SEV discussion: Mines

[Arkcon]

Hmmm... I think we may be missing something here. What is the purpose of mines, in a game, and not a simulation?

I understand it to be a sort of random threat to opponents, something to limit our ability to just go wherever we want with our massive fleets.

Some of the irritations for people is the "all or nothing" aspect, so random misses would be a good addition. The tendency is for people to go as fast as possible to reach the 100 mine limit, and likewise to reach the 100 mine sweeping limit. This too perfect numbering system for mines could be countered by decaying minefields, but I think it would be cool if that were keyed to total amount there -- i.e. as you approach 100 mines, the decay increases, but you could conceivably have a few more than 100, for a short while. Then the decay falls off, so that a 20 mine field might lose one only every few turns.

Something I'd like to see is mines that have several components that are needed. The mine hull should have no cloaking, and no "magical only hit enemy" sensor. You drop these killer kegs of ball bearings in space, and anything that enters gets hit. You know where you've laid them, so you can avoid them. Any one can see them, so they can avoid them as well. But what if you have to cross that sector? Build sweepers and grit your teeth. My idea here is to return the mine field to a “do not touch” status, instead of “stealth death”.

Later research can give mine cloaking devices, and sensors that allow friendly ships past (gotta add an intel project to allow one of your ships to steal the codes and allow it's safe passage -- wouldn't that be a surprise, Bwa-ha-ha). The ultimate tech would be Von Neumann mines, that would use interstellar material to overcome the mines' decay rate, maybe even create more mines than were originally laid (you can call those self-replicating mines if you're a diehard Star TrekS9 fan)

Building on the DS9 angle, races should get angry if normal space lanes are blocked with mines, whereas if you mine a small planet of yours as a defensive measure, people might tolerate that to some degree.

[Q]

IMO mines are not that bad in SE IV after all and I would prefer not too complicated mines for SE V.
They should be cheap and deadly to an unprotected ship. But at highest tech level sweeping should be a reliable method to removed them.
What I would like to see are different "sweeping resistence" for mines: I SE IV every mine counts as 1 for sweeping. For SE V you could build advanced mines that count as 2 or more for sweeping. This makes sweeping more difficult. And if you have higher unit in space limits in SE V you can drop this 100 mines per sector limit, which is not good IMO.

[Paul1980au]

I think all very good ideas - perhaps expanding upon that mines to start with could only damage unshielded ships - shielded ships would be protected - but with mines blocking a warp point perhaps with ships coming through depending on the tech and the number start off with a 1% chance of hitting and then work up ?

Make cloak ships less likley to be hit by a mine ?

Perhaps some sort of new weapon (drones etc) that can be sent through warp points to scout around or sats that can be "pushed" through warp points to scout for mines first.

Id like to see mines still included but some targetted changes made to the mine system.

[se5a]

how about diferent mines for fighters and ships?
fighters should be able (with corect guns) to sweep antiship mines with a fair degree of sucsess, however they should have some trouble with the anti fighter mines.

I still thinking Captain Kwok's first idea is the best so far...
what if you had the mines moveing in a random pattern instead of the ships, with the ships moveing straight through?

[primitive]

Don't forget the game has to be playable, you micromanagement maniacs

My advise to MM: Keep the stock game simple (SEIV model is just fine), but keep as many options as possible open to the modders.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yes, mines should definitely do the damage type listed, and not have automatic shield-skipping.

[Aiken]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
My idea here is to return the mine field to a “do not touch” status, instead of “stealth death”.

Later research can give mine cloaking devices, and sensors that allow friendly ships past (gotta add an intel project to allow one of your ships to steal the codes and allow it's safe passage -- wouldn't that be a surprise, Bwa-ha-ha).

Actually in the real world mines are intended to be a "stealth death". Nobody will mine the ground and then establish a sign "Caution! Mines here!", unless you want to flood enemy with incorrect information.

Originally posted by Q:
What I would like to see are different "sweeping resistence" for mines: I SE IV every mine counts as 1 for sweeping. For SE V you could build advanced mines that count as 2 or more for sweeping. This makes sweeping more difficult. And if you have higher unit in space limits in SE V you can drop this 100 mines per sector limit, which is not good IMO.

Imo, the easiest way to fix minesweeping for se5 is to use ability Can sweep N kt of mines per use., instead of current Can sweep N mine per use.