CleverRaven
Make buried landmines impossible to spot
Summary
None
Purpose of change
Humans do not have ground-penetrating vision. There is no reasonable indication of where mines have been emplaced.
Describe the solution
Make landmines impossible to spot
Also make it take 6 minutes to bury an active landmine instead of.... 3 seconds. Roughly reasoned out by this table in mine/countermine operations. Since you are an amateur, and you're doing two people's jobs it takes slightly longer than twice the time for a 2-man team.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Letting players dig up the minefield at random looking for mines until they blow themselves up --> pointless, stupid
Testing
Additional context
There is no reasonable indication of where mines have been emplaced.
This is not the case, to bury a mine you have to dig soil up and then replace it, and it can't be that deep and still function. This can result in the soil above the mine either being higher or lower than the soil around it. The presence of the mine just under the surface can also do things like either impeding or enhancing the growth of vegetation directly above it.
Also, "traditional" buried mines make up a relatively small amount of the US inventory, from what I can tell most US mines are "scatterable" and rely on simply being small and difficult to spot rather than being buried.
This is not the case, to bury a mine you have to dig soil up and then replace it, and it can't be that deep and still function. This can result in the soil above the mine either being higher or lower than the soil around it. The presence of the mine just under the surface can also do things like either impeding or enhancing the growth of vegetation directly above it.
Spotted strange dirt mound to the east!
Hear me out.
- We are fighting with the zombies not humans so many people just gonna place the mine and leave it like that. Unless they are bandits, they dont wanna kill a possible trader or a possible recruit.
- Its gonna annoy new players and experienced players if they get inside of a building thats just added and have mines in it. imagine losing your 1 week char because of this pr.
Hear me out.
- We are fighting with the zombies not humans so many people just gonna place the mine and leave it like that. Unless they are bandits, they dont wanna kill a possible trader or a possible recruit.
- Its gonna annoy new players and experienced players if they get inside of a building thats just added and have mines in it. imagine losing your 1 week char because of this pr.
Bridges that have been mined were clearly not intended to deal with the undead.
There are no mines outside of clearly marked areas. (This is also obvious, nobody with a brain would walk into these. People are not at any serious risk in these circumstances.)
This is not the case, to bury a mine you have to dig soil up and then replace it, and it can't be that deep and still function. This can result in the soil above the mine either being higher or lower than the soil around it. The presence of the mine just under the surface can also do things like either impeding or enhancing the growth of vegetation directly above it.
As far as the mine/countermine manual goes, you can know you're in a minefield, sometimes, by the presence of disturbed ground. But you cannot detect individual mines - that must be done through probing. Even for electronic detection, it warns: "Detection of mines by visual or electronic means should be confirmed by probing. [...] Electronic detection is effective for locating mines, but this method is time-consuming and exposes personnel to enemy fire. In addition, the suspected mines must be confirmed by probing."
If they cannot be reasonably spotted after their physical location is known, I don't see how an ingame character doing visual scanning alone could possibly identify mines.
Also, "traditional" buried mines make up a relatively small amount of the US inventory, from what I can tell most US mines are "scatterable" and rely on simply being small and difficult to spot rather than being buried.
Before opening this PR I was very certain we had a note saying that our landmines were a specific model but I'm unable to find it on review. 🤷
Hear me out.
- We are fighting with the zombies not humans so many people just gonna place the mine and leave it like that. Unless they are bandits, they dont wanna kill a possible trader or a possible recruit.
- Its gonna annoy new players and experienced players if they get inside of a building thats just added and have mines in it. imagine losing your 1 week char because of this pr.
Bridges that have been mined were clearly not intended to deal with the undead.
There are no mines outside of clearly marked areas. (This is also obvious, nobody with a brain would walk into these. People are not at any serious risk in these circumstances.)
maybe... or maybe not. Look at this way tho. there are dumbass zombies coming your way. if they cross the bridge they gonna infect the city so you and your soldiers need to protect the bridge. if i was the leader, psshh i would just put the mines down fast and quick than set up a 50.cal machine gun or something and pew pew pew!!
There's a huge difference between "it's not safe to use visual inspection to detect mines", which is true, and "they're literally impossible to detect visually", which is what the proposed change would do.
On balance I'm starting to be inclined to just remove all the mines instead of trying to shuffle things around to make them work.
To the extent that these represent traditional buried landmines, those are not actually a thing in the US arsenal outside of some bizzare exception they make for the North/South Korean border. It's not at all clear that even if someone with the appropriate clout to override the current moratorium on landmine use decided to start placing mines, that they would be able to acquire them, especially at scale.
The mine-like things in the US arsenal that would be available for use would be "scatterable" mines that self-detonate on a timer and therefore would also not be present by the time the game starts.