It's hard for scouts to set mines off unless it is a vasari minefield in which case it is then probable. Scouts being so small and fast are effective when at taking mines out in clusters when you build about 30 of them. Unfortunately they need to be told to move from cluster to cluster with auto attack on or they will just ignore them. But back to the point no I don't believe that would be the right thing to do and make them immune to mines.

EDIT: actually no on second thought I think they should be immune. The only argument would be the Advent's mines are "homing"....

Or how about instead of just being immune, mines can ONLY deal shield damage to scouts.  It'd at least make them somewhat vulnerable so you can't just use them to detonate all mines in a still active enemy territory b/c they'd just get picked off by something else in the well easily right after.

I agree that scouts should be immune as well.

I need to check how the mines detonate later. If it's how I think, then making them ignore scouts isn't feasible. Generally, the valid targets for abilities and such are the entity types (frigate, capital, fighter, planet, etc). It doesn't break down on a by-ship basis, so anything that can target a frigate can target anything from a colony ship to a heavy cruiser. So if mines exploding is done through an ability (valid target enters range sort of thing), then I doubt excluding scouts can happen.

It's a good idea (and "scouts should be immune" implies they trigger the mines but take no damage, quite a bit different than "scouts shouldn't trigger mines" ), I'm just worried about the engine limitation. Will have to peek at the mine entities.

Well, I double checked on the mines and they do indeed detonate as an ability:

targetFilter
    numOwnerships 1
    ownership "Enemy"
    numObjects 4
    object "Frigate"
    object "CapitalShip"
    object "PlanetModule"
    object "StarBase"

Which basically means there's no way to single out scouts as not triggering them, because scouts are part of the Frigate object

Well, here's the sucky part. The Vasari and Advent mines have their own "SpaceMine" entity type, which means it should be a valid object for a TargetFilter if there was an ability made for the scouts themselves to diffuse the mines (which I think would solve a lot of issues).

You could just attach a damage-over-time effect to the mine detection ability (and maybe limit the number of mines hit by it so a single scout wouldn't be able to knock out a big stack of mines too quickly) that only targets the SpaceMine entity... but the TEC mines are Orbital Structures, not SpaceMines, so that whole idea falls apart.

It's kind of a shame, because to me making the scouts themselves disarm the mines would be the most ideal solution. You'd have to use them as forward mine sweepers, and if it takes a few seconds to destroy all the mines in their detection radius, the enemy has a chance to kill the scouts and at the same time your fleet doesn't have to babysit the mine fields themselves.

Yeah, to turn the TEC mines into SpaceMine they would not be able to be built the way they are now, it would need either a building to deploy them or a ship. I also did make the assumption that SpaceMine would be a valid object in a target filter for an ability, since it is a separate entities and so far every other entity can go in there.

Because currently it's impossible to sweep mines without intense micromanagement.

Have you not run into >3k mines per gravity well yet?

Scouts also need for their detection range to be increased.

My personal theory for why "realistically" scouts wouldn't detonate the mines is that they're traveling fast enough to 1) not detonate the mines or 2) the mines are smart enough to know even if they detonate on a scout they won't catch it.

I base this off mines not detonating on fighters/bombers, and the scout is the third fastest unit in the game (barring Vasari speed buffs or Kodiak's ability), although it is admittedly much slower than fighters/bombers, so it makes a moderate amount of sense from a realism standpoint as well.

But, basically, scouts detect mines, so why would a scout run over one?

Explain to me how being immune to mines is any different than "dodging" them.

Maybe we're talking about two different types of immune, here.  All I'm saying is that scouts shouldn't detonate mines.  I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't take any damage from them.

If you'll read up, you'll see that I said that if another ship is accompanying the scout, it should detonate the mine.  If a scout is in the blast radius, it should most certainly take damage.

Again, how is not detonating them different from "dodging" them?  From a gameplay perspective, at least.  From my perspective, it allows approximately the same solution to be implemented with less coding.

I said they should go boom-if another ship is present to detonate the mine(s) in question.

I think we can all agree on that last point.

Right -- avoiding minefields and being immune to them are two completely different things.  Avoiding them means you can only pass if you can find a safe path AROUND the minefield or clear a path through it.  Being immune means you can ignore it and charge straight through it with no delay or other penalty, which is absurd.

I agree the mines need work (See also other threads on this subject), but granting immunity to certain frigates is not the solution.