Mines, Torpedoes, Constructors - annoying micro

"1) Create a toggle-able ship behavior to avoid mines. This makes the area around a mine a no-man's land, like the area between the surface of a planet and the region ships can traverse. If a player really wants to ram the minefield, he can just toggle off this setting."

This would be useless unless you had scouts in the fleet since they are the only ones who can see them...

"2) Give scouts a toggle-able minesweeper behavior, which causes them to automatically travel to reveal a mine in the local grav well when their current move orders have ended."

You don't need this when theres the explore autocast ability, its essentially the same thing.

I do agree with the SB constructor that is really annoying when theres no queue

Really?  While playing as Vasari vs. TEC, I could see enemy mines, I just couldn't clear them out because I don't have any scouts around.

Windmage - thanks for your input.

1) If the mines are invisible, this behavior would have no effect. But when visible - and they very often are - such a behavior could save a lot of tedium. It certainly couldn't hurt.

2)  It's hardly the same thing - explore autocast sends the scout to another gravity well and is useful for keeping your intel up to date and scouting the map at the beginning. Minesweeper autocast keeps the scout in the gravity well and is solely useful for taking some of the tedium out of clearing minefields after a battle.

Yeah that does make sense. But until they decide that should be added we just have to suffer I guess. The seeing mines is odd I thought they said they were not supposed to be seen without scouts.

I don't believe you should be able to just tell your ships to avoid mines.  That's a little unfair, since without having to make any effort, you nullify a minefield's effectiveness.  It would be like implementing an "avoid turrets" ability where ships would never approach within a turret's firing range.  Players should have to manually avoid mines.

However, the minesweper ability for scouts makes perfect sense.  Currently there is no unit for removing mines efficiently.  If the scout, which contrary to popular belief is in fact armed, had a "search and destroy" function that sought out mines in a particular gravity well and then detonated them, it would make scouts useful beyond simply saying "there is a mine, please do not step on it."

You're absolutely right about the starbase constructor, too.  I did the exact same thing and ended up having to decommission the resulting base because there was no cancel button and the damn thing was in the wrong gravity well.

The torpedo cruiser's weapons do need to not be an ability.  Even with just five of them, they were hard to manage, especially in the heat of battle.  Miraculously, none of them died; I kept the same five cruisers for the whole game.  One other thing about them is that the damage from their torpedoes seems not to take effect sometimes.  Has anyone else noticed that?

Great expansion so far!  Won a game as TEC, and plan to try all the other races, too--just to maintain competitive advantage, of course.

Yeah I could see all the mines. They looked "phased" but the icons were there and I could see the meshes. I was looking at mostly advent mines though that follow carriers around.

I agree with the starbase function you propose. Especially the ring that shows the range.  If we can't have a place starbase ability, at lest make it queue-able.

I think I'd prefer the mines hidden with less damage. I'd much rather prefer having an entire field completely invisible unless the scout finds it. But for what they are now, they do hella lots of damage and mixing that with complete invisibility would be too devestating.

Maybe a system where:

if scout is in grav well, icons show up,

If scout is within range mines are visible and destroyable

With no scout in grav well mines are completely hidden.

While I don't necessarily agree with you Slinky that mines become inneffective with that ability - since all the ability does is automate what you would tell your ships to do anyway - I do agree that it would take all the fun out of it. You build mines to make enemies go boom.

So I stand corrected. Changing ship behavior probably isn't the answer; changing mine behavior probably is.

There are a lot of ways to de-clunkify a lot of the aspects of mines (I'm thinking TEC mines here):

Making a more numerous/denser minefield with much weaker mines reduces the punishment of straying to the edge of the field while making laborious, hair-raising navigation of the field by passing between the mines impossible. Less micro with no serious game change!

I agree with tkins that invisible mines are really the way to go. Then fields aren't about denying space; a strategy could be to try to build your base defenses to channel the enemy fleet into your mines. You could de-activate the auto-detonation and wait for the enemy to be fully surrounded, then ... boom. "Say, didn't I leave a fleet somewhere around here?"

Now that would be cool. Provided you could change the behavior of all the mines at once, which I don't believe is possible right now.

In another thread, someone (sorry; don't remember who) spoke of giving capital ships mine-detecting abilities. This makes a lot of sense as scouts are spectacularly fragile. But allowing cappies to see mines right off the bat would make scouts pointless. A happy medium - add a tech that gives cappies limited mine-detection range, vastly inferior to that of the scout but enough to keep the fleet from being totally helpless in the absence of scouts.

Man, some very good points here! Overall I love the expansion. But I certainly would vote for invisible mines you can detonate on your own if you choose... This would add really deep strategy...

I would keep the mine detection ability with the scouts. You will have to add a couple of scouts to your main fleet additionally with scouts... well, scouting ahead... But they should be able to destroy mines, too. I mean, even if your mines don't cripple an approaching fleet because they destroy your mines, you will have slowed them down and got warned that they are approaching.

Thank you Ironclad! This expansion seems to give me what I have been missing so far...

Huh, does anyone know if your own exploding mines damage your fleet if it is too close?

I don't believe it does.  My constructor ships have been next to exploding mines and have not died (though they exploded soon after due to pirate raids).

Only 1 game so far.  Loved the SB, hated the mines.  Had one "empty well" beween him and me (uncolonizable).  There were uncountable mines there, right where you warp in.  Literally, I'd say 1000+ easy.  And having ALL mines show up on the list on the left was just crazy; even stacked in 10s, the list scrolled down forever.  There has to be some kind of limit on minefields.

I think scouts should just auto shoot/kill mines; minesweapers; that would solve a lot.  Not just one shot one kill, so you'd want about 5-25 in your fleet to sweep safely.  As it is now, I really dislike the mine combat, and the horrible clutter on the screen.  But that's what a beta is for I guess.

Hm, that would mean I could put my fleet into my mine field and let the enemy close in on me. His ships would be destroyed and mine would be fine... I don't know, but this does not sound good to me. If there is a good and fast way to implement it, then mines should affect all ships and structures around it....

I agree, having your fleet sitting in your own minefield without being harmed is not really fair, but having the mines do full damage to you would certainly also make you too vulnerable to "suicide scouts" (espl with minesweeper ability)...

"ha, twenty scouts against my 3 caps and supports in my minefield... eh.... run for it !"

Maybe have the "friendly fire" damage be not 100%, but 33% (actually your ships really should know where the mines are and can avoid these better)

1) Create a toggle-able ship behavior to avoid mines. This makes the area around a mine a no-man's land, like the area between the surface of a planet and the region ships can traverse. If a player really wants to ram the minefield, he can just toggle off this setting. 

i love that solution...  mines should have a no-go zone around them when detected , it's not relastic to have  a fleet move to the side of a minefield then some stray frigates making a gigantuous u-loop straight into a DETECTED minefield,   ofcourse this should only work on mines that have been detected, but this is not difficult to implement.

ofcourse there are alot of u saying it will be unfair,  but be  serious  if u detect a minefield  what do u do?  99% of the time u avoid it, it wouldt be realistic enough to have every ship think for himself and NOT get close to mines, just liek u orderd them to

just a reminder,   mines are not meant to kil fleets  yes they kil, no you dont use them for that,  u try to bottleneck them where u want,  

example: you put a row of mines on places where u dont want the enemy to be, next  u open up a hole where u want your enemy to go to i.e. repair bay range,   the mines are there to be sure your enemy won't run around palces u dont want them to.  cuase if they do, thy'll get punished ,  badly, this way  u can control a battle and theoretically lure enemy ships to a "safe" spot, wich is actually meant as your bottleneckwhere ure fleet can take aim, and preferably are in range of a repair bay

making a mine-avoidance-system wil probably wil be one of the most user-friendly fixes that can be made atm..., for theres little you can do about stray ships,

example:  u see a light frigate heading for a minefield just deteced by your scout,  u quickly order it to move back

result: light frigate wil make a huge u-turn, probably large enough to go hafway into the minefield,  losing u the frigate...  now this was just an exampel with 1 frigate, little you can do about it,   now with over 100 frigates in your army your gonna lose a whole bunch of healthpoints just becuase ure ships r .. easysaid..  to stupid to make some evasive maneuvres, they just use regular movement

Navigation-officer: Commander! our scouts have spotted mines in the planet's inner grav-well!

Commander: Halt immediatly and turn us around, regroup the fleet in the outer grav well afterwards.

Navigation-officer: aye aye Sir!

Commander: Report

Hoshiko Captain:  Commander, we lost 1/4 of our light frigate group Alpha in the minefield, They violated your orders and tried making a sharp U-turn. in addition, the other haf that made it out will have to retreat, they have taken to much damage from the mines

Commander: Bastards... they should've known we arent designed for sharp u-turns. Spread the word, the attack has been blunted, We have failed......

2 months later:

Sir we just received word from mars, Earth has been destroyed there werent enough light frigates to counter the vasari Bombardment

LoL

So we got Sins RUWANDA, Africans spilling mines on my corn fireld, verion now.

i agree scouts should have a mine sweeping ability. every game i have played with the comp on hard they just cover every gravity well in 100's and 100's of mines. the entire gravity well is just dots of mines. after you take the planet it can take 10-15 mins just to clear the mines from the area and that is far from fun. i think the vasari mines are way over powered to. just jumping in i would often lose half my fleet or more to mines even with 10-15 scouts.   

I think they need to add a new ability (Actually 2) to counter mines.

First, I'd add an ability to celio cruisers (and other races equals) that makes mines self destruct.  Make it an autocast ability.  You would use Celios to escort your fleet and keep viewed mines from messing them up.  Since Celios dont detect mines, they would be useless without scouts.

I'd also add a new strikecraft ability/new strikecraft type to capships.  These would by antimine fighters.  They would have a small detection range, and would try to attack mines across the gravwell.  I think a new strikecraft type would be best.  These would detect mine at short range, and clear them.  Since these strike craft were basically recon fighters make them fast like fighters, but with a weak gun (With bonus against mines).  To keep it simply, a toggle could be added to bombers/fighters that would allow them to see mines, and prioritize them too.

I do like the idea of having another support ship do the de-mining, on the tec i would add it to hosinkos since they do produce robots.

The auto-avoidance would have its benifits as the would be able only to go where you want them,but if the fleet has to traverse the mine field i would like to see them forced to slow down.( I have creates a planet with mines all the way around the grav well and many pirates fly straight through faster than they can detonate, meaning they dont always set them off.)

There's also annoying micro when you're placing the mines, at least with the Vasari (haven't tried the other races yet).  Right now I just settle for massive shift-rightclicking to make the mine-placer fly repeatedly around the area I want mines to be placed in.  It seems like there must be a better way.  What I'd really like (in my dreams) is to be able to draw the contour of the mine-field and have the cruiser automatically keep it filled with mines (auto-replacing ones that go off to destroy an incoming fleet).  But I'd settle for a queueable "place mines within the target circle" ability.     (on the other hand, having the *option* to fly through enemy territory, leaving a trail of mines as you go, is rather nice)

Lots of great responses.

Shadow_of_Light, your post makes a lot of sense. It's just annoying to watch your ships die to mines because you didn't (or in some cases, in spite of your best) annoyingly micromanage.

lamdaman: Good post. You touch on an issue that runs, perhaps, a bit deeper.

Advent mines are a bit different; this post adresses TEC and Vasari mines. 

ANNOYING MINE PLACEMENT MICRO:

As this thread has established, mines are about denying area from an enemy (unless a future builds makes invisibility an option). So what's important about a minefield isn't how densely the mines are spaced or whatever, its about where the edge of the field is. In many cases, you can make a completely hollow minefield and it will serve the same purpose. All that matters are the mines on the edge.

So the TEC circular pattern of mine placement is wasteful. Meanwhile, the Vasari system, which allows you to create lines of mines (a method more appropriate for the way mines work in Sins) is clunky and annoying, requiring repetitive queued move orders.

PROPOSAL TO FIX ANNOYING MINE PLACEMENT MICRO:

For TEC, there are two widely different solutions. The first is to make the minefield spread about 5 times wider than it is now.  Essentially, this would just contaminate a huge area instead of making a small area intraversable. The downside - placing mines would have minimal strategic interest.

Probably a better solution: players should be able to click where they want a mine wall to start, then click again where they want it to end, holding shift to queue up bends in the wall. Above the mouse, a tiny popup should show the forecasted cost of the wall.

Mines will be placed along that line as loosely as possible to ensure no ship can pass through it safely. To make the wall stronger (to avoid ramming from heavy cruisers or cappies) the player can simply place another wall on top of the first.

Voila! TEC players can now, with a minimum of pain, place mines intelligently.

Vasari is a bit trickier. Their current mine-spam method has its uses, such as laying mines in an enemy grav well while the rest of your fleet keeps the foe occupied. But for everyday minelaying, a method similar to that of the TEC should be an option - making your cruisers travel along the construction line pooping out mines AT REGULAR INTERVALS.

Ugh - the left side thing is crowded enough with just planets, satellites and ships.

I'd rather mines be considered an intrinsic effect of the system, like the ateroids and gas pockets.

They deal persistant damage to enemy vessels on the move, as they are expended.

Let scout ships and clearing ships be able to avoid/deal with them, but don't make us manually manage everything.

finally got around to trying vasari and I can understand now what you mean, and also the issue with mine balance. here is what I suggest:

make the vasari (and possibly the advent, however they work) version work the same way as tec. it is an ability, it has to be manually selected, it costs something and it places a small field of like 10 mines where you want it.

that way, you don't have to run around like crazy, you don't even have to designate a specific area, you just click a spot and around there it will place those 10 mines. it also gets around balance issue, bc now, given enough time, a single vasari minelayer can lay dozens if not hundreds of mines and it would never be a cost issue. you'd still have mobility to place it in any grav well, but t would be easier to use and harder to abuse.

as for hard caps, I don't know. I mean somewhere there has to be an end as to how many mines one can lay. it could work via each field being more expensive than the previous or a hard cap or sth.

I absolutely agree.

A thought on mine caps: everyone seems to agree we should have them; the difficulty facing Ironclad is: what should it be? I propose adding a Fleet Logistic line for Defense, used up by starbases and mines. Players can pay to upgrade the Defense logistics, allowing them to support more starbases and lay more mines, but they cant just spam recklessly.

A player right now: "I'll put a starbase in every forward well and put maybe 50 gajillion mines down. And now, since I have such a lopsided defensive bonus, I may as well sit around a culture spam/novalith the guy to death."

A player after the defense cap is installed: "I can put down 50 mines. Where do I want them? Hm. Maybe I should just build a starbase. Maybe I'll upgrade my defense cap and get both! But I really want another Marza ..."

Voila. The game is fun again.

This discusion sounds simular to pirates; some like them, some really disliked them.  So, I hope they will at least put a toggle, Mines/No Mines, just like pirates.  That's one sure way to please the "Underminers".