#Specific mine buffs!

93 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

torn jolt
#

Based on the previous thread of buffing mines with more than a hundred upvotes, I believe that the following changes are worth trying in terms of a proper buff:

  • Add slight tracking
  • Halve an individual mine part's cost
  • Double how many mine parts are stored on an individual storage tile
  • Quadruple their health

The reasoning or thoughts behind the changes is that mines deal ludicrous amount of damage, but they're super inconsistent, so all the changes are supposed to make them more consistent. Specific explanations is as follows:

  • Mines are very very easily flown around, so by adding slight drift that eventually places them in the path of opponents, they become a much larger nuisance than just effortlessly
  • This change and the next are for the sake of actually using mines. As is they're less ammo efficient than nukes, which seriously calls into question why they should be used if nukes which are much more consistent. By making mines twice as efficient they now have the typical identity of being produced and used in large quantities
  • Mines are very easily shot down. Waaay too easily, I think it should be harder to do this than even nukes. As mines don't move at all, reasonably why would one not pack on as much armor as possible to protect against enemy counterfire?
cloud pilot
#

oops, i posted my suggestion at the same exact time

#

yeah this sounds solid, i like this

winged garnet
#

Add slight tracking
You mean they slowly drift towards nearby enemy ships?

torn jolt
#

Yes

#

Preferably into their paths, rather than directly at them

winged garnet
#

target prediction is a lot more expensive than just going straight to the target, i'm a bit worried about performance if there are a lot of mines

torn jolt
#

Straight towards the target should be fine then. I don't think it'll be too much of a difference most of the time

empty wave
#

also unsuck the factory, currently is (near) impossible to use in combat

#

needing to deliver to specific holes makes the crew costs go up ridiculously and makes shoving ammo in hard

#

also needing other resources in the first place makes also getting the high power usage under control hard too

torn jolt
#

Hmm, lets see, for mine factory a good place to start would be to just halve the cost and production requirements. They're super hard to supply? Not anymore! You've just cut all the necessary resource income in half!

  • Reducing the cost is a good move in my mind as they also have a huge cost relative to what you're actually getting
  • Change crew walk speed from 50% to 75% (maybe carry over to all combat factories, ammo, nukes, EMPs, HEs) as presumably these rooms would be optimized to handle crew moving in them in active combat
image.png
winged garnet
#

Is the cost just an issue with the bullets, or is it an issue with the iron as well?

torn jolt
#

I'd say iron more so since if a ship is producing mines it's also producing ammo/using sulfer

ember maple
#

issue is that ammo is very crew inefficient to carry

#

even with the suggested halving of requirements, that's 2 crew trips/mine

#

while the iron is 1 crew trip for every 10 mines

torn jolt
#

I wouldn't be opposed to doubling the amount of ammo crew can carry, that would also help deck cannons being super ammo weird since they take so much of it

pale ferry
torn jolt
#

Cannons and flak are both in awful positions and it's flat out weird how hard it is to supply deck cannons. Rails are ridiculously ammo efficient so that wouldn't be a concern either

ember maple
#

i'm in favour of that buff

pale ferry
ember maple
#

though it is still a massive difference between the amount of crew trips needed for iron and ammo in the mine factory

pale ferry
#

Do you think it would be a good idea to add damage (or more damage) to the initial mine explosion (but not the shrapnel, but give the mine a ~1 second arming once in detonation range, and adjust the 20m detonation range to balance it out.

Reason for suggestion, is to punish careless movement for bigger ships, with more damage (while giving fast ships a chance to escape or give chance for fast early game ships to escape). For those with careful movement or proactive mine detection can avoid that extra damage, it could be a viable mechanic to add realism to the game.

If this evolves into a big mechanic, something to teach this to players (as an example) would be to add in specific quests in Phase 1, which involves clearing a minefield in an asteroid field.

Although on second thought, it might make mines even more inconsistent, and maybe lead to performance issues if 15 mines arm at once.

What would be your thoughts on this?

ember maple
#

i think some inherent explosion is good

alpine hornet
#

having no inertial dampening would make them less viable for railkites, so you'd be more free to buff mines if you removed the inertial dampening

ember maple
#

what's inertial dampening in this case?

torn jolt
#

Slowing down after being launched to reduce momentum, I'm assuming

alpine hornet
#

called inertial dampening in config files so i just used those words

ember maple
#

ah

silent widget
#

if mines are super inconsistent, making them cheaper while having them fire out far more rapidly then missiles might help

#

the purpose of mines is to make an area of space dangerous to inhabit

#

they might not make for great offensive weapons but spit out enough them in a decent scatter behind you and any ships that true to pursue will be torn apart for as long as they stick to their foolish course

#

Maybe the capacity to set "mine layers", where you want this section of space to have x percent of it filled with y mine type

#

soften them up with EMP mines against their shields, then explosive or nuclear mines once they're briefly undefended

torn jolt
silent widget
#

Yes, agree.

#

Making them cheaper is only half of it though

#

you still have the bottleneck of deploying them if you want coverage, which... You do, for mines

#

missiles can get away with lower rates because they have a much higher impact chance per-missile what with being better guided

plucky hinge
#

I believe they need to last at least 3X as long. I get the idea of spaming mine is bad but wen in dom you want to defend a control point using mine was at one time good as you would lay a field out and go to the next zone going back and forth now you cant leave without then dying by the time your to the next spot.

#

I know other dom player agree with this.

cloud pilot
#

maybe mines should instantly die if they're outisde ROD

#

preventing situations where you have ROD and a pile of mijes

#

mines

slender sparrow
#

Yes yes yes yes I absolutely approve this post.

#

👍

#

Wonder if by ''previous thread of buffing mines'' Saris means my thread... #1034372934631968778

#

Yes it is a pat on the back but I think I did a really good job underlining the specific technical problems that plague mines.

torn jolt
#

Walt stated he wanted specific solutions, not meandering rambling, ergo tgis post

slender sparrow
#

Huh...

dusky spindle
#

I think one way to fix them might be to make them function like Proximity Mines.
Once you drop a mine it just sits around a long time, but once a hostile target moves into its relative proximity it arms itself, then begins to fly towards the target at an accelerating rate.
However, once armed the mine only has a few seconds before it explodes, regardless of whether or not it hits its target.

So small and fast targets can cause the mines to arm and explode without any risk just by flying past them, where as large and slower ships won't be able to get out of the way in time, but may have flak or other equipment to destroy them before they hit.

Powerful in the right situation, but has clear counter play.

torn jolt
#

That's what 'slight tracking' entails

empty wave
#

but that's just a nuke lol

#

well it does the same tihng as a nuke

cloud pilot
#

not really depending on range of attraction

slender sparrow
#

Honestly, I'd love all the missiles to have their own guidance quirks. HE is your standard ''fly randomly with relatively poor guidance, miss and come back to hit at enemy's butt'' kinda thing, nuke fires off, tracks and then heads to claim enemy's booty, and mine... Well, mine is a mine, it just sits around waiting to disintegrate or be shot by PD... But then there's EMP, literally just like HE except with worse guidance.

#

I'd love to see some love for EMP, as functionally it's probably the most underwhelming weapon as at least mines have an intriguing concept.

#

EMP is just disruptor except way less compact and worse, which also basically copies HE's guidance.

#

I love them, but they shall see better days in my opinion.

cloud pilot
#

:elon_meth: what if it teleported

empty wave
#

make them like old nukes for the boomerang

torn jolt
#

Or boomerang like regular missiles

empty wave
#

make them start fires

pale ferry
#

Mines could do bonus damage to armor

empty wave
#

they 1shot anything nonarmor anyways so u might as well just increase their damage so they can also kill shields (even more)

jade night
#

What if each mine was really ten smaller mines. The initial mine pops after some time, and puts out the smaller mines is a larger area. The total damage would be higher 2x-3x, if all of them were hit. Have them be 'magnetic' and track things that get close.

empty wave
#

clustermines

#

make it have 4 to go w/ the current stacking system

winged garnet
#

@torn jolt Reviving this thread because I'm finally looking into doing these changes for tomorrow's RC build. How important is the slight tracking? I have performance concerns about it. Tracking is pretty expensive, and there can be a lot of mines in the game at once.

torn jolt
#

Not much at all, I think you could completely drop it and be fine. Tracking was just an ideal thing that I said with no understanding of the scope

winged garnet
#

👍

weary sierra
# winged garnet 👍

So, would this mean that the mines would last longer? I'd like to see them last say 2 minutes so one could lay a mine field and leave the area in dom. I find there life is just to short for a practical strategy. Thank you for your consideration - Eric The Awfull

tidal saddle
severe frost
#

I think there's something with the shrapnel that doesn't feel right. Mines generally pop weak blocks like a charm but can just as easily dump all their stuff into armour without much effect, if the target is maneuvering around them.
If there was a way to make them pierce the armour and do some damage on the inside that would make them a lot more threatening. (And not as reliant on the situational explosion damage) Something about how their penetration works? So if you have like a block of corridors, then instead of chewing off a little piece off the edge it damages a whole row, but doesn't destroy it entirely with a single shrapnel projectile (which should be fine cause we have two mines)

I think their unprimed behaviour should also change. Just make the mine itself bounce off of armour like solid objects instead of projectiles, until they are far enough from the launcher to activate. (Could also let us do fun stuff with scooping them up and throwing them out as a group, but that might get laggy :/)
As objects they could also interact with tbs, which would let us use them at a longer range.

Another idea would be to give them a rapid fire option (dumping the mag into space without launching) or an alternating fire. But this would mean they could be used more directly, which is likely not their intended purpose.

severe frost
# winged garnet <@477132815033434113> Reviving this thread because I'm finally looking into doin...

Idk how expensive it would be or if this is something you can do in the game rn, but if the tip of a ship's motion vector acts as the point the mines attract towards in a certain radius (their tracking range) instead of the centre of the ship, then that effectively acts as a motion predictor even for very fast ships. And breaking in front of the mine would then steer it into the ship. So to dodge them, you'd need a ship that can change directions of thrust fast.

torn jolt
#

They fire cannon rounds that naturally pierce. Would you suggest increasing the amount of piercing to several layers of armor?

severe frost
# torn jolt They fire cannon rounds that naturally pierce. Would you suggest increasing the ...

Ye, they act like any other piercing projectile. Increasing penetration alone wouldn't help (because it still stops when damage runs out). I'm talking dealing just a fraction of damage and then pierce and move to the next block in line. So it doesn't stop on armour and goes in to wreak some havoc on the soft parts (fitting for a shrapnel)
The damage dealt could be tied to the blocks's piercing resistance. So armour isn't completely useless and corridors don't get chewed up by just one shrapnel.

torn jolt
#

I dunno man nothing else in the game works like that. Maybe for the next RC but I think randomly having what'll feel like infinite pierce isn't a great idea

severe frost
#

Mhm. But it could be as simple as "do half to armour" so a weave still stops them, but then they go past once the armour cracks.

But if that's not possible. I'd just suggest trying to boost the shrapnel in some other way. Range maybe. Idk, it just seems the projectiles should have a bigger role. The model definitely makes it seem like they would, they look like something very poky, lances, javelins.

thorny sinew
#

i meant idea for storage

tidal saddle
empty wave
#

i think mine damage/pen is fine, it's just the consistency

#

4ish mines will usually shred any wall going at full speed

tidal saddle
#

hmm maybe make the mines launch all of its shrapnel at the enemy ship, then?

empty wave
#

but then it's not doing its job of unencouraging speed

#

maybe increase the damage and bullet speed

#

so that way less will hit fast things and more will hit slow things

#

*relative to the current ones

tidal saddle
#

that would also make it not unencourage speed

empty wave
#

it would, just to a lesser degree