Engineers laying mines

[KevinRanger95]

I have some engineer friends that I got turned on to SPMBT and the first thing that they said is why were there not any MICLIC's and I told them what I had seen in the posts, the other is something that I have not heard about, Why can't any nations engineers lay mines, just one or two. what they said to me was if you put one surface laid mine in the middle of the road, it will make the enemy more cautious, or take a unsuspecting way that you have made a firesack out of. How hard would it be or is it even possible? And something I can do myself but need help, can you assign a helo a FASCAM weapon to make it a way of air delivery mine field?

[PlasmaKrab]

I guess that the reasons you gave your engineers not to have engineer units laying mines on-map are the sames that I'm about to repeat:

It would distort the gameplay too much. In defending positions the possibilities to lay mines are already great enough, the FASCAM units are overwhelmingly over-effective, and apparently the code doesn't allow much choice in the amount of mines laid each time (this needs programmers' confirmation). Having many other minelaying devices would give a defender too much of an edge in a battle, for quite a small cost.
Besides there are strong risks of bugs occuring.

Of course it is doable, Listy has come up with a perfectly good Shielder (UK) minespreader vehicle, and has apparently been able to apply the same principle to helos and aircrafts. Most probably you could do the same with infantry units.

Just remind that this thing will never become official.

[KevinRanger95]

that is pretty much what I told them, and I gave them the link to this forum, I told them that this is something I have no info on and if they decided to want a more in depth answer then this is the place to ask for it!
Now the other I must do more research, for what I found was Italian and it looks pretty simple, now my other question is if I give it a range of 0 does that mean it will place the mines in the hex I am in or the hex I am facing?

[PlasmaKrab]

!!!Warning!!!

From my own experience, range=O implies game crash. Test it if you want, I may have had other issues when I tested that, but as soon as I fired a range=0 weapon, it all went fuzzy and back to desktop.

Better make that range=1, after all engineers are able to demine the next hex just as well. Make them area-fire into an adjacent hex and they will place their mines. More to the point, if you set them to fire (lay mines) into their own hex (provided you can) they have chances of 1) suppressing and pinning themselves, 2) not getting out of the hex with all their feet attached and 3) start demining their own mines.

The trick to attach a mine-spreading weapon to any unit, if you need to know, is the following: take an innocent unit, strip it off of its weapon and tweak as you like, then assign all its four weapon emplacement to the same, unoccupied slot in the weapon list.
Then leave that unit alone. Next step, go to the weapon page, copy to buffer any old FASCAM weapon, paste it to the very same empty slot you assigned to your unit and tweak as needed (range particularly). Do not try to change class. Save your OOB. Do not reverse these steps.
Important: DO NOT attempt to change the unit's data after you've created and assigned the mine weapon, otherwise you'll get stuck into this unit, the program will go on checking weapon/class incompatibility and you'll have to do it all over again.

In the first step you may want to change your unit's class to something inoccuous so as not to have the IA picking it and to separate it clearly from the rest.
This procedure should work with all kinds of units. THe trick is not to let the editor check the unit once the harm
is done.

That's a tricky workaround but broadly that's the only way to go (details may vary).

[Listy]

The way I did it.

I worked out the stats of the weapon, then classified it as a main gun, put it in it's place on the unit then changed the weapon to the correct class.
fed it into the points calculator, then went beck changed the weapon to a gun, added the correct points, then changed the weapon back to FASCAM.

Notes:
1. You will need one HE round as the Direct fire only works if you have HE rounds, don't worry this will not be used, the AP rounds will be. However when you run out of AP rounds you can still lay mines. I included the AP rounds to allow players to work out when they where meant to run out of ammo.

2. the Maximum mines you can lay per turn is 1 salvo, three weapons will provide the maximum coverage.

3. It may not cost many points, however, it won't kill many enemies, but it can throw a spanner in the enemies plans. on the whole a useful, but not overpowering weapon. Personally I don't know why it's not included, It makes people think more about realistic armies, IE: Mine clearing kit.

Oh and thanks plasmakrab...

[Mobhack]

I may need to put specific code in there to find and strip such weapons, and not just in mobhack. Only the minelet rocket and minelet artillery units will have minelet weapons.


That one has been trashed over for 5+ years. Situation is as the consensus of that time's discussions (some of which you can probably find in the yahoo groups, if they have not fallen off the queues due to age . So it will not be rehashed yet again.

No engineer minelaying, as no time to lay a realistic hidden and buried field, and only the 2 appropriate off map unit types will lay minelets. Human player would lay strings of mines in mission types where the AI does not buy engineers (only does so when assaulting, as a rule).

I may have to physically kill any units not of this type (damage the weapon or something) if folk insist on breaking the safety code built in to mobhack to any great extent. I'll monitor use OOBs for any proliferation of units which spread mines as if a farmer muck-spraying his fields !

Cheers
Andy

[KevinRanger95]

so it really won't cause any problems with the FASCAM being off map units? Thanks for the warning with the range 0 thing I tried it with a RTO or flame weapon out of the russian oob and not only did I crash the game but before it crashed I watched myself burst into flames and watched was left retreat, does that mean when i die I'll see how everything happens(lol), My main concern is say I have this weapon on a Blackhawk or some kind of heavy lift helo, can I control how many hexes that mines are laid to?
It was alot easier when I just printed out how to do it off this forum, really alot easier!!!!!!
My engineer buddies and I had this conversation today, and I totally agree that its not over powering and its very useful, of course their argue is the same as everyone else's, whos better than the rest of the combined arms group! you know ENGINEERS lead the way! And of course I had to argue why armor is the king of battle!!!
I don't know for game purposes if having little sapper men run around laying one or two mines in the middle of a road is worth it or not, but on the other side of things I still play this as a platoon level game which would fit this type of warfare perfectly! And by no means am I asking for this unit to be created, If I want it I'll find a way to make it myself.
Thanks for all of this, this is the first time I have to MOBHACK any thing and I'm finding it to be fun!!!!!!

[Listy]

MOBhack, I would erge you Not to kill any units.
Just keep the Offical OOB's free of such units.

Allow us the freedom to play with the game, and use units we create.

[Mobhack]

Right now, I will leave that exploit of the bug in. No guarantees, but future editions of the code may well have some code added to look for illegal combinations.


Andy

[KevinRanger95]

Mobhack, I don't know alot of what you said, and I seen kill in there somewhere, and farmers muck and I know none of that is good, but everything else, well, You got me!
I think what you are saying is don't play these against or provide these to anyone else!
I also agree with the whole assualt thing, for AI purposes, But some countries don't bury mines anymore, they surface lay them with the intent to direct or manuver a enemy force in a certain direction. It takes less than 3 min to employ a M-21 tilt rod mine or 30sec for a ground or air FASCAM minefield, now don't get me wrong I understand what you are saying, and this is strickly conversational not a plea for a piece of equipment, but many engagements have went one way or another due to a Airborne Engineers hasty laid minefield of 3 mines across the road to buy some time for what ever reason, and that is what I am trying to create!