ABJECT_SELF

I went by Renthyr back in the old Renegade. Was extremely active in the classic game up until they made all the servers use infinite ammo. Never got too involved with the social scene around the game though. Wouldn't mind joining a clan this time around.

25 y/o male Top 500 on Leaderboard Expert at base infiltration and defense Likes long walks along the beach Steam name: Pegleg

Proximity mines. They do the least damage of any bomb and are only carried by one character per team, yet they are arguably the most important weapon in the entire game. They're your last, best deterrent against a group of squirmy engineers sneaking into your refinery and smothering that MCT in C4. So wouldn't it be great if you could cover every square inch of your base in SBH-killing prox mines? Well, you can't. Planting proximity mines effectively requires a great deal of planning, strategy and situational awareness, and if you don't know what you're doing you could actually create a dire weak point in your team's defenses. Simply put, if you don't know how to mine, don't do it. But if you want to know how to mine, this guide will help turn you from a dope into a defender. Mining 101: How Not to Screw Your Team Over with Prox Mines. Watch the Minelimit! This is the single most important aspect of prox mining. You have a limited "budget", or number of mines you can plant per map. The exact number varies by server, but most servers default to a maximum of 30 mines. Once this minelimit is reached, every additional mine planted completely erases the oldest mine. This is the most common mistake I see new players and even veterans make, and sadly the most fatal, since planting too many mines can completely undo your earlier work or the work of your teammates. Before you think of placing proximity mines, look at the minelimit tally at the bottom of your screen. If the minelimit is at maximum, don't even bother. If the minelimit is not at maximum, but is ticking upwards, then someone else is already mining and you should let them do their task. Make sure only one person in your base is mining at a time, as this reduces the risk of overmining. If you spot a teammate overmining, politely remind him to stop and search for any mines missing from your buildings. Depending on how stretched you are for mines, you may need to remine the base entirely. Unfortunately, with the way mines work now, replacing mines in one door can erase mines in another. (BTW devs it would be great if we could disarm team mines for this purpose so that we would only have to disarm poorly placed mines instead of completely redoing the whole place) Mine to protect your buildings, not your whole base! Let's make one thing perfectly clear: You cannot keep the enemy out of your base entirely with prox mines. There is no way to effectively stop SBHs from sneaking into your base or engie-loaded APCs from driving through your front door, so do not plant a line of 20 mines in front of your base's gate or around your tunnels. I've actually had some players heatedly defend mining tunnels and base entrances, so here's the issues with that tactic. For one, the areas just outside your base or within your tunnels are magnitudes safer for enemies to hang out than anywhere within your base, which means an enemy engineer can gleefully disarm each and every mine, getting a boatload of points while silently punching a massive hole in your defenses. Secondly, there is always another way into the base. Did you mine up the underground tunnel in Walls. An SBH can walk right through the front gate and nuke your WF. Did you make a fine line of mines covering the front of your base in Whiteout? Shame that won't stop those chinooks and APCs from pouring in. About 80% of the time I've been able to infiltrate and destroy a building solo, it's because somebody on the opposing team planted a bunch of mines in the back entrance or tunnels but left the buildings dry. As a Hotwire or Technician, I can disarm a few mines well out of view of the enemy team and walk right into the Hand of Nod without setting off a single explosion. Three or Four per Door! Mining effectively means mining your buildings! Your back entrances, ramps, and front entrances of each building take priority, in that order. You'll want to plant 3-4 mines per building entrance, minelimit permitting, and focus on entrances that are out of your team's direct line of sight in base. This means that in a map like Walls, it's better to plant mines in the rear-facing doors of your Power Plant than the front door of your Weapons Factory. There are some maps where it's worth leaving certain building entrances completely exposed so long as you can mine your weaker spots. I wouldn't waste mines on a building entrance that's covered by the AGT when I've got stealth units sneaking around the ref. Watch for Mines Going Off or Being Disarmed This is another reason why watching the mine limit is so important. If the mine count at the bottom of the screen starts to tick down, there are only two possible explanations: Some bozo from the other team tripped over your mines, or some techie is in your base disarming them. Either case, when you notice your mine count dropping and/or hear explosions, check your base pronto! Look for the missing mines and replace them right away, and check the building for any engies or stealth units hiding inside. A common trick for infiltrators is to bring along a soldier who can throw himself into a group of mines while the real demolition men walk over the scorch marks. In this way, mines are the closest you have to a base alarm. If a mine gets set off in your base, go on alert until you know the threat has been nullified. DO NOT use prox mines as offensive weapons! A lot of times when I go head to head with an enemy Technician, he'll forget whipping out a pistol or remote mines and toss prox mines at me while trying to run away. In some cases, this is a good way to make a getaway, but most of the time it's just dumb. Any mines this guy threw that don't hit me can immediately be disarmed for points. Plus, if his team is at minelimit, this techie just erased three or four mines somewhere in his base. Even on maps where you don't need to use all your mines (like Field), it's generally a bad idea to throw mines in enemy territory. Sure you might snag a kill on a reckless Havoc here and there, but more often then not your just feeding points to the enemy team. I remember one match where an enemy Hotwire spent the entire game trying to keep my team's rear tunnel entrance mined in an attempt to box us in. I just sat there on the other end of the door, disarming each mine and netting hundreds of points for my team without firing a shot.

Ah, those are the best games. I don't even feel bad losing those kind of matches because the whole game was such a clenched match of wits. I'm not sure nuclear war and running a marathon is a fair comparison. Let's think of this in terms of actual warfare then. Let's say Country A launches a surprise attack on Country B. A number of B's critical facilities, like a refinery and a power plant, are destroyed and much of their resources are cut off. Now Country A has the upper hand and Country B is in a dire situation. But B reorganizes, digs in and uses guerrilla tactics. A launches wave after wave of overwhelming force, but they suffer heavy losses because B anticipates their moves and counters with advanced tactics using disposable weapons. Over time, B doesn't inflict any major damage on A's territory, but A's forces are getting weary and losing morale. After a long war, A loses the will to fight even though they still have more weapons and funds. Country A fought a better war at the start, but they got overconfident, lost their footing and made no real gains against B despite mounting losses. The end result is that Country B was more effective than Country A. This has actually happened a few times in world history. You can win the early battles but still lose the war if you can't keep your momentum up. Yeah, the only reason I'm coming back to this thread is for fear that a dev actually takes this as a referendum on whether points should be removed from RenX. Sounds silly, but then again this kind of thing led to them putting infinite ammo in the original Renegade (shudder).

This isn't soccer. A tie should only happen if both teams survive the game and happen to have the exact same points.

Another issues is the fact that the crates are so huge and placed in such central areas that avoiding them is a significant challenge at times. Like the crate that spawns by the waterfall in Field. That's smack-dab in the middle of a lot of infantry traffic, and I've actually fallen off the cliff a few times trying to avoid running into the crate. Crates really should be more off to the side or in areas where you need a sharp eye to catch them.

I couldn't disagree more. The other team won that game because they got smart, dug in and played defensively. Meanwhile your team got overconfident, probably used a lot of high-cost units and beacons, and bashed their heads against the enemy defenses. The enemy probably only used basic infantry or did all they could to preserve their existing assets, so they're not giving away mere handfuls of points per attack, while you're giving them hundreds per failed tank rush or disarmed beacon. It may be frustrating, but the enemy team did earn that point victory with smart tactics and resource management. Taking away point victories would make any David vs Goliath scenario hopeless, since the team with the most resources mid-game would almost always win.

Pegleg I think I just had a game with you the other night on Walls.

That's probably to counter "point-whoring", where one team could sit right outside an enemy base and pepper the same building with repeated arty or missile fire for points alone. It didn't accomplish anything physically, but after ten minutes it would widen the point gap so that the opposing team could get the upper hand and still lose miserably by points. The way it is now, I've seen teams come back from a 20-minute siege and still manage a point lead, so it feels more balanced.

It allows arties to deliver their payload while staying out of direct fire AND means I don't have to worry about an arty headshotting my Sydney from half a mile away. Seems win/win.

Well, assuming airstrikes in Renegade X are meant to work like airstrikes in the original Command & Conquer, they were extremely vulnerable to SAM strikes, so much so that you couldn't even attempt to bomb an enemy base until all SAMs were taken out. So maybe airstrikes could be adjusted so that if you try and call one into an enemy base, they get intercepted by SAMs.