Question, Armor and mines

[Q]

I basically agree with you Geoschmo that mines are too powerful in the early and too weak in the late game. I just think the difference is not that enormous.
The minesweeping components to clear 100 mines cost alone 10000 minerals. Therefore the cost to build and more important to maintain a sufficient number of minesweepers can be important. And if you find this still too cheap, it can of course be modified and increased.
The changes MM made in the Last patch with new mounts/damage types gives me hope that the mine suggestions could be realized too in a future patch if we continue to ask for it.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Q:
The changes MM made in the Last patch with new mounts/damage types gives me hope that the mine suggestions could be realized too in a future patch if we continue to ask for it.

Oh yes. I agree totally. And I love asking for stuff.

[Q]

Just an idea I am going to try:
Reduce damage of mine warheads to 1/4 = 25/50/75kT for Level I/II/III.
Create mine mount for medium and large mines that increase the warhead damage by 2x repectively 4x.
Increase tech level requirement for medium and large mines to 3 respectively 5.
Increase cost of minesweeping components by factor 4!

Expected results: small mines are quite weak, but because with the new patch their damage stacks not completely ineffective. This might balance the too high power of mines in the early game. For the later game it is important to research and use the larger mines. Minesweeping gets very expensive.

[geoschmo]

I like the idea some. I think it would help in the early game. However I am unconvinced it will accomplish what I want in the late game. The fact is no matter what you do to minesweepeing component cost it's still a formula. You change the values of the equation some, but there is still a solution. Once the player gets to the point where they can build and support enough sweepers mines become irrelevant to the attacking fleet. It's all or nothing. Your fleet will roll through field after field with no pause or concern from the mines. I want you to have to take your time. Not to stop you completely, but to make you take your time when going from planet to planet. I want to make wars in the late game be campaigns instead of just an inexorable drive from planet to planet towards the heart of the enemy empire. The only way to do that that I can think of is to make you take some damage from the mines. Not enough to critically damage the fleet, unless the other guy gets lucky or you don't prepare carefully, but enough to slow you down and make you more methodical about things.

Geoschmo

[Q]

I absolutely agree that it is not the ideal solution, but it was the best thing I could find without a change made by MM.
The best as I said would be a moddable percent of minesweeping failure (depending on the mine size/tech level), maybe combined with a moddable percent of hit failure of the mine itself. That would create a degree of uncertainty we both seem to like with mines.
On the other hand, if you can build many ships that cost about 50000 minerals each (that will be the cost of a minesweeper in my mod that can sweep 100 mines) don't you think that you have won the game already?

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Q:
On the other hand, if you can build many ships that cost about 50000 minerals each (that will be the cost of a minesweeper in my mod that can sweep 100 mines) don't you think that you have won the game already?

Not if the other guy can too.

[LGM]

If you goal is to make mines a delaying factor, change them to be a special Satellite hull instead with a special weapon (for Satellites only) that is a very long range Engine Killer with Cloaking factor. Zip there engines and you will slow the fleet down. Of course, normal weapons would be able to shoot down the Satelitte/Mines, but Minefield combat would be a nice addition. I suppose the problem would be they could avoid them and refuse to close range (except at warp points they would have to run away).

I have often wondered how you can mine a three diminsional region anyway. In space, your frontage is a plane, not a line. On oceans or land, you can go around (or fly over mines, then you are in a three universe where mines reside in a two diminsional universe). However, if you are on foot, going around will take considerable time. When laying a minefield, you have to consider a few things, how much frontage you want to cover, how dense you want the mines, and how deep the minefield extends. If you maximize frontage, you loose density or depth, thus you reduce the size of the hazard zone or decrease the odds of a hit. It would be really nice if mines had a chance to hit based on density. Something like % of a hit = Mines x 99 / (Mines + 98) for the first ship (1% for one mine, 50% for 100 mines). Divide by two for the second ship (in the same fleet), divide by three for the third, etc. This would allow fleets to have ship ordinal 1 be the lead ship. If we really want to get it right, we have to factor formation into mine field triggering. Column formation is much safer for moving through potential minefields than battleline. However, column is not very good when you encounter enemy ships. My intuition tells me that my formula should probably square the Mine factor in the denominator, which would require a much bigger constant on the top to get the percentages back up to 1% and 50% for the extremes. Linear equations are so much easier to solve though. 1% is probably way to high a probabliltiy for 1 mine though. Think of a 20x20 square plane and you move your fleet single file through one of those squares. You have a 1/400 chance to hit a mine if its range is its own square. If its range is 1, 9 out of 400. If you have 100 mines with range 1, each covers 9 squares, so you need about 33 to cover the whole grid. That means, moving single file, your fleet should detonate at most 3 mines out of 100. The other 97% are still undetected. Minesweaping is methodical and should take lots of time. Lets say that space mines drift around a bit, to fill in the wholes, so you cannot remember the path through. If they drift fast, you ought to be able to detect the buggers.