Looking for comments on possible mine suggestion.

[geoschmo]

Mines are a sore subject for many people. There is much disagreement over them whether they are too hard or too easy. Everybody has their pet idea for changes to make them better. I have one I haven't heard anyone propose before and wanted to get some opinions on it.

First of all, let me tell you that the next patch will address the mine bug that allows you to get past the 100 mines per sector limit. I am not a big fan of the 100 mines per sector limit, I think it is too arbitrary. But it is there, and since it is there I have been persuaded that it not a good thing for it to be bypassed. Hopefully the fix in the next patch will correct it so that it cannot.

My biggest problem with the 100 mine limit is that it severly marginalizes mines. They are good for a while, but after not to long the other side gets enough minesweepers to handle 100 mines (not really difficult at all), and then they become useless.

So my suggestion is, leave the 100 mine limit per sector in place, but make the minesweeper component be destroyed in the process of detonating the mines. Not the minesweeping ship itself, just the sweeper component.

This would make the mines more useful in that they wouldn't be able to stop a marauding fleet, but they would be able to slow it down. The attacker would be forced to wait a few turns and repair the damage to the sweepers before moving on to the next planet, or keep several repair ships in the fleet, enough to repair all the sweeper comps as they are used up. And no more tearing through an entire system in one turn glasssing all the planets on the fly, unless you have sweepering capacity for several hundred mines in the fleet.

Comments?

Geoschmo