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"]



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--
"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:

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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.

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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.

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