Laying Mines problem since new Patch, Bug?

Puke · #1 December 24th, 2000, 09:05 PM

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.

Puke · #2 December 24th, 2000, 09:34 PM

Argh! Puke SMASH!!

okay, hold on tight here, but when i was 'fixing' mine layers, sats, and fighter bays, i noticed that not only were the silly littel per game turn limits put on, but level 3 fighter bays which used to launch 2 fighters per combat turn, now (wait for it.. wait for it..) only launch one!

now, i can see some arguements both for and against this. either way though, its a fairly major component change and it would have been nice to have some sort of notice for it.

on the whole though, this has been a great patch. dont get me wrong, MM has been doing a superb job overall. and things like this.. well, things like this probably help to bolster the Mod'er community

Daynarr · #3 December 25th, 2000, 12:31 AM

quote:
okay, hold on tight here, but when i was 'fixing' mine layers, sats, and fighter bays, i noticed that not only were the silly littel per game turn limits put on, but level 3 fighter bays which used to launch 2 fighters per combat turn, now (wait for it.. wait for it..) only launch one!

Well, didn't look at .txt files for that one, but in the Version history file for latest patch that was mentioned.

quote:
on the whole though, this has been a great patch. dont get me wrong, MM has been doing a superb job overall. and things like this.. well, things like this probably help to bolster the Mod'er community

LMAO.

On the side note, when you deploy units in combat, all the units deployed RETURN to their carrier after combat.
However, I haven't tried that on mines, just satellites.

Trachmyr · #4 December 26th, 2000, 10:06 AM

Another possible solution to balancing mines is to see how many mines detect the enemy vessels... based upon Ship size, number in fleet (&sensors/ecm/cloak). Thus only a % of mines will "engage" the ship/fleet... they will attack untill enemy is deystroyed... and you won't know if the field is completely clean.

Trachmyr

Puke · #5 December 26th, 2000, 10:23 AM

yes, it does seem that I didnt pay enough attention to the Version history..

as for the percent of mines engaging based on size and cloak, thats awesome. It would also mean that you could put things like sensors on mines, and actual mine 'design' would not be quite as rhetorical as it is now.

Puke · #6 December 27th, 2000, 01:11 AM

on how mines are triggered, the general concencus that i have read on the board, and what i have seen with smaller fleets, has been that when a field is triggered, mines attack one ship till it dies, then go for another.

mostly people complain about this, but I dont mind too much really. the odd thing is, that i just plowed a fleet of dreadnaughts through a hostile warp point (okay, it wasn't to bright of me). six bought the farm, and about 7 others were damaged rather heavily. the fact that some were damaged without being destroyed makes me wonder if something changed in the new Version, or if we have had a major missconception about whats going on. or if i have been missunderstanding the entire discussion.

Instar · #7 December 27th, 2000, 04:28 AM

Well, if you want to put mines down, you'll have to put more mine layers on your ship. (Again, the tradeoff, more layers, or more cargo?)
However, I think that the layers should be able to launch more than 1 a turn. Thats silly.