Once had an opponent take an egg, a small fleet, and a few ruiners and run in behind my lines leaving lots of mines after every jump.  After jumping around for a while he managed to take out one planet with the egg because my fleet was so tied up trying to maneuver around the mines.  He lost ultimately because he focused too much on that micro while he let his econ flounder.. but for a while I was really annoyed and distracted.

Doesn't the advent carrier also function as mobile mine layer also?  It can't deploy as many mines as the ruiner, but it can field 3 squads at a time.

That sounds very nice on paper, but building mine layers drains serious am.  One squadron is already a bit much.

I believe Ruiner should be changed a little bit. The way it is now, it simply isn't really worth having.
For example, the ruiner could 'throw' a cloud of mines some distance away instead of around himself, like Kortul throws Volatile Nanites. Or the mines could do 10% damage until they're fully activated. Or they could cause 10% explosion damage when destroyed.

Right now, ruiner's mobility is quite useless really.

I don't want the damage buffed just so the mines are useful.
Mines are fine - if you don't pay attention, you go puff.

Something has to be done about the Ruiner though, because it is only marginally useful on the offensive.

In vs. AI games I play with friends, I find that it's usually easier to send a few Ruiners if my ally needs defensive support and is far away, instead of assembling a small fleet to babysit them with.  The resource savings are questionable, but the Ruiners require less micro in this case since you can just deploy a few clouds of mines and then get back to paying attention to your own matters.

You can use advent mines using the their drone host carriers or the hangar bays.  In the squadron selection you will have an extra build option for homing mines.  These act just like normal strike craft except they have no weapon and have the ability to deploy in an area to create a small field of homing mines.  Advent mines do extreme damage against a single target and minor damage to a small area around the explosion.  Vasari mines do 750 damage to all caught within the explosion.  What makes advent mines so incredibly useful is the fact that they have a rather large homing range.  A mine is only really useful if it actually detonates.  In this case advent mines have the greatest chance of detonating since once a target flies remotely close to them they will start moving toward that target to explode.  I'd have to say advent mines have about....perhaps twice as large a chance as finding a target than any of the other mines.  I've seen pirates go UNDER my vasari mines which drove me nuts.  TEC mines have a similar performance as the vasari ones.

How about merging in the role of structure killing with the Ruiner? The ruiner is a ship that houses the most potential explosives of any frigate. The Vasari pride themselves on the enslavement of other races, so a slave crew with a few masters can manage the ship. See where I'm going with this? Take the Ruiner, attach a thick front armor drill, prime the mines INSIDE the ship, go full speed hardcore into a structure. Sure, you lose a few slaves, but you get rid of a lot of enemies!

Sure, you would have to run the ships directly into danger in order to deal damage. This means you'd likely need more frigates than other races to accomplish the same thing. You'd also need new ships for every target you're trying to kill. But it's not AS severe as things are currently, and the vasari have a great ability to scavenge the scrap.

shield mitigation, yes...armor, no.

i think theres a flawed assumption here that ruiners are actually supposed to do something besides lay mines. it isn't. its the vasari means for laying explosive and gravity mines. they just chose to do it with a cruiser. less fleet supply spent on your minelayer than, say, the advent, but then again less flexible too.

and advent homing mines do 1050 to their primary +150 to surrounding.

mines arent an offensive tool. if you want a mine that flys towards its target, buy an assailant.

the intent is to have a convenient method to hostiley desploy mines, while either running or just do it off the side in the enemy's gravwell so it interrupts their fleet activities. carriers attract to much attention.

and whats so great about homing mines (require sacrifice of carrier/squadrons)? hell, what do you have to complain about? at least it lets you deploy mines in hostile wells.

Using them to block off plausible paths for reinforcements while you're raiding, dropping mines to buy you a bit more time to deploy a base in the fringe of a grav well, and so forth might be considered offensive.