Space Mines and More

I think a lot of mods are reducing the count for planet size/importance. Home planet stays default where other Terran can be reduced 25%, volcanic/ice maybe 40% reduction and asteroids 60%. Everyone has there own preferences but it's an idea. Maybe add a slot count for increasing beyond the new default, say if an asteroid is a choke point. 

Also the models were reduced in polys by SivCorp for TSOP. I for one never ever zoomed in on a mine until I made the models SoaSE compatible for SivCorp but I can see the need or people that do, there are some sweet models in Sins but more than a few have potential for many poly reductions and still be great quality.

Edit: Others also cut the numbers in half but double up on the HPs. This was also done for the Strike Craft and Cargo Ships (reduced numbers, increased capacity) TSOP add-ons.

Also the returning pirates can eventually lead to 100s of ships at the pirate base.

A little off track but is it possible to have strike craft auto dock when not in use?

Couple of thoughts on mines in general.

Could mines have their own supply value when applied to the gravity well to help differentiate racial differences and differences in mines. For example Advent drone mines could be fewer in number but more powerful in their damage or area of effect.

TEC Ion mines could disable ship movement and deplete anti matter reserves.

Mines are also incredibly easy to clear given scouts start with mine detection but mines themselves aren't researched until tier 2 or 3 depending. Mines might have more strategic value if they required some investment to clear.

I like the mines with de-buffs applied like the Vasari Gravity mines (Although Tier 6 seems a little high).

In regards to cpu utilization... Could mines be shutdown, i.e. abilities disabled until enemy hyperspaces are coming towards the gravity well. I'm assuming a fair amount of cpu cycles are consumed processing the target filters every second for mines to see if they should activate when the majority of the time they are just sitting there idle.

Touching on what myfist0 has stated, mines really do need a poly count reduction and in many mods having a reduction of mines per gravity well has not affected game play other than reducing the amount of memory consumed. In order to make mines more 'fun' to play with I would like to make them more dangerous both in physical damage as well as any secondary abilities. With this statement I would also suggest making the clearing of mines easier whether it be a research ability for ships (passive or otherwise) that consumes anti-matter or requires tech tree research. I'm not suggesting the removal the ability from scouts but rather an additional options.

Mines were always much more of a defensive weapon than an offensive weapon, unless in exceptional circumstances like the Russo-Japanese War which was essentially a war-long blockade of one harbour.  Even given years, and with the area to be mined mostly two-dimensional with a very restricted third dimension, it was difficult and expensive to do more than maintain the defence of harbour approaches, even given years.  Space, genuinely three-dimensional, might be too difficult to mine thoroughly, a gravity well is a vast area.  However, though mines were limited they were very deadly, a mine hit would sink a ship.  Space mines would have to be similar if they were to be effective.

My first problem with mines is that they are not cost-effective, which as an impact on the AI as well as the AI is programmed to build them.    I've seen a capital ship hit six mines which have done about 150 damage each- this turns capital ships into overlarge fast minesweepers rather than ships that have to be protected from mines at all costs, as they used to be.  Another gameplay example: is it reasonable to assume that if you have a Drone Host next to a couple of enemy carriers and deploy three sets of mines almost on top of them, that they would be destroyed?  The cost of the mines themselves is equivalent to losing more than a Drone Host, plus you then have another Drone Host without any strikecraft.

The TEC mines are even worse off because they have no potential for combat deployment, and even then rely on splash damage as they are less powerful than the portable and deployable Advent mines, which makes no sense.  If historical mines had worked like TEC mines, with a lead ship damaged by a mine but the fleet alerted and with no loss of manoeuvre ability, they would have been a waste of time.  Fleets don't even need scouts for TEC mines, as long as their owner is watching them... Another issue is the Vasari Gravity mines, which have been compared unfavourably to their normal mines.

So my solution would be a much tougher limit on mine numbers combined with a vast increase in firepower, possibly with some random element.  Three minefields per grav well seems reasonable, with a part-minefield, where some mines have exploded, not counting.   I don't consider that you should differentiate between types of grav well, if history is a guide mines would be much more likely to be deployed in smaller grav wells in any case.  However mines should destroy ships.. one should kill a light frigate, one or two a cruiser, a single mine should threaten a damaged capital ship.  The splash damage I'm not as concerned about, if it was to be effective at its current level you'd need a delayed detonation to allow a fleet to enter the minefield without being alerted, and then you risk not hitting anything at all.  Perhaps boost it to half the full damage?  Gravity mines seem easily dealt with by allowing them to explode as well, also increasing the area affected.

The main issue might be combat deployment, though this isn't a problem for TEC.  If you can be confident that your mines are going to explode straight away a three minefield limit is no handicap, and if they are vastly deadlier they could be a balance issue.  Perhaps newly deployed mines, exploding as soon as they are ready, which are practically missiles rather than mines, should explode for less damage, with a mechanic similar to carriers recovering AM faster when not in combat?  A simpler concept, using less CPU time, might simply prohibit mines from being deployed within their explosive range of enemy ships.  Mines were not used as missiles, on the rare occasion that they were deployed in combat it was by a fleeing ship, and I'm not sure that this was ever successful.  

On the balance side, the TEC mines are so much more limited in their role and so time consuming to deploy that it seems odd to have them less powerful than the Advent homing mines.  If the combat use of mines is prohibited this limits the mines of the other factions somewhat, but unless TEC are meant to be handicapped (and aren't TEC the static defense faction?) then I would have TEC mines the most powerful.

Mines need to to easier to deploy for TEC. While its neat both Advent and Vasari can deploy them on the fly, They deploy them en-mass. TEC has to build each one or 2 at a time. Lame.

What we did in Distant Stars, was reduce the over all number but increase their damage output accordingly. It helped us deal with ingame lag.

I have to disagree with you boshimi, mines are fairly easy to deal with scouts. Honestly if you give an alternate method to mine removal, scouts will be even more useless. But the scout role is a different topic.

Anyhow, TEC needs easier deployment, addtion debuffs would be neat for each race. And I personaly thing and decrease in over all numbers but increase in damage is the way to go. Makes them a bit more tactical, you cant fill half the grav well with mines. And will make them actually worth the effort if do hit something.

Just throwing out a guess.. isn't the main CPU/memory usage of mines that each one has an ability that's constantly checking if someone is in range in order to detonate?

Why not just keep mines as they are, but instead of an ability just give them a slightly bigger spherical hit-box (like a planet), and instead detonate the mine on collision? You'd only have to catch the first collision to detonate the mine, so you wouldn't be trying to calculate a couple hundred ships bumping into each mine.

Wow, glad to hear you're looking at this feature.  Mines need love, that's for sure.

Currently, players use mines as thickets instead of walls.  Because they're so easy to go around, they don't make effective barriers and the way the AI uses them is laughable.  Large clusters of mines really only work for Advent, and even then it's more an annoyance tactic since homing mines need to be manually cleared if you don't want to lose scouts repeatedly.  Instead, mines are used sparingly as thickets to hide your units in or behind.  You're free to pass through (since mines have no friendly fire properties) but the enemy cannot.

If we want to cut down on the memory/cpu hogging through gameplay, you probably want to eccentuate this role since it leads to much more sparing mine usage than we presently see from the AI.

It would help if the Devs specified what is cpu and memory consuming about the current mines.

Is it the model? Then use less detailed model (noone zooms all the way at the mines anyway). But it probably wont be model since there is always only one mine model in view if you zoom, the rest of the minefield gets culled and substituted with simple sprites.

Is it their numbers? that would seem odd to me (but I am not a programmer), since all the game must do is keep track of position and ownership of a mine (two simple parameters per one mine), that doesnt seem memory intensive to me, it can be few hundred bytes per mine,so shouldnt pose a problem even when there are thousands of them.

Is it checking against enemy presence? Then I believe many culling techniques can be implemented to check against them only where and when they can be.

If its really insolvable problem, then the only solution is to decrease number of mines, and make them more powerful and increase their explosion radius to compensate.

The simplist thing I can think of to just reduce their numbers is to make them more powerful, with more range, but a lower limit per gravity well. Four times the damage and four times the range would (hypothetically) mean you would need a quarter of the number of mines (right? you'd need less, anyway ).

It works for us on Distant Stars.

Taking the 'more' as a cue, here are some other areas of concern, most of which seem to require little more than some tweaking of numbers:

Trade ships/refinery ships:  why do these rebuild so fast?  They have to have phase drives, yet they rebuild far faster that constructors.  Is the bounty for destroying them working- do they even have any reason for existence at all?  Could we consider slowing them down to perhaps half speed to make them easier to interdict?  If they have no impact on the game what about the technologies that improve them, like civilian ship safety and the Advent retribution?

Colony pods are extremely expensive for the return.

Resource Focus will almost never be cost-efficient at the current level of boost.

Vasari volcanic population upgrades give far too little return for the investment.

More generally, refineries are only viable in exceptional situations, and could use either a cost reduction or some change to the mechanic.

Pinpoint Bombardment- is this some kind of cosmic joke on novice Vasari players?  What is it intended to achieve?

Martyrdom- never researched in its current form, becuse of the lack of any effect.

Planetary shields- extremely expensive and high tech for the limited effect after the introduction of auxiliary government in Entrenchment.

Insurgency- again, Entrenchment had a severe impect on this high-level technology. 

Wave weapons and other non-phase missile weapon upgrades- wave weapons are the worst, extremely expensive and with a very limited effect, but some others are almost as bad.  Perhaps weapon upgrades which are not widely used by a faction's ships could be 10% improvements not 5%?

Advent hangars/hangars in general- the antimatter recharge rate is far too low on hangars at present.

Deliverance Engine- if this is only to give combat bonuses to a fleet, in which case it would be rarely valuable to have more than one or two, then it would be okay.  However, if it is intended to threaten to eliminate enemy planets due to culture then it is truly woeful at present and does practically nothing, even against planets where the enemy hold is already weakening before the weapon is fired.

More generally the culture mechanic could use work, unless it is intended that there should be no purpose at all in building multiple culture propagation centres.

Carrier capitals- are about the only type of capital in multiplayer.  I have suggested that it should cost them AM to build strikecraft, perhaps at 25%-33% the rate of carrier cruisers, but still some cost, as it reduces skill to have anything built for nothing.  The Halcyon and Skirantra have received too many extra squadrons since all the carrier capitals were upgraded and are now substituting for carrier cruiser fleets, one reason being that they can still kite LRF while the carrier cruisers can't.  

Everyone has their own opinion on capital ship abilities, but here are some generally regarded as rubbish- Shield Restore has become far inferior to Surge and the Dunov can't even heal itself; Animosity is totally ineffective; Subversion is far too situational and costs too much, if you raid a back area with a bunch of trade ports it does nothing; the Radiance equivalent of Gauss Rail Gun does twice the damage and is an interrupt plus disable; Guidance has been described as merely using up antimatter more quickly without providing any real benefit; Incendiaries do far too little damage.

Capital ship speeds are an area where some of the balance mods make an improvement- particularly the close combat battleships are made more viable with a speed improvement.  After all, this is the principle of the game at frigate level, that greater range means less speed? 

As much as I agree with the issues you bring up, Desconnor, the devs have asked for a response on the particular issue of mines in this thread.  I hope these issues all get their day, but today in this thread, it's about mines.

The one issue that slipped my mind earlier was the 3D exploit; it's very easy to just go over or under mines, which means anyone who really wants to can ignore mines.  Making their targeting a little more lax in the Z-axis alone would be quite useful.

Actually 4 times the range (radius) covers 16 times as much space (in 2D ignoring up down). With 4 times the damage as well you are looking at more like one sixty fourth of the current number of mines

I don't suppose anyone has ever considered not being able to see enemy mines (as a player, as well as a ship) unless you are a scout? Right now we know they're there and are able to effectively avoid them or 'bulldoze' through them with a capital ship.

This is a good point.  Should the mines just be made invisible absent scouts or special abilities?  The price for deploying them would probably need to be raised but they'd also probably get used more often.  One problem is that players might not be aware that they are hitting mines with their ships; there would need to be some sort of special visual effect to make it clear that a ship has been hit with a mine.

The title said 'Space Mines and More.'  Now, had it said 'Space Mines and only Space Mines or a Self-appointed Resident Enforcer will turn up to give you a Slap', fair enough, but it didn't.  It said 'Space Mines and More.' 

On mines, then.  Even if Annatar's theory holds, for gameplay purposes I would still want a severe limit on mine deployment, with more powerful mines.   It both would improve the AI use of mines and make mines a more entertaining aspect of the game.  The issue with a limit like three minefields is that if several mines are detonated presumably they cannot be replaced until an entire minefield is destroyed.  I'd suggest a scheme that allowed a single extra minefield if any minefields were missing mines, that should cope with most circumstances.

On visibility, how about a sensor war- only the faction with the most scouts in a gravwell can see mines at any given time..?  I'm not sure whether the mines can be made to disappear once a scout has seen them, but in either case this system is simple and might add complexity?

Personally I would want something done about vasari mines being laid in the midst of subverted ships to be dealt with before making them invisible or more powerful.  Mines shouldn't be an offensive weapon but more of a defensive one in my opinion. 

[_]-Greyfox

Deployment is the biggest problem with the TEC and Advent varieties that leads to them being underused.  Vasari, on the other hand, has the exact opposite issue; deployment is SO EASY that they have some very abusive strategies available.

I'd agree we don't want to see mines being used as hand grenades (though I do like Vasari's ability to deploy them on-the-fly, just not right on top of enemy units).  However, I don't see an easy solution here.  A subverter nerf is probably a good idea from a balance perspective and at very least that would put a dint in this tactic.

Advent can easily deploy mines hidden by the fact the ship that deploys them are carriers. Can use repulse to push enemy into the mines.

Blair I would increase the radius for both radius, activation and aoe of all mines.  Tec mines are the worst. How about an upgrade to make them invisible because its the only mine that cant be set in enemy territory.  Vassari mine upgrade to disable rather then destroy doesnt make since unless the duration is greatly increased or becomes invisible.  Why disable when you can destroy

They can be intercepted by fighters (rather easily) though, and you need to pay antimatter and wait for the squad to rebuild between deployments.  And you don't have a total-shutdown to prevent the enemy from sniping the mines before they arm.  Still achievable, but not even on the same page as the highly convenient Vasari variety.

The repulsion combo sounds absolutely delightful, but this requires you to set up the enemy by getting them wedged between an iconus and a minefield.  You have to work for it, and the enemy has a fair opportunity to see it coming and get out of it.

Agreed; gravity mines are basically only useful against capital ships as a result of this (since caps will usually survive regular mines without issue), and given the massive tech tier difference between them and regular mines, this isn't justifiable at all.

I'm personally not a fan of the concept of invisible mines.  It seems more like a gamble than anything, hoping that your enemy won't check for them at the right time.  I like the fact that Sins is a game that doesn't overly emphasize blindsiding your opponent, and I feel this would be the wrong direction for it.  That said, I fully agree that mines need something.

The Advent mines can be docked and deployed when needed.  They travel as fast as SC so cant be destroyed easily as you make it seem.  They are not auto targeted by fighters or flak unless is the only type of SC around.

You can start pushing a fleet back with repulse then deploy the mines behind the enemy.  Use a 2nd guardian to push the other fleet into the mines. Ships under repulse have a hard time moving already

Gravity mines: Reverse Repulsion?

Good point, though still easily killable with a little micro once they deploy.

You still have to work for it, and the enemy has a fair opportunity to try to get out of the setup.  Much harder to avoid and prevent the Vasari variety, and much easier to spring the trap.  Never said it's a bad tactic; quite the contrary, that's a great combo, just not quite as great as the Vasari variety.

Furthermore, a proper change to repulsion would fix this combo, since the issue is more the immobilizing effect of this ability (which has ALWAYS been an issue).  We actually got a great version of repulse in the Project Equilibrium mod that didn't completely immobilize units, but still would push them out of the area of effect quite nicely.

Well you always have to work for it to make mines be used in the offensive

Less so with vasari.  No more than you would be doing with subverters anyways and its basically uncounterable without strike craft superiority(an iffy thing against vasari anyways since they tend to go overboard with SC anyways).  It takes a lot of forethought to position to repulse someone into mines already laid.  As mentioned already, the vasari is likely going to have a lot of bombers to shoot them down as they are being laid.  It is a lot harder to pull off as advent at any rate and impossible with TEC.  To be clear, I don't want mines used offensively by advent either.

[_]-Greyfox