Tesla Mine

 

Tesla Mine
Production information
Technical specifications
Damage Per Hit	Continuous - roughly 30 per second
Maximum Ammunition	50 (original game) 5 (2023 remaster)
Usage
Era(s)	Quake II: Ground Zero Call of the Machine
[Source]

“	Toss the Tesla, and once it activates, deadly tendrils of electricity lash out at your enemy. It's an awesome "area of denial" weapon. Just as with the Prox, there are five in a pack.	”
—Ground Zero Manual

The Tesla Mine is weapon that is introduced in the Quake II mission pack: Ground Zero. The Tesla is not a gun, as such, but rather a device that is thrown into position and will then attack nearby enemies by itself, lashing out at them with lightning. Its attack has a short range, but will target all enemies within that range at once.

The 2023 remaster improves the Tesla mine's health and improves its behaviour in several ways (see below) but drastically reduced the player's maximum capacity for this item, from 50 to 5; furthermore, each pickup confers a smaller number of Tesla mines, reduced from 5 to 3.

With the release of the 2023 remaster, Tesla Mines also appear in Call of the Machine.

Description

A Tesla is thrown into position much like a hand grenade, and like grenades you can hold down the fire button to throw them further (unlike grenades, there's no risk of them exploding in your hand if you wait too long). Once it lands, after a brief moment it will activate, and then shoot lightning at all enemies within a short range. Enemies will treat the Tesla as hostile, and will usually attempt to destroy it - Strogg will sometimes even treat it as a higher priority target than the player, especially if the Tesla started attacking them before they saw the player. It also blocks enemy movement to some extent. A Tesla has 30 health in the original game (the same as a Shotgun Guard), or 50 health in the 2023 remaster.

In multiplayer gameplay, a Tesla will fire at everyone, including the player who threw it. In single-player, your own Teslas won't harm you. In the original game, an activated Tesla will also fire at another Tesla if you throw it nearby, and it'll also fire at a mine from the Prox Launcher, but this behaviour was removed in the 2023 remaster. If not destroyed by attacks, Teslas will self-destruct 30 seconds after activating. However, this explosion will not harm anyone nearby.

In the original game, Teslas would sometimes apparently run out of power and cease firing, and there doesn't seem to be much consistency in this behaviour. Sometimes they'll seem to run out of power as soon as there are no nearby enemies, and therefore won't begin firing if a new target comes into range. This seems rather like a bug, but it has been fixed in the 2023 remaster.

Tesla mines cannot function underwater; if one is thrown into water, it will explode as it attempts to activate itself, and this explosion does hurt you if you're close - whereas the explosion of a Tesla destroyed by gunfire, or self-destructing, is harmless.

Strategies

Single player

• Tesla mines have many uses in single-player. They can be used as a kind of "canary in a coal mine" item - if you're not sure what's lying in wait to ambush you in the next area, you can throw in a Tesla on its own, and observe what happens to it. Strogg will usually treat the Tesla mine as a target, and move to attack it even if they aren't aware of the player's presence, and even if they destroy the Tesla mine, this doesn't cause them to be alerted to the player themselves. Along the same lines, they can be used as bait - throw the Tesla in and immediately switch to a powerful weapon while watching the Tesla, and possibly some enemies will move up to the Tesla to attack it, moving into your line of fire in the process - while not immediately focusing their attention on you. A Tesla mine can make a useful companion to the BFG10K in this way; a player can throw a Tesla in roughly the direction in which they intend to fire the BFG10K, and with some luck the Tesla will cause the Strogg to approach and attack it, "grouping up" in the process and making for a better BFG10K target. Alternatively you can throw in a Tesla before moving in - if you wait a moment for it to activate before you move in, then hopefully some of the enemy attention and gunfire will be aimed at the Tesla rather than yourself. Even a brief distraction can give you a big advantage, allowing you to line up a good shot at a key target while taking less fire in return, and this is well worth using a Tesla to achieve.
• A single Tesla mine can be expected to defeat any type of Guard, small groups of Flyers, a Technician or Icarus. With its increased health in the 2023 remaster, it can put up a decent fight against an Enforcer, Parasite, Stalker or Daedalus, but the fight can go either way. A Tesla shouldn't be expected to defeat a Berserker, Gunner, Medic or Mutant on its own, and it will be easily destroyed by a Gladiator or Tank, but even in those cases, it is often still productive to throw a Tesla in first, distracting their attention for a moment and diverting some of the enemy's fire.
• The 2023 remaster improves a Tesla's ability to perform the above tactic due to its increased health and the fact Tesla mines no longer attack each other, meaning you can choose to throw more than one into an area, thereby increasing the damage they'll do. Since all of the Tesla mines will fire at all of the Strogg within their range, two Tesla mines can achieve much more damage and distraction than one, since most Strogg attacks would only be capable of hitting a single Tesla at once.
• Tesla mines can be very helpful against a Medic Commander, arguably the most dangerous non-boss enemy in any Quake II game. If you hear a Medic Commander ahead and are able to get fairly close to it before it's aware of you, first throw a Tesla (or more than one) near it and then switch to the BFG10K. The Tesla will hopefully distract the Medic Commander for a moment, delaying its summoning of Strogg just long enough for you to line up a perfect BFG shot into the beast. Just be ready to fire again in case it doesn't quite go as planned. A useful bonus of this tactic is that any Strogg spawned by the Medic Commander might well find themselves in range of the Tesla's lightning. Furthermore, even if the Medic Commander was already aware of your presence and has begun summoning Strogg, throwing a Tesla or two in front of you can help, hindering the advance of its summoned reinforcements.
• Even after a Tesla runs out of power (in the original game; it no longer does so in the 2023 remaster), it continues to block enemy movement to some extent if not destroyed, which can delay their advance especially in a narrow corridor. You can also use this to your advantage if a fight isn't going quite your way and you want to retreat to a safer position - lay a Tesla as you retreat to delay any pursuers. But be advised, eventually the Tesla will self-destruct even if the Strogg don't destroy it.
• A Daedalus makes a particularly good target for a Tesla mine. It'll take a Daedalus quite a while to destroy a Tesla due to its blaster being rather weak, and the Tesla will therefore have more time to fire its lightning than it would against most other enemies, and cause a lot of damage to the Daedalus before it is destroyed. On most difficulty settings, a single Tesla can quite reasonably destroy a Daedalus on its own; it is less likely on Nightmare difficulty since enemies don't flinch in pain on that setting, but it can still be a close thing. Once the Daedalus begins firing at the Tesla, you can contribute to the fight with your own weaponry. This tactic works better in the 2023 remaster; if performed correctly, you can attack the distracted Daedalus with the Blaster or even the Chainfist without it retaliating, and thereby destroy it without expending any ammunition beyond the one Tesla Mine. However, a safer strategy overall would be to switch to a stronger ranged weapon once the Daedalus is distracted.
• If a Tesla mine is thrown into view of a Turret but is not within range to attack the Turret with its lightning, the Turret will tend to aim its targeting laser sight at the Tesla mine but won't actually fire. This could be helpful if the player wishes to know the position of Turrets in an area in advance. However, the Turret will turn its attention to the player once the player enters its view.
• A helpful benefit of the Tesla mine against Stalkers is that they are not fooled by the "fake death" Stalkers sometimes do, falling onto their back when near death and then gradually healing themselves. A Tesla will keep firing at a Stalker in this case until it is truly dead. However, a Tesla will cease firing once a Guard or Enforcer is "dead" even if the Guard or Enforcer is about to perform their final dying attack.

Multiplayer

• Tesla mines are more like ambushes for the other players, but putting it next to one, the player will just shoot it while it is activating. Don't put a Tesla where you are, because the Teslas can attack even the spawner on Multiplayer. On Multiplayer, the same is for singleplayer, do not put two Teslas next to each other.

Trivia

• A Tesla mine is affected by the damage boost conferred by Quad Damage or Double Damage, but only if the power-up was active at the point the Tesla mine was thrown.
• Some of the player's weapons seem incapable of harming a Tesla, generally hitscan weapons such as the Shotgun and Super Shotgun. However, projectile weapons such as the Blaster don't seem to have this problem, nor do the Strogg's hitscan weapons.

Gallery

Hand-held Tesla Mine

Several Tesla Mines bundled together

How does Tesla works