I was thinking the other day and came up with a nifty idea.

[Cyrus]

Ok, I'm sure this has been suggested before, but I'm not about to scroll through 90 some odd pages to find it

What if we were able to design missles in the same way that we were able to design mines and satellites? We could design them to be ECMish, have more armor, more punch, heck we could put ranged weapons on them and give them a ranged attack (though I imagine this one would take quite a bit of work). The current missle tech we research could research different sized missle bodies and specific components, along with missle bays. The missles bays would hold X tonnage of missles and launch N missles per turn.

So, has this been mentioned before? Sound cool at all or am I just being a dumbass again?

[geoschmo]

No it's not dumb at all, and it has been suggested. It would require some hard code changes to do though. But if Aaron ever does that, it should make for some interesting mods.

Geoschmo

[Taqwus]

As well as some highly intriguing balance and strategic issues. Missiles would become expendable, and therefore keeping an attack fleet armed w/ em would become a serious consideration. Bringing along your own shipyard ships to build more would work, but only slowly, and they cannot build while moving...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cyrus:
Ok, I'm sure this has been suggested before, but I'm not about to scroll through 90 some odd pages to find it

What if we were able to design missles in the same way that we were able to design mines and satellites? We could design them to be ECMish, have more armor, more punch, heck we could put ranged weapons on them and give them a ranged attack (though I imagine this one would take quite a bit of work). The current missle tech we research could research different sized missle bodies and specific components, along with missle bays. The missles bays would hold X tonnage of missles and launch N missles per turn.

So, has this been mentioned before? Sound cool at all or am I just being a dumbass again?

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Somewhere, I think on the SE IV Center forums, Aaron posted that he considered this for SE IV but rejected it because it added too much micro-management. Think of the hassles of building missiles, storing them on planets, and stocking your ships with missiles. I think he still went too far even in making mines individual units. It would save a lot of game overhead to have abstract 'minefields' and let minelayers just bump up the count of units in a field. What can we do with individual mines right now? Nothing. Was there a plan to make them have fancier possiblities?

Anyway, I think Drones will be very close to what you are thinking. You will be able to have some ships armed with 'standard' missiles and some armed with drone bays and a stock of individual drones. It will be very interesting to see which style is more popular...

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 13 October 2001).]

[Lerchey]

Mines in their current implimentation are pretty uninteresting. However, with a little modding, you can create some cool options.

Shard Mines - bypass armor
Phased Polaron Mines - bypass non-phased shields
Null Space Mines - bypass shields and armor
Time Mines - quad damage to shields

I had thought about some things like doing Allegience Subverter mines and Engine Damaging mines, but they're quirky at best (since mines are strategic and not tactical in nature) and in some cases just don't work.

At least there IS an option to make some more interesting/entertaining mines.

General John

[bearclaw]

IMHO, I think the best way to handle this option would be to keep the missles unchanged, perhaps add a bunch more for different purposes, but to implement drones. As mentioned below, it seems that the original intention of drones were, basicly, customized missles.

"Send in the Drones"
"Attack of the Drones"?

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"You don't know the Power of the Dark Side. I must obey my Master"