The ai had placed over 70 homming mines in an empty but well traveled grav well. As my scouts travelled through the grav well the homming mines tracked them down and destroyed them. A few minutes later my fleet shows up with some new scouts and procede to eliminate the mine field with strike craft, lrms, and ogrovs. The mines never budge. Just like any other mine field.
Is the mine's ability to detect the scout less than the scout's ability to detect the mine? The scout then knows to stay out of the range on the mine's detection radius to allow for easy mine clearing? Or is there some other reason?
i just posted another thread sorta like this about mines
someone said that advent homing mines are weird, they choose what targets they pick as though they have pms so...
i mean, i flew a major fleet past a homing minefield, brushing the outer edge of the field and out of maybe 100 mines maybe 10 tried to hit me, soo...
If I could get in a complaint about minefields here as well...
Saw this in a game yesterday: lone light frigate flies through the middle of the minefield and about 7 mines follow it along. The first explosion pretty much does the craft in, but all seven then decide to finish it off. 7 mines for a single craft. Seems a bit of a waste.
i think that happs with all sorts of mines as well, because of the lag in damage assesment, i think the mines and even ships for that matter, dont know when to stop firing. i think most destroyed ships would end up with negative HP values.
like, if you fly a lf through a mine field, even if it has 0 health, all mines in the vicinity will detonate anyway, or if you have your fleet firing at a cap ship or starbase, they will keep firing until the explosion graphic plays.
not really a mine complaint, but i would like there to be real time damage counting, not in jumps and starts as it is now
TheRezonator: Ships will waste very little damage on a ship about to destroyed. They are aggressive about this; it is possible (though rare) for ships to switch targets slightly too soon, leaving the old target with 5-10 HP.
im pretty sure i posted before but obviously had net problems
anyway, i was trying to say: maybe in your experience, but ive never seen my ships attack a new target before the old one was destroyed. like i said, i usually see my ships firing at targets right up until the explosion graphic.
although, in all fairness, it could just be a function of distance, still, im pretty sure ive seen closer range ships still firing, but meh
The homing mine's range should be a little bit shorter than the scouts ability to detect them, otherwise mines would be overpowered, if the only way to destroy them would be to activate them. When all of the mines activated that first time, the scout was probably either on auto-explore or doing a manual move, both of which ignore mines (or so it seems based on experience). But the second time, they stayed out of the range and took them out. The problem that I often have is when scouts detect a certain mine, but are closer to another. That one blows up and goodbye scout. The thing that I dont' really understand about homing mines are the ways to shoot them down. I thought you need a scout, but sometimes I just send in fighters who wipe them out. Also, are gardas good at taking them down too?
I'm not positive that all of this is correct, but I'm pretty sure it is.
scouts disable the mine stealthing ability, while SC (fighters) and flak frigs (or a cap like a battleship or destroyer, if you want to put your caps in danger for mine clearing ops) are best suited to taking down mines
That makes perfect sense and is likely the answer. I soemtimes forget to turn off everything from autocasting except mine clearing. You would think mine clearing woudl always take priority if it was on autocast but probably not.
Thanks so much.
"Also, are gardas good at taking them down too?"
I have tried them and they were so so, as they can not get all their banks to bear on the mines. Lrms and strike craft and even ogrovs imho are better.
i think Gardas are good because they can attack up to 4 targets at once. im pretty sure i read somewhere that the Devs did this on purpose, 1) to increase effeciency against SC but also 2) to be able to take down mines faster. get alot of them and they do a fair good job. put them in a fleet with a bunch of scouts and they will usually clear a minefield for you in about 10-15 mins depending on the size of the field
Ogrovs and lrms can hit strike craft?
no we are talking about taking out mines
to be honest a fully upgraded vasari starbases works well too, they don't get damaged by mines and have ungodly firepower
really? huh, didnt know that
wow, I'm not quite sure what I was thinking. but then again, I still didn't know ogrovs could take out mines...
Do you have any idea how long that actually is in game? I REALLY don't think it takes that long. I'd say it'll take from 45-90 seconds if you fly your flak frigates and scouts in a fleet formation straight through a minefield at a decent pace. Flaks are great at taking down mines, especially since they can take a couple hits from some and keep chugging along, a single one can target 4 at a time (eventhough 1 will take a couple of rounds of fire to destroy 1 mine, 3-4 will blow-em up pretty quick.) Plus if a couple of mines end up blowing up on your fleet, what did you lose? a couple of scouts and flaks? Big woop. Also if you enter a well where mines are still being placed, the flaks can destroy the mine layers (ruiners/contruction vehicles), or protect your scouts from fighters (drone hosts). Lets see Ogrovs do THAT! Given the choice, I'd pick using flak frigates for clearing mines over SC simply because A) Unless you set the fighters to hold position and move them with the scouts, flaks will take down the mines faster and Flaks have a longer range than fighters do, so If you were going to set your fighters to hold position to take down mines, you may as well just use flaks.
As far as Homing mines are concerned, I believe the scouts detection radius and homing mines detection radius are almost the same, making it difficult to destroy them with just scouts alone. The homing ability works as a double edged sword, while its makes it the field MUCH more dangerous to fleets, you will lose more to enemy ships just passing through than the stationary vasari and TEC mines.
I played the other day and noticed 3 oddities:
1) Homing mines didn't cost anything
2) They didn't home, but I could order them to move
3) They didn't explode!! Even when I clicked directly on the target, they just moved next to it like carriers (due to no weapons). After that they still didn't explode.
Juggernaut10,
What you're describing is a Homing Mine Squadron, which is quite different. The advent make squads of homing mines just as they would normal strikecraft; however, the mines have to be deployed (activated? I forget the word) for them to be useful. The squadron itself doesn't do anything other than follow the Drone Host around. If you click on them, there will be an option to actually lay out the squadron as mines, at which point they will act as you would expect homing mines to.
Hope that made sense. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.
D'oh
wait, when you lay the squadron out to be mines, can you make another squadron and lay them out too? So, besides the cost of the carrier, they cost nothing?
No, it costs nothing to produce a squadron, but it DOES cost money to deploy the squadron as mines. As a squadron they act as if they were unarmed SC and stick close to the carrier (unless of course you keep they docked). You may fly them to any position in the gravity well and select the button to "deploy" them by selecting the squadron. The deploy button works like the deploy button on SB constructors. The squadron will wait until you have the appropriate amount of resources (unless you have that already) and then spread out and become mines. Once deployed they take on mine characteristics with the exception of thier homming ability to follow ships that come too close. Once deployed the carrier will automatically produce another squadronfor placement. You can field up to 3 squadrons per carrier, allowing more mines to be deployed simulataneously, however EACH deployment costs resources (based on how full the squadron is).
is there a mine limit per GW ala TEC mine placement?
same for Vasari, is there something to stop you spending tens or hundreds of thousands of credits and resources on 100's of mines in a single GW?
I beleive the limit is 150 per well.
so all 3 races can only place 150 per well regardless of the technique (homing mine squadron and ruiner etc)
I believe EACH can put in 150, making a possible total of 450. But, I'm not sure, and anyone correct me if I'm wrong.
EDIT: that actually doesn't make much sense, since then all the different factions would be affected by eachother. So, it may be just a plain total of 150.
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