Currently mines are late game cpu laggers and are easily circumvented and hellaciously expensive for what they deliver. They can be cleared by simply plowing through them or sacrificing a few scouts and are often just used for target practice. they are simply boring.
As far as strategy goes--not a lot there. Dump them in a big pile to augment defenses briefly. Sure, versus AI you can abuse them well but they are so disjointed that in player vs player they are considered anathema.
It is simply an insult to mines and a waste of a good concept.
So I'm working on alternatives (with no help of course 'cause everyone considers it a lost cause). There is room for as many as 18-21 differing mine types (6-7 per faction) and that gives room for innovation (I don't think I'll need that many). Mines just need to be handled differently and with more realistic and strategic effects.
Instead of mine fields that are easily spotted and require a near physical impact to hit (like a pilot would have to want to hit them for them to work like that in space) mines should be designed for the space environment and not used like WWII and Vietnam area ground munitions. They also need to be a genuine part of game strategy and not the flawed "tack-on" they currently are.
So here's the ones I'm working on (I had many more variants than these but these are the ones I think will make mines interesting). The concepts are based on current warfare, the American Civil War, Reagan's Star Wars program and science fiction ideas we all know and love.
The Faction-Specific Mines
[Phase] Singularity--spawns a mini black hole for a set duration. Friend and foe alike affected.
[Tech] Area-Effect--simply makes a big, dirty, energetic bang of HEAP antimatter shrapnel hurting friend and foe alike. Close range, heavy damage. The mother of all explosive munitions.
[Psi] Domination--a large psychic amplifier that captures all enemy frigates within range.
The Generic Mines
Grazer--fusion explosion powered ranged mine that fires a single gamma ray laser beam at a single target. High damage and long range at targeted enemy capital ship.
Xaser--fission explosion powered ranged mine that fires a single high energy X-ray laser beam at a single target. Medium damage and long range at a targeted enemy frigate.
Anti-Strike--cluster munition that fires explosively propelled antimatter pellets at all strike craft in range. High damage, medium range.
Dummy--low cost decoy mines that do no damage and deploy as multiple mines.
Notes
All mines will be deployed by mine-laying vessels and I am exploring rather than hard limits on numbers instead making them count as fleet logistics slots. These could all be created as "frigates" but that's a waste of good ship slots and a waste of the already present mine slots. Best to get the value of all of them.
It remains to be seen which abilities mines can have and can do. Feel free to contribute anyone.
These look very interesting. Though I'll just note a few things; one is that while mines can have antimatter, shields, and hull, they cannot have weapons (their explosion/detonation is via ability) and two, mines can move/have speed. I'm not entirely sure how your fleet logistics slots thing will work, as fleet slots = ship slots.
As for the mines that shoot stuff, there's two ways that this can be achieved. One is by giving the mine an ability that does so, like the TEC's Railgun, and another is to instead of creating the mines as spacemine entities, is to make them ability-deployed combat turrets (aka. frigates which take up no ship slots). As combat turrets can have abilities, they can also act as mines, set to detonate when mines do or after taking a certain amount of damage.
I'll be watching your progress on this, and good luck!
I'm actually planning to use mostly abilities to get the effects. I haven't actually created any particle forge things so far so beams shooting out at a target are for another day. I have considered for the ones that "shoot" to simply have the mine itself go there after an explosion effect--using their movement capability. But I have to do baby steps.
Most mines will simply be an explosion at the epicenter because that's essentially what drives them. I'd love to have the Vasari antistrike rockets spew out after targets from a small explosion for the antistrike mine but it won't be me anytime soon that does anything on that level.
The fleet logistics approach is probably not possible but I would love to do that. One of the goals is to reduce mine spam and mine lag and that's a great way to address both. The one workaround there I can think of is to create a "useless frigate" that spawn with mines and make an action on it be the trigger to activate the mine ability--but that really sounds like a backwards approach to what I want.
The one special effect I would like would be the black hole mine--would be awesome to have something spectacular there--and an epic explosion for the mother-of-all mines for TEC..
Thanks for the interest sir and you have been quite helpful lately as well.
You and your family will be spared in the coming great galactic purge.
Either the Advent or Vasari should have vertigo/nano jammer mines. Would be a fairly cheap mine that reduces the rate of fire significantly or disables weapons all together (actually all three factions could have this effect if needed) for a while.
I don't really see the point of a different Grazer and Xaser, just stick it on one mine and effect both targets (with extra effects for one if need be).
Yeah--nannites and the like are variants I am considering for the "generic' mines...but there is a reason for two similar types.
The Xaser has a greater trigger range than the Grazer. If a scout or frigate comes through to try to disable the mine, the Xaser will eliminate it--leaving the Grazer intact to hit capitals. Xasers will be greatly cheaper than Grazers and Grazers will be serious big ship threats.
Sinperium, During all your mine fixing and such, if you wanna reduce a bit of lag with the empire display spam you cna go into your diplomacy.user and edit the MaxEmpireWindowStackSize 10 to 50 or so, 4 stacks of 50 vs 20 stacks of 10 for mines lol
that aside, I like your ideas =3 and I thought maybe something like the TEC scout and Advent scout abilities could be one direction to pull from for the ones shooting out things. Also along those lines I have an idea for a cluster mine idea, like cluster missiles, one mine kinda "poofs" leaving about 10 or so smaller mines to hit 10 consecutive times vs 1 hit, you could incorporate this into homing mines or maybe use something like that to deploy your mine types(in the advent's case, give the homing mine strike craft unit more abilities besides the one and it's big empty option slots that are ripe to fill) and the Vasari mine layer has plenty of room itself and you could turn it into something like the advent anima controller and give the vasari a "strike craft" like mine unit too, would also save time with the mine-layers instead of them doing "auto-return" to the point they decoded to lay a mine from. As for TEC, maybe replace the mines themselves with some sort of unit the assemblers could build that then, in turn does it's one time thing of building mines here there or wherever, unable to phase jump, unable to attack would keep it within the TEC's bounds for minelaying as well and wow I typed alot more than I thought i was going to, hope you pick or pull any ideas form this you fancy.
P.S. that's alotta run ons that I aint fixin! Ya hear!? lol
Thanks. I'm, picking at it right now wall-of-text writer.
I just found a post by Brad of Stardock asking for mine ideas and for the same reasons I am working on these--I had never seen it (it's from January).
So I am trying to get some progress here to present on that thread. I'll work on making the generic mine types more "race specific" in effect shortly.
An interesting note:
If you add "slotCount#" to the Tech Space Mine entity, the constructor builds them and as soon as they are 100% complete they explode. I'll experiment with the line in different positions in the file and on the other mines later today.
lol, I never intended to make a wall!! anyway that explode on creation thing does seem like a possible use with one of the methods i stuck in that wall. As far as building the different types of mines I kinda like my idea about making the mines into strike craft/unit type things built from their original vessels and the built unit takes it from there
I found a post from January where Brad (Stardock) asked us for mine ideas and for exactly the reasons my OP here suggest.
I'm hoping to have working demos as fast as I can to post there.
The instant explode is odd considering the line I added seems so unrelated. I'm restarting the experiment now and trying variations.
I've tried inserting varying ship values into varying positions in varying mine entities. I've got one that black screens the game for more than an hour, another that minidumps and some that seem to do nothing.
From what I can see, Mines most resemble "squad" entities (strike craft).
I can easily make self destructing frigates by giving them the mine detonate ability but they blow up on impact--including with shots fired at them. You can make them manually triggerable so they get close enough to kamikaze--kinda fun but these aren't the mines I am looking for
So on today with more experiments.
I now have the "black hole mine" working--tweaking the abilities, range, etc.
Well I am interested to see how this turns out...
Unfortunately the AI won't make use of any of this, but should be great for LAN games where people are willing to play the same mod...keep up the good work! I like some of these ideas, curious to see how they pan out...
I'm not sure about the AI. I am trying to convert existing mines and ships so they are replaced but carry the same entities--though obviously there will be others that aren't written for them.
Brad has a post in January saying they want to make mines more intersting and less lagging in rebellion. If I can make a "proof of concept" maybe they can write them in for the AI.
But the main idea was to make mines work in multiplayer online and actually be fun and useful.
Is there any way to fix the Advent AI's stupidity in the way it uses its Aeria Drone Hosts in Entrenchment and Diplomacy, because that would fix some things right there?
Unfortunately beyond me. I can't really do anything with the AI. At present, my first experiment is to make Advent mines all work from "Domination". I'll see how it goes.
I have the singularity mines working but am having to adjust the effect times and parameters so I don't get the occasional minidump.
I just watched a Distant Stars pirate fleet vaporize in its entirety upon hitting the singularity mine field. Hehe--I haven't reduced the mine numbers yet and the effect time is very long--still, I am Lord of Ryat now
This will be incorporated into the mod I am working on but I'll also pull out just the mines so people can add them into their mods if they want.
Ok...here's the point I am at...I have the "black mine" effects working--just not connected and synchronized.
What happens now is the mine special ability effect is always on with the mine--whether detonating or not. The mine detonates as normal (actually at the moment I have a 10 second delay) and the ability expires with the mine.I'm futzing around changing values and getting a lot of interesting results but not the ones I want.
What I need is:
I'm futzing around changing values and getting a lot of interesting results but not the ones I want. Here's a pastebin link of all the different file contents if anyone wants to contribute. I'm not sure at this point what needs to be connected to what as there are about 8 entities involved overall. I get conflicting an incomplete results with my poor efforts so far.
It is pretty spectacular watching an entire mega-size pirate fleet turn to atoms but I need to reign it in a little. If I can "solve" this one then I have something to study and get an example from as well. It will also allow me a better playtest so I can tune the attraction force and damage.
Thanks in advance.
This is probably occurring because AbilityBLACKMINE.entity is a passive ability, aka. it's ALWAYS activated. What you need to do, I think, is if you want the black hole effect to be triggered on mine detonation, is to have it a part of the detonate mine ability/buffs or be triggered by the "death" of the mine; whether this be the mine itself being killed or the detonate mine ability firing off.
Yeah--I'm aware of the passive always on at present. What I have posted is the black hole effects I am using to spring off from--which doesn't really clarify.
So to be more clear, the idea is that if a ship passes near the mine (in detonation range) it doesn't immediately detonate but has a time dealy of around 30 seconds. When the time-delay count begins, the gravity effects would also turn on and for 30 seconds draw ships in gravity range towards the detonation center. At the end of thirty seconds it will explode and deal area damage.
The reason the first trigger happens in the smaller detonation area is that I didn't want a barely in-range, outlying ship of a passing fleet to trigger it and only pull that ship--the idea is to damage a fleet with this. My other approach (not tried) is to cast the gravity effect onto a ship within a single trigger range and have that ship be the center of detonation. It would loose all movement and abilities and collapse into a small black hole, sucking nearby fleet members into its dying explosion.
I may or may not leave in the area damage currently there or else I will use it for other things (nanite mines).
Back to the lab.
Ok--I have made a little progress on Mines but as they seem related to strike craft in nature, I have spent time on strike craft for a bit here. I think some of the things I have worked for strike craft are transferable and I'll attempt that when I finish the small strike craft mod I'm tweaking right now.
Both mods come down to an "abilities" question. Which ones work, which don't etc.
At present, I have working:
Gunship (Assault Fighter)-- better armored, more hit points, faster but turns much more poorly. Medium range weapon with higher rate of fire and 360 arc. Best against light targets. A single strike craft per squad and only producible at starbases and planet hangars
Heavy Bomber--far better hit points, extremely slow, extremely short range. High rate of fire and higher damage. Lumbers in to the target and at point blank range unleashes a rapid salvo (about 6 shots average). A single strike craft per squad and only producible at starbases and planet hangars
Interceptor--blazing fast, terrible maneuver and a single, point-blank, high damage shot with a very long cool down. Primarily made to attack enemy scouts to prevent their escaping the gravity well.
Right now I am trying to find a gimmick to make some very unconventional craft but it's unclear if it will work in some areas. Examples would be civilian transport craft launched from a carrier, marine assault craft launched in the same way and strike craft capable of bombing planets.
The bomber and gunship play very well and don't disturn balance other than they do give a little more beef to hangars in gravity wells.
More as I get it.
That's rather hard to do because strikecraft can only really have passive abilities. And even those don't quite work as you'd expect. For those unique ships you'd probably be better off making frigates that are deployed via ability that have fighter movement enabled. I'm pretty sure planet bombing strikecraft are impossible.
Also just curious but are you using custom models? The Vanilla strikecraft would look kind of odd with 360 firing arcs lol.
No new models--I'll release it so it can go straight into vanilla and I don't have the time to figure how to XSI model--plus I want to keep the cpu load down.
Passive-like abilities are the limit it seems and I have some abilities that will work for various things but am trying to get the "flavor", not just an effect.
Only the gunship fighter has the 360 arc--everything else is set in a direction.
I really don't want to go into frigates as fighters becasue I'd like to give carriers some versatility. I'm still experimenting with weird things right now and counting the errors and minidumps to see what might work.
It would be nice to simulate what happened at the battle of Midway in WWII where the loadout of the strike craft is part of the strategy.
I rarely have time to zoom in on a single fighter and watch it fire. I may tweak the turn ability some and set it back to forward firing.
Thanks for the input.
You could just give the ability to the carriers. Won't work for carrier caps but that's probably a good thing since they are already very good units anyways.
Well if you didn't mess with the model at all (not even to change the weapon point to fire all direction, which can be done in notepad), you won't see it fire period. The damage will still apply but it will only show the particle when firing in a direction with a valid weapon point. If you check the Dev log it will tell you which entities have this problem. Honestly I hope you can make it work, I rather like the gunship idea.
FYI another stupid fighter restriction is that they cannot apply buffs to themselves.
Yeah I noticed about the no buffs to themselves--bummer.
I have a couple of abilities on the fighters from hangars and starbases right now and am trying a few things out.
I could look and see about the weapons points--might be doable for me.
I'm having to add a little more turn to the gunships anyway so the forward guns will work. they were going out of the gravity well becasue their turn was so slow and speed so high--took forver to get back--though it was awesome when they came screaming into a battle from out in left field.
The bombers are working very well in actual play. They pack enough punch to be serious but they have to first get to the battle and then turn to the target--takes them a little while. I set their weapon range to 300 so they have to almost ram the target to shoot it. They fly dead on after lining up and fire with just enough time to turn aside. The extra hull on them balances nicely as most of their turns are within weapons range of their target.
I hate the limited choices I have on abilities but I have got things like flak burst to work on them.
I have to combat test the interceptor some more and then try out the "specialty" craft.
"specialty" craft have my interest raised =3 can I expect some unmanned kamakazi type things? Something like Guided missile drones, 1 per squadron dealing X dmg to whatever target it/you desire? an ability with "deathuponuse" or some such? =3 would give something of a bombardment type weapon towards fleets/structures 14 fighter spots = 14 missiles flying at once. give then 0 def, 1hp and a fighter's speed? you might be able to use the Orgonev's missiles in a scaled down size for the model, make it all match. and alter it's dmg by the hp&speed to balance it out =3
I read all this on my phone while waiting for my second class today and all this filled my head =3 I've been mulling it around trying to figure out the best way to get it out there, alas I have 0 ability and even less time(damn home work) so i give you this idea Sin, though it was yours to begin with I just added something to it x.x
There already is a Martyr ability in the game, or at least is in some mods. This could easily be tweaked for such a guided missile concept.
Yep--there are three ways I know off to make suicide bombers (which I have for the Advent) and I'm trying them out.
One is Self Destruct from the TEC starbase, another is the Advent's Martyr and the final is Mine Detonate. The mine function is not practical for strike craft but is for frigates where it can be toggled when ready--otherwise the ships blow up as soon as a shot hits them. I am trying a mine approach but its complicated and I don't know if it will work for sure.
I'm working on trying to coax the game into letting me colonize and capture neutrals as well as planet bomb but it has to be an area effect and I am still futzing with how to make it work.
I'm really liking the gunships and bombers--very striking how they are playing out. Gunships veer far out in the grav well then swoop in at very high speed with rapid fire at close range. The bombers slowly turn and roll and almost collide with their targets--pulling out at the last split second and hitting them with a salvo of a half-dozen shots. The damage seems about right. It lets hangar defenses have enough punch to defend a system. Bombers and gunships take longer to rebuild when destroyed but have more hit points. Bombers take the longest but have a base of 1000 hull and heavier armor vs. anti-air fire. They have less speed than many of their targets but are quite effective hitting a static line of ships or ones that are changing direction and have slowed. Very WWII tactic flavored.
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