Maby a good balance could be creating a ship class that pushes the mines away (like a reverse magnetic field - NOT a 1 to 1 basis) on a reasonable range scale, pushing all the mines back within that area range (enough to protect a fleet).

This would work for the mines including the Homing mines from Advent and mass gravity well mines from Vassari e.g pushes them away.

However it may also be useful if the mines went back to their previous positions slowly after the mine pusher is gone/destroyed (so that fleets have a chance to get out and don't get "cluster" bombed), and that the mine pusher is not a limited one use ship - it would also help by not having new mines put into the old position of the old mines, and slowing down computer systems.

The reason that they would go back to their previous position automatically is that so the mines are still effective and the "mine pusher" is not a be all and end all to mines to create fleet pathways, even when they're gone).

I also think that scouts should have an radius ability to destroy mines within a small radius area (as opposed to 1 on 1), and used in conjunction with the "mine pusher" i think it would work.

What do people think, would it be effective?

Mines do bring the game to a crawl. I spend more time trying to clear a well of mines, that it literaly stops the game. It becomes a mine hunt.

Btw I think its IS stupid that you can see enemy mines in the empire tree.

Agree. Mega Mines just made what was a nice game pretty boring and stupid about 3 hours in. There were so many of the damn things it no longer was a strategic or even tactical game, its just became a game of frogger as I had to avoid mine fields within my own system. Create a MINESWEEPER!! And make Mines optional. I want to turn them off!!

I believe this would not work - you`d simply make the 'Mine Pusher' ship a part of your fleet, which means that fleet would possess a mobile bubble protection versus Mines. Mines would then be useless, except to force your opponent to build said Pusher. Mines should be capable to a considerable degree of area denial, without friendly fleet support.

Again, turn minues on/off button.

And

No more than 30 mines per planet, just like it's limited to 1 starbase.

This is the same for me and Vasari

Do I have to hear when every mine is constructed? How bout a all mines are deployed wav.?

I play the Vas exclusively and I have to agree that there should be some type of cost effect placed on the mines.  It is too easy to set a line of travel for the ship and just let it place 100's of mines in 1 grav well.  Need to fix this.

This is a very interesting idea.

Here's just a thought about mine-spam, and I don't know if the programming is past the point for this to be even considered but...

Eliminate all individually placed mines, and use the following abstract system which could hopefully add levels of strategy, depth, and won't paralyze your computer at the same time...

1)  Instead of using Tactical Slots, could a New slot be added to the planet developement window "Mine Defenses".

Perhaps Mine Defenses can only be purchased after some Research has been conducted.

Allow different levels of mine Defenses per planet, possiby for example, TEC 3 upgrades per planet, Advent 2, Vasari 1, or whatever.

Mine Defenses can have a random chance of damaging each ship every X second time interval.

Chance of damage/Amount of damage/other effects can all be affected by the levels of research conducted.  (See #3 below)

2)  Allow the upgrade only to be purchased when a minelayer is present in system, and/or if possible, minelayer needs to be present throughout the length of the upgrade.

3)  Consider adding additional researches regarding effectiveness of mines, or special effects or something.

4)  If you have a fleet with a Minelayer and/or scout in system where mines are present, then you are "immune" to mine effects.  Maybe requiring 1 scout per level of mines developed at the planet.  If you are in a fleet battle and the enemy takes out your mine protection, then you'll be vulnerable.

Or implement some other Ability to protect from mine damage and set on autocast, minimal Antimatter cost, or always in use unless interrupted.  Give various Ranges of "Protection" for each ship, small range for a scout, very large for a minesweeper.  (Also affected by Research).

5)  Add the ability for a Minelayer/scout to Remove Levels of emplaced mines at a planet, and/or prevent new contruction of mines, implement like sort of an Embargo against mines. 

No, this solution doesn't cover mining areas with no planets, but Mines only work in system where they can be controlled so they don't blow up your automated trade ships or refinery ships, or <insert whatever other explanation you choose>

Feedback?  Thoughts?  Bullets?

Don't forget it is beta testing, and if you caught bug, make a new dedicated thread named such as "[bug] memory leak" or so on. Don't stop play just because of a silly bug, go try other factions, do some real beta testing

Thankyou for your input.

What i meant in the post was that the mines would come back to their original position automatically once the "mine pusher" is destroyed/disabled, and that the pushers ability would not be stacked within its range (aka couldn't overrun the field with mine pushers - unless they had very low hp or shielding or so it wouldn't be balanced - it could even use anti-matter.) I believe this would help so that there would not be a big gap in the mine field where the mine pusher/fleet was covering the area in which the "pusher" pushed out so that they would go back to their default placement area.

(aka soon as mine pusher is destroyed/out of range the mines go back to their original position - closing the gap that it made)

by the way what does "area denial" mean? (sorry not sure what context it is).

(However i do believe i see where you are comming from).

The only other alternate methods i could think of are making the Z axis more user friendly (like i have said in another post) - I still believe this is the best option, as the mines can be the same (aka they do what they say on the tin and are there to get rid of you/make you suffer as much loss as possible, hense the phrase when theres lots of something (usually bad) - its a mine field out there) - and if you want to try get around the mines you navigate yourself above/below or around them. (And for this i believe it would be best to have an easy user interface icon to do it).

Or having some fleet feature of having a in game function e.g similar to "orders - e.g attack in local area - under commands (i think)"- for auto-avoiding the mines (with something like a start at 40% effectivity rate, and the tecnology has to be researched to make it more effective). e.g if mines were invisible (and only scouts could detect them) it could be better "mine detection sensors". Which will move your fleets above/below/around the mines radius - however their is still a chance they could hit due to it not being 100% perfect research. (The path finding would have to be spot on aswel).

Sorry if it is not very clearly written.

I did start a memory leak thread, but got no reply.  I do still have the saved game. 

It's not that I don't want to play.  Either it crashes or there are hundreds of mines at multiple planets making it impossible to take over.

Basically, I can't get through a single game.

I like the idea of mines but there needs to be a minesweeper ship or ability for another ship.  A large fleet with 6 cap ships, numerous scouts, frigates and cruisers does virtually nothing to the minefield.  On the other hand the same fleet destroys worlds, structures and starbases in under a minute and is indestructable to large enemy fleets.  Something is wrong!

Minefields should be layed out so that each mine can detonate without setting off others around it otherwise the mine layers would have done a really bad job.  A whole minefield should not snowball but maybe large debris from cap ships (?) should set off a few mines as it drifts.

I also like the idea of a cap ship having a mine detection upgrade.

Well, I just finished a game where in the end, I just ended up massing mine cruisers as vasari. The game ended up using over 2 gigs of ram and it wouldnt even render all the mines on the screen. I was just having mine wars with the computer.

The scroll bar goes down even farther than that. That's over 2,000 mines right there lol.

-Stick

The logical conclusion to this is that the mine layers also learn how to use the z-axis, and we have three levels of mine spam instead of one. That doesn't really solve the crippling performance problems mines are causing.

After reading all of your comments, here are my ideas on mine balance.

1: because of computer limitations, limit mines to 100 per system per faction. This would allow defensive and offensive placements of mines, but limit computer crashing mine spam. Also, limit the placement of mines to the gravity well.

2: I think we all agree that enemy mines should not be visible on the map, unless your fleet can see them.

3: we need a mine sweeper! My idea would be to have a tech upgrade to a ship that allow them to “ping” (i.e. expose) mines in a greater area than the scout. Fleet AI should be changed to have its highest priority to engage mines in firing range. This slows down a fleet, which is what mines are meant to do. You can obviously choose to ignore this at your own risk.

4: when a mine explodes, any non-phased out ship or structure that is caught in the blast radius should be damaged.

5: and on the off the wall end of the spectrum, Advent shouldn’t have mines. Instead of homing mines, I’d like to see kamikaze squadrons of strike craft instead. Since these squadrons would take up a slot, it would limit spam. These kamikaze strike craft would be interceptable, so your fighters or anti strike craft ships could shoot them down. I know balance would have to be found, but I think each fighter should do enough damage that a full squadron should be able to take down any ship short of a cap ship. I know that if overpowered, people would spam them on carriers. So they would need to be easier to intercept then current Advent strike craft. So either make them slower, or easier to shoot down; or a combination of both.

Finally on a non mine balance issue: strike craft are currently overpowered. Instead of nerfing them though, I would prefer new techs and or abilities to fight them. Upgrades to the Guardia for the TEC, better intercept abilities for Advent fighters, and an anti-strike craft ability upgrade for the Vasari defense platform would make sense to me.  

Surely minefields should be mapped once the gravity well has been scouted/explored (?).  The minefield information would only be up updated when a ship is in the gravity well or a drone is active.

Maybe an icon in the empire tree for every 100 mines instead of 10.

How about (at least for vasari), there's a set number of mines the minelayer can lay.  Maybe make it like 10 or 20.  After those are used up, the ship auto-scuttles, but you don't get any resources back for it.

How about just abandon the idea of mines entirely?

JGH

I think the mines are a good idea but they could use some work. They are too random in their placement and tec there should be some way to clear them. There should be one type of ship that can either clear them, detonate them or something so they don't overwhelm peoples pc's. Mine seems to be handling it for now. Network games need some work too.

My idea is a cruiser that would be like a carrier and would have the ability to deploy say 10 (with an upgrade) mines around them and then it would become immobile.  Then it would also have the ability to collect the mines back up and move. 

Possibly it would have the ability to collect enemy mines too and that you would get money from each individual one like 5 metal 5 crystal and 10 credits so that you would make the enemy pay for spamming a gravity well with mines.

Also if you take a planet that is completely spammed i think that your constructer ships should auto disassemble the mines.

New guy here so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

Nothing should come for free or give an overwhelming advantage.

PRODUCTION:  Mines should cost a SMALL fee.  Credits / metal.  Nothing comes for free...even in this fairy tale.  If it doesn't cost it will get abused and apparently it has!

USE:  A player should be able to entrench themselves with defense in depth, but while that defense keeps an aggressor at bay...it can also imprison the defender.  So the more you use the more you spend and the less mobility you have.  There should be a ratio to maneuver / speed factor.  The more you use the slower and less maneuverable your ships in that well are.  They would still have to navigate a minefield even if they knew where they were. 

DETECTION / DESTRUCTION:  Scouts and a combo of fighters sounded like a good idea to me.  You give the fighters a new role as well.  Scouts being able to engage these are possibly another option?  A minesweeping ship?  Or a tactical addition to one of the frigates or cap ships?  The idea of collateral damage was also relevant...if you spam them so tight together then if one goes off the other will be affected.  Spamming becomes obsolete at this point because in a ridiculously swamped minefield it will only take one or two explosions to destroy an entire field thus wasting the time and resources a defender has spent for one spectacular blast and no payoff except on nice show.  Makes our defenders "plan" their defenses and consider their resources and the tactical advantages / disadvantage of a minefield. 

Besides...who wants to play with a guy who does that?  "I'll sit over here and you sit over there and we'll just look at each other over our impenetrable walls of mines"  and build massive fleets and civilizations to do nothing....kills the game. 

Mines are great and should be used but they have to be put in check.

New guy here so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

Nothing should come for free or give an overwhelming advantage.

PRODUCTION:  Mines should cost a SMALL fee.  Credits / metal.  Nothing comes for free...even in this fairy tale.  If it doesn't cost it will get abused and apparently it has!

USE:  A player should be able to entrench themselves with defense in depth, but while that defense keeps an aggressor at bay...it can also imprison the defender.  So the more you use the more you spend and the less mobility you have.  There should be a ratio to maneuver / speed factor.  The more you use the slower and less maneuverable your ships in that well are.  They would still have to navigate a minefield even if they knew where they were. 

DETECTION / DESTRUCTION:  Scouts and a combo of fighters sounded like a good idea to me.  You give the fighters a new role as well.  Scouts being able to engage these are possibly another option?  A minesweeping ship?  Or a tactical addition to one of the frigates or cap ships?  The idea of collateral damage was also relevant...if you spam them so tight together then if one goes off the other will be affected.  Spamming becomes obsolete at this point because in a ridiculously swamped minefield it will only take one or two explosions to destroy an entire field thus wasting the time and resources a defender has spent for one spectacular blast and no payoff except on nice show.  Makes our defenders "plan" their defenses and consider their resources and the tactical advantages / disadvantage of a minefield. 

Besides...who wants to play with a guy who does that?  "I'll sit over here and you sit over there and we'll just look at each other over our impenetrable walls of mines"  and build massive fleets and civilizations to do nothing....kills the game. 

Mines are great and should be used but they have to be put in check.