Charged and Burst mines

[Daft Loon]

Often overlooked for lack of an effect on range but they have some powerful effects to them.

Charged mines: Raw power, Direct hits
With +30% damage they have a serious impact on anyone who hits them and without the AoE loss that lochnagar has i suspect they do more damage to the engines and guns on the far side of the ship.
I use a mine launcher on the top right side of my spire to punish anyone who tries a linear rush, I've had even some fairly experienced opponents fly directly into a mine, lose most/all of their remaining armor and die to the hwacha/heavy flak. I bring charged rounds and fire it myself so it works even if both engineers are tanking.
Playing around with this - http://ducksoficarus.servegame.com - wonderful toy revealed that direct charged mine hits break armor faster than greased Gatling in some cases, albeit with shorter range.

Burst mines: Minefields, fun and/or !!Fun!!
50% extra blast radius, taking it up to 90m which is i think more than the width of a mobula.
This considerably increases the chance that 1 mine will trigger another and the chance that a ship will be within the area affected.
I haven't used these as much but i remember an occasion where a single mine hit 2 enemy ships, an allied ship and my own.

I'm thinking one of these could be swapped for lochnagar or incendiary in the standard mine loadout, is it worth it?

[Hilary Briss]

Burst is a favorite of mine.

[Carn]

Never used burst in a mine yet, love charged mines though.

[Koali]

Burst is a favorite of mine.

Oh, Rowho, you so punny!

[Kamoba]

The other day I had Renaulde shooting a launcher, we took burst lesmok loch.
It was a good day.

May try a charged burst loch loadout with someone to see how effective it can be.

[Daft Loon]

I think charged direct hits + ramming could be a substitute for loch on forward facing mines.
by range:
Lesmok -> Charged -> Incendiary -> Direct Charged

[Squidslinger Gilder]

I think charged direct hits + ramming could be a substitute for loch on forward facing mines.
by range:
Lesmok -> Charged -> Incendiary -> Direct Charged

Charged is. I never use Loch ever. The trade off for a mine launcher going down is too risky. After the shits n giggles are over you go...oh, right, rebuild and hope to heck you get it back up before the foe kills you.

[Extirminator]

I never use Loch ever. The trade off for a mine launcher going down is too risky. After the shits n giggles are over you go...oh, right, rebuild and hope to heck you get it back up before the foe kills you.

Loch is vital, you use it for emergencies and not for "shits and giggles". you might lose your gun for a few seconds but that mine is doing 405 damage to balloon, 180 damage to armor and 337 damage to hull - as well as some 135 to components if you managed to hit close to them.

Of course if your pilot can bring you outside of that loch arming range of ~66m to a better range for other ammo types it's a bit more advisable, but there are scenarios in which you have to use it if your engines are out and the enemy is right in your face so you can't provide better range like when fighting a hwacha fish for example - it's not even that unusual for an enemy to bring hwacha fish if you bring a munker.
Your mine might not be as effective in the long run because of the rebuild time, but if you have an experienced gunner you can almost guarantee a hit every time with loch, making it extremely viable at escaping those situations because the discombobulation from that one mine that wouldn't have hit otherwise if you haven't used loch bought you time to rebuild some engines and back away for more mines to get a chance to be at effective range again.
Also, with the high damage values of the loch, considering the target is already damaged from previous mines - components like light guns, balloon and armor are a lot more likely to go down from that extreme damage burst further crippling the enemy ship.
That is my take on lochnagar for a gunner on the mine launcher.


What ammos do I usually bring for mine lancher and why:

If we are talking about an engineer, I am sure a lot will agree that neither are good for him, you wanna go for more range variety - usually lesmok and less often ammo types that decrease the arming range depends on the pilot's flying style and/or the enemy ship's type and loadout/flying style.


As for gunner, I am an avid user of lochnagar as I already mentioned, and lesmok is a must. Which leaves us with only a third ammo type to choose from. I personally like more range difference than just the ~66m/~165m/~280m(that loch/normal/lesmok provide) so I choose my third ammo type to be a range changing one other than burst/charged. I think they are both inferior to more range choices for I can lay down fire at the enemy all the time and not be dependent on range as much, I feel like constant damage and turning of the enemy ship is a much more effective way of approaching the mine launcher rather than getting a higher damage per shot.

A conclusion which leads me to my third ammo type to be heatsink rather than incendiary, yes, an unorthodox pick. However, with the difference of only ~15.5m from the incendiary mine in arming time and a detonation radius of 20m for the mine, you are theoretically able to hit every single target with both inc and heatsink at the same range, you just have to have better placement. I like the added utility of heatsink for the awesome rotation speed boost from a mere 30 deg/s to 45 deg/s(horizontal) and 20 deg/s to 30 deg/s(vertical) and the added benefit of extinguishing your own weapon which we all know never gets a visit from an engineer unless overheated on the bottom of a junker or until fighting is over. The only downside is 17% less damage, which are in my opinion negligible in the light of the added functionality for the mine launcher(especially when you realize that the loss of damage is 30 for balloon, 13 for armor, 10 for guns and engines and 25 for hull. The added functionality outweighs the damage reduction by so much it's ridiculous not to use it.).
As for people who might argue that incendiary has a better chance of starting fires, the fire rate increase of the mine launcher with incendiary is a mere 0.2 fires per shot increase and a measly 0.05 fires per second increase, so yeah...

That is why I use Lesmok/Heatsink/Loch, heatsink is just a better pick functionality wise than incendiary, and if they get close enough I can always use lochnagar.

Now as for the original question of burst or charged for the mine launcher -
If I couldn't take my usual 3 ammo setup and will be forced to pick one of the two, I would pick charged - and this is why:

Contrary to popular belief, more damage does not equal more thrust induced by the mines(nor on minotaur for that matter), nor does more aoe radius equal more thrust. Both ammo types have purely the same "knockback".
The argument goes down to the damage done by them.
Now, with a detonation radius of 20m, considering the mine haven't been placed inside that radius already, the aoe radius of a mine is 60m which means you will start losing aoe damage from this mechanic right here, after about 10m of ship penetration:

Which means you will do full damage for the first 10m of ship you hit and farther away, up till a point of 60m away from the mine, or 40m of "ship" you will hit 20% of the base damage - since it decreases linearly over distance after the 50% of the radius mark.
Which means with normal mines, you are able to deal unmodified, full damage to usually armor and balloon since they both are within 30m of the mine(exception could be galleon), and decreasing damage linearly away from the hit location to all guns and engines since they are more likely to be farther away from the hit location.

In that case, burst gives you the SAME damage for balloon and armor(exception could be galleon) however, it gives you a possibility of more damage to guns and engines by increasing the radius of the blast, BUT, due to the low damage multiplier of 0.6 in comparison to other component's damage multipliers, you do not actually gain a lot of bang for your bucks.
On the other hand, you have charged that will do +30% more damage to balloon and armor, which are the bulk of the damage done by mines because of high multipliers and will still damage guns and engines within the radius with more damage(not as much as burst but still an increase.)

The choice of charged over burst is because -
Burst allows you to damage guns and components more than charged with charged allowing for greater armor, hull and balloon damage(and a slight increase of damage to guns and engines) - But there is no choice between the two according to playstyle, the damage multipliers of impact damage on components simply dictate that you are guaranteed to get a lot more benefit from charged than burst.
Hence why my answer every time someone asked me this question was charged, and still is charged.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Well if you are running with just a single mine launcher then Loch may have a benefit because 1 launcher has a much harder job of stopping a foe than two. I tend to always run with a twin setup and I shoot for 2-4 mines out at once before impact is scored. So ideally the foe is always running into two or if only one, they'll be bounced into the 2nd. Cripples the vessel and before they can move I'll have a cage of mines around. Then its just a matter of detonating and getting the instagib kill. A ship should never get in close enough for loch to be needed with 2+ miners. If it does then either I'm disconnected or my miner has no idea what they are doing.

Yeah heatsink is a viable option in someways. The range isn't the same tho. Incendiary is still a little shorter. Plus you also have the fire ignition being greater. I've hit plenty of incendiary mines and they can be pretty nasty. Guess it just comes down to captain's or gunner's choice and build. If fire is going to be a big worry from the foes then yeah.

[Daft Loon]

For reference as far as ranges go: After testing by ramming into mines the turning engines on a junker took damage unreliably. Based on the mine radius of 60m and a 20m trigger radius that makes the junker 40m long from the forward most part that can trigger mines to the turning engines.

From testing lochnagar i would suggest not trying to use it if they are more likely to trigger it at 20m than have it land within that. The results were variable:
-Rising into the mine with a junker did only balloon damage
-Flying into it with it visible just below the balloon did balloon damage, destroyed the front gun and did armor damage slightly less than charged
-Descending onto it did about 3/4 armor damage, 3/4 damage to the 4 rear guns and broke the front one (forgot if it hit the balloon)

If you substitute for direct charged hits you get:
-About the same armor damage as the best case (with an extra direct hit instead of a gun rebuild)
-No 'kick'
-No unreliable medium-high balloon damage
-No very unreliable but possibly crippling component damage
- +30% damage at standard range

Some ship geometries are long enough that standard mines miss some components entirely when detonating at 20m and more than a few are reduced to the 20-40% damage range so burst might be advantageous in that respect. The wiki only has balloon health for the mine, does anyone know the damage needed to break a mines "hull" and trigger it, so we can figure out the chain reaction range for burst/normal mines and convert it to easily visualized junker lengths.

As far as incendiary it does seem to have the weaker effect of only applying its own 20% 1 fire stack chance rather than adding 20% to the 25% 5 stack chance, however it hits most of the ships parts so gets more like 1.6 fires per hit (if it hits hull,balloon,3 engines,3 guns), meaning in effect 1 or 2 extra components on fire at about half the damage rate (fire stacks not being linear 1 stack does 10 while 5 does 18). Still pretty weak but not entirely useless.

Noticing a discrepancy between what I'd written above and the theoretical value i went back and tested and got a charged mine to do 50% armor damage to a junker and a loch to do 80%, 350 and 560 damage respectively. No fires were involved in that damage (ai's were off so can't have done a sneaky extinguish). Calculating both damages a charged mine does 347.75 total so is it possible the direct damage is applied to either all components or just the one that triggers it?

[Extirminator]

Well if you are running with just a single mine launcher then Loch may have a benefit because 1 launcher has a much harder job of stopping a foe than two. I tend to always run with a twin setup and I shoot for 2-4 mines out at once before impact is scored. So ideally the foe is always running into two or if only one, they'll be bounced into the 2nd. Cripples the vessel and before they can move I'll have a cage of mines around. Then its just a matter of detonating and getting the instagib kill. A ship should never get in close enough for loch to be needed with 2+ miners. If it does then either I'm disconnected or my miner has no idea what they are doing.

The scenario you described is a perfect scenario, there is always room for compensating for instances that could occur. No one is perfect and you are bound to get in a situation like I described sooner or later. Not in all maps you can see them coming from a mile ahead, you could be just turning a corner and they are right there at your face. If you are prepared for every case your chances of failing drop drastically. When you design a good build you need to have both long range combat and close range combat, maybe even disable potential to be ready for every scenario - same with mines don't just dismiss the possibility someone will fuck up or the enemy outsmarted you and don't bring lochnagar because of it.


Also, you clearly haven't read the entirety of the post:

The range isn't the same tho. Incendiary is still a little shorter.

A conclusion which leads me to my third ammo type to be heatsink rather than incendiary, yes, an unorthodox pick. However, with the difference of only ~15.5m from the incendiary mine in arming time and a detonation radius of 20m for the mine, you are theoretically able to hit every single target with both inc and heatsink at the same range, you just have to have better placement.

Plus you also have the fire ignition being greater. I've hit plenty of incendiary mines and they can be pretty nasty.

As for people who might argue that incendiary has a better chance of starting fires, the fire rate increase of the mine launcher with incendiary is a mere 0.2 fires per shot increase and a measly 0.05 fires per second increase, so yeah...

Yeah what you get is on average 1 stack of fire for every 20 seconds of continuous usage, which means 5 mines hitting directly one after the other. You'll get 1 extra stack of fire in that time on mostly chem sprayed ships not to mention that if you hit that many mines within that time-span most of the components are already dead from the damage and the fires will not do anything.

From testing lochnagar i would suggest not trying to use it if they are more likely to trigger it at 20m than have it land within that. The results were variable:
-Rising into the mine with a junker did only balloon damage
-Flying into it with it visible just below the balloon did balloon damage, destroyed the front gun and did armor damage slightly less than charged
-Descending onto it did about 3/4 armor damage, 3/4 damage to the 4 rear guns and broke the front one (forgot if it hit the balloon)

If you substitute for direct charged hits you get:
-About the same armor damage as the best case (with an extra direct hit instead of a gun rebuild)
-No 'kick'
-No unreliable medium-high balloon damage
-No very unreliable but possibly crippling component damage
- +30% damage at standard range

That is because you lose 50% aoe radius using lochnagar, you only damage components that are the closest to the impact point. That is why I said that you could be hitting components if close to the point of impact.
There is not even a valid point in comparing and contrasting loch and charged due to their different arming ranges - charged will simply not be useful within ~165m of range while lochnagar will still be useful and be able to "buy you time" as I stated before. Another point you forgot to mention though is that you are unable to do anything with charged when the armor is down to damage the hull while with loch you are practically able to get them down to 50% of their health.

As to burst being effective in the sense of damaging more components, I still count that as less effective than charged doing more damage to armor, balloon and hull which helps you more with your higher multipliers of 0.8,1.8 and 1.5 respectively in comparison to the 0.6 of guns and engines multiplier.

Also, yeah, when I was saying 0.2 fires per shot I meant on each component separately but that is really not a lot and not something that should be taken into account when picking ammo types because its quite negligible. and the formula for fire damage damage for amount of stacks is in fact linear, only that a base damage is added to it:
fire_damage_per_sec = 8 + (2*fire_stacks_number)
So the first stack is more substantial than the others, because without it, there wouldn't be the added base damage.
But considering that the chance for 5 stacks to add to a hit component is 25% and the inc ignition to add 1 stack is 20% a component is more likely to get ignited by the 5 stacks before the incendiary stacks, making the addition to fire damage more likely to be the one of 2 fire damage per second rather than 10.

As for junker size, the exact length from the center of the light engines hitbox to the center of hitbox of the front gun on the Z axis is 36.189m so that could give you an approximation of the junker's size.

Also I did your same tests and looks like when the mine explodes it applies both direct and aoe damage at the same time, I always thought that it will only do the secondary damage because it never directly hits - I wonder if that is intended?
If that is the case you are actually able to get 0.4 stacks per shot from incendiary mines and about 0.1 stacks per second which is still pretty bad though. Although I have ran into enough mines for it to statistically happen way over 10 times already and still haven't gotten 2 or 7 stacks from one mine - so the ignition doesn't seem right.

[Crafeksterty]

With  my heavy flak spire, Loch mine usualy tends to take out all armor giving way for loch heavy flak.

So like, you use default mines for the usual and dont expect to use loch. But loch is there for the super close encounters where they managed to get passed a mine. That loch mine will open up most ships (Just not galleon)

[Extirminator]

With  my heavy flak spire, Loch mine usualy tends to take out all armor giving way for loch heavy flak.

So like, you use default mines for the usual and dont expect to use loch. But loch is there for the super close encounters where they managed to get passed a mine. That loch mine will open up most ships (Just not galleon)

Actually, it will destroy the armor of only squid, spire, goldfish and mobula with one shot(non-buffed armor).
Pyramidion, junker and galleon armor will not die, because it will do 601 damage and all of those ships have more armor than that. Unless you buffed your loch mine and then only galleon armor can survive it.

[BlackenedPies]

I heard that buffed mines only deal damage if they are buffed during the point of impact, not when they are fired. Sounds odd but is it true? Why do loch mines seem to cause less push?
So incendiary only adds single fire stacks not the 5 stacks.

In some situations loch is unnecessary but often it's vital. I use incendiary on squid and for the spire pilot mine, and I take the time to preload right side mobula mine with incendiary while the gunner already has heatsink (charged heatsink loch for merc/flak/mine). I'll switch to heatsink if you say so. I always brought heatsink on mine pyra, and originally brought charged but luckily Renaulde convinced me to loch. Back when pyra was great we played 100 matches straight in a moonshine tar triple mine pyra.

[Queso]

I heard that buffed mines only deal damage if they are buffed during the point of impact, not when they are fired. Sounds odd but is it true?

This should NOT be true. If any data seems to contradict this assumption then I can investigate, but a quick look through doesn't suggest any behavior of this sort.