Permanent Mines

[runic lynx]

Before the steam release of Cosmoteer, i often played the earlier versions in which the mines would stay on the map permanently, which was often useful for long-term defensive emplacements, or made it difficult for enemy ships to navigate terrain, or was otherwise just fun to use. However, in the full release the mines disappear aften a given amount of time. It would be nice to reintroduce this, even as a toggle-able feature if you didn't like it or it slowed down your computer.

[coarse bramble]

Just removing limited lifetime for mines seems extremely OP, there needs to be some kind of tradeoff

[dark glacier]

pirate raids?

increasing in difficulty until you leave the area or you remove the mine

[coarse bramble]

A more complex suggestion: allow mine factories to configure the amount of resources they use per mine and scale their lifetime based on that

But that would probably be hell on earth to code

[crisp pawn]

Not really , mines can still be shot down with sufficient PD and are easily avoidable. After all , they're literally stationary bombs waiting for a target to hit them

[coarse bramble]

Eh true

[agile spruce]

mines already weak

you cant use them in fight normally

if enemy too close to you they are useless

if enemy fast enoug they are useless

if enemy have pd they are useless

so that wont do much but give some air for mines

[agile spruce]

yeah, they useless in fight face-to-face

only if you have constructions that hold your enemy on range of mines activation

they good for defence

[crisp pawn]

to be honest I think giving mines their infinite lifetime back would be better as they're very useless at the moment and serve no true purpose

[agile spruce]

yeah

before I was using them as shotgun

by making them activate instantly

at the moment its too hard

so they are literally useless

[fiery spindle]

A few notes relating to mines' lifespan getting changed:
- Old mines weren't actually permanent, they just lasted a very long time (I think it was 5 minutes?).
- Mines are easily one of the laggiest projectiles in the game; having too many simply present somewhere on the map can slow the game down to a crawl. Part of the reason why their lifespan was reduced is to reduce lag.
- Using mines as a primary weapon was often frustrating for everyone involved in a PvP match, since it typically brought the game's pace to a crawl, sometimes even stalemating. Minelayers have no real way of guaranteeing damage on opponents (since opponents can just, not fly into mines), and opponents rarely get the opportunity to so much as fire back, unless they want to tank 30+ mines to get the chance. Typically this sort of fight mostly or completely runs out the match timer and is decided (directly or not) by the RoD.

Fwiw mines are planned to get overhauled at some point (since they're not very useful right now and can't be used on built-ins), it's just a matter of figuring out what to change.

[agile spruce]

its good that mines will be reworked because the only way they can be used right now, is defence and movements blocking (can be usable against orbiters)

its just high-level defence that can be used on stations/very slow ships or patrol ships