SEV discussion: Mines

[Captain Kwok]

Here is another way mines could work:

The chances for a mine to hit a ship could be a simple chance formula where the maximum mines that can be in a sector represents a 100% hit chance for ships passing through. Each mine laid counts as a % of that total. For example with a 100 mine limit, if you had 20 mines that'd be 20% to hit chance for each ship passing through. So, say 50 ships were passing through in that example without minesweepers, perhaps 10 ships would take damage or be destroyed.

[LonghornXtreme]

My biggest grip about the mine system in se4 is that there's no way to detect the mine fields (correct me if i'm wrong... i'm still a newb)... This is a realism issue that doesnt' involve any micro short of researching the proper scanning tech...

Seems to me that any mine large enough to blow up a huge ship should be visible orbiting a planet... I DO like the idea of not being able to tell on the other side of a warp point but once in system or say once your reach the range of your scanners you should be able to spot which sectors have mines and the approximate size....

Just a little pet peeve about mines in SE4

[Grand Lord Vito]

Thats all you have to is put up a fast mine field in se4 and that should stop the AI cold

[Suicide Junkie]

Originally posted by Paul1980au:
Like an expanded experience type

Ie overall experience values
Experience vs fighters
Experience vs drones
Experience in mines (detection and laying and navigating around)
Experience in well other areas.

You might have 10 or so different experience breakdowns that would affect combat more so in an expanded way instead of just the basic fleet and ship experience.

This might also lead to new technology and alien technology types + new events ie ship was attacked by space pirates in fighters or drones (or oterhs) and has gained 3% experience points when in combat against fighters.

How about having [%experience%] as a legal variable to use in the equations?

It could affect anything any way you want, then.

[Fyron]

My biggest grip about the mine system in se4 is that there's no way to detect the mine fields (correct me if i'm wrong... i'm still a newb)... This is a realism issue that doesnt' involve any micro short of researching the proper scanning tech...

Actually there is never any way to detect mines in stock SE4, other than crashing into them. Some mods (such as Adamant) make mines detectable, with actual cloaking components instead of super-cloaking built into the hulls.

[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.