Laying Mines problem since new Patch, Bug?

Daynarr · #1 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 · #2 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 · #3 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 · #4 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 · #5 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.

Noble713 · #6 December 27th, 2000, 06:52 AM

I'm pretty sure mines pick random ships to damage, as I have had a bunch of smashed up ships sitting on a warp point waiting for repair far too often.

Barnacle Bill · #7 December 28th, 2000, 12:27 AM

A mine in space would not work like an old-fashioned naval mine, exploding when something hit it. Space being vast, the chances that something will run over your mine is remote. Even with a proximity fuse, the warhead would have to be huge to cause any damage at all. So, for mines to be realistic in space, they would have to be one of two things:

1) A stealthed seeker that waited to activate until it detected a target in range. Some modern naval mines are this already.

2) A disposable (bomb-pumped) one shot non-seeking weapon that fired at the first target which came in range (or perhaps held fire once the target is in range until the range to target starts increasing).

In scenario 1, point defense would work and you'd need a bunch of them to be effective (enough to saturate PD).

In scenario 2, you could postulate that the bomb-pumping the weapon makes it more powerful than even massive base-mounted weapons. You'd avoid having to play out the interaction with PD. However, it could still miss and the target's ECM would help it miss (you'd need to add combat sensors in your mine design).

In either scenario, you'd have the possibility of ships coming through the sector without getting within range. Again, space being vast, the chance of a ship coming within range of even one mine as it passed through the minefield sector would be remote. The only way to deal with that is to make mines a warp point-only weapon which attacks only enemy ships using the warp point (either direction). Then you can postulate the mines are all set up within range of the warp point. Note that this does not save the concept of a simple explosive mine. If they were all close enough to the warp point to damage something coming through, the first mine that went off would either detonate or destroy all the rest. They'd all have to go off together, probably over-killing the first target and letting the rest of the enemy fleet come through unharmed.

Using the warp point-only idea in combination with scenario #2 would make mines work more or less like they do now, in warp point sectors. However, you'd still need to address the interaction between the mine's fire control system (scanners, combat sensors, etc..) and the target's passive defenses (ECM, cloak, etc...). Cloaked ships that could not be detected by the systems installed in the mines would simply not set off any mines.

So, what is mine sweeping in that case? Probably some sort of very short-ranged decoy that goes through the warp point first to set off the mines.