Does anyone have any strategies regarding placing mines? The obvious way seems to be to place them just outside the door and then lure the enemies out and quickly retreat. However I rarely am able to pull it off properly and it's generally way too much trouble to make it worthwhile.

I'm asking because mines are the only item that seem "useful" but I was never really able to utilize properly. Is it just me, or are they just like this? If anyone managed to get any good results from them, please post.

Thanks

EDIT: And I mean JA1. Sorry forgot this forum is for the whole series.

I only used mines in Deadly Games, in one of the late missions where you have to defend a building, so what I will say has good chances to only apply to Deadly Games and not Jagged Alliance.

What I noticed is that in Deadly Games mercs not only have a specific formula to determine how good they are at detecting mines/traps, they also have a specific formula to determine how good they are at hiding mines/traps. And since enemy soldiers have skills in explosive and experience level, just like your mercenaries, they too have a specific formula to determine how good they are at detecting mines/traps set up by your mercenaries.

If you place an easily findable mine on a square, enemy soldiers will refuse to step on that square. If you put an easily findable mine in a doorway, enemies will ignore that doorway and use the other door to reach your guys. Should all the doorway be trapped in such way, they'll just stay outside/inside and refuse to move toward your guys. If however the enemy is unable to detect your mine, they'd gladly come out/in, stepping on your mine and getting blown to bits by it.

That sounds useful in theory but in practice it is another story.

Bombs levels range between 1 and 10, 1 being a bomb that anyone can spot, 10 being a bomb that only Mike, with his whooping 11 score in bomb detection can find. In Jagged Alliance, the formula to detect a bomb used to be approximately: LVL+(EXP/3), for every slice of 30 points on a mercenary explosive stat, they would be able to detect a bomb one level higher.

Fidel, with a 99 in EXP and LVL 1, can detect a level 4 bomb.
Larry, with 65 in EXP and LVL 1, can detect a level 3 bomb.
Pops, with 8 in EXP and LVL 9, can detect a level 9 bomb.

That is how the formula used to be in Jagged Alliance, in Deadly Games, that formula was changed, how, I don't know, but I do know how good mercenaries are at detecting bomb because I built a minefields in the map editor in order to test every mercenaries to see how good every single one of them were at finding bombs, for the most part, it still is how Jagged Alliance used to be, meaning it is heavily dependent on a mercenary's LVL stat, but knowledge in EXP can give you a bonus.

Fidel, with his high knowledge in explosives but low level, can detect a level 5 bomb.
Larry, with his medium knowledge in explosives but low level, can detect a level 3 bomb.
Pops, with his abysmal knowledge in explosives but high level, can detect a level 9 bomb.
Ivan, with his medium knowledge in explosives and low level, can detect a level 4 bomb.
For most mercenaries with little to no knowledge in explosives, the only stat that will be able to help them finding bombs is their experience level, if they're level 1, they'll be able to detect level 1 bombs but any other bombs or mines will blow them up to bits.

Hiding a bomb however is a different formula entirely, and once again, I have no idea what that formula is. I did however create a special testing ground in the map editor where I lined up redshirts ranging from LVL 1 to LVL 10, each of them stuck inside a respective row of bushes, I picked a mercenary, I laid mines at the entrance of those rows, and once all the entrances were mined, I flipped a switch that detonated a bomb in a field. Since bomb blasts have a noise radius of 50 squares, all the redshirts in the map proceeded to come investigate, all of them, except those that had a sufficiently high level to detect the bomb at the entrance of their leafy prison, these ones remained stationary. Repeating the process with every mercenary I discovered that hiding a bomb depended heavily on a mercenary's Explosive stat but also other stats as well. Could be Wisdom, could be Dexterity, I have no idea, that being said, while mercenaries were quite good at detecting bombs, hiding them was much harder.

Mike, with his godly stats, can only hide a level 6 bomb, meaning any enemies with a score of 6 or higher in LVL will see Mike's trap from a mile and avoid it.
Fidel, although he has 98 or 99 in Explosive, can only hide a level 4 bomb. So can Larry, who has about two third of Fidel's knowledge in Explosive.
Pops can hide a level 3 bomb.
Ivan can hide a level 2 bomb.

Long story short, your mercs can be pros when dealing with explosives, if they're facing redshirts with at least LVL 6, your cleverly set up shmuck baits of mining doorways will simply fall flat as enemies will avoid that door.

I am guessing this difference in range between detecting bombs and hiding them is for balancing reasons due to the multiplayer mode featured in Deadly Games. Or it could also be that mines could be used to exploit AI and gain massive advantage in the first Jagged Alliance, I don't know.

There is one way however I've been able to put mines to good use in Deadly Games, unfortunately that won't help you in Jagged Alliance.

Unlike Jagged Alliance, in Deadly Games, grenades and explosives damage not only the square they are set up on but also neighboring squares. If you set explosives on a wall in Jagged Alliance, items behind that wall will still be intact. In Deadly Games, if you blow up a wall, you'll not only destroy the wall but if there were items located in the blast radius, whether in plain sight, hidden or stored inside crates, those items will become damaged or get destroyed. If an explosive gets damaged in such way, it will explode too. So the best way to use mines in Deadly Games is to set them up in a choke point, but leave enough room for enemies to avoid the mines, navigate and take cover too. When you want to detonate the mines, lob a grenade or a molotov cocktail near your mines and they'll explode in a chain reaction. It's a bit harder to set up, and you still got to use a grenade, so what give, and it will only work for redshirts that have the aggressive or investigative AI, redshirts that tend to be defensive will prefer to hide rather than run toward your guys, but if you're good at it, you're effectively turning a grenade into a three or four blasts explosion.

Then again, since redshirts never disarm mines, the most effective and strategic way to use mines is probably to hide them poorly and block doorways and choke points entirely and re-route the entire enemy force toward another choke points where your mortar shells and grenades will shred them to pieces.

Thats not quite correct. While explosive placed in a wall indeed not destroy a crates inside the wall - it does a damage to a persons located there. And if you set explosion in a pile of crates (even from grenade) - you would crush more than one of them. Its about "HP" of object here, say, you can detonante explosion on a wall tile adjacent to door - and door (low HP compared to wall HP) - will go off too.

Thank you very much for the detailed answer blueskirt.

I'm playing only Jagged Alliance at the moment. However when I try Deadly Games I'll be sure to check this out. If only to see the chain reaction.

I wasn't referring to damage in general, I meant damage to objects. Of course if you blow up a wall, anyone behind that wall that is caught in the blast radius will get hurt. And of course, if you blow up a wall (or any square for that matter) and there is a switch or an item on that same wall (or square), that switch or item located on the same square as the explosion will get vaporized by it. But objects and items adjacent to the explosion do not.

You made me doubt so I installed Jagged Alliance and loaded my old savegames to verify. I planted mines on the ground in a cross pattern (like a mine on the ground, then a mine above it, mine under it, a mine left to it, a mine right to it, as close as possible to one another), I set up live plastic right above the middle one. The middle one got destroyed (it did not detonate, but it vanished) but the mines adjacent to the explosion remained intact. I detonated four more live plastics and the mines were still there (when asked to search the ground where the mine were located, I'd get a message asking me if I wanted to disarm the buried mine.)

I did the same with my gun, googles, ear extender, helmet and gas mask, all items which, when they are worn on a soldier when this soldier is caught in a blast radius, will become damaged. I put those items on the ground in a cross pattern. I set up live plastics and bundles of TNT on the middle square of the cross pattern, and the only item that got destroyed was the item underneath the explosion, all the items on the ground adjacent to the explosion remained intact, I picked them up and their damage level were exactly the same.

I was in Sector 37, there was a house with three rooms: A bedroom, a living room, and a small store room with crates. I laid bombs on the nightstand right next to the beds in the bedroom, each time a bomb exploded, I put another on that very same square, I went through my five live plastics and five bundles of TNT, and the only square that got damaged was the square on which I set up the bombs, the beds remained intact.

I repeated the process in the living room, the chair caught in the blast radius changed sprite, to that of a chair that has fallen on the ground, but the table next to it remained intact. I repeated the process yet again in the storeroom, and unless crates that have been pried open become invulnerable compared to closed crates, setting up bombs in the same square in the store room, I managed to obliterate the crate where I was setting bombs on, but the opened crate and cardboard box that were right next to it were still standing after dust cleared.

Walls, chairs and doors, and furniture that occupy two squares are the exception.

If you detonate a bomb directly on a dining table or a bed for example, the square where the bomb exploded will get vaporized, and the remaining half of the furniture will change sprite to that of a damaged table or bed. If there were items on the table, the item on the square where the bomb exploded will get vaporized, the item on the remaining half of the table will still be there, intact, waiting for you to pick it up. And even if you continue detonating bombs on that same square, the remaining half of the furniture will not get damaged any further, it will still be there once you've depleted all your bombs.

Chairs caught in the blast radius of an explosion will fall on their back, but further explosion blast will not damage the chairs any further, they will remain there, blocking your way until you lob a grenade or set explosives directly on the chair to vaporize it.

If you detonate a wall with TNT or C4, the wall you set the bomb on (and any switch or item located on that square for that matter) will get vaporized. The walls adjacent to that vaporized wall will change sprite to that of damaged walls, but they will nonetheless still act like walls, they will still block your way and if there were switches or items on these adjacent walls, those switches or items can still be used or picked up, even if graphically the cupboard seems to have been blown away.

Doors are the only object which seems to have HP.
Powerful gun shots can blow open doors with low strength.
Fragmentation grenades lobbed directly at doors can blow open doors with low to medium strength.
The blast radius of TNT and C4 can blow open doors with low to medium strength. (You can set the bomb on the floor and doors caught in the blast radius will be blown open)
TNT and C4 placed directly on the door, or directly on the wall adjacent to the door, will vaporize any door, no matter if the door has a low or an high strength.

Feel free to try it out yourself if you don't believe me. You had me doubting, and I had to re-install the game and check it out myself to be sure. When a bomb explodes, whether it is live plastic, TNT or fragmentation grenade, any character caught in the blast radius will suffer damage, most items worn or carried by a character caught in the blast radius will suffer condition damage (some items cannot be damaged that way), and whatever was exactly on the square underneath the explosion will get vaporized, grenades can vaporize some doors and furniture; TNT and plastic can vaporize anything, including walls and trees.

But, beyond that square where the explosion happens, any items laying about that are caught in the blast radius will remain intact and any furniture caught in the blast radius will remain intact (except for chairs which will flip on their back, and objects that are made of two halves, like dining table, bed, bath, those will change sprite if their other half get destroyed, but will nonetheless act like obstacle.)

This is how Jagged Alliance works. In Deadly Games they fixed that, in Deadly Games, items caught in the blast radius will become damaged or destroyed, and if the item was an explosive, it will detonate too, potentially creating a chain reaction if multiple explosives are adjacent to one another.

Do some tests in Second Plant sector (near Lab). There is a storage room on a island, where the detonator is on the wall. There is lot of crates to test with them (in case you didnt uninstall yet). Btw i didnt said what it should damage objects on a ground, also.