Laying Mines problem since new Patch, Bug?

[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).]