Really easy... make the damned things useful.

Twice today I set up lovely mine fields and had ok results. Here's about 40 or so going off simultaneously.



Seems useful, I know. Here's where they are completely useless... that mine field took hours to set up and more to maintain/you leave the sector, get killed etc... etc... they magically go away. Very irritating.

So...

1. Make mines like cargo. Persistent for a certain amount of time. I say at least one hour.
2. A bit more variety would be cool.
3. Increase all mine launchers ammo count, with an appropriate mass increase.
or...
4. Treat mine launchers ejected from cargo as mines.
or...
5. Eliminate the launcher and deploy them from the cargo bay.
or...
6. Combat Moth Mine Layer Variant.

Mines show up on radar.
You can shoot mines.
If you're clever, there are at least half a dozen ways to clear a mine field.
In space you have nearly unlimited area to fly.

It doesn't seem unbalanced, it would make them useful and they would be serving the purpose they are meant to serve.

I do want to make them more useful.

- With the cargo-persistency stuff, we can probably add the feature to mines as well, and make them persist across sector shutdowns and last longer and so on.

- However, there needs to be some kind of absolute cap on the number per user, which may be problematically complex to enforce across multiple sectors. Mines slow things down on the server side. It can get kinda bad. That's part of why they've never persisted before. I'm sure some optimizations can be done there, but I don't have a lot of time to be optimizing server-side mine.. stuff, right now.

- I'm open to more feedback on the variety of types and so on. I think the old toys thread probably has some stuff, I'd have to look.

So, anyway, feel free to continue the discussion..

Nothing about Group-IFF awareness for mine triggers Ryan? I honestly think that's the biggest thing making mines tactically useless.

I was trying to recall what I forgot! Thanks...

7. Group-IFF awareness for mine triggers.

All hail #7!

Also to a lesser degree but still good, All hail #1

So what about ammo capacity? For mines to truly be useful they need significantly higher ammo. I am personally in favor of 6 or 5 or both.

Vigilante 8 had magnetic mines - drive over them and they'd activate, creating a magnetic field that would try to pull you back and hold you in place for a while. You could escape from it if you were going fast enough or if you used a rocket booster to push you out. Something like that might be fun, and would be a lot more useful to a fleeing ship than a conc mine. Might need to have a short duration to prevent it from being OP.

Maybe two categories of mines? Civilian/military?

I've been experimenting with ways of making mines more useful for nearly 2 years, mostly without success due to their severe limitations.

Just make some weapon types reloadable from the cargo bay.

...and of course add significantly to their lifetime. ;)

Hmm, we still have the problem that a very laggy player can do huge damage with an l mine compared to a player with normal ping.

I accept the above, but feel that sorting out the lag/lmine anomaly is a prerequisite.

Lag mines aren't a problem if you're expecting it, and that only happens a couple times.

A very laggy player can do huge damage with flares too.

+1 to make mines last much longer, so makes sense using them as minefields
+1 to increase ammo, preferably as heavier cargo crates that you can use to reload in space.

-1 to IFF mines. Mines are dumb. If you want such a thing, then make it a AUTOTURRET, a sort of mine that once deployed will become a small turret, with 3 selectable IFF modes: (anyone I hate / Faction standing only / dumb mode, engage any nearby ship). MineTurret should have very short range, like <500m, and limited ammo, flare-like.

But I can accept a new sort of "smart mine", heavy, expensive and capable of IFF, very low ammo. It can be combined with regular mines for improved effect.

But I can accept a new sort of "smart mine", heavy, expensive and capable of IFF, very low ammo. It can be combined with regular mines for improved effect.

Maybe one of them can shoot a very short range lightning damage-over-time beam. We should call it... the Lightning Mine! ;)

Since when Lmines have IFF / group awareness?

They don't, but it's a suggestion in this thread and elsewhere.

Mines should have IFF... just for the simple fact that its the damned future. Also, it would go a long way to making them useful.

Maybe Civilian Mines no IFF. Military mines, simple standing or nation based IFF.

1+ to deployable turrets that can have any small port weapon.

Thanks Alloh!

Oh and spider mines.. that follow your ship and explode within proximity.. come on.. those would be boss!

ye want yer own aerna seeker hun? : )

why would civilians have mines?

Thats a fair question that I will answer with question. Why would civilians have Missiles, Rockets and cannons?