I hate clickbait titles.
Mines themselves are both rare and situational.
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The average player usually can’t afford to outfit everyone with mines. Giving them to, say, 25 soldiers, that’s already 75 bronze orders, excluding other equipment. Given how the game’s “equipment progression” works most orders will usually be used for more practical equipment. If they only equip 1 squad with them, they aren’t always on the field.
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Mines need time to set up. You need to manually place each mine. For a 9-man squad, with practice, you can mine up the entire point’s entrances and chokepoints within 30 seconds, if using AP mines. With AT mines, you need to position your mines where enemy vehicle traffic is expected. This usually means you’ll be exposed in the open and routes where the enemy is likely to advance from. This complicates minelaying, and for urban maps, means you’ll need to walk through several venues or use multiple mines to cover a road. AT mines take a far longer time to set up.
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Mines can be blown up prematurely by bombs, artillery and any other explosive. All the hard work minelaying can be simply blown away in an instant. This isn’t too much of an issue with AP mines, as they are usually placed indoors.
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Vehicle routes are not fixed. They’re completely unpredictable. For larger maps, this is a no brainer, and in most cases, there’s no one stopping a vehicle from taking the long route to avoid mines completely.
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More mines cannot be laid until the previous ones blow up, or are no longer in the player’s playable area.
Now, I personally don’t have an issue with AP mines. AP mines can avoid most of the drawbacks mentioned above, though they are a bit expensive, I believe they’re worth the price considering how hazardous it makes for an enemy team to hunt a friendly rally point.
To summarize:
You have an expensive non-cost efficient weapon that can “maybe” blow up a tank, if artillery or bombs don’t get to it first.
You’re honestly better off using a TNT pack, or any handheld AT given how unreliable and expensive it is.
My proposals- Either alone or a combination of them:
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Make AT mines indestructible to bombs and artillery. Make them only detonate when directly shot at by small arms, so enemy teams can still “disarm” them. This is by far the simplest way to make them marginally more useful, without affecting balance too much.
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Make AT mines cheaper. 3 bronze orders on an unreliable weapon is not worth it.
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Make multiple copies available for a single purchase. This allows someone to deny an area.