Laying Mines problem since new Patch, Bug?

[Mayaca]

Greets..

I have noticed since the latest patch I can no longer lay bunches and clumps of mines in the strategic turn. For example, i'll bring my Minesweeper/layer to a warp point, this one only has one mine layer component on it, and when I go to lay mines, it will only let me lay one mine a turn. This prevents the wholesale quick mining of warp points or planets for defense which, while possibly balancing, I don't care for and don't agree with. How long is a turn supposed to be? A month or two? I fail to believe that with one mine layer component I can only lay one mine a month, that just doesn't make sense. Please put it back to the way it was.

[Tomgs]

Its not a bug its as intended.

Quote from the Beta patch thread:
14. Changed - There is now a limit per game turn in the number of fighters\
satellites\mines that can be launched. There is no limit to
the number of units that can be recovered. The Unit Transfer
window has been modified to display the numbers that can be
launched in a turn per ship.
NOTE: All 3 levels of mine layers, fighter bays, and satellites
bays have been changed to that they can only launch 1
unit per game turn or combat turn. (This was to make it
a little more interesting)
End quote.

This can be tweaked in my game I changed it so that a level 2 can launch 2 per turn and a level 3 can launch 3 This helps a bit but its still a lot slower than it was. The slower deployment helps the AI the most because it uses ship sizes like destroyer ect. to deploy instead of transports like I usually do so it doesn't carry hundreds of units around to deploy. At least they didn't limit the number of troops deployed from a troop transport per turn.

You can make the changes in the data\component.txt file to change the number of units launched per turn but you have to edit each component seperately.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 23 December 2000).]

[Puke]

I have gotta agree. most laying type things let you lay x number of things per tactical phase, not game turn. It might be OK if a level 1 layer let you lay 1 per tactical phase and 2 let you lay 2. there might not have been cause for a change, since this would not be very limiting even.

there can be a tactical combat for every movement point of a ship, with 30 turns (at default) of mine laying per combat.. or the new system for simutanious allows 1 combat per 5 days, whatever that comes out to. probably something like 5 combats per turn or so. so 5*30=150 mines per turn from a level 1 mine layer.

I think if mines need balancing, the answer is to make warheads less damaging, or do a random ammount of damage (ohh, it blew up too far from the ship). or to increase the power of sweepers. to make mines ineffective to deploy in order to counter the AI not treating them right is just friggin lame and it hoses up multiplayer games.

[Barnacle Bill]

There are separate entries for how many units a component can launch per tactical turn and how many it can launch per game turn. You can probably set the limit per game turn so high that it effectively works just like before the patch, but there could be a hard-coded limit on the value the game will work with. I agree that it makes no sense the way it is since the patch, so I plan to change it when I install the patch (after finishing my current game).

Why doesn't it make sense? OK, if you string sectors with enemy units consecutively a ship could fight as many battles as it has stategic movement points. For a Battlecruiser or smaller with 6 quantum engines and a Solar Sail 3, belonging to a "Propulsion Experts" race, that is 13 battles in a single strategic turn. If it has one component which can launch 1 unit per tactical turn, at 30 tactical turns per battle that means 390 units can be launched during the 1 month strategic turn. So, if it can launch 390 units per month under combat conditions why would it only be able to launch 1 sitting by itself for the entire month under non-combat conditions. It just doesn't make sense for the "per game turn" limit to be less than 390 times the "per tactical turn" limit.

[Baron Munchausen]

Gentelemen! (Err, and ladies if present? )

As I have pointed out too many times to recall now, the "balance" problem with mines is not the number that can be deployed, nor even the relative ineffectivness of minesweepers. It is the INFALLABLE HIT of every single mine. Mines never miss. As things are now, when you enter a minefield you get hit again and again until you are destroyed or the mines run out. This is beyond ridiculous. The one weapon system that will probably be impossible in "real" space warfare is mines, but even if they are possible they sure aren't going to be 100 percent effective. The vastness of space makes the concept of a mine very difficult to implement. It's very hard to imagine ships "accidently" hitting them, and if they have to detect ships and seek then they have the same chance to hit or miss as other weapons. If we want even a trace of realism with mines, we need to make them have a less than 100 percent chance to hit.

[Daynarr]

I agree on that one Baron. Also putting some random damage on those hits would be good too, but not essential.

[Psitticine]

I agree with all that plus I'd like to point out how much more interesting it'd be if you didn't know for a fact that a minefield is gone once you made it through. As it stands, if you survive, you must have had all the mines blow as you moved through.

Logically, all you'd know is that you cleared one path and if the mines drift about at all, it'd close up again before another fleet could pass through it. Wouldn't it be a lot more interesting as well as realistic to not really know if a minefield is gone until the minesweepers had been through?

A reasonable fix might be to have a percentage of mines able to "engage" an opponent. The higher the overall number of mines, the higher the density, so the greater number of mines would be found along any path cutting through the field. Even if the auto-hit for mines is kept, adding a random varience to this percentage would still generate some, well, randomness.

[Sabre21]

The idea that a minefield continues to go off untill the ship is destroyed or the field is used up is not really such a far fetched idea. We must go beyond the thinking that all mines are the dumb ones that were used over the past several wars. There are mines today that can detect hovering helicopters and then launch a fragmentation device into the air in the direction of the chopper..then there are others that fire anti tank missiles at approaching threats..most people think mines need to have some kind of contact before they explode, and while most of them do, many of them do not. The anti helicopter mines have been in use since the mid eighties. Today the tactical internet between combat platforms is the new thing, and it is not hard to imagine a couple centuries from now that smart mines would be able to "talk" to each other, not only to determine friend from foe, but to attack targets until the target is destroyed, even being able to process battle damage assesments and pass this info back to a friendly HQ. Even having the individual mines reposition to cover holes from previous breaching attempts seems logical. From a play balancing point of view this may not seem entirely fair, but from a realistic one, its perfectly logical.

[AJC]

I tend to agree - tactical and strategic needs more separation when it comes to launching units.. There should not be a restriction on the amount launched when dealing with the long term strategic time scale of the game, strategically launching units should not be limited.

[This message has been edited by AJC (edited 24 December 2000).]

[Puke]

first off, i agree that peoples thinking on what mines are is a bit constrained. we are doing lots of crazy stuff with them now, and the can be an unbalancing aspect of warfare. it remains ballanced since everyone has them though. sort of like mutual assured distruction, but not so nasty. now, to the rant:

did some testing here in a simultanious movement game. combats seem to occur once per movement point per ship/fleet per turn.

so for arguement, with 20 ships per side not grouped in fleets, with 10 mp each, thats 400 combats at 30 phases each, is 1200 possible mines, and as far as i can tell the formula is infinitly extendable. as far as im concerned thats all keen, but it means that mine / fighter deployments should not be limited as long as the unit has at least 1 movement point left.

I mean, look at a modern air craft carrier. it can launch its fighters pretty danm fast. I think something on the order of one every 30 seconds, or 2 minutes, or something equally mean. they tend to have 1 lift, and 1 runway, and alot of storage space (ok, im simplifying). but MM would have us believe that 25th century carriers or mine layers will need one lift and one runway for EVERY DARN FIGHTER unless they only want to launch one per MONTH. come on now...

I also noticed something else interesting, in a simutanious (i'll spell that differently each time, thank you) movement game, the disposable emergency speed booster rocket things seem to do two things for you. jack and spit. I think jack left town, and spit's probably edited for television. anyone able to make them, i dont know.. work? when you use them, they are not used until the turn is computed, so you plot your movement with your standard speed, then they get used, then the turn ends.. then your back to standard speed, without ever getting to plot movement at the higher speed. and as far as the test above went, they did not even factor into the number of times that combat occured in a turn. whoo hoo.