Is there somethin I'm not gettin with these mines?

I'm playing as Advent in a current game. I think the homing mines are broken. I've noticed that after coming out of the hanger newly made they will home on enemy ships, but after sitting a while they just stop working and cluster around the hanger bays, no longer able to home on enemies should some come into the system. Anyone else have this occur?

I've found that I need to put a scout near the mines and wait a couple seconds or nearby friendlies to acquire the mines and start shooting at them.  Fighters and capital ships seem to be the biggest participants... since the phased-out homing mines are born from a fighter squadron, you likely need/want some form of anti-fighter unit (fighters, flak boats) to be effective against the mines.

The mines are clustering around your hangar because the squadrons auto-deploy after fully populating themselves with mines.  Turn off autocast or move them to where you want them before they do this.  This is a pain in the butt, as the squads rebuild after deploying, and there's no way to force new squads to go to a specific location or have them not spawn with autocast enabled.

The homing mines also only home on targets within a certain range... they won't chase something clear across the gravity well, so the ones stuck around your hangar will stay there unless something comes after them.  All the more reason to catch them before they auto-deploy and put them near the phase lanes.

Righty... after some testing.... me TEC vs. A bunch load of Advent Homing Mines... 

I jump into their system, see the mines which is great! Got a few scout frigates, more then enough to make em targetable... or so I thought... Since they remained Invulnerable even when within range of my scouts anti-mine ability.

So...I drove the scout frigates around for a little while... I tell you.. I gathered up a bunch of those homing mines ^^ .... drove them in circles around my fleet hopin to be able to blow em up... but no. 

Then, after about 5 min.. after the last Advent ship had left the system... and only then! All homing mines... seized their activity... they stopped homing. And suddenly... my scouts anti-mine ability worked as it should.

Now I'm pretty sure this is not how it's suppose to be right? 

Yeah, since your previous post I've found that I can move them initially after first exiting the hanger. It would be nice if you could set a rally point or better yet a rally 'strip' for them to deploy to.

I haven't encounter the Advent homing mines as an enemy, but I would think they should be active when chasing a target. I'm not sure.

I am having problems with mines as well. I play vasari and the problem was when cleaning a TEC mine field, my scout was in range to reveal the mines but they just kept phasing in and out so when i told my ships to fire at the mines, they phased out so my ships stopped the attack, this happened several times and was really annoying, clear that mine field (10 mines aprox) took me like 20 mins, definitively a mood killer, while having to keep two battles at the same time, one taking another system and the other cleaning one by one those "funny" mines.

Also, i really dont like to see the names of the planets and stars, etc, before i could select the option from the menu and it was fine (show names) but now i deselect it and the names dont go away, or they go away but only on some systems, its so random.

Hope this helps the final version of the expansion to be better, beside those annoying problems, nothing else to report, the new options and feeling of the game are great, keep up the good work guys!!

I've found that sending in about 5 scouts more if they have other defenses (besides mines) and placing them throughout the mine field works okay. The advent strike craft will the target them, as well as frigates and capitals - usually as a higher priority then other things. It does seem to require much more micromanagement, both deploying and clearing fields. The Vasari AI in my current game has a gravity well full of mines - I'm dreading attacking that planet (I guess mines are somewhat a deterrent).

I find clearing mines to be almost impossible.  Last night I was playing as vasarri vs advent and the advent laid over 2,000 mines in a single gravity well.  There was no way for me to even attempt to take out all the mines with the current settings.  The vasarri seeker vessel would reveal them in the short range, but they would flicker between in phase and out of phase, which made them nearly impossible to hit.

My suggestions below:

-Mine clearing ship (if there's a mine laying ship, why not a mine clearing ship?)

-Have mines cost more than just 5 antimatter - 10 credits for example - not enough so nobody builds mines, but enough that building 2,000 in a few minutes with 3 or 4 ships has some affect other than the initial cost of the mine ship.

-Have a mine clearing ship that is excellent at taking out mines.  Then mines can't be your only defense, you'd have to have a few ships around to take out the mine clearers first.

-Ability to turn off mines completely (i.e. in the Game Options screen have a "Mines - Inactive / Active" option)

That's just my 2 cents on mines.  Great job on the game guys!

Oh by all means... they were active when they were chasing me around. But only as long as the Advent fleet was in the grav well. The moment the last ship left... they just powered down and became harmless. But while the advent fleet or even just one of their ships were in the grav well. They were invulnerable to any damage even with the scout frigates around.

I just realized something, havent you noticed how dumb are the ships when choosing a route after they encounter mines?,

When a ship is facing a mine and you tell it to go back, it describes a path that indeed takes it back but by first passing by the mine, it makes a circle. Wouldnt it be better for the ship to just turn 180 degrees and leave? at least that way they wouldnt enter the mines which was the objective of the order "go back" given at the beginning.

Just an idea

its all just too much micro

Why not make it the same ship? It already specializes in mines already.

well no, maybe the advent sent out a prayer to the gods asking for invulnerable suicide mines??    or.. did that statement kind of conflicts >.>????

theres already some interest in making flak frigates anti-mines,  since they are terrible vs squads anyways people insist giving hem something usefull   just confused why they didnt add a Armortype Strike Craft that'd solve the flak problem.... cuase i really dont like the idea of a flak frigate being made anti-mine  i want an anti-mine frigate/cruiser for that "go for yet Another support cruiser!!!"

Totaly agree,  this has also been stated in another Topic "forgot wich one tough"  dont reember wich one tough

The AI goes pretty crazy with mines. The Vasari oppenent I mentioned above had put down probably 900-1000 mines at a single one of its planets (after clearing at least have I thought to take a screen shot which shows ~460 in the empire tree). The planet gravity well that was full of mines was a choke point to the rest of the planets. I havent checked the other planets in the system, to see if it was the AI smartly fortifying that point or just spamming them everywhere.  Some way there needs to be either a limit or a fairly quick way to clean mines from an otherwise abandoned gravity well (I had already taken down the star base and no fleets where incoming to defend it).

Best thing to do to not get destroyed by mines is to go above/below them with the Z axis, then they won't effect you at all if they are placed on the default plane.

seriously?  If the Z axis is wide enough to let you just fly over the mines, I'd call that a bug.  The Z axis allows for some nice cinematic action, but I'm pretty certain it's not seriously meant to allow you to outmaneuver defenses.

ADVENT mines are th EASIEST to clear. The vasari mines and tec mines are hte more difficult ones. To clear avemnt mines just send a single scout ship inot the sector, and micro it NEAR  amine field, assuming the user hasn't turned the mines off of AUTO AQUIRE every mine in the system will chase after you, just drage them to the other side of the system, and let the scout die....all the mines will stack in a neat little pike, and your entried fleet is free to come in and ravash the system....done and done.

Mine clearing ? come on use your imagination!

Seriously.. how can you blow those mines up? Whenever I face Advent mines, they're always invulnerable -.- as long as a Advent ship remains in teh system. And yes.. I got my scouts

Of course, this could be an Offline bug... maybe they act differently Online for some reason.

i like to use 2 scouts and then let my strike craft target the mines, i still wish they had a ship that could do it all on its own...