MINES - A break from the Scout discussion...

agreed

Unfortunately, I hear that units cannot be made invisible in the Iron engine that Sins uses. Just hearsay, however, so I'm not completely sure.

Making mines would be very bad because it would take forever to find all the mines and clear them. "Mopping up" would be very frustrating. Mines should disperse through the z-axis more and also be cheaper.

They should definitely be cheaper, yes. But that's hardly enough, is it? They can fool the AI but any human player will simply phase jump to a clear spot. Heck, you can even just send a couple of scouts ahead and have them detect, leaving them useless. Their greatest shortcoming is really the fact that they simply aren't very effective, not their outrageously high cost.

I don't think the mopping up would be a problem were they invisible. The detection radius would clearly have to be made much bigger, probably to be given a range akin of weapon range of a LRF if not Starfish/Ogrev. That would also make the whole detection process a lot less cumbersome - which currently, it certainly is. Moreover, taking over the planet (colonizing) should reveal (and disable?) all remaining mines so we can skip the entire silly micromanagement mop-up phase and get on with what the game is/should be about: Strategy.

Regardless, if(?) mines can't be made invisible we should think up another solution. I don't think simply lowering the cost would be enough. Even if dirt cheap, they would still be more of a nuissance than a real threat. A minefield should be a threat - not to mention a cool as heck game feature! How would you like to be able to defend yourself with a huge minefield rather than always the same-old starbase? It's a whole new dimension to defending planets. Apparently, mines were supposed to be one of the major selling points of Entrenchment, a feature widely asked for. They really need to be made useful and not forgotten!

From the Entrenchment readme:

The most requested defensive feature was minefields and Entrenchment delivers.

Delivers? Hardly!

I'd say up the damage by a factor 3 or 4 (even a siege frigate runs through these things - what kind of mine is that?!), increase their range (currently units have to be almost colliding into them) and drastically lower the cost.

So really, what I'm asking for are minefields that are a lot more dangerous and can play an actual role in a defense while also being much less tedious to micromanage, both when deploying them and cleaning up afterwards. Sounds like a win, no?

Maybe have them float around in random movement or drift towards any opponent in the grav well over time?

What they should do rather than making them invisible is simply not have the icons show up unless a scout is near them. while not completly invisible, it makes looking for them without a scout turn into something that requires a player to ignore other things just to zoom in and find the mines

Or mines should be normally invisible, but when a scout fly into grav well you'll see all the mines but you can attack only those which are 'detected' in traditional way.

thats why i made the suggestion that there simplty be no icon

right now, my only use for mines are anti piracy and to direct my enemies fleet to a particular area in the gravity well that sets them up for an assualt. Forcing them to stay and fight because of PJIs and a field of mines surrounding their escape route. But I always wondered why as an enemy without scouts I could see the damn mines. It made no sense. I definitely think they should be invisible til they are detected by scouts. Other wise the only reasoning for a scout is for ships to target the damn things.

I think they actually used to be invisible early in the beta (someone correct me if I am wrong).

I am with you on making mines actually useful.  I'd certainly be for making them cheaper.  But you have to understand, there is a history to everything.  In the beta, mines were very contentious for a lot of people.  People screamed bloody murder about "mine spam" and what not, so they were nerfed into oblivion of course (it seems that anything that ever gets nerfed gets nerfed into oblivion - RA *cough*, subverters *cough*, the PJI coming out of beta, on and on).

Mines in the beta never bothered me, but they seemed to bother some folks, and those folks were pretty vocal about it, so I doubt anything will be done, and mines will be left as an undelivered promise.  Basically, it's like you bought Entrenchment and got one less feature (the mines).

they were never invisible

IIRC, the "mine spam" complaints came up because initially there was no limit on the number of mines that could be placed in a gravity well.  You could literally make it impossible to enter a gravity well.  Additionally, I think it really taxed the computers trying to figure out what to do with the thousands of little explosive devices floating around.

Was there another nerf that I just don't remember?

Invisible mines would be much too frustrating and luck-based.  You'd have no way of knowing whether the planet your enemy is defending has mines (because your scout will get fragged before it can do any "sniffing") and therefor in order to attack you need to guess where the minefield is and isn't.  In other words, invisible mines will make a direct assault into a complete crap shoot.  You're already at a massive disadvantage when you jump into a fortified enemy grav well, this would be over the top.

Now, that said, I do agree there are some significant problems with mines, and no obvious solutions. 

One of the issues that needs attention is the Z-Axis.  Some people consider it an under-used tactical gold-mine, others consider it nothing but an exploit.  I could go either way if there weren't things like starbase blind-spots in the Z-Axis or the fact that minefields are positively worthless if you can go above or below them.  Oh yes, it's possible to place minefields in 3D, but then they're so sparse (and the cost of filling out the area obscenely high) as to be useless.

Another issue is simply that avoiding mines is so easy.  I don't think invisibility is the answer.  If they are too difficult to detect then it becomes a crapshoot as described above, but if they're still easily detected by sending a sacrificial scout then nothing has changed.  I don't see a middle ground here that would make invisible solve these problems without causing newer and bigger ones. 

Then there's the issue of mine overkill.  Often times (particularly with Advent mines) you will get far too many exploding for far too few targets.  It's entirely possible to "brute force" your way through a minefield by sending sacrificial lambs.  Flak frigates and scout frigates (very cheap for the health and shield they offer) are favourite choices.  This needs to be addressed as well.

I'd like to throw my hat into the ring for my own little take on this.

The mines are indeed lackluster - no more so than that of the TEC.  Typically, I like to place my minefields in such a way that there isn't a way to get past it - in other words, planets near stars have a WALL of mines just waiting on standby near the jump from the star.

The problem, at least I think, is that the mines themselves just don't have a big enough detect/asplode radius.  This shortcoming is made painfully clear with the TEC, whose mines can end up miles apart, at times.  I do like the "no icons" idea - in addition to making them harder to find, it might save a little strain on machines when we play.  Not much, mind you, but it should be enough to be noticed.

No, mines are fine as they are.  There are a few viable strageties in multiplayer that would make them overkill if they were able to hold off entire fleets.

Only Advent mines seem to achieve any results, other mines can be detected safely and easily avoided and destroyed by fighters.  Perhaps all mines should be types of homing mine?

How about Tec chain mines, which activate when a ship crosses a line between a pair of mines, exploiting a spread?  The scout might have to get close enough to centre of the line to detect the pair.  Phase mines could activate only on a phase jump- and chase enemies out of a grav well, maybe, to explode on destination?  Then they could only be destroyed if there was a ship with a phase jump activated nearby..

the mines arent fine, they have no real tactical value in defending the GW. A starbase does its job. but mines are literally mosquito bites to ships with shields and hull. The only ships that take a beating from any minefield is Pirates. Making them a waste of your money even if they were made cheaper.

Uh... if you run it through a minefield a capital ship will be destroyed you know.  One mine might not kill much, but get hit by two or three and you're gunna get fragged.  The problem isn't their damage, which is actually probably about right, but rather that they're likely to be detonated by a single ship (if at all).

ive ran Kols through 10 or so mines one after the other and the most it did was suck the life out of the shields. But never did any damage to the hull

Also I highly doubt someone would be able to predict where ships will travel that they line up more then 4 or 5 mines along the same line so that the ships are constantly hitting them.  So like I said, mosquito bites. I think Ive only lost Scouts to mines because sometimes they smack mine after mine, but anything bigger has been able to take atleast two maybe three hits before being on the brink of destruction.

True, damage certainly isn't fine. Even without shield mitigation, at 700 damage per mine you'd have to plow your capital ships through many to even disrupt their shields. I think it takes three or four mines just to kill a freakin siege frigate which is quite horrid.

I think the only thing minefields really need (Zaxis not included) is the ability to automatically regenerate themselves. As it is now, even if your minefield does its job, it tends to take to much time to set them up again to defend for the next attack. If this and Darvin's other points are addressed, I think mines will become adequetely useful.

I don't think they need to become invisible, I've wasted over half an hour trying to clear a heavily mined planet (even after I conquered that planet), and as it is I think thats too long. I can only imagine the horror of trying to find and sweep over 100 homing mines.

im not worried about the actual damage done, cause i dont think they should be able to smash frigates in one shot, but the fact they can be seen without even using scouts means their completely useless because you can avoid them until your ready to engage them.

yeah. i mean when i turn off my tradeship icons i get an additional 7fps when zoomed in

My present thoughts on this (And I have certainly bitched enough about it)

Either make mines weaker/smaller but in far greater number, or make them larger with larget aoe. They need to cover more ground. I do think that a mine should be able to take a frigate with one explosion, or at least cripple it with only one explosion. maybe it have them hurt certain kinds of armor more.

THey need to be invisible, barring that, hard to see.

yes to z axis, for a number of things.

Autoplacement of mines (and you cant turn it off) is retarded. TEC and Vas layout is quite a bit like my ex girlfriend, a mess. THey get thrown at nearly random, out of each others area, and in different planes.

summary mines=awesome, present incarnation=crap.

i really cant stand it when i place 10 mines near a phase lane, and one or two of them land on the opposite side of the damn GW near one of my static defense platforms, making me scuttle the damn thing.