I play TEC and so far I don't think my faction has the mine laying ability with fleet.  If one faction can do this all should be able to.

Put me on the mine hate list too.  I was playing as Vasari against Vasari, small map, but the deeper into the comp's territory I get, there are so many of its wells that are just blobs of mines.  I quit playing because it's simply too frustrating.

I like the idea (at least as a short-term "solution") of having a mines on/off option.  Long-term, though, they need some major rework - a cap on how many can be deployed, an easier way to get rid of them, make them less effective, something.

I think you guys should remember that scout ships and light frigates are expendable. Use them as sacrificial shield to kill the mines.

And how large does a mine have to be really? A light frigate could probably carry anywhere from 10 to 20, and a mine laying ship? Many more than that.

However, a dedicated mine sweeping ship (such as a converted Kodiak) would be extremely handy, especially against the mine rush.

If you don't want to lose 100 LRMs in 10 seconds, don't use a tight formation.

Something needs to be done to fix the mines, especially the Vasari mines that can be used offensively.  Nothing is more irritating than being attacked by a bunch of Ruiners that then proceed to, well, RUIN my system.  It wouldn't be so bad if scouts actually continuously detected the mines so my fighter garrisons could clear them, but there is a clearly a bug that makes the mines pop in and out of detection, making the fighters move in a herky-jerky and very slow path towards them.  That's what needs to be fixed.  And possibly put some kind of limit on how many mines can be laid per system. 

Star Bases are killer !

Mines are not.... imo they need to be removed all together, they add serious amounts of lag the longer the match goes on and dont really add anything to the fun factor, they are more frustrating.

Should focus on Star Bases and maybe even expand that Defensive research tree. Make all Star Bases mobile or increase the firing range of the non-mobile bases, add more options to them, we need more options for static defense instead of mines.

I think they could be useful and balanced if done in a different way.

Start off with only scouts able to detect the mines as it is.

Let you research a mine detection improvment that allows capitals to detect mines as well as other researches that allow mine detection at a longer distance. Another research would allow flak ships to detect mines (and remove them), or perhaps a dedicated minesweeper. Flak ships seem a bit underpowered, so giving them an extra use would be good.

Have mines drain antimatter from minelaying ships slowly, if there are no minelaying ships in the system, then the mines will detonate after 10 minutes or so, Minelaying ships will lay mines at a slower rate as the number of mines in a system increase (each drains antimatter) capping out at about 20 per minelayer. Have minelaying also cost resources on a constant rate, so maintaining those minefields will cost your nation's economy.

Mines as a basic idea are great, it's just they're to easy to fill wells with them then move on to the next well, with two minelaying ships you can turn a well into a deathfield very quickly.

Frankly, the micromanagement side of mines is the part that annoys the heck out of me. If you don't put your Hangars (as Advent) in the advancement lane from the jump path, your mines end up clumping around the planet far from where you need them. And that's just annoying.

A better option for most mine deployment systems would be to borrow the previously suggested "fields" idea and place them just as you would an orbital facility. Click the planter, click the "place mines," click the location. If the planter is a ship, you should be able to set its usual "default position" which it returns to between refreshing fields. That doesn't necessarily mean that mine fields should disapear after X time (in fact, I'm utterly against that; the fact that fields hang around long after their creators are gone is important in many battlefields), but detonation should deplete the field and require it to be refreshed by a layer whether that be a Hangar facility or a mobile ship. You should definitely be able to destroy your own mine fields by scrapping them, pointedly.

If individual planters/layers are limited in the number of spherical fields they can support at any given time, you get a more natural limitation of the resource. Hangars for the Advent can trade out SC for mines; the Hangar itself would act as the layer in this case and let you set a number of "mine field" tokens which would be refreshed within some X range of the Handar supporting them. For the Vasari, the minelayer ship could be anywhere in the well, but support only X number of fields -- possibly with those fields requiring a visit of the layer after Y time. (That would possibly keep the layer moving around the well within range of the fields and could, in and of itself, act as a limiter on how many fields a layer could support -- If a field takes Z time to maintain every A time, then you can lay as many fields as you want, but some will fade before the later gets back around. But that might be what you want, sjifting mine fields!)

For defense, it seems obvious to me that while Scouts should / can detect mines, Defense ships of all stripes should be able to detect and destroy them as well. In fact, I'd give the edge in detection to Scouts and in destroying them to Defense; a dedicated mine-clearing fleet of a couple of Scouts and a handfull of Defenses would be an ideal pair-up, and certainly something to hold in reserve for when you need them. Scout ranges on mine detection really need to be much, much wider; probably more like a third of an average well. Engagement ranges should be much lower, of course, but that's sensible. SC might be able to clear mines (possibly with an upgrade for everyone but Advent who'd get it innately), but really they're not designed to hit small, non-emitting, non-moving targets of that nature. SC should generally not be the anti-mine sweeps of choice (unless you pop for a research upgrade, as I mentioned). (I suggested Advent to have anti-mine fighter inherent because they generally prefer to go heavier on fighters rather than Defense craft, and that fits their philosophy much more tightly.)

Make the deployment of a mine done as a field on purchase, give them some "maintainance" necessity, and minimize the micromanagement necessary to make them an issue and I think they'll be much more useful. Oh yes, and said fields should be spherical around a point, not disc-like flat. Possibly you could add a different deployment orientation as an interface option, such as a plane oriented flat-face toward wherever the layer happened to be at deployment, but that adds complexity.

Mines are great and wonderful beasts. They require a bit of balancing to keep them effective, though.

This seems like a decent idea to me.  I think starbases definitely need some sort of additional option to help defend uninhabited nodes, but I don't know if creating structures would be the right answer.  I'd rather just see additional options for the base itself, such as additional hangars and some sort of phase inhibitor functionality.  These probably wouldn't be used for SBs in planetary grav wells, as using those slots would be wasteful when the planet can already provide those structures.  I think there's a growing consensus that more hangars is a necessary option for SBs anyway.  The phase inhibitor function may even help solve part of the issue of SBs being too easy to bypass.

This is basically how TEC mines work now.  I think it's fine, except that a cap is needed, as well as the ability to scuttle a group of mines all at once.  We also need to have a better method of laying them to form barriers rather than just amorphous blobs of mines.  I can't really speak to the Vasari or Advent issues yet.

I've suggested adding some sort of mine-clearing enhancement to the Cielo cruiser for the TEC.  Through upgrades it would allow engagement and quicker destruction of mines over a wider than normal radius when paired with scouts for spotting.  The Vasari and Advent would need other solutions, though I like your idea of using strikecraft for the Advent.

I don't like the idea of maintenance.  I think they are fine without it.  We just need a cap, which will probably be different for each side, given that they use mines in different ways.  The sphere vs. disc issue is a major one.  The need to create barriers means that you need to mine the full volume of space along that border, which means that the mine cap would need to be much higher than what many are calling for.  Otherwise the enemy will simply go over or under them.  I'm not sure how to solve that without the creation of easy methods of drawing a border around the area you want to have mined, and then having the pattern automatically created to fill the entire volume of space within those boundaries.  That calls for a lot of mines though.

Why do you necro? Do you even realise this thread is 6 years old and it is likely that most people here do not even visit this forum anymore?