EMP mines. Tech that is never used?

theTroy · Post by **theTroy** » Mon May 12, 2008 8:46 am

EMP mines are not used. Well, they are, only if the team is filthy reach and can afford anything they like.

I had a thought about it, and in the end, its not that useless after all, no really. If you compare :

Prox Diameter : 200m
EMP mine Diameter : 500m,
which means that bbr will notice the mine, will try to dodge it (he is used to dodging mines, even if they are EMPs), hence will have to dodge a 500m mine, instead of 200m, making it even slower and giving you more time to hunter the nans.

Prox capacity : 1
EMP mines capacity : 3
Easier to spam, and much more effective. It will not kill the scouts, but it will strip their shields off, making it 1-hit kill, instead of 2 hits.

EMP mines can be worthless in a dogfight, but on a bomber defense they are as effective as prox mines if you are playing against a vet team and chose TAC techpath. You cant research proxmines in TAC, scouts can still use their proxes when you are TAC, but having to kill shieldless scouts, when you spammed emps with you sf, is much easier than having to spend 2 hunter3 instead of 1.

On the other note, is it just me, or on dn6 emp2 does some hull damage as well?

So the question is, why is it not used? It gives you advantage, you can easily camp aleph with proxes, but there are a lot of times when you are forced to drop prox infront of a running bomber and not on an aleph..

MashMellows · Post by **MashMellows** » Mon May 12, 2008 8:57 am

EMP Mines cost $$$ - prox is free. Usually - that's why its not used.

Cost wise - Hunter3 is more useful cause you can use it to kill miners faster/defend better (i.e. its multi purpose).

EMP Mines are defensive and don't work on Ints. It also is kinda painful to prox as EMP scout cause anything will kill ya.

theTroy · Post by **theTroy** » Mon May 12, 2008 9:04 am

You dont need to use EMPs on a scout. You use them on sfs. And yes it is defensive, but it is quite useful in what it does, I saw comms having $ who just dont bother buying it, even if they havy funds both for emp mines and hunters and are being constantly bombed.

And they can also be effectively used to strip the shields off the miners/cons, as the prox is used now. (again, scouts do not need emps, only sfs need them, and they do not loose anything by having them)

sgt_baker · Post by **sgt_baker** » Mon May 12, 2008 9:49 am

Aren't EMP mines more effectively employed as an anti-cap weapon?

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Mon May 12, 2008 11:10 am

i've used emp mines on a galv run. worked pretty well softening em up to finish with hunter 3.

CronoDroid · Post by **CronoDroid** » Mon May 12, 2008 11:39 am

Yeah, commanders buy EMP mines if the enemy gets caps, and Nix and that's about it. Prox is a billion times more effective than EMP mines during bomber defence, the diametre doesn't matter much if the prox is on the aleph. Usually when you have to drop mines in front of a bomber, their shields will be down anyway because people hit the bomber with guns and crossfire. It's also entirely possible to see what sort of mines get dropped while you fly bombers, if the mines are EMP and the bomber isn't a Nix one, it'd plow right through and and get nanned if it's shot. Half of prox is slowing down the bomber, after all.

theTroy · Post by **theTroy** » Mon May 12, 2008 11:48 am

its not the bomber that matters, but its nans. As I said above. It takes 1 hit to kill a shieldless nan. It takes 2 hits to kill a shielded nan.

Aleph proxes are not always applicable. There are always scouts with half/full shields around. If bomber plows through emp mine, (I can bet bbrs rarely try to watch what sort of mine is infront) he will definitely get all of his nans through it, making sure that they do not have shields...

I am in no doubt that prox is better than EMP mine, its just the thing that EMP mine is not all that worthless.

Dorjan · Post by **Dorjan** » Mon May 12, 2008 12:15 pm

how much are they?

If they are only 2.5k then for a tac team it wouldn't be all bad, as the SF don't fill that slot anyway and it's free to equipt, it can only help even only a little.

And a non-expert bomber maybe fooled...

B4life · Post by **B4life** » Mon May 12, 2008 1:13 pm

I saw EMPs used against belters the other day. Scared the @#(! out of me (belter). =.=

WhiskeyGhost · Post by **WhiskeyGhost** » Mon May 12, 2008 3:16 pm

EMP mines don't get used for all the stated reasons, there just isn't a priority to use them most of the time when other things could be of more use. If they worked a little like EoR ones (and stopped missiles) then they might be of some worth (another note: EoR's EMP mines are actually drones and not minefields at all, they just look like minefields).

Oh, and EMP mines are 5k base cost