Entrenchment Counters (How to effectively counter mines)Updated

from Sins Forums

Mines: Are a minor delaying tactic at most.

TEC: Their mines have a good feel I think. Their expensive so hard to spam to the point of it being it's own game. I wish they were place by a minelayer ship that ran a auto pattern. That way TEC could mine the outer wells of a planets, stars, and non-colonizables.

1.  You can use the Z axis to totally avoid mines. Except for Advent.

2. Scouts are the only ship in game that can dephase mines without selfmulation. The range is very short on this ability so you have to micro your scouts into the field. I agree this needs an adjustment.

3. EVERYTHING can shoot a mine when dephased. Bombers with a few scouts can tear em up pretty quick with a little mico.

4. Scouts with anything short of flak make pretty good anti-mine ships. Yes, you would assume flak would be the best, but not if their is any sort of fighter suport in the well they just suicide going for the fighters. Unless extensively microed.

Basicly just add scouts to your flt mix of choice. Move more carefully.

Advent:There mines are a pain on the micro. Scouts, fighters, and flak make good counters to the advent mines. Where as if your careful with the tec or vasari mine you will suffer little to no losses. The advent mines you just have to take some losses to clear a field.

1 Drone Anima=3 drone mine squads

1 Drone Mine=850 dmg

Basicly 10 carriers = 300 mines

300 mines = 255000 dmg

 

Vasari: Their mines seem to be full of painfull mico.  They still have a major flaw/exploit. With 4 ruiner ships on 2 stars. 2 per star, I was able to place 2000+ mines in 20 to 30 minutes. Eventually it got so rediculous it crashed the game.

 

Starbases:  Their are so many upgrades. The full effect is harder to see. I like where there going. I think the last weapon upgrade should give a 10000 range. Its a starbase stands to reason it would carry longer range missles.

PLEASE feel free to add and elaborate to this topic. All discussion is welcome. More to come as Entrenchment evolves.

8,485 views 19 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Vasari mines are laid by a ship. They're free. You can have endless numbers of them. Adding scouts to a fleet doesn't really work, since the fleet will latch on to some ship on the other end of the gravity well, run through the minefield, and be completely destroyed unless you spam the stop button. In my experience. (Fun one was the AI attacking one of my systems with a fleet that was 50% mine laying ships. They showed up and 30 seconds later there's a giant cloud of mines, which my Starbase decided to move into so it could attack the ships. Not helpful.)

 

Not to mention that with the Vasari dropping 500 mines a gravity well everywhere, the game gets reduced to a slideshow.

Assuming the z-axis thing isn't intended (and I have a hard time believing that it is given that it's not used for anything else in the game), mines on a big map break the game.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

There is no way to currently combat the Vasari mines... as Tridus mentions they're free and the AI loves to drop them EVERYWHERE.  I've gone to worlds where the gravity well was literally COVERED in mines.  Luckily I've noticed they don't all seem to go off very often.

 

On top of that-- am I the only one whose ships are having difficulty shooting mines?  Even with a scout sitting RIGHT NEXT to a mine, it seems half my ships are unable to attack.  They're trying, as evidenced by the red line, but bombers and fighters just circle their bays and most ships won't attack.  This is making it EVEN MORE difficult to get rid of mines than it should be.

 

Hope they address mines quick... this has basically made it impossible to play a game against Vasari computers.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Agreed. I"m side-lining SoaSE until hte next beta patch is released. The devs are pretty good. I think they'll be able to fix the mine issue.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Wow you guys must be having a hard time of it. There is the fuction of flt attack range i.e. grav well, close, and hold position. That close option is your friend. You might have one or two ships stray. Especially if you're trying to retreat. There is also 3 options for how far ships in a flt will go from the flt leader. Use em. :rolleyes:

 

On a personal note. You guys need to chill, take a deep breath. Try to look at things objectively, when you can't figure something out. Well obviously, I know what I'm talkin' about..it must be broken. Or maybe, just maybe the truth of the situation failed to present itself to your infinite all knowing minds. Oh and remember take that deep breath.

:thumbsup:

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Mines: Are a minor delaying tactic at most.

1. Don't think in 2D. You can use the Z axis to totally avoid mines.

This is a major problem I think.  If you can completely bypass mines by simply going over or under them, then they're broken.  I believe we need mine caps for each grav well, and better ways of clearing them without so much micromanagement, but we also need to be able to build effective barriers with them or they are truly useless.  Any delay they create is insignificant next to the effort to place them, not to mention any cost associated with them.  We need to be able to create barriers that cover the full volume of a border that we define.  Otherwise they might as well just remove mines from the game, as they won't be used.

Quoting overchargethis, reply 3
Agreed. I"m side-lining SoaSE until hte next beta patch is released. The devs are pretty good. I think they'll be able to fix the mine issue.
End of overchargethis's quote

We're supposed to be testing it and finding all the issues we can, not playing competitive or even necessarily enjoyable games.  We're not just getting a preview of the final game.  Everyone already knows that there are problems with the current implementation of mines.  If you're not going to help solve them, along with other issues, then why post in the beta forums?

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lord_Dark_Cloud, reply 4

On a personal note. You guys need to chill, take a deep breath. Try to look at things objectively, when you can't figure something out. Well obviously, I know what I'm talkin' about..it must be broken. Or maybe, just maybe the truth of the situation failed to present itself to your infinite all knowing minds. Oh and remember take that deep breath.

End of Lord_Dark_Cloud's quote

 

Mines are without a doubt totally imbalanced right now, to the point they pretty much make the game unplayable.  It's not something as simple as not thinking it through.  This is what beta testers do-- give feedback on the game prior to its release so they can fix things like this.  I still believe there needs to be a better way to deal with mines, but you CANNOT argue that they aren't imbalanced between the races. 

TEK have to pay a high price for each mine they lay down.
Advent are at least restricted to how many hangers they can build on a system, and even then they have to sacrifice fighters/bombers to do so
Vesari get to build 1 ship and have that ship mine spam every world in the system for free.

Dealing with the Vesari mine imbalance would solve most of the problems; it's only Vesari worlds that you see carpetted with mines.  I'd say give each ship a mine cap: Maximum 5 mines active per mine ship, and if it gets destroyed they disappear, probably would want to make the miner more expensive too.  That lets the Vesari still carpet mine a planet, but now they used up quite a bit of resource slots for it.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lord_Dark_Cloud, reply 4
Wow you guys must be having a hard time of it. There is the fuction of flt attack range i.e. grav well, close, and hold position. That close option is your friend. You might have one or two ships stray. Especially if you're trying to retreat. There is also 3 options for how far ships in a flt will go from the flt leader. Use em.

 

On a personal note. You guys need to chill, take a deep breath. Try to look at things objectively, when you can't figure something out. Well obviously, I know what I'm talkin' about..it must be broken. Or maybe, just maybe the truth of the situation failed to present itself to your infinite all knowing minds. Oh and remember take that deep breath.

End of Lord_Dark_Cloud's quote
Might I suggest you play more, as more than one race, before you start suggesting that everyone else is playing poorly and/or overreacting.

You think what you think now because you're basing your opinion on so little experience, in your own words, that you can't even comment on the other races or stations.

Everyone who stated an opinion stated a very valid one which is shared by pretty much everyone that's been beta testing this thing since day one, including myself.

Mines, in the state they're in, ruin the game. Starbases are utterly useless due to their range, at the moment, but they don't actively ruin anything. Mines do.

There is nothing good about gravwell after gravwell completely carpeted by FREE Vasari and Advent mines. Heck, your Z axis suggestion (which I still can't believe the dev's didn't take into consideration) doesn't even work against the Advent mines.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

I just don't seem to be having the troubles you seem to be having. I also have over 800 hours in game.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lord_Dark_Cloud, reply 4
Wow you guys must be having a hard time of it. There is the fuction of flt attack range i.e. grav well, close, and hold position. That close option is your friend. You might have one or two ships stray. Especially if you're trying to retreat. There is also 3 options for how far ships in a flt will go from the flt leader. Use em.
End of Lord_Dark_Cloud's quote


I have another thread on here about that, where I set everything to hold position, send the fleet in to the gravity well with the zillion mines... and as soon as they get there, the capital ships all decide its a great idea to go bombard the planet. So once again I'm left spamming the "Stop" button as fast as I can in the hope they actually listen, while being unable to order them to do much else because the 600 mines in the system have turned the game into a slideshow.

 

Once the mines come out, it becomes unplayable for me right now.
 

On a personal note. You guys need to chill, take a deep breath. Try to look at things objectively, when you can't figure something out. Well obviously, I know what I'm talkin' about..it must be broken. Or maybe, just maybe the truth of the situation failed to present itself to your infinite all knowing minds. Oh and remember take that deep breath.
End of quote

 

Could you possibly be any more condascending? And maybe take your own advice? Just because you're not having the problem doesn't mean other people aren't having it. Judging by the forum posts, you're in the minority.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Guess you havent tried fighting a hard/unfair AI Advent player.... They build like 40 Host ships that invade you and launch 2 million homing mines that wipe out everything - and i mean everything.  Sure, once the carriers are dead you can kill the mines, taking a lot of work, but that is no easy task.  Also invading the same type Advent AI is silly hard due to the amount of homing mines launched, i lost a full fleet + 19k starbase doing so, either i totally suck or that is some serious AI.  Mines = lag, remove them !!

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Lord_Dark_Cloud, reply 8
I just don't seem to be having the troubles you seem to be having. I also have over 800 hours in game.
End of Lord_Dark_Cloud's quote
How jolly for you.

Game != Beta

I've played the game a bazillion hours, myself. Entrenchment isn't the same. At all.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

You'ds guys are easy to honk off!!!!!! :grin:

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

I ussually take hard ais in teams of 2's. Entrenchment is the first time its actually been entertaining to play the ai.

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

How to effectively counter mines
End of quote

Grab a dozen carriers and play a game of "Pearl Harbor?"

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

As i've said in another post which i will quote below

 

personally i think that the point of entrenchment was to add defensive manuverablitity not just become as we call it "entrenched" any turtling game becomes very boring and takes forever. Sins takes a while on its own but with mines and starbases it just becomes the 10 inch steel plate in front of a bullet. The only way you get through is by sending cannon fodder after cannon fodder at your enemy. There should be an easier way to rush. I don't mean like 10 minutes 20 ships hit you. thats just stupid but i mean like 1 hour or something and make mines have a cap. "IF" mines had a 100 mine cap it makes it that strategic placement becomes key. Defense in sins was completely lacking. I feel that its almost impossible to mount a strong enough defense against even a moderate player and hold the line with defense alone. The only other way to mount defense was to spam it at all your planets. What we need is a way to make the defenses worth while, so we don't have to spam defenses at all our planets. Just at the frontal places, and maybe farther back. Just liek ww1 we need to fortify the front not everywhere. In ww1 you didn't have troops thorughout all your trenches you had them where theyy were needed at the front. Thats what is needed, a way to create a wall/ baricade against your enemy making it harder to just bypass a heavily fortified planet and go to one not so fortified. Make it expensive but at least make it possible. Its annoying when you spend all this time on defenses when all it takes is the enemy to navigate around them. Thats just gets me PO'ed.

P.S. sorry for the hodge-podge of random ideas but thats how i argue. LOL

 A few issues that i need to clear up from that post. The point of entrenchment was to clean up that bad defense issue and make defenses more frontlined. Also the mine cap would totally be planet subjective such as 25 or 50 mines a planet. What we do need is some way to attach more defensive structures to one planet. Thus "entrenching" but doing so we would need to spend research time inside the defensive research. This meaning we would lose ground in other areas (as in ships variety or strength) The main thing is that i think stardock needs to do some tuning and that their adressing an issue that was present. Mines are a great way to make a wall or at least delay an enemy but we still don't have a way to stop an advancing fleet in their tracks.

Very long reply i know but personally i think i hit the nail on the head. If anyone wants to give any feedback on what i said please reply or pm. I don't own entrenchment but i have enough of an idea because i've played enough rts's to know what an impossible tactic is. My question is though that how do you move in the up and down axis. I haven't figured that out yet and i think it would be a viable tactic to use.

Recomendation create an upgraded version of the phase (blanking out, it increases the time it takes to phase jump) and make a phase blocker or make it take 2000% time. (again sacrifice something like lots of metal or crystal to build or lots of tactical slots). Another recomendation is to give planets a building that would take logistic slots and turn them into tactical slots. Such as a military coordination base which would give 10 extra tactical slots and cost 4 logistic slots. This would then effectively entrench the game.

Sorry for getting a little off topic with that post and for all of those who read this whole post ty and I hope you will give feedback through pm or reply yet again.

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Just got done playing a couple advent games and OMG.

Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting lordgoddestroyer, reply 17
One of the Devs must be dating an advent chick....cuz they always seem to be OP....
End of lordgoddestroyer's quote
All those lonely nights in Ironclad's offices take their toll. Devs need <3 too.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top

 I hear those advent don't look too bad either. Hook me up.:P