[Feedback] Mines

I totally agree the mines are highly annoying and very hard to work around, not to mention the computers go absolutely crazy with them, especially the Vasari.

Fighters or bombers should be able to detonate mines without being harmed or there should be a USEFUL frigate that can spot them(not the dumb scout ship that's useless) or at the very least, the spotting range needs to be at least triple what it is now on the scout ships.

I've only seen one instance where I could actually destroy mines and that's when a scout was nearby to spot them and I had defenses in range, my ships didn't even seem to care about destroying them.

Only other solution I've found and it's extremely time consuming is build a bazillion scouts and have them go ram the mines.

You're right though, mines should either despawn or detonate when you take over the planet.  One thing is for sure something needs to be done about them because they're the #2 reason I don't play the beta right now, #1 being the de-synch problems I seem to have every lan game.

I feel your pain. Something needs to be done, and from the posts others have written I'm sure they will. Personaly I also would like to see a researchable ability given to one of the frigates. Perhaps the seige frigates could be given missles that could detonate when in proximity of mines, or the long rang frigate could have missles that launch clusters into mine feilds destroying mines from affar just before your fleet moves in. Or some such equivilant. It would be good to be able to do something to rid a gravity well of at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the mines during an offensive if adequitly prepared.

I agree with Ratchit01, I didn't really think about it at first, but now that he metions it, it would really be a good idea to have the TEC Siege Frigate, Advent Purge Vessel, and the Vasari Karrastra Destructor to have a researchable ability that can eliminate the mines. I personally hate the fact that the mines are Invincible up untill your ships are like 2 inches away from them. But if those frigates are able to do the job of eliminating the missles that the AI apperently loves to spam, just because you are about 1 phase lane away from their homeworld, then I would personally play Entrenchment 10 fold.

Actually they just need to improve the scouts ability to Seek/Destroy mines, They started with the scouts so that more people would use them. making them an important part of a fleet. I feel like they just need to make it so the mines stay vulnerable as long as they are spotted by a scout (which should automatically start destroying the mines). Thats just my two cp.

Yeh! I also am guilty of producing and using the scout very little (usually only 1 or 2 at the start of the game ). It would be good to have scouts able to have an additional role. But it just seems a bit wrong sending my poor little scout to what I know is more than likely a suicide mission. But thats just me.

Now that I think about it, maybe it would be good to have the Cap. carrier have an upgrade to deploy a mine sweeping ship/device that does nothing but destroy mines, similar to the missle batteries ability. This would make fleet micro management similar to un-Entrenchment Sins.

I find a dedicated sweeper fleet of scouts, flak, and optionally your long range arty frigates (missile/beam frigs) does a good job sweeping mines. Just move the fleet near a bunch, and let them wipe it out.

Does NOT work against Advent mines though. There's literally no way to sweep these, they activate from outside a scout's detection range and blow everything to heck.

The other factions' mines I honestly don't mind. They're easy enough to clean up once you learn how to do it. It's just the advent ones. Either I'm missing something, or they're just automatic death. They definitely pass my criteria for something that's vastly overpowered: I feel guilty when I use them.

I had 10 carriers, each of which had one squadron dedicated to building mines... My fleet moved near a fully upgraded starbase, and the carriers deployed their mines. The mines swarmed the starbase and wiped out it's shields in ONE volley. Just 10 carriers with one mine squadron each. I fear if they had been set to build 3 mine squadrons each, they might have one shotted the starbase.

Also, there's a bug with Advent mines (Aside from them being ludicrously overpowered), in that if some of your carriers in your fleet have mines built, if you try to access the squadron management panel for the fleet as a whole, the game crashes to desktop, every time.

With a little tweaking of the AI - largely not to ignore the out of phase mine, small and appropriately configured fleets could effectively sweep gravity wells of mines.

You don't need to sweep advent mines. Acouple of scouts can move entire mine feilds out of the way by getting them to give chase. Their mobility is their weakness. I actually think the advent mines are the most balaced of the three races. Once they cost some resources to deploy I think they will be pretty much balanced.

I never tried that. Mines really shouldn't be able to damage the starbases.

Well, call me biased, but anything that I have to sacrifice ships to counter (Even just a couple cheap ships like scouts) is bad design. There needs to be a way of countering it without taking losses if I do it carefully enough. But there is no way to do this with Advent mines.

Master Musashi

Try scouts and fighters or flak to counter advent mines.

I tried using my scouts to do that, they did do just that - to one set of mine feilds. But after manufacturing about 1 doz. scouts with the remainder of the fleet supply I had left I was running out of options,there was just to many mine feilds. The only thing I could think of was to build a SB. in the G. well and start sacrificing the scouts, then imediatly replace them with new one's, using the SB's frigate/cruiser upgrade ability. I was'nt counting prisicly but, rough estimate, 100 scouts later there was only a 1/2 Doz. left then the fighters moved in and finished off the rest. Is there something I'm doing wrong with my fighters???

I also think mines are a great addition to the game and I agree realy its only the Advent that I have trouble with. At this stage I just think there is to many, well maybe there is a better to counter them I just have'nt worked it out yet.

I was using scouts combined with flak, fighters, etc... It doesn't work vs. Advent mines because they can literally trigger from OUTSIDE scout detection range. And once they're triggered they're indestructible, the scout ability won't let you shoot them once they're locked on to a target.

So basically, you're boned.

You can sweep them when there's no ships of that faction in the sector, because they basically won't trigger at all without a ship or structure there in order to give that player vision on that gravwell. But all the other guy has to do is send one scout into the gravwell and BOOM, there goes your whole minesweeping fleet

Well I have no problems with that seeing as I am ALL ADVENT, but something does need to be done to all Mines to cut domn on the AI spam. Especially when scouts have to be used to stop them. That blows

My issue is that the Advent mines are the most spammable to start with, and they're also the best ones. They should be the worst if they're going to be that spammable. Besides, the Advent was overpowered before Entrenchment, they don't need to be made even more so.

The other thing I found annoying with the Advent mine spam blotting out all of their structures in their G. well and chasing down my fleet was that the game became stutery and jumpy trying to process the shear number of unit movements going on. It made extremely hard to position my ships into a safe enough position. Using a complete compliment fleet wise and using a large map, I'd been playing for about 15hrs.  against 6 AI and had'nt had this problem until the first time I had to combat the Advent. Once I had eliminate most of the mines however things returned to normal.

So I was clearing some mines today and noticed something that seemed wrong/buggy.

I sat my seeker vessel within discovery range of a vasari mine (no problem).

Then, as I mouse over one of the mines, it flickers between the phased out/invunerable state and then to a detected state, and then back to phased out, and so on.  As if the game is changing it's mind every half second or so about the state of the mine.

I selected a few frigates and asked them to attack the mine.  If it's phased out, they don't detect it and log a 'move here' order.  If it's phased in they register the attack order and start firing, but then the mine phases out and they stop shooting.

Has anyone else seen this effect?  Or is it a one off bug (I'll play again later to check and see if it happens again).

I have been lately just using the Z-axis command and flying right over or under them.  The comp usually lays them on a flat plane rather than varied elevations.

As I am playing, at the moment with all 3 races to test balance, I seem to encounter this issue with the TEC starbase.

Is anyone else having the same problem?

I guess you are talking about the illuminated yellow square at the bottom right. If so then yes. I think its supposed to sit in the top I'd never worried about it, but now that you bruoght it up the more I think it is.

Another thing I've noticed is that weapons fire goes straight through them and explodes on the opposite side to which the weapon was fired from. I guess they've just got a few little loose ends at this stage.

I hate mines like I hate my ex-wife.

I do have to say the mines have to be delt with. Right now, I was playing against 6 other computers, and 3 of them have been harrassing me. I kept pushing back, just to realize one of them laid 200+ mines in my own grav well. Explosive and Gravity. Oh, and in the worm hole, there are 400+ mines. I would show you, but I get a "Saved MiniDump" popup that freezes my game... At least make the AI's use less of them. a few hundred in one grav well, nevertheless mine, is a little too excessive.

I was playing a really tough match on small random map.

Me as Advent vs The Vasari.

Background info I had them down to 3 planets with me nearly finished all research only maybe 3 or 4 left to research total minors ones i had no use for really. All my planets maxed out and all with trade ports and etc etc.

At the pinch points i had several beam defense and 3 hangers as well as the SB and a massive fleet on the southern point ready for invasion.

The Vasari counter attacked with a huge fleet at the northen pinch point as i launched an attack from the south. I figured my defenses would hold out for a bit till i could build some back up i had 2 systems with 3 small ship building stations in each system about 2 jumps away at each. i started sending in some cheap seeker ships in groups of 3 as quick cheap help.

My ships arrived and the gavity well was covered in mines.I lost the SB and almost ever single defense while i did not lose the planet it took me forever to get control back of the system since i lost so many ships just trying to get them farther in the gravity well to help. Once i had control back and it was clear of all enemy ships all those mines remained and i could not for the life of me figure out how to destroy them short of running seekers into the area to clear a path by detonating them.

I know the TEC beginner ship Scout or what ever it is called you can research a tech so that they will do something with the mines i think it was destroy but not sure. Do the Advent and Vasari have anything like that?

I am loving the beta so far but i really hope they do some more work on mines. They can be abused way to easy right now.

They're pretty much worthless until you have a couple hundred in the gravwell though...

The Seeker vessel coes with a mine sweeper right of the back. The only problem is that if you plan on using your fleet to destroy them, it won't work. You would have to have the seeker vessel come close enough to the mine for it to be detected, and you would need to have either the Seekers with AutoAttack activated, a starbase in the vicinity of the mine field, or numerous DEFENSE platforms in the gravity well for them to be completely destroyed.

On the other hand, I seem to have this problem mostly with the TEC mines. For some reason when I play against the TEC, they take mine spamming to a whole new level.

I tried that, but half the time the mines wouldn't follow. I also ran into the issue of trying to move my scouts close enough to the Advent mines so my fighters could destroy them, but most of the time, the mines would fallow, and this is just at the very edge of the scouts range to disrupt and make the mines vulnerable. I was Vasari vs Advent, so it might be somethign with the Vasari scout.

Yep, just a graphics glitch. I'm sure it will be fixed by the next patch. Hopefully that patch will be soon, as with everyone else, these mines are ruining my enjoyment of the game and turned into micromanagement central. I enjoy this game BECAUSE I don't need to micromanage everything (automatic powers for example).

I agree that maybe a few hundred mines to make it effective, but the lack of any sort of cap on mine placement is having massive issues with everyone, especially the Vasari AI, hence why I don't play against the Vasari computer. Putting a cap on the number of mines deployed will force actual strategic positioning of mines instead of the current spam. But allowing such a high number of mines can only be allowed once there is an efficient and working way to clear them.