Mines wiping squads from full

Really feel like this has to be addressed. Mines are 35 munitions, and provide insane value because:

1) Can cripple a vehicle, making it very easy to knock out. This is fine because there is a degree of counter play. You can try to save the vehicle, and the opponent has to do something additional to take it out, by using AT weapons. Vehicles are also easier to cover with minesweepers, because you will normally only have one light vehicle (those that are instagibbed by mines), so you can just send your engineer squad with your armoured car. Infantry on the other hand is much more difficult to cover because you have more than just one squad.

2) Can take a squad out of a fight, or prevent it from capping a point. This helps you to either win an engagement, or retain more map control.

Both of these features are fine. If this is all that mines would do, they would already be incredible valuable.

Problem is, mines often do a lot more than this. They have the potential to regularly wipe squads. That is not ok. A lot of the time this can be attributed to terrible unit spacing, which is more of an issue generally, and also needs to be looked at.

The point is, you should not be able to take out a high vet squad with a single 30 munition ability. That's insane cost for benefit, being able to wipe a (potentially) vet 5 440 or 400 MP 60 muni unit. It also affects wehrmacht hugely, grenadiers and pzgrens being very much affected. The same thing applies for early game infantry sections (and rarely US rifle squads). Such a loss can be game losing, quite often the player is not at fault and is merely unlucky.

So, you can do incredible damage for very small investment. Your own mines will also not have the same effect on your opponent, because allied squads are not affected by it to the same extent due to larger squad sizes. Wipes on allied squads will only be achieved if the squad is quite low on members, which is fair enough (this equally applies to German factions). Having a low HP squad on the field is risky.

Mine sweepers are a potential counter play, but are often ineffective because:

1) you cannot sweep the whole map- if you attempt to capture a number of sectors, you can only sweep one of them. If a mine happens to be where your minesweeper is not (happens often) a mine can still insta wipe your unit.

2) Often you may only get minesweepers after a squad gets blown up.

3) Wehrmacht specific, if you get a flame pio (often needed) you will be susceptible to mines early game, where you often only have one pioneer squad available. This is devastating because Wehrmacht squads are extremely vulnerable to mines.

Thus, mines should be nerfed in some way. Perhaps some for of suppression (like in Coh1) should be implemented, reinforcing their role as helping to win engagements, and deny territory, but their damage should be reduced. They would still be sufficiently cost effective for their low cost, but it will prevent the crazy value they currently have.

Furthermore, unit spacing needs to be looked at. Combat engineers seem to have good spacing, perhaps this should be implemented for other four man squads.

The point is, you marched your army to an area without minesweeper, you were taking risk. You reap the result.

You priority flamer over minesweeper, you were taking risk. You reap the result. Remember that your enemy also have to make the same choice as you.

You roll your panzer to enemy fortification with no support, especially minesweeper. You get what you deserve. I have once killed a full health King Tiger this way. Panzer is not invincible.

In the end, enemy pay 30 munition for mine, why can't you pay 30 munition for minesweeper?