Forums » Suggestions

Ability to attack mines

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Apr 10, 2018 NarWalrusWarrior link
Mines, we all love them.
a mine dropped within the prox of another mine should be able to set off and destroy it. (almost exclusively for L mine) however the concussion mine range should be increased by 50% and should be able to knock other mines far off course.
Mines should also be able to be targeted, its incredibly annoying to not be able to do so, however missiles should not be able to be fired at them.
Apr 10, 2018 -Wash- link
-1 mines are by design meant to be laid out in large fields to create areas of destruction. Once a mine is detonated mines within range are in fact also destroyed. You can destroy mines with energy weapons, it just requires you to manually aim your weapons.
Apr 10, 2018 joylessjoker link
Mines should also be able to be targeted, its incredibly annoying to not be able to do so

-1 your lack of skill to aim manually is not a valid argument
Apr 10, 2018 greenwall link
+1 it's stupid we can't target mines... as if they have some ridiculous cloaking technology not available to any other object in the game.
Apr 10, 2018 joylessjoker link
They are easily seen visually and on radar. I'm not sure what you mean by the word "cloaked"?
Apr 10, 2018 aaronund link
-1 I don't know why they appear on the radar. Surely the manufacturer would try his best to make the mines invisible by copying the characteristics of objects that are found in space but do not appear on the radar.
Apr 10, 2018 Pizzasgood link
I agree with aaronund. Let's remove mines from the radar.

Can they still be targeted by plugin, or has that been fixed?
Apr 10, 2018 Knauf link
mines being targetable by plugin has been fixed
Apr 10, 2018 joylessjoker link
It's really good to see that VO isn't fully infested by perverse carebearism.
Apr 10, 2018 greenwall link
Mines work on the notion of concealment. Laying mines in space, out in plain sight, showing up on radar, and yet not capable of being targeted is retarded. Even if they didn't show up on radar they should be targetable once you have them within your targeting reticle.

I don't have a problem with certain variants of mines be un-targetable due to some high level technology, but if they are they should be also hidden from radar. Or alternatively perhaps some kind of addon (which might be built in, perhaps, to the UDV) could provide the ability to target mines.

I mean seriously, your ship's computer has the ability to locate and PINPOINT a mine on your radar showing it as a blue or yellow dot, but it is unable to target that dot? Stupid, sorry.
Apr 11, 2018 NarWalrusWarrior link
+1 greenwall
Apr 11, 2018 Whistler link
Your arguments would be more effective if you refrained from adjectives like "retarded" and "stupid" and instead focused on how a suggested change would improve the game.
Apr 11, 2018 Pizzasgood link
It would improve the game by making it less retarded and stupid.

(Though I'd prefer fixing the stupidity by removing them from the radar instead of making them targetable, either solution is preferable to the status quo.)
Apr 11, 2018 greenwall link
The game was better when we could target mines. It allowed us to see what kind of mines they were, first of all, and secondly it provided a way to clear mines without the precarious task of getting close enough to land a hit via manual, visual-based targeting without triggering the proximity fuse.

As things stand now, the ONLY way to safely clear non-electrical mines floating in open space is by flying through them with a capital ship, since there is no longer a way to differentiate between proximity, concussion and TU mines. For newbs and such without access to a shielded vessel, this poses a particularly unfair burden. It has also been noted that manually targeting mines is MUCH more difficult for mobile players.

Additionally, back when mines were targetable they still posed a significant threat. Even vets sometimes would forget to notice the slight coloration difference between yellow and gray and just think the mines were roids on radar.

And let us not forget the reason mines are no longer targetable has nothing to do with how that feature was affecting the gameplay for us players -- but rather Incarnate having not realized until YEARS after the fact that mines had been targetable via a freely available and widely used plugin. In other words it was a decision based on what an original intent was and the impact of the change on gameplay hadn't really been taken into account -- AT ALL.

This discussion has been had before in various forms:

https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/33415
https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/33408?page=1
(to point out a few)

So yes, mines have a lot of potential for improvement, but being rendered completely untargetable in game for reasons of principle rather than practicality makes for worse gameplay.

If you can see the mines you should be able to target them. Nobody is worse off for allowing it.

(lol@rin)
Apr 11, 2018 Ore link
It allowed some of you to target the mines if you had the plugin that was never shared publicly. Then incarnate found out that you were cheating the game mechanics and fixed the exploit. You were never meant to target the mines according to the developer.
Apr 11, 2018 greenwall link
It was shared publicly.
Apr 11, 2018 Luxen link
It was still against the dev's wishes in the first place
Apr 11, 2018 greenwall link
Exactly luxen. Wishes that took little to no consideration of the impact to gameplay. At most it was done because some party complained about it after feeling left out of the cool kid group (i.e. almost every vet) because they didn't know about it. Hence (part of) this suggestion: to re-introduce mine targeting to some degree, for the sake of tactical gameplay enhancement and to improve the mobile experience.

There are a bunch of different ways to do it. As have been suggested here and the links above.

Another idea I had was mines could appear intermittently on radar, as little twinkles, as it were. So when they did appear, say every couple seconds, you could target them, and when they didn't you couldn't. This would alleviate the concern of clearing mines easily with homing missiles, as the lock would fail when the radar signature faded.

I do think the mine signatures of those you own (or those which are part of a group) should remain constant as they are -- since there is tactical use for knowing where friendly mines are located.
Apr 11, 2018 joylessjoker link
As things stand now, the ONLY way to safely clear non-electrical mines floating in open space is by flying through them with a capital ship, since there is no longer a way to differentiate between proximity, concussion and TU mines.

Wow, just wow. So much wailing and gnashing of teeth over adding one more point to your death count. Who cares if you fly an ec-89 into a TU mine to defuse it?
Apr 11, 2018 Pizzasgood link
I agree with keeping your own mines visible on the radar.

Making all mines visually distinct from each other is not something I'd have a problem with.

I don't really care if it's hard to target mines on mobile, or for people with bad coordination, or whatever. This is a twitch game, so the player is expected to bring a certain amount of physical and technological capability to the table. It's possible to play with less, but some activities will be difficult. It's just the nature of the beast.

I would not, however, be opposed to an addon that detects mines within 2 km or so, puts them on the radar, and makes them targetable. I just don't think that functionality should be present by default in most ships.