[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, mines are sadly deficient compared to other aspects of SE IV. These complaints are the same sort of arguments we have been throwing at MM since before the game was released. I suggest that all of you send email directly to MM explaining the problems with mines. It seems to take a very large 'popular' uprising to get him to change any significant feature of the game anymore.

BTW, since mines are supposed to be like 'seekers' I think they will always 'always hit'. He'd have to rewrite the combat system to change that. What can be changed is the number of mines that get a chance to hit a given ship. There's no need or logic for ALL mines to be omnipresent in the sector. The formula could be based on the size of the ship and the number of mines in the sector. Something like X percent of available mines + some modifier for ship size. Larger ships would logically attract more mines, being larger targets.

Technologies that let you create custom settings for your mines or minefields would be even better. Hmm, do MINES obey strategies? Oh, they cannot. But with these changes maybe they could. Then you could have different models of mines with different strategies to attack larger ships first, unarmed ships, or whatever. Combined with special damage types this could be great fun.

Also, the effectiveness of mine sweepers could be changed. Even PDC has at least some chance to miss. Mine sweepers are always 100 percent effective, which is every bit as ridiculous as mines being 100 percent effective. A simple calculation of 'to hit' percentages based on your ship's sensors and any defenses the mine might have would be nice.

So, if MM would just add another set of options to the settings.txt file:

Mines Always Present := TRUE/FALSE
Percent of Mines Per Target := 5
Spaces Per Additional Mine := 100

First setting:
TRUE = The old mine rules are in effect.
FALSE = The new mine rules (using the additional settings) are in effect.

Second setting: default percent of mines chosen to 'attack' any given ship.

third setting: number of kt ship size that attracts an 'extra' mine, just like 'spaces per one' in the AI design file.

Mines could operate much more realistically with these settings. Among the nice side-effects of realistic mine attack would be that some mines would be left over even after successfully passing through a sector, so you would be uncertain of the mine content of that sector for a long time, especially if mine sweepers were not 100 percent effective. And a large number of small ships could actually 'distract' mines and make it easier to get some ships through.

[ August 08, 2002, 17:13: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]