Mines mines

I like the tec mines. They seem to have a good balance. The Advent and Vasari mines are a totally different story.

what ship drop tec mines btw...couldnt find it

There isn't one. They're built like structures.

I know it would take away from some of the coolness, but I'd prefer if they were all built like the TEC ones.  You could always leave the TEC with pure damage ones and give the Advent and Vasari special abilities on top of lesser damage.

Yeah, as much as I like seeing the effort to make each races style more unique the TEC model does seem by far the least problematic.  Using that as a base for all races and then researching upgrades that fit in with each races area of expertise seems like the least radical rework of the entire mine idea.

I agree, the TEC minefields are much more fair, although there still needs to be some sort of limit.  Once they drop 1000 mines into a system, it's still pretty lame.

Yeah, I'd be in favor of something like Defense Points per gravity well and have the different planet types and certain attributes increase or decrease them.  By attributes, I mean like the one where you have a larger or smaller than normal gravwell and that would affect the number of groups of mines you could place.  Perhaps the number of phase lanes into a system could also be part of the determination.

Along your line of thinking Mazuo, dead asteroids and asteroids should probably be able to hold more mines than the other planets.  Having a bunch of mines around a heavily populated planet would be dangerous to the citizens I'm sure.

Also, if they changed the Vasari and Advent mines to do something other than damage, it might help some.  Say, Vasari mines detonate and slow a ship down and Advent mines reduce damage output for a period of time?

meh, all races should have mines that do damage imo

but different ways of using them

and they are all fine atm

even tho there should be a cap on how much mines can be in one system ( but it should be pritty big)

But the whole point about the lag issues and crashes is that the mines CAN be spammed.  So obviously they're not fine the way they are.

That and the fact that they are extremely annoying to get rid of.

We've given up playing anything including Vasari (which we always use to include in every game, because you just got'a have a bad guy to blow up).  But the mine spam and micro needed with mines makes playing/playtesting pretty much impossible for us.

And if we can't play against or use Vasari, then we are not really giving that race the playtesting it needs either unfortunetly.  Hopefully some kind of quick fix patch is needed for Varasi mines; nerf them to death (just for a while) so we can playtest the other 90% of their ships/tech/starbases ect.

lol, right

another nerf is exactly what vassari needs..

When a Vasari AI attacks you with a fleet that is 50% Ruiners (and it actually works), yeah it needs a nerf. Vasari mine spam is totally out of control right now.

I'm not really playing Entrenchment anymore until the mines are fixed (or even better, removed entirely).

Mines are NOT going to be removed. That stupid. When mines become balanced, they will be fine. That would much better then stupidly removing them.

Vasari already have got these. They are called Gravity Mines.

I've also stopped playing until things become more balanced.  Homing mines destroyed a large fleet and well fortified planetry structures so quickly I decided to wait until the issue is fixed.  The mines are too good at homing in on targets and the TEC fleet was far too stupid, flying into them instead of holding position or backing off, not even attacking the mines between them and the enemy fleet just flying further into the minefield!

Matter of opinion. From where I sit, mines add nothing of value. They're not fun to place. They're not fun to remove. They're not fun to have your fleet AI decide to suicide against them unless you spam the stop and hold position buttons (only to have them try to bombard the planet on the other side of the minefield anyway). They're certainly not fun when the game turns into a slideshow because of them.

Yeah, only played Vasari once so far with Entrenchment, so I didn't know.  But now I think I remember.  lol

I thought about it a little more and I guess my pipedream as it stands now would work out like this:

TEC Mines:  Large explosive inside casing.  Big boom. 

Advent Mines:  Psionic disruption field temporarily slows all ship weapons that are caught within it.  Crews being mildly to severely disoriented being the reason why.  Could affect the CD on abilities, but I wouldn't prevent their use.

Vasari Mines:  Nanobot swarms attach themselves to the hulls of unfortunate passing vessels increasing their mass and slowing their normal space movement speed by X%.  Would be nice if it could slowly be alleviated until its duration was zero and then be completely gone, but just a static effect on a timer could still work.

The damage of the Advent and Vasari mines could only be appropriately set through beta I'm sure, but they'd definitely be lower than TEC.  All fields would be constructed as TEC's are now, but could have different numbers of mines, spread patterns, size of the fields, and resource cost depending on race.

Idle speculation I guess here, but since IC and SD are still sorta out on vacation, I figure we got nothing better to do than posit solutions.

I think the scouts detection range for mines needs to be a little bit bigger. The other day I had my fleet parked on the edge of a gravity well that was chok full of these huge piles of Advent mines (Thanks drone hosts!) so I figured I'd give this sweeping thing a try, and flew over a scout a little closer at a time to get in range to 'see' them so the ships could fire at them.

As soon as I got into the circle for mine detection range, I guess it also just os happens to be the range for Advent mines' "Hey There's a Guy, Lets Kick His Ass!" detection radius. As soon as I was close enough to see a few, the ones I was close to just flew over and blew up the scout. ;/ I hope throwing endless numbers of scouts at mines isn't how I'm supposed to get rid of them.. there were easily a thousand mines in that place (halp framerate! ) and it would have taken forever D:

That's a great idea that the devs should look into, not all mines have to go BOOM.

People need to learn to have a better anti-mine strategy.

Basic mine strategy:

1) Do not have any of your fleets that could possibly jump into/be jumped on have the engage in gravity well fleet order.  Hold position, or possibly short range attacks only.  More micro-managing, but at least your fleet wont jump into a system and get themselves blown up in an attempt to wipe out a constructor.

2) Scouts, scouts, and more scouts. Scouts + (battle cruiser/dreadnought capital ship) or starbase (vasari's mobile base is best) or carriers are the most effective way I've found to defeat mines.  Get your scouts, turn their fleet orders on "Hold position" and move them near the mines which will uncloak them, next the other ships further in the background can take them down with beam weapons/fast firing weapons.  Also if the mines detonate on the cruiser when it approaches (if it approaches too closely, Advent homing mines in particular) it can take a couple of hits without being obliterated.  Plus, you get 5-10 xp per mine, and if the mines are numerous enough.

3) Never jump your primary fleet in first, always send in a scout before jumping in to a) decloak mines so incoming fleets have some sort of chance, and make sure the jump path is clear.

More strategy peeps!

But everyone has mines that go boom... there really isn't a point to create a mine if it doesn't boom.  Alternative mines are there that can do other things if needed.  No need to increase mass if you have mines that destroy/impare the engines (which they have).

Tried it. Cap ships decided to bombard the planet anyway, and went stampeding through a minefield to do it.  Only thing I could do was mash "Stop" as fast as I could and hope that it worked in the lag. That was despite having scouts tagged to follow them, so they had detection moving with them.

You can do this, but it takes a very long time to clear 500 mines, and it's absolutely nothing resembling fun or compelling gameplay. It's mind numbing grind.

Doesn't work when the grav well entrance itself is covered in mines. Scout comes in, ships come in, ships still blow up.

You don't sweep an Advent Minefeild you Move it. Their Mobility is actually their weakness. You can use a small fleet of scouts to move the mines off into some pocket of the gravity well where they wont be in the way of your fleet. As long as your scouts are moving fast as they pass the mine field they will out run the mines. That still doesnt solve the problem of jumping into a mine field but its much faster than sweeping TEC or Vasari mine Fields.

From my experiences ingame and what I've read I've come up with a few suggestions for changing mines.

TEC: No real change needed. The damage and cost of the mines may be varied as testing continues.

Vasari: The minelayers should deploy a field of mines as opposed to two, and doing so should cost resources (less than TEC, because you had to buy the ship) and have a longer cooldown and antimatter cost than it currently does. They should also probably do less damage due to their increased flexibility (can be put down anywhere).

Advent: Trickier, because they replace strike craft in production, but a similarity to Vasari comes to mind. Cause the squadron to place a mine-field and make doing so cost resources. We could, instead of mines, give Advent the option of suicide ships.

With all mines costing some sort of resources limits to a given gravity well seem less neccesary.

Secondary effects / different mine types for Vasari and Advent mines seems like cool idea, but does run into the general issue of, why debuff someone when you can kill them? If it was done it would have to be a pure secondary effect in return for reduced damage on all their mines.

Anyone have thoughts about the Advent, I'm less confident on how to deal with them.