Half of my arsenal goes unused, tips on using tripmines, charges and others?

Black Mesa Archive Help!
#1

I love this mod, let me start with that. I have been lurking the forum a few times for a few months and intensively in recent weeks, reading through most of the questions to devs thread :slight_smile:

Now it’s here I am so happy, I waited a day to play it so I was in the right mood and could really sit down and get into it. It was worth it, I was grinning near constantly and spending so much time enjoying every detail I could find.

I hope you guys get the recognition you deserve in the coming weeks/months/years!

TL;DR

So I’m currently just into Questionable Ethics and i’ve found some parts rather tricky involving the HECU mostly, they are hard. (On Normal difficulty btw).

Many times during chapters at certain moments i’m suddenly given a lot of trip mines or other explosives that kinda points out they would be a great use, but I never use them.

I tried to run and place a trip mine but it seemed pointless considering in that time the soldier noticed me and had caused enough damage to make it more worthwhile for me to just face him with guns.

Any examples of where and how to use trip mines to their full use? Same with charges, although i’ve used them a few times, around a corner to stop a turret or on the lift in power up after placing a few barrels around.

Thanks for your help!
David

(All this said, I don’t think I really used the tripmines or charges much at all on the original HL)

#2

trip mines make the assassins extremely easy to vs.

Areas where you know there will be backtracking are good places for satchels, mainly because always, without fail, there will be monsters there.

Satchels are also good as a self defence mechanism. throw one in a doorway, then as the soldiers come to kill you, either shoot them in the face (one guy) or press Q and blow their minds (multiple guys).

The only weapon of mine that never sees use is the snarks

#3

I’ve found that knowing where they spawn helps. Place a mine in front of their spawn point, trigger the spawn, and they’ll just run into it and you won’t have to deal with them.

Mines, satchels, and the like are less useful against HGrunts really since they’re smart enough to avoid them which kind of foils most of your traps.

#4

The only fail so far is, that the “climax” fight at Questionable Ethics… there are no explosives given to the player before the ambush, neither there is a chance to recharge health… so imagine (my case) having circa 17 HP, no satchels and having to defeat like 10 soldiers while 1 is enough to kill me in an instant.
The balancing is sometimes off

#5

Unless you missed it, there is a health and HEV charger right before the door.

#6

Already used it, that’s it.

#7

Cheers for the advice so far.

Will try out some of them, although I assume knowing where enemies will spawn is an odd point, as you’d have played it already to know this? and it seems like a game solution, i figured you would use things like trip mines in a more realistic way rather than knowing where an enemy spawns. Bit of an immersion breaker?

An example I can think of where I failed…
When you start up powerup, you’re given some trip mines, you go down the corridor and see HECU fighting the big garg thing. I then put trip mines in front of me and assumed I could shoot the HECU to get their attention, (as there seemed to be a lot) and a group or few would turn their attention to me and come down the corridor… I ended up with a constant limbo obstacle :slight_smile:

Probably not a good example as it is somewhat of a setpiece with them fighting the garg.

But in other cases i’ve placed a trip mine then realised to lead them down to it, I have to do this crazy run back and duck and jump without hitting the beam while they shoot me. S I guessed there would be better uses for them and stopped trying that technique.

The Satchel charge tips are definitely useful however :slight_smile: . I have used them a couple of times like that. But like the trip mines they seem to be the kinda thing you get a ton of before something as if they are useful and I often find my backpack is still full of them when I come across more, so can’t be using them well :slight_smile:

#8

i prefer more shotgun ammo, my weapon of choice

i say to hell with the rest!

Ive even changed the sounds to mimick the Half-Life 2 shot gun and works perfectly.

#9

I do love the shotgun. Probably because it became my favourite weapon in HL2+eps after I realised the secondary fire was both barrels, it just feels great and that enjoyment carried over to BM. Feels great!

#10

Yeah trapping the spawns is a bit cheap and immersion breaking, I agree. But it helps on later playthroughs, particularly on Power Up and On a Rail.

You don’t have to do that though. I usually plant one to cover my retreat, but so far I haven’t successfully killed anything in that particular way yet.

Another user around here has said it works well against Assassins. But I haven’t tried that yet.

#11

I’m past Power up and On a Rail. It is where I did use the charges once or twice though, with the lift. Will remember it for future :slight_smile:

When it came to the assasins I had no problems really, just ran around wildly and managed to shotgun them. They weren’t as hard as I had though they would be. Granted they weren’t invisible!

#12

I can confirm that on hard they are actually challenging

#13

Personally, I have never used trip mines in HL or BM. But the satchel charges do come in handy from time to time.
Snarks- another weapon I see absolutely no need for. Even the hive hand I used briefly during the latter half of Surface Tension.

#14

Are you kidding me? I always use mines, they are amazing . Just keep planting and retreat and then charge.

#15

Snarks and Tripmines are Deathmatch/Multiplayer-only weapons IMO.
EXCEPT in case they add back the option to jump on top of them to allow speed-running.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.