Laying Mines problem since new Patch, Bug?

Psitticine · #1 December 24th, 2000, 02:49 AM

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 · #2 December 24th, 2000, 01:25 PM

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 · #3 December 24th, 2000, 08:50 PM

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).]

Puke · #4 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 · #5 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 · #6 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 · #7 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