Mines could add a lot of game depth

[Eisenhans]

No strategy game like SE 4 can do or should do without mines. Mines are a cost efficient way of keeping an nme at distance, so it simply is not realistic to do without any.
Space mines as used in SE 4can be thought of to resemble sea mines, of which there are quite a variety around with any degree of sophistication from a powder keg that will blow up only when a ship bumps right into it to wonders of modern technology that can be programmed to only react to a certain frequeny (for example mine sweeping sonar) or a certain noise or a certain ship size or whatever. Some even do not explode themselves but rather fire small torpedoes at the ship in question. There are many levels of stealth to be found as well.
The tech-thread for mines in SE 4 though is a rather primitive.
IMHO the whole game could gain a lot of depth with more differentiated mines. To start with

Mines I: they should simply explode whenever ANY ship hits them – even your own.

Mines II: would be able to distinguish between you and anyone else without making up for
changing alliances. They would just blow up anything that is not yours.

Mines III: could act much like the mines do now, but maybe have a higher range in tactical
combat

Mines IV: could be able to react to hull type: some for Colony Ships, some for Carriers and so
forth.

Mines V would then be able to distinguish between certain designs deciding on components
on the ship. Like they blow up that nasty mine sweeper or ships with weapons or ships with cloaking devices...

Another feature I would like to see is that mines get old. Once in space for some time they just can’t keep up with a changing environment and become less and less able to distinguish between friend and foe. Maybe they could even start to float someplace else. So in an area heavily mined there should be a real mine threat to anybody. (In fact any serious damage done to ships in the past 20 years by mines was done by leftovers from WW2)

This is no top priority thing(although I would like to have it tomorrow!) but rather a project for some time in the future. Anyway it would require a way better AI to deal with that.

Is there any way to get this done by modding? I had a look but couldn’t figure it out.

What do you think? ( Comments by people who do not out of principle condemn mines especially welcome!)

[rdouglass]

I seem to remember someone created a mod for SE3 that had mines that just did specific damage. I think it was similar to Ionic and Tachyon weapons in the sense that they damaged either weapons or engines. They were cool, but I never used 'em.

Any SE3 players out there remember those???

[Daynarr]

It should be possible to do in SE4 as well. Remember that you get to design mines here! So far you only put a specific number of warheads on them and that's it. But, you could design new type of warhead that only destroys engines, weapons or shield generators and make new types of mines. AI could be able to use them too with some changes to design files.
Important note: if you plan to make new warheads, make sure that they all belong to separate, unused components family and weapons family.

[Baron Munchausen]

We've considered this in the beta forums. It's not likely to work, though I don't know if anyone has actually tried it. Remember, mines keep attacking until the ships are destroyed or the mines run out. So, one ship would wipe out a minefield of hundreds of anti-engine or anti-shield mines just like a colony ship takes out aregular minefield if the warheads aren't powerful enough to destroy the colony module. They'd just keep blowing up until they were gone, doing no more damage to the ship. Mines will have to be changed before any of those cool variations are possible.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 12 January 2001).]

[Sinapus]

Maybe they should install debris fields, since that's what the AI keeps placing in my warp points when they try to go through.

(Actually, I've had the AI start getting rather nasty with minesweeping. They still don't send minesweepers in as fleets, but those dreadnought-sized sweepers can take huge chunks out of my minefield. I think the race attacking me could have done more if they'd not been at war with the 2nd place race (the Eee) as well.)

["...have successfully swept 110 mines." "DAMN"]



------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough
to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a
pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors
come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless
eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your
associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[Nyx]

quote:

---

Mines I: they should simply explode whenever ANY ship hits them – even your own.

Mines II: would be able to distinguish between you and anyone else without making up for
changing alliances. They would just blow up anything that is not yours.

---

Since we already have incredibly complex Friend-or-foe technology today, there's no reason to propose a more advanced civiliation would lose it. The devices are small enough to fit into cell phones and cheap enough to build at home with parts from Radio Shack (my step father did it so I know this first hand) so you can't say that they wouldn't put them into mines for cost reasons either.

Heck, there's already a guy who expects to have reprogrammable motion sensors only twice the size of dust particles in production in 2002, I think that the mines of a space-faring race could be designed to know which ships to attack.

Now, if you wanted to include this feature, a great way to do it would be to up the size of all mine bodies by 1kt, and add a mine computer module with those limits you speak of. The lowest Version would only cost 5 minerals, the next, 25, and the rest could be decently expensive. This way you might have a reason to make cheap ones if you needed them in a real hurry, but in reality, almost everyone could afford the good mines.

------------------
Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[Eisenhans]

Nyx!

I like the idea of incorporating a computer!
It could be a cheap thread of it's own or in Computers.

As for "we already have... why should they lose it": Because it's a game and it would add to it! There's other technology that shouldn't need to be researched first by a technologically advanced civilisation( what makes a ship training facility such a new thing to invent? Or: why do you have to do research first to be able to build some crappy mine?). But that doesn't matter becaause the more needs to be researched the better.

[HAL]

I generally don't like mines in SEIV. They take a lot of work, and even though the AI is currently dealing with them very well in my game, the general consensus is that the AI doesn't handle them well.

However, changes that I would like to see to mines are as follow:

1) Minefield decay. It is amazing how this large group of mines doesn't float away or disperse.

2) Mines with a hit chance on a ship base on the density of the field. One of the current, problems is that ships entering a minefield don't even get the chance to avoid the mines. Given the size of the tactical space this not a good thing.


------------------
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Eisenhans]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Daynarr:
...But, you could design new type of warhead that only destroys engines, weapons or shield generators and make new types of mines. AI could be able to use them too with some changes to design files.
Important note: if you plan to make new warheads, make sure that they all belong to separate, unused components family and weapons family.

---

I'm just not sure: is the ability to distinguish friend from foe built in the mine or into the warhead? I didn't find it yet.
Designing new warheads that destroy specific components is not that hard, but I would rather like to see mines that just sit there and do nothing UNTIL a ship with a certain component or of a certain size comes along and then wipe it out completely.
That way some warships could move through a warp point without any problems and just when you thought it was save your troop transport or colony ship that was following gets blown to bits.
I'm happy to see that there are more people around who like mines. From some other threads on the topic I got the ipression that we would be a minority.

[Barnacle Bill]

Naval mines in real life are already far more sophisticated than "bump into them and they blow up". I see no reason why anybody would make a mine like that in the distant future. Also, space is much more vast than the surface of the ocean. Such a mine would not work in space, even with a proximity fuse, except where there is a pretty small area that ships would need to go through (like low orbit around a planet or a warp point). This is actually the case with naval mines in real life. Turning them loose in open ocean just creates a random hazard which is not very effective as a barrier (although the knowledge that someone has done it tends to deter commercial shipping from risking the area). To form an effective barrier they have to be placed in a channel or harbor.

I think that realistic space mines would be sort of a one-shot "bomb-pumped" weapon (i.e. directional) with a lot of damage. It has to be directional to avoid fratricide. It would have to use passive sensors only, and have a computer to run it which could tell friend from not-friend. "Not-friend" is not necessarily the same as foe, as the mine would probably bounce an IFF off anything it had decided to fire at and fire immediately if the correct response was not received. It would only engage (i.e. bounce an IFF off of) targets within effective range. The mines within a field could be considered linked by some sort of highly directional low-powered tight-beam comm system which would let them cooperate in terms of which mine fires first at a given target.

With the above in mind, mines should only work two places. One of those is warp points. The mines would be considered to be placed at firing range from the warp point and would fire at ships entering or exiting the sector via the warp point. If defenders other than mines are present, the mines would still fire before combat is initiated (with no combat if the mines eliminate the intruder). If defenders other than mines are present and the attacker enters from another sector in the same system rather than via the warp point, combat occurs. In that case, the mines do not show up on the map to the attacker but fire if the attacker's ships come close enough to the square they occupy. That square would be chosen by the defender prior to the attacker's ships being placed on the tactical map, with a given range of the warp point square. If nothing but mines from the mine-owner's side is present, and non-friendlies enter the sector from another sector within the system and don't try to exit via the warp point, the mines do nothing (assume space is vast and they don't come near the warp point unless they intend to use it).

The other place I would allow them is at planets. Here they would be assumed to be located in a square adjactent to the planet. If a non-friendly enters the sector but has no interaction with the planet, and no other defenders are present, the mines do nothing. If the non-friendly attempts to colonize the mined planet, resupply at the mined planet, drop or pick up cargo, repair, retrofit, scrap, etc... at the mined planet, and no other defenders (i.e. things friendly to the mines) are present, then the mines fire. If other defenders are present, the mines are placed in a square adjacent to the mined planet (mine owner's choice, placed before the other side is placed on the tactical map) and only fire at non-friendlies which come in range. Again, they do not appear on the map to the non-friendlies. If nothing but mines from the mine-owner's side is present, and non-friendlies enter the sector and don't try to interact with the mined planet, the mines do nothing (assume space is vast and they don't come near the planet unless they intend to interact with it).


In the above context, minesweeper components would be considered a specialized point defense system which detects the hostile mine IFF pulse, uses it to locate the mine and quickly shoots at the mine before it can detonate. If you think the mine design would be sophisticated enough to put the IFF tranciever remote from the weapon (it would, in real life), then assume the minesweeper component includes a short-range sensing system which detects the mine despite its stealth, but only detects them at the mine's firing range, and gets off the first shot while the mine is processing transmittal of the IFF pulse. Also keep in mind that some simplification would be required for playability.

Cloaked ships would not set off mines unless one of the mines in the minefield (i.e. part of the same "group" of mines) has an installed sensor component capable of detected them.

There might be an option to set up the minefield to fire without trying to IFF first. Assume minesweepers still work because they have bigger & more sophisticated sensors & computers that let them still get off the first shot. This option then just lets your minefield work against your allies if you want it to (of course they would get angry...).