A second look at Romulan mines?

posted on October 25th, 2009, 1:11 am

Normally when people post that something is overpowered, it's because they lost and now they want to cry about it etc., etc.  But I'm finding it too easy to use my fleet of generix support to lay down mines in large fleet engagements, and I'm feeling that in large groups they provide too much burst dps.  So I was wondering if Optec and DC could take a look at romulan mine laying, specifically in the middle of large battles.  So long, and thanks for all the fish.

posted on October 25th, 2009, 1:59 am

Hmm, and you don't find that all the mines hit one or two ships? I can see how it might be a problem if you have a few big battleships and the Support descends, but against a lot of cruisers it shouldn't be that big of an idea (or am I off the mark?)... then again, the weapon relies on being in close range... dunno

In general I think mines are being changed... but I don't know how: I must consult 

posted on October 25th, 2009, 2:44 am

To be honest, it's hard to tell where the mines are going.  A large fleet of gen support (12-16 ships) can pump out 1 mine per ship every 5 seconds 4 times in a row, with a 5th soon following.  The one instance that really stuck out in my mind was a game I played against a klingon player who had a decent fleet of ships.  Our fleets were spread out on top of one another, so at a guess, several vessels were hit each time.

Of course, some of my ships were firing plasma bolts and using shield recharge, but most of them were spamming mines.  Let's say about 40 mines total were used in a 30 second battle.  Dropped in 4-5 waves, there's going to be a lot of ships destroyed/heavily damaged (2-3 ships per wave, perhaps?) plus the damage coming from the generex's conventional weapons and the rest of my fleet.  I guess that's why I'm suggesting some testing, is because I'm not really sure if they are overpowered or not, it just feels that way.  I'm not accounting for ships being destroyed and thus not contributing to the mine pool, but with shield recharge most of the support ships don't die. 

I remember back in the competition game you had a lot of gen support and DC had a sizable vorcha fleet that mixed it up.  Mines were dropped and the Vorchas died in seconds. (hhmmm...all my examples seem to come from Klingon ships blowing up! ) 

I'm sure part of it is just the Klingon's low defensive value makes them vunerable to this kind of attack.  Or maybe I really am that good .  But I'd like to think that the mines are just really strong.  

posted on October 25th, 2009, 3:28 am

Hmm, well Shield Recharge does eat up a ton of special energy pretty fast (100 per second out of a total of 519). Usually I'd say those Generixes would be lucky if they'd drop one [138] mine each (especially if using plasma bolt too [104]).

I just did a quick test just to see how much damage a mine did in real time... seems to knock about 16% off a K'beajQ's shields.

So basically if they each use 1-2 Plasma Bolts and recharge one ship's shields they are down to being able to drop between 1-2 mines, assuming of course they don't go crazy with more plasma bolts etc.

From just these quick tests it doesn't seem too powerful really, but it depends on what sort of ships are being involved I guess.

Incidentally, if you watch carefully in the Competition Game, no mines (ok, maybe one--although you can't see them, or hear them being dropped in that battle at all) were dropped into DC's fleet--they were all dropped a sizable distance before. I know, because I only had about 100-200 special energy, and I was desperately trying to recharge shields (also, I just re watched it now ). Really the end for that battle came because of Baron's SCubes added to my overwhelming forces. Not the most tactical battle on my part I have to say. 

posted on October 25th, 2009, 3:45 am

To be honest, it's hard to tell where the mines are going.  A large fleet of gen support (12-16 ships) can pump out 1 mine per ship every 5 seconds 4 times in a row, with a 5th soon following.  The one instance that really stuck out in my mind was a game I played against a klingon player who had a decent fleet of ships.  Our fleets were spread out on top of one another, so at a guess, several vessels were hit each time.

Of course, some of my ships were firing plasma bolts and using shield recharge, but most of them were spamming mines.  Let's say about 40 mines total were used in a 30 second battle.  Dropped in 4-5 waves, there's going to be a lot of ships destroyed/heavily damaged (2-3 ships per wave, perhaps?) plus the damage coming from the generex's conventional weapons and the rest of my fleet.  I guess that's why I'm suggesting some testing, is because I'm not really sure if they are overpowered or not, it just feels that way.  I'm not accounting for ships being destroyed and thus not contributing to the mine pool, but with shield recharge most of the support ships don't die. 

I remember back in the competition game you had a lot of gen support and DC had a sizable vorcha fleet that mixed it up.  Mines were dropped and the Vorchas died in seconds. (hhmmm...all my examples seem to come from Klingon ships blowing up! ) 

I'm sure part of it is just the Klingon's low defensive value makes them vunerable to this kind of attack.  Or maybe I really am that good .  But I'd like to think that the mines are just really strong.  

well they are balanced you see b/c you lay enough mines and the game will crash

[Anonymous]

posted on October 25th, 2009, 4:02 am

Last edited by Anonymous on October 25th, 2009, 4:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I could have sworn you were dropping mines!   Of course you were the one doing it (or I suppose not doing it, in this case).  Now I have to check it again.  I must be getting senile.

Edit:  In that game you laid several sets of mines before battle which don't come into play, we see 1 or 2 ships low on special energy.  Then you attack their fleet, and Baron shows up with his scubes.  I don't see them, but I thought I heard two sets of mines being laid, but it's very hard to hear it amongst the weapons fire.  So maybe I am crazy .  You also had some officer level rhienns, I'm sure that didn't hurt.

So maybe they aren't OP.  But they do seem to do a lot of damage.  I smell a few test games with my testing buddy coming up...

posted on October 25th, 2009, 2:11 pm

Most certainly

posted on October 25th, 2009, 7:28 pm

i would say a little dil/trit cost would fit pretty well for the mines... otherwie you can spam waay too much mmines if the enemy doesnt keep the pressure up (i.e in a 3 player ffa)

posted on October 25th, 2009, 7:34 pm

Eh, spamming mines isn't hard to defeat (just use a few cheap scouts, and you remove most of them) and it is quite time consuming. Plus, with Romulan turrets being fairly weak, the mines give a nice defensive boost

posted on October 25th, 2009, 9:19 pm

One of the most amusing uses of mines that I've seen is a group of Generix Support decloaking in a mining expansion, dropping a bunch of mines, cloaking and running away, letting the mines break some miners and hamper the opponent's economy.

Nothing like a fully-loaded miner getting blown up trying to enter the mining station to slow your resources down.

posted on October 25th, 2009, 9:23 pm

mines will be changed in a future redo to become more interessting

posted on October 25th, 2009, 9:25 pm

One of the most amusing uses of mines that I've seen is a group of Generix Support decloaking in a mining expansion, dropping a bunch of mines, cloaking and running away, letting the mines break some miners and hamper the opponent's economy.

Nothing like a fully-loaded miner getting blown up trying to enter the mining station to slow your resources down.

The thing is, if you can do that, you usually can destroy the mining facility itself

Good to hear Optec

posted on October 25th, 2009, 9:29 pm

Dast ist gut, ja!

posted on October 26th, 2009, 3:37 am

I know, Dom.  But what's cooler?  You know it's mining their mining!  Hard to beat that for cool, and therefore, it's the tactic more worthy of use!

posted on October 26th, 2009, 4:57 pm

indeed Silent

Kind of like Perigrining the crap out of somebody's mining--even if you could have just used your fleet to zoom in there and destroy things