Guide to Mine Hop Bomb Run

[Beagle]

Originally Posted by Evan20000

U so pretti!111

aw ur so sweet sin ;3

[hurripilot]

Originally Posted by Beagle

aw ur so sweet sin ;3

Writing in pretty colors and exchanging corndog recipes in the water cooler are the only things that should be done on these forums

[SkyTiger]

lol u guys are silly.

Yes a mine hopped bomb can be easily defeated by a decent team. But having an option to do it in itself is an advantage.
And srsly, no decent team in the right mind would actually PLAN for a whale to go mine hopping as their primary bomb strategy.

Also, once experienced, setting it up is actually faster and more effective than you would initially think.
See, a whale waiting for backup would set up a remote mine to hold his position anyway. The mine now doubles as a hop-mine when placed correctly. When backup arrives, you can either mine boost yourself into position, or if hp is too low, just throw it.
From my experience, the chances of this happening in an actual game would be 1 in 5~6 games. Like said, when the available option is used correctly, it is at least an option.

Also, due to the rarity of an actual mine-hopped-bomb-lob, its not true that "ONCE A WHALE PICKS UP THE BOMB EVERYONE WOULD KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT". not true.

update on lob location:

tbd_middleground: i've got a few lobs through from somewhat middle of the map. Aim through the top opening on the enemy side middle tall wall. Do a full speed lob by v. fast D-S. kinda hard, but do'able.

[Evan20000]

But it has the same problem most lobs have; they WILL be blocked unless the lobber is lagging.

[SkyTiger]

Originally Posted by Evan20000

But it has the same problem most lobs have; they WILL be blocked unless the lobber is lagging.

yes it will be blocked under normal circumstances....

but consider this:
When a defender sees the bomb flying towards the base, the natural response is to stop shooting at the enemy, and get into position for a block. Getting into position for a block is a very obvious move, one which requires aiming for the bomb, and accurately get in line with the bomb, possibly even slowing down to catch the bomb. That will leave them wide open to be pushed out of the way using the director. selah.
*situation changes if defender has shield, but still, with luck you can push them out of the path before the shield comes into play.

Escorting the bomb is the next best thing after mine-hop-lobbing. If you try it often enough, you will see that the natural response is indeed to run for the bomb rather than to shoot you down. When people do this, stop blockers from blocking by your rockets. Fly with the bomb to mask it works sometimes.

Common team mate mistakes would be to escort your bomb with a shield. It doesn't work that way. Escorting a bomb should be blasting blockers out of the way not shield it.

tbd_locomotion : Bomb spot also available in the middle region. Set up mine at the sloped walls in the middle, aiming through the low pass. Also require some bars (at least 1 silver) and full speed (picking up speed from horizontal flight rather than climbing) to lob it far and fast enough.

[Evan20000]

You're missing my point. Everything you've just said is infinitely more effective with say, a loopy running the bomb and a whale escort. The whale has to remain in a bomber spam lane for a prolonged amount of time to set up his hop, thereby making this outright impossible on some maps and merely impractical on the rest. Besides, the Whale is banking on his flexy wings for a quick execution. If you get EMP'd (You will at some point), your whole plan becomes that much harder.

[Fartface]

Originally Posted by Evan20000

You're missing my point. Everything you've just said is infinitely more effective with say, a loopy running the bomb and a whale escort. The whale has to remain in a bomber spam lane for a prolonged amount of time to set up his hop, thereby making this outright impossible on some maps and merely impractical on the rest. Besides, the Whale is banking on his flexy wings for a quick execution. If you get EMP'd (You will at some point), your whole plan becomes that much harder.

Except you're leaving no room for mistakes. The vast majority of the time, you will not be playing a team that has all its members alive at once, all its bombers spamming all the choke points, and EMP. The thing about this tactic is that the user really has to use his/her better judgement. But it is very possible on most maps under the right circumstances.

[Smushface]

This is a nice little gimmick that has marginal utility. The only "right circumstance" I can see where this is useful is if the Explo ended up with the bomb after a push and did not have a light plane to take the pick up, and was close enough to the base to have enough time but far enough from the base so that it would be a surprise.

So yea, pretty rare circumstance. But its a nice and fun thing that can be useful from time to time.

But what upsets me about this whole thing is that I see whales who are trying to do this and have not yet mastered the basics of explo. Learn those first and then learn the tricks. And there's at least one supporter in this thread who I have seen regularly taking a bomb from light planes who are trying to run just so that they can mine jump bomb.

So learn the basics, stop ruining ladder and you'll have my support for this technique.

[banana]

Not that I'm encouraging it, but a reverse whale mine bomb would take less time to prepare. Just pop out the mine and reverse over it.

[Wok3N^]

Originally Posted by banana

Not that I'm encouraging it, but a reverse whale mine bomb would take less time to prepare. Just pop out the mine and reverse over it.

Like like like!

[Evan20000]

Originally Posted by Fartface

Except you're leaving no room for mistakes. The vast majority of the time, you will not be playing a team that has all its members alive at once, all its bombers spamming all the choke points, and EMP. The thing about this tactic is that the user really has to use his/her better judgement. But it is very possible on most maps under the right circumstances.

The "If the other team is playing like X" argument could be used to justify a bunch of inefficient techniques. Mid-to-Top tier teams will be well enough organized to prevent such an attack. I'm not saying this to discourage you from trying to find new stuff; I'm trying to give you the experience of everyone who tried this after remote got nerfed.

As for reverse like Nana said; that's crazy enough to (maybe) work. Your windup will be much faster, making it feasible ONLY under certain conditions.

[Considered]

I rarely ever play TBD but reverse remote mine hop sounds epic... I will need to try that tonight.

[SkyTiger]

Originally Posted by banana

Not that I'm encouraging it, but a reverse whale mine bomb would take less time to prepare. Just pop out the mine and reverse over it.

indeed, and I have tried it. When you do this, it is VERY hard to aim & get good consistency.
Another tactic that allows fast mine lobs is shooting rocket and blowing them right in front of the nose, allowing you to propel backwards, thyen combine this with mine and rev, gives the most AWESOME lobs. Will fly through the whole map like a rocket! but its too hard to control.

To think of mine lob as a serious technique means you need that super accuracy of angle, and bomb flight. Most maps only allow very tight-tight angles to get your bomb through.
Since rev mine hop is inconsistent its becomes even more impractical in a game. Probably the only map that this can work consistently is tbd_hills. Not even a serious map, more like a fun map. :P Having different angles of your plane also give different bomb flight so it will take someone with immense skill to pull this off consistently even in practice map with nobody interfering.

That said, i would love to see someone throwing bombs from afar.

hey wait... someone should make a fun map where bombs spawn in 1sec, and the 2 teams lob bombs across a very long map with immense turrets in the middle so nobody can pass.

Put a few shields and we can see bombs flying ALL OVER!!! It would be a new game mode called tbl (team bomb lob) hahaha

[silent skies]

This tactic actually fooled me the first few times I saw it.

I'm usually the one who ends up taking one for the team and blocking long lobs, but a couple times the enemy bomb icon would disappear waaay away from where I was, so I would assume it had been defused, and I'd move out of lob-blocking position.

And then I'd see this horizontal bomb come out of nowhere and smack into the base... Oh my.

...

However, I'm used to the concept now. Once you've trained yourself to be wary of it it's not as effective a tactic, but pretty neat nonetheless.

[bong]

Here's the spot at asteroids, asteroids #2

Cheers!

[silent skies]

2nd one's really cool :O

[evilarsenal]

on mayhem, woken did a wokhop against fLb during an official match. It was epic,just for the record

[Evan20000]

I almost peed my pants laughing when that bomb hit.

[Ingbo]

ye i remember that bomb passing me and i was like "thats a weird ****ing missile.... ohhhh......"

[Fartface]

Originally Posted by bong

Here's the spot at asteroids, asteroids #2

Cheers!

Already got that second one in my guide >:[ nicely carried out though