Minelayer Rework

[boreal bluff]

Heres my concept, this is designed to be able to reuse all current assets and the majority of the functionality ideally.

stats wise to begin with you'd heavily reduce the damage and reduce the aoe somewhat.

we'd retain the current left click functionality as is, dropping mines. (Dropped mines should ideally do more damage or something, or have a larger AOE.)

On right click, however, you'd slowly rack up your available mines (up to 8) and if your bot permits the rough firing angle, the mines are lobbed a medium distance in a large spread over the area you are aiming (maybe a aiming circle or arrow?)
i.e, like 1 second per mine launcher to prime.

It would just make it alot more versatile potentially.

the core idea is we trade off alot of the raw power for the capability to deal more damage, and setup mines in more interesting areas.

//FWIW the lob concept for a secondary that creates zero gravity projectiles that settle and connect to eachother with a matrix would be a interesting anti-air style mine.

I think the mine is alot better but still begs for extra functionality so it can be as generally useful as the missiles or autocannon

[dusty echo]

You'd have to place the mines on the top of your bot to be able to lob them in any direction, I presume

[boreal bluff]

or towards the front, or any useful angle that isnt obstructed.

[rocky dawn]

I think it would be best to make a new weapon to fire mines across a great distance, rather than change the current mine layer.

while i initially thought that this might turn the mine launcher into a "bomb launcher", i see we already have some very good "bomb launchers" so use a mine launcher as "bomb launcher" isn't really a problem. unless the mine is too powerful as a toss bomb, which is the other issue that minelayer isn't exempt.

[plush olive]

Pretty much agree with Sii; I think this would be better as a separate thing entirely... not against adjusting mines but I'd rather lean further into their current role as area denial.

[shut gyro]

I agree that the mines need a nerf in AOE or damage somewhat, even if the rest of the suggested idea isn't implemented.

Current mines are ridiculously dangerous, even for bots who shouldn't have a hard time evading them.

[plush olive]

Yeah I will say it's a bit disconcerting to get oneshot by a minefield that somebody else detonated while I'm flying in the air two or three bot lengths above a cap point.

Personally I'd like to see them have a higher cap for the number of active mines (doubled?) in exchange for less AoE and damage.

[shut gyro]

don't double the cap increase it like by 1.25x,
lag through entity-count can still be an issue to worry about.

[plush olive]

in theory yeah, though I don't know how much of an issue that actually is for this game

the limit is pretty low currently so I assumed doubling should be fine; I guess just raise it to whatever doesn't cause performance issues.

[shut gyro]

one must always go by the perspective of 8(Not 8 per team) funny men bringing a mine spam bot to a battle.
At that point I would rather go to martian Brasil.

[plush olive]

I think it's pretty much okay if <scenario which can be reasonably expected to be laggy, achievable only by agreement of all involved> is laggy.

[shut gyro]

Noone even if it is by collaboration should have this power.

[boreal bluff]

Im thinking the chain explosion is perhaps an inherently flawed property

mines might be easier to balance if clearing them is a little more challenging, and they deal less damage, etc.

takes a while to setup mines and having the chain explosion blip all of them does suck

you cant really spread out mines as a ground bot, which is part of what my original concept kinda tries to adress

I think if we wanted to strictly keep the mines the same, lowering damage, lowering aoe, making them a little bit more annoying to clear dozens of mines, could be helpful.