When do you use Trip Mines?

[Raiman]

Help? Even in the original half life I don't know when to use them.

[Sp4zzmatica]

In small narrow spaces probably.

[40ozKilla]

I use them to kill the Black Ops or I put them behind me to watch my back when fighting multiple hecu where they might come from multiple directions

[Sanctuary]

for me they were quite useless

[Lil C]-[ew C]-[ew is ☂д☂]

Originally posted by Raiman:

Help? Even in the original half life I don't know when to use them.

That is very normal. Half Life always used the classic fps tactic of letting the player have a extended variation of weapons. I still don't like Tau cannon and that is why I preffer Gluon cannon or when it comes to throwable explosives, I choose to use satchel charge or HE grenades. But why I haven't mentioned trip mine lasers? It is because is not a offensive weapon to use all the time. You use when you out of ammo to any other explosives or if you like going slow and making traps certain moments in the game you know when the enemy will spawn go use these mines.
They focus more for this purpose.

[drh]

I use them when I'm in a desperate retreat either against a superior force or when I'm low on health. They're very situational.

[DIGITAL SPORTS]

They're not particularly useful in my opinion. We even buffed the explosive damage of the Tripmines/Satchels in one of our updates to be 150 compared to the Frag/MP5 Nade's 100, but they're still just not that useful.

They can be okay against the Assassins.

[kwahoo]

On the stairs near to manually loaded cannon (that part of Surface Tension when you have to destroy choppa).

[Venom415]

the black ops women group I weave through the containers planting them, then I usually have to kill just one with a mp5 grenade. then in lobby of the unethical testing area when the soldires are dropping down, that and then other zombies or big monsters that are chasing me

[Nevermore2790]

Power Up is one chapter where it can be useful.

[Wraggle]

One of the issues with tripmines is that it is necessary to know where the enemies are beforehand to even think about using them. On first playthroughs of Half-Life and Black Mesa most players probably don't even use them until they have maybe died and reloaded a couple of times on a certain section. I only found them useful, on hard difficulty, killing Alien Grunts in QE, Lambda Core and the Xen factory by getting them to follow me, but again, that is with prior knowledge of their positions.

I used to wish I could use them to stumble the Gargantua whilst being chased or maybe incorporate them into some sort of cheesy mini-boss puzzle but they are just a difficult a weapon to make memorable. It must be hard to communicate to the player when to use them effectively and they just sit there as an alternative option.

[Firewalk]

The time it takes for them to activate, the unpredictable nature of enemies and the fact that some enemies are too small for these to work effectively has caused me to hardly ever use them.

I think I died more times to own trip mines by accident than I have killed enemies with them.