Mines

posted on July 6th, 2010, 5:06 pm

I've heard rumours going around that the romulan gen support will be made into a dedicated minelayer, which is awesome.

so i had some ideas about mines.

the current mine would remain as the basic mine, that can be dropped while cloaked.

there would be an upgraded mine, which is bigger and stronger and costs more energy (and possibly supply/res) and cant be dropped while cloaked until the support reaches officer rank.

then there would be cloaked mines, which are equipped with normal cloaking devices and possibly an upgrade to give them advanced cloaking devices if it can be balanced. and these can dropped cloaked only by officers or maybe veterans.

another part of my ideas on mines is that it fails sometimes.

i look back to the ds9 ep where the klinks are being dishonourable and mining the bajor system. some of the mines 'sploded when dropped cloaked.

so my idea is that when dropping a mine while cloaked there is a chance of failure. and a separate chance of the mine exploding as its being dropped.

failure has a 10% chance for unranked, and each rankup removes 1% chance, so vets have a 5% chance of failure. failure means the mine is dropped, but explodes away from the ship, not damaging it at all, just losing whatever costs were paid for the mine.

eploding when dropped has a 5% chance for unranked and each rankup removes 1% chance so vets have 0% chance to have the mine explode in their faces. this explosion damages the ship twice as much as it would an enemy, as the ship has its mine laying doors open and the explosion can pass into the ship, and subsystems are very easily damaged by this explosion as the inners of the ship are affected. so you would be unlucky if ur cloak was disabled by this this explosion also disables the ability to drop mines for a set period of time, as the people who just dropped the mine probably died first and the mine laying equipment must be repaired or something.

posted on July 9th, 2010, 2:18 pm

I like the upgraded mine.  Maybe a 'Protoss Carrier-like' ability where the ship actually constructs these larger, expensive (but deadly) mines.  A stop-gap turret alternative for certain corridors, or around a mining station.

posted on July 9th, 2010, 3:53 pm

A minelayer turret would be nice with some sort of hidden mines once you get the cloak generator.

posted on July 10th, 2010, 9:34 am

I'm not sure if it is possible with the engine, but i'd like to see mines with a proximity fuse to they don't chase after vessels across half the map.

Also it'd be nice if mines would ignore small vessels like scouts.

Last thing, addition of a mine removal system.

posted on July 10th, 2010, 12:29 pm

we already have one they are called sabers

posted on July 10th, 2010, 4:32 pm

we already have one they are called sabers

Sure you can remove a mine by stepping on it or flying a ship against it, but i think it would be preferable if mines could be destroyed without sacrificing ships and resources.

posted on July 10th, 2010, 5:32 pm

hm, mine always remindes me at:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-_x4YTrOvM&feature=related[/youtube]

posted on July 10th, 2010, 6:38 pm

Sure you can remove a mine by stepping on it or flying a ship against it, but i think it would be preferable if mines could be destroyed without sacrificing ships and resources.

Just throw some redshirts out the airlock at them...no-one cares if they die!

posted on July 10th, 2010, 9:04 pm

I also think mines need to be more integrated in the game.  They clearly can serve as a cheap alternative to turrets in areas of high space travel.  I disagree with the cloak idea to some degrees.  Yes, it makes since for the Romulans or the Klingons to have a mine that is superior at remaining hidden from sight, but the Feds and Dominion could use hidden mines as well.  What I was thinking was that their mines should be remotely similar to the new Dominion scouting special, the probe that activates intermittently and has a low visibility rate to enemy vessels.  That would reduce an enemy from seeing it til it's to late, and still make use of the fact that mines are suppose to be hidden.

Regards,
-Grey

posted on July 10th, 2010, 9:28 pm

Eh, the Feds hide things about as much as the Borg do.  Sure, they could have asked the Romulans to seed the wormhole with their cloaking magnetic mines of doom, but instead they built a self-replicating minefield that anybody could see (but good luck taking it down easy).

I'd think fed mines would be easily detected, but a serious pain to be rid of, or annoyingly powerful.  They prefer deterrants, after all.

The Dominion, on the other hand, seems to have no hangups about using misdirection, stealth, and underhanded tactics.  I could definately see them using hidden minefields...but the Romulans are the crown princes of that.  They even seed planetary rings with them to make people not explore.

posted on July 10th, 2010, 9:29 pm

they built a self-replicating minefield that anybody could see (but good luck taking it down easy).

rewatch that episode and u will see that the mines did indeed have cloaking devices.

posted on July 11th, 2010, 2:01 am

indeed you can clearly see that entire minefield cloaked once they activated it

posted on July 11th, 2010, 2:41 pm

I think the mines should have the feature of going offline afterseveral years of operation as the mines cloak may use some energy - perhaps ten minutes ingame. But to not just lose them, you could re-energize them with a support ship to make them last further ten minutes. The reason I order is that mines should not get a too easy solution.

posted on July 11th, 2010, 2:43 pm

The mines could use the Transmitter, like the Turrets.

posted on July 11th, 2010, 2:53 pm

Indeed - but what is needed for the rommies is a defensive (ok, mines can be used offensive too) feature that works withou that annoying tower. Perhaps a mobile energy transmitter could be created such a ship would additionally make turrets sensible for the rommies in early game.