Another soltuion to make mine removal easier is to increase the power of the mines around 10x and limit the amount one ship can deploy to a small number.

This way you get a dozen or so mines that give the same over all effect as hundreds, and can be cleared out much faster.

(not sure the details behind making this balaned would be easier however.)

The problem with making the mines go pop if the deploying ship is destroyed, is the player can simply retreat the deployment ship back to their core world after laying  a huge field, making it impossible to insta-slag all the mines without tediously pushing through (or going around) them.

The developers have to be very careful to separate out legitimate balancing concerns over mines (and other units) from complaints that stem from a certain gaming preference or culture or mindset.  The mindset that I am referring to is an "anti-defensive" mindset and a "pro-wide open gameplay mechanic" mindset.

There was a small but hardcore and vocal group of people who screamed bloody murder about the phase jump inhibitor.  After questioning these people it became apparent through their own statements and admissions that they actually hated the concept of defense (they would use terms like "having to painstakingly and tediously wade through defenses"), and they hated anything that would get in the way of moving their fleets whenever and wherever they wanted to move them, unimpeded by anything whatsoever.  That's where their complaint about the PJI stemmed from, and they got it nerfed into oblivion.

I have entrenchment now, and I bought it because of the name - "entrenchment," which implies defense.  In summary, let's please evaluate the mine situation with a cool head, with an eye towards the name of the game (entrenchment), and with a VERY WARY EYE towards the motivations of people who want to uber-nerf the mine or remove it altogether, and what sort of gaming bias their complaints stem from.  Some suggestions are for removing the mine completely, and other suggestions are for making mines so easy to deal with that it might as well be removed altogether.  That's outrageous.  On the other hand, I have seen one or two suggestions for less micromanagement in dealing with mines.  Since Sins is all about eliminating the need for micromanagement, this type of suggestion could be in keeping with the way Sins works in general, as long as it is done in such a way as to keep the defensive value of mines and not make them useless.

I for one haven't had enough experience with mines yet to make any suggestions (I plan to get some soon), but the one thing I do know is, WE'D BETTER EVALUATE THE GAMEPLAY BIASES OF THOSE GIVING SUGGESTIONS even as we evaluate the suggestions themselves.

We also need to base our feedback off of the map type as well. A small map will see way less mines then a huge one, and concurrently have less mine clearing micro/less game processing slowdown etc...

How about being able to re-program mines instead of blowing them all up?  It would be cool if there was a tech to convert enemy mines into yours.

Well, I can blow this out of othe water pretty fast. I'm in favor of the old PJI, of Starbases actually being able to defend a planet (and any planets behind them) without the current "fly by" system, and I think that if I fortify a planet to the teeth, it should take a big fleet to bring it down.

I also HATE mines and want them removed entirely, to the point that I don't like playing Entrenchment as soon as the mines start showing up.

It's not outrageous at all. Mines as they're implemented right now are performance crippling. They're unbelievably tedious to clear. They cause tons of frustration when your ships ignore orders and go plowing through a minefield to their deaths.

They don't pass the most important test in any game: is this fun? Mines are not fun. You can try to sideline anybody who argues against mines by claiming some secret agenda all you want, but at the end of the day mines will still be bad. They're the most complained about thing on this forum for a reason.

I love playing defense - seeing a fleet crippled under the weight of my guns is SWWEEEEET.  So here is my suggestions.

I think the mines are a good deal and I don't  mind the spamming so much as long as you find a way to make it take less of an impact on the GPU.  The mine concept in it self is awesome.  The advent's homing mines were especially impressive considering that a cluster of them took out a level 9 KOL the minute I jumped into the system - my fault for not scouting first.

If it reduces CPU time make the mines deply in clusters -say every 10 act as a unit - 

- The benefit here is you end up with 1 less object so it should be easier for the cpu to manage

- Set the groups to timed so that it does not trigger when the first shit enters the field

- 5 seconds from the time the lead ship enters the field the whole field should blow - this spreads the damage across many ships - or against 1 very unlucky ship.

- I think the amount of damage is fair right now - in the real world things that get caught in mine fields get killed period

Now in terms of cleanup.

I'm fine with the scout ships being able to see them.

- Give the scout like a detonation spark ability - so that when it encounters a field it can send a pulse to distroy it.

- One shot should take out a field - seriously I don't think mines are built with heavy armor they should be sensitive so a direct shot should make them trigger.

I think Omenowl's syuggestion is the best here. Let me reiterate it

This is the best for the following reasons

• It creates less objects for the CPU (and possibly GPU) to handle.
  
• It makes it much less of a micromanagement or an annoyance. Currently to allow my minelayer to get to work, I move-queue about 50 times in a minefield I want and totally spam it with mines. That requires a lot of micromanagement when started but if queued enough, it makes the GravWell a nightmare.
• You can have more variety with a single upgradable object. You can for example upgrade one minefield to become cloacked, another to become movable, a third to have long range locking, ion (ship disabling) etc.
  
• You can limit the number of minefields to balance it out, similar to the way the Starbases are limited to one per GravWell, perhaps you can limit it to 3 minefields per GravWell.
• You can stop extreme damage due to swamps of mines by preventing overlap. A minefield cannot be on top of another one.
• You could make it so that upgrades to a minefield would require a minelayer around to do the task. This might make it a bit more balanceable as the other player might take the minelayer out to stop you. This also makes sense from a realistic point of view as I can't think how mines would independently upgrade themselves or increase their quantity.
• You can allow minefields to be created as a planetary defensive structure as well, laid down by the normal constructors.

The end result would be a minefield which starts very simple, say with 200 mines of 10 dmg each (PS: of-the-top-of-my-head numbers, not actually balanced). The field would stay at it's current location where it was built. The number of mines is also relative to its health, so this minefield also has 2000 health points and for every 10 points of damage it is dealt, 1 mines disappears. Normal ships do only 1/3 of their normal damage to a minefield so this makes it time consuming to sweep without specialized ships (see below).

A minefield with a minelayer close to it (or in your own planet's GravWell) can then perform various upgrades. Standard ones would include an increase in size so that the minefield expands in volume, an increase in density, allowing more mines in the same area and thus more damage, an increase in armor etc. Researched upgrades can include cloaking, movement, range etc.

I will agree that we also need an easy and non-micro way to disable minefields. I believe the best idea suggested was to have a research upgrade which makes the flak-frigates (or the relevant for each race) mine sweepers as well. While any ship should be able to attack a minefield (which being a single object would be simpler instead of having to individually target each mine) such a task would be very slow as most of their guns and missiles will not be able to target small, motionless and cold objects in space. Thus attacks from unequipped ships into a minefield would be able to reduce it but very very slowly. The minesweeper upgrade would simply increase dramatically the damage the flak-frigates do to minefields.

All in all, I believe that making the mines as a constructible "minefield" object would fit much better with the overall gameplay and allow much more flexibility in their usability.

Why not the ultimate weapon on all the factions, destroy or incapacitates/damages mines aswell when fired upon a system with it?

I have to agree with Tridus on this one. The current "Spam mines until your computer grinds to a screeching halt" implementation is not fun.

I'm saying that I don't like mines, in fact I think they are awesome. Every RTS I play, I turtle to no end, but I still think that something needs to be done about mines.

A minesweeper ship or ability for a ship is pretty much a must, in order to eliminate some of the tedious micro involved in clearing mines.

A hard limit to the number of mines in a gravity well is also pretty much required, if only to stop computers from slowing down because of all the mines.

A dense field of mines should suffer from a "chain reaction" if one explodes.  Debris from the ship and the first mine sets off the nearest mines.  This propagates outwards from the original explosion, setting off more and more mines.  I suspect this would happen in real life.  This would create a few small gaps in the mine field.

I agree that the mines should self destruct after a player loses control of the planet.  Or at least become inert.  They should "half life" around stars and non-colonizable territory.

Maybe the mines should half life in all situations.

Something should be able to shoot at them.

Mines should slow done both friendly and hostile fleets.

I've played through a couple large Entrenchment games now, and I figured I might as well put my two cents in on the Mine issue.

I like mines.  I really do; between them and starbases, it REALLY helps slow the game down in a good way.  In the vanilla game, I always played the Vasari because the other races simply couldn't react quickly enough to reinforce an attacked world before it was destroyed, but with these additions, chokepoint systems can finally be defended heavily enough to hold out for a bit.  But on the reverse side, once I filled out my fleets in the vanilla game, they were unstoppable; a fleet of three capital ships (space egg + carrier + (battleship or ground attack)), five carrier cruisers, and ten heavy cruisers could roll through the defenses of any enemy system that didn't have a standing fleet, and in the later game I'd add another five carriers and five heavy cruisers to each.  I had four of those fleets, plus my "primary" fleet of the remaining 4 capships (egg+carrier+ two devastators) and 15-20 carriers, plus an assortment of utility cruisers.  Five fleets, any one of which could handle any typical planet without ANY losses, and I'd only need to link two of them up when I confronted the enemy's main fleet.  Games went very quickly, because I'd quickly cross the threshold of "mopping up".

With Entrenchment, I actually had to hold up some of my advances long enough to get TWO of those fleets into each system.  Mines would chip away at my cruisers, losing a handful of them per system, and the starbase could hold off the capships for far too long.  It was a good thing.

But I'd still change how mines are handled.  Here's what I'd like to see:

> All capships should be able to engage mines directly, at the range of the current scouts (i.e., short).  A capship moving through a minefield should be able to clear its own path as it goes, unless the field is REALLY dense.  This still has a combat value, as the capship will be using its weapons to engage mines instead of defending itself from other attacks.  And this wouldn't have to extend to its accompanying frigates/cruisers: scouts would pull mines to where ANY ship could engage them, while capships would just always be treated as if there were a scout within their range.  This ability could require a general research upgrade to unlock, but it shouldn't be that high of a tier.

> At least one other ship type for each race should act like scouts do, with their current range.  I'd vote for one of the "specialty" cruiser classes (for the Vasari, I'd say the Overseer, since it's all about detection).  That way, heavier fleets wouldn't need to bring a half-dozen incredibly vulnerable scouts along.  This ability should require a high-tier research upgrade to unlock, which is fine since these ships themselves are high-tier.

> The detection range on the dedicated scout frigates needs to be at least doubled over its current value.  You shouldn't need to have five or six scout vessels per fleet just to ensure quick targeting of mines, and this would allow the scouts to remain useful even after the above change.  This could be a researched ability (starting out scouts would have their existing range, but you can increase it), probably mid-tier.

> Starbases should be counted as being scouts for the purposes of mines.  That is, they should have a large detection radius and be capable of pulling the mines to where they can be engaged.  This should be automatic.

> Scouts should get a "Minesweeper" AI toggle, sort of like the current "Explore" mode: with it on, the scouts will attempt to move towards any mines in the current system to spot them for other ships to clear.  Plus, they'll use their own dinky gun to kill the mines as well.  This AI should probably be the default; a scout without player-given orders should head towards enemy mines automatically.

> Owned planets should automatically detect any mines in the gravity well, for that system's owner.  That is, once you control a system, the system defense structures (hangars, starbases, etc.) should be able to clear any enemy mines without user input.  This still leaves an offensive use for mines while attacking an enemy system, in that it creates more things for the defenses to engage, but it doesn't affect them when mines are used as a defensive tool.  Too often, I ended a game with hundreds of enemy mines still around my systems, leftovers of long-dead civilizations.  This ability should require a researched upgrade, although I'd say it could even be a side-benefit of one of the Artifacts.

> Minelayers should get a "Wander" AI toggle, like the modes mentioned above.  With it on, the minelaying ship should meander around the current gravity well, dropping mines as it goes, without user input.  I was having to lay down a dozen zigzagging waypoints for my minelayers, and it got tiresome after the first few systems.

> Mines should, in general, be more powerful and more expensive, so that you don't need to place so many in a system.  Take the Vasari as an example; they currently research a mine upgrade that lets them lay mines that limit movement, in addition to the default explosive mines.  This should instead be an upgrade to their existing mine, not two separate activated abilities on the minelayer ship, and would retroactively improve any mines belonging to that player.  Mines should also do damage in a considerably larger AoE, although this could vary by race: TEC mines might have a big AoE and a large trigger radius, Vasari would have small AoE but high damage, and Advent would be "directional" (pick a single target within a small proximity range and do all of the damage to that target).  Also, cleared mines should have a chance of triggering as they go, possibly damaging the ship clearing them.

Bottom line, frigates and cruisers that aren't accompanied by scouts should get ripped apart by minefields, but primary fleets (ones with capships) should be able to handle them better than that, especially if they also have scouts.  Mines would still be tremendously useful, in that you can still fortify chokepoint systems well enough to keep the random one-frigate scouting parties from charging through and slow down incoming battlefleets long enough to reinforce the system, but they wouldn't be the micromanagement headache they are currently.

How to clear mines:

Step 1- Build 2 scouts and 4 flak frigates

Step 2- Place them near mines

Step 3- ???

Step 4- Gobble gobble free exp for your titan.

Also, does nobody check dates before posting? The OP is from FIVE YEARS AGO!!! You must have spent quite a lot of time digging this up...

Not all the time. I've been developing this rad new build where I go pure Vasari minelayer. Its even more powerful than mass flak rush. Expect to see it this week on ICO.