. I have never read a comment by a dev stating that mines are for defense only. Besides, there isn't a strict line between offense and defense. Many techniques can be used for both. Guns can be used to both attack and defend a position. It would be strange to say that they could be used for one but not the other. For as long as I remember, mines could be used both for defense and as an AoE attack. When was this time that mines could be used for defense only?
I also don't know why people keep bringing up real life. STO is not the type of game that aims to be a realistic simulation of combat. Otherwise, there would be friendly fire from all weapons---guns, grenades, and mines. NPCs that players are supposed to rescue would die from all the friendly fire. Many abilities clearly don't behave like their real-life counterparts. For example, it would be suicidal to fire a mortar or call for an orbital strike indoors.
I usually have to disagree with mcduffie, but he does have a point here. The problem is not the mines being strong. The problem is that you can be hit by all five at one time. The mechanic needs to change where deployment makes the mines spread out to a distance where you can only be hit by two of them apt a time. This should not one shot a player or decent leveled NPC. Force the mines farther apart and this should fix the issue.
I usually have to disagree with mcduffie, but he does have a point here. The problem is not the mines being strong. The problem is that you can be hit by all five at one time. The mechanic needs to change where deployment makes the mines spread out to a distance where you can only be hit by two of them apt a time. This should not one shot a player or decent leveled NPC. Force the mines farther apart and this should fix the issue.
There used to be a damage fall-off with distance, so if you were at the periphery of the damage zone, you would only take a small amount of damage. Cryptic removed the damage fall-off, so it is now possible to take full damage from all 5 mines. They should restore the damage fall-off with distance, but calculate it only in the horizontal plane to fix the jumping exploit. They should also fix the geometry bug that sometimes causes mines to be laid on top of each other.
I didnt think this many people PLAYED ground missions. I used to LOVE Mine Trap, but I got tired of waiting 90mins for a game to launch. Seemed like everyone stopped playing. Might have to look at that again.
I didnt think this many people PLAYED ground missions. I used to LOVE Mine Trap, but I got tired of waiting 90mins for a game to launch. Seemed like everyone stopped playing. Might have to look at that again.
You'd be surprised by the number of players that enjoy ground combat.
Comments
Chroniton Mine Barrier used to suffer from a very high drop-off in damage as the target was further away from the explosion point. Caitians, with their increased jump height, were able to drastically mitigate the damage of the power by jumping over the mines. They would trigger the mines due to their horizontal displacement, but their vertical displacement reduced the damage significantly. The damage drop-off was removed to counter this. The result of this, however, is that triggering multiple mines (which is usually what happens) means you take full damage from all of them, and the damage is pretty significant when you take the total from all the mines that went off, especially since it partially ignores shields. If it was as simple as the Caitains avoiding the mines entirely by jumping over them, it wouldn't have been as much an issue, avoidance is a reasonable tactic when dealing with mines. But they were effectively acting as the bomb squad for the rest of their team who couldn't use that tactic.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
On a side note, star trek canon says that Klingons love their mines. How many tons of them were used to mine the wormhole during the impending Dominion invasion?
There is a deployment delay of a few seconds. That said, when I used mines before, I did it aggressively with Fuse Armor to prevent the enemy from running and giving mines time to deploy. But...
... I decided to move to ET as well because most experienced players know how to and will avoid mines. I've been far more successful with ET, but I admit I'm gonna take the 'Mines back when the Kit Revamp comes. For one thing, they keep those pesky Lunges away.
STO Screenshot Archive
Uhm...I don't remember ever hearing about Klingons loving mines. Besides, it was the crew of DS9 itself who thought of mining the wormhole, not the Klingons.
I totally understand that one. I mean, aside from the awesomeness of simply having Mines plus Equipment Diagnostics in the first place, the Explosives skills boosts both the mines and your OS/OCB. So ED, then OS/OCB, then mines = very dead.
And that ain't even including what everyone else is doing.
Yeah, there's a thing for that in real life, too. Still not seeing the problem.
Mines can totally be used as offensive weapons. You should see some of the more amusing ways we've come up with for using claymores. You're just too stuck in your historical "stuck in the box" thinking. With an attitude like that, you wouldn't last very long in a warzone.
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Maybe spend some points in armor and wear something with good physical resist?
Alternatively - hear me out here - don't stand in a minefield, just run out when they spawn.
Ah, my mistake then. I'd forgotten about that. Thank you for correcting me.
Mines do kinetic damage, not physical. Even so, an engineer who's dedicated to eventually taking you down with mines, can, and will do everything they can to do so. Sure your sci (presuming you are running the medic kit?) can laugh em off, but most engs and tacs, and even some scis cannot do so quite as easily.
An eng isn't just gonna lay em out and expect people to run into them unless it's a defense against something like a cloaker trying to flank them; they are gonna hold somebody down, probably with Fuse Armor, and lay the mines under them, then BOOM, all while they are unable to run usually.
Ok, the problem is an ability with a 20 second cooldown and a 2 second deployment time is cable of dealing 2,200-4,000 damage every 22 seconds in a very large area of effect. Engineers are capable of having two of these fields active at any given time. Players have a maximum of 667 health and these mines cover a very large area. You can easily get an extra 140 damage/second out of these mines alone. Toss in a quantum mortar for an extra 150 damage/second. That is all before factoring in actual damage from the engineer's weapon. Mine Barrier paired with 100% uptime Quantum Mortars is the reason Engineers, the shield tank class, are dealing three times the damage of Tactical Officers. Tactical Officers are supposed to be the damage class, but they are outclassed by engineers with over double the amount of survivability options.
There is also a bug that allows engineers to stack all five mines on top of eachother to make the entire minefield look like a single mine. Next, we have buggy map terrain that will make the mines invisible to all players...except when they walk past them for massive damage. It only takes 2-4 mines from a field to kill at the moment. This was never the intended purpose for an ability that was made as a spammable attack. A team with 2-3 engineers can very easily make a map impossible to maneuver with the sheer amount of mines they can deploy on top of their mortar spam.
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Amen to that.
I get so tired of having to shrug off engi nubs preying for the mine 1 shot...
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Generally speaking, that's what was done. The effective range was increased by removing the damage drop-off. But getting hit with 5 chroniton mines at full strength is fairly non-trivial in terms of damage, and a huge increase in what the ability used to be capable of and was likely balanced around.
In real life terms, adding shrapnel does increase the range of a blast, but you still take more damage at ground zero than if you were just struck by the shrapnel alone. Chroniton Mine Barrier currently does full damage regardless of where you are within the blast radius.
Yes, bomb diffusal squads exist in real life. However, I'm pretty sure they don't just detonate the mines and take reduced damage by being slightly further away from them than others so nobody else has to. Yes, they often times purposefully detonate explosives, but they generally have specialized equipment and take time to set up, usually shielding the blast as much as possible or getting behind cover. Caitians were mitigating the mines too easily by just jumping over them.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
Xxxx does 100 (800) kinetic damage with mine barrier blablablah.
Pointing at raw damage as a reason for them being op is a bit misguided in my opinion. Like anything else it depends on the situation. Shields are down it's going to hurt more. If a player isn't wearing armor with good kinetic resistance they'll die faster etc.
The problem pve wise is more the stupidity of the enemy npcs and that they just run right to them or don't even try to avoid them.
I do think that the mine engineer is very active and not lazy as stated in this thread. Taking a smart player down with mines requires good timing and smart deployment.
I still prefer the equip tech kit myself though.
Vanilla Ground PvP information
From the pve perspective I'm not sure how much of a pressing concern it is. While it is true that the neut kit engineer is the first choice to play when you intend to solo or to carry a random pug group through an stf, its also true that its the least desireable class to have in a speed run group when the entire team is composed of experienced, well geared players.
Also I think we've kinda missed the chance to talk about this with the expectation of getting a change in the current kit pass. Hawk did his lets talk kit powers thread back in late December.
Well, sure. On the other hand, real explosives have an effective radius of more than about 2 meters. They also don't magically distinguish between friend and foe. I'd say removing that alone would resolve most of these issues.
Defusal. You don't want to diffuse bombs.
That is actually the operating principle behind the "mine roller".
I've seen that technique used in real life, too. Mines are often designed to detonate with a delay after triggering, to allow the victim unit to move over them so the mine detonates within the unit instead of only on the first person. Someone sufficiently spry and acquainted with this particular behavior can thus intentionally trip them and causing them to explode mostly harmlessly.
Clicking on something does not constitute aiming. I would be happy to have a weapon that I actually could AIM by myself, since the auto-aim is terrible and capable of missing a target that occupies the entire firing arc of the weapon.
Well, the solution is to make the enemy AI less moronic and less prone to mindlessly stepping into obvious mines. It should be simple to have enemies treat mines as "no go" areas much in the same way they avoid plasma fires. Only dumb, non-sapient entities should fall for this. Enemies intended to be sapient beings should avoid these.
As someone said earlier, mines are far from the most effective thing in PvP because players who aren't idiots quickly learn to stop stepping in them.
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Caitians may have a jump height boost, but it definitely isn't 2 meters. Why shouldn't they be taking more than insignificant damage? They weren't avoiding the mines, they were purposefully detonating the mines and getting hit. As for same-team damage, that sort of thing in general has issues in PvP play outside of STO, and with the wide variety of AoE ground abilities would lead into more problems than solutions. Cryptic already removed the friendly fire from Plasma Grenade, I think they're trying to avoid friendly fire issues.
Damn, I knew I spelled it wrong.
Going back to "specialized equipment." The Caitians were not using specialized equipment, they were purposefully detonating the mines and they were NOT outside of the range of the mine, they were just taking significantly reduced damage, nor were they using protective gear outside of standard-issue body armor and personal shield systems. They were not outside the "effective kill range" of a real-life mine, why should they take such insignificant damage from these? The main complaint is that they removed all fall-off damage, they didn't just reduce the penalty.
Chroniton Mine Barrier does not have a delayed blast timer, just a setup delay timer. The mines were detonating immediately when a Caitian got within range if the setup timer was already over. The Caitians WERE getting hit, but for far less than they should have been given their proximity to the mines.
The main problem was the entire removal of the fall-off damage. The damage went from trivial-to-moderate to fairly severe.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
This at best deletes the power, and at worst turns it into a noob trap power that does negative team dps and causes bugs.
Theres an important point that is being missed in this thread. Mines are powerful, yes. But they are not the one power to rule them all that has all other classes bowing to their awesome.
As player skill + gear progresses class performance looks vaguely like this in a team environment:
Noob
> Uber
Sci
Weak
Ok
Helpful
Strong
Powerful
Eng----Weak
Strong - Strong
Helpful
Helpful
Tac-- Hinderance - Weak - Ok
Strong
Uber
Engineer powers do not scale up well with player skill. They noticably lack buttons to be pressing in an assault situation, which all STFs tend towards because of the nature of the maps being something you progress through under timed conditions. Being overly reliant on one assault power makes their performance drop off when there are fewer opportunities to activate the power.
What is an issue is that players easily fall into the rut of never learning to use their scis and their tacs effectively because engineers get to the strong position so early in their development, and they can just carry the team to a mediocre completion that probably still gets the optional. This also combines with people actively wanting to avoid investment in ground traits so they can use the slots for space.
Spanking the engineer with a nerfbat without also addressing the other issues is unhelpful.
I enjoy working through a mission the first time, figuring things out, having to actually work for it. But when I have to do it over and over and over again to grind through end game content for not only personal reputations, but fleet projects as well. I want my "kill all and get on with it as fast as possible button". I like being able to complete the "Peer Pressure" mission without having to work at it, over, and over, and over, and over.
Sorry if this bothers you. If we ever were to randomly be in a pick up group on Defera, I'd totally be willing to work with you, and not set mines at all the borg drop points so you can go pew pew pew with other weapons and not kill things instantly.
Because hey, I like working WITH people instead of trying to take away their fun too.
This says it all. The mines are lazy and OP for pvp and pve.
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You realize your suggested change to the power would have literally no impact on how joshglass runs the Defera Invasion? The Borg down there generally don't react until the player initiates combat, giving Engineers time to deploy mines. Don't use a poorly designed combat scenario as an example about how the power is "lazy." Tactical officers and Science officers are equally guilty of taking advantage of the Borg's lack of attention.
The problem with the Defera Invasion example returns to the Engineer's lack of offensive powers. Quantum Mortar and Phaser/Disruptor Turret have semi-random targetting, you can't directly control where and when they fire, so while you're trying to prevent a Deferi Citizen's assimilation, your fabrications might be targeting the nearby Borg attacking a Deferi turret. Seeker Drone is slightly more controllable, but not by much. That leaves Chroniton Mine Barrier and Transphasic Bomb, which are significantly more reliable under the circumstances.
And why do the Engineers get all the long setup powers? Everything Science and Tactical does is near instant-use, with the Tactical grenades having a slight delivery delay but not generally impeding the player's actions and movements. Engineers have at least 5 kit powers and a class power that root them for several seconds. That trend does not need to continue.
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Vanilla Ground PvP information
This, of course, doesn't explain why putatively intelligent enemies with self-preservation desires like, say, Voth, also blindly ram into mines. It should not be hard to upgrade their AI so that they will avoid these things like players do.
Again: Still an offence Playstyle, not some uh, ill wait behind the corner and letzt my mortars do the job.
In STFs you will be dealing with assimilation, flanking, and (more or less) extensive hand-to-hand-combat, which can overwhelm one.
As for pvp I still think that, if you fell victim to mines, either you&your team did something wrong or the engineer laid a wonderful ambush.
I also agree that this bug should fixed.
Let me see if I understand you correctly. You want the engineer to sit there for 12 seconds deploying one mine per second? During those 12 seconds, the enemy would have ample time to attack the engineer from a distance or flank him. Of course, the mines would never finish deploying, because the engineer is constantly being interrupted. If I were a tac and I saw an engineer sitting there deploying mines like that, I would just lob a plasma grenade at him.
I'm not sure where this notion that mines are purely defensive comes from. I have never read a comment by a dev stating that mines are for defense only. Besides, there isn't a strict line between offense and defense. Many techniques can be used for both. Guns can be used to both attack and defend a position. It would be strange to say that they could be used for one but not the other. For as long as I remember, mines could be used both for defense and as an AoE attack. When was this time that mines could be used for defense only?
I also don't know why people keep bringing up real life. STO is not the type of game that aims to be a realistic simulation of combat. Otherwise, there would be friendly fire from all weapons---guns, grenades, and mines. NPCs that players are supposed to rescue would die from all the friendly fire. Many abilities clearly don't behave like their real-life counterparts. For example, it would be suicidal to fire a mortar or call for an orbital strike indoors.
There used to be a damage fall-off with distance, so if you were at the periphery of the damage zone, you would only take a small amount of damage. Cryptic removed the damage fall-off, so it is now possible to take full damage from all 5 mines. They should restore the damage fall-off with distance, but calculate it only in the horizontal plane to fix the jumping exploit. They should also fix the geometry bug that sometimes causes mines to be laid on top of each other.
You'd be surprised by the number of players that enjoy ground combat.
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Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)