Suggestion to improve Entrenchment

Here are a few of my thoughts. 

I am just getting back into SOASE after a long absence and have only been playing the Entrenchment beta since the start of the weekend.

So: (first off, Thanks Stardock! you guys rock)

1) Vasari mines are.. wow.  well... lets just say it take TEK 1000 credits a pop to lay a minefield and as far as i can tell, i can only do it in my system. The Vasari can jump into one of my systems, run in for an attack, and run out laying mines behind them.  I lose massive amounts of fleet to this. I accept it is a legitimate tactic, but i think this in unbalanced in the Vasari's favor.  If I am managing more than one battle at a time, I may come back to find a fleet wiped out because i wasn't there to put the breaks on.

2) I totally agree there needs to be a minesweeper tactic.  Again, in this example, Playing on a small map against 1 AI, by the time I am starting to lay down minimal mine fields, the Vasari have laid down the equivalent of 20K worth of Trade Coalition mines.  I didn't want to mess w/ clearing it so i researched up rapidly and started pounding them w/ a novalith cannon.  I'm thinking that would be a cool ability for the Marza (at least for TEK, obviously something else for others).  why not make it so it can shoot it's Radiation bomb into a minefield and cause a chain reaction.  Or make it a Fighter Role, that would make me want to take more carriers. (in fact, i allready am taking more carriers.)

3) If Arcova Scouts are the method i have for detecting mines and using them to sweep w/ my fleet - then they need a new position in the fleets formation - like a shell. 

4) Why is it the auto cannons on a Kodiak can take out a mine w/ a quick burst, but a level 6 KOL battle cruiser w/ the max amount of laser research applied to it, takes the entire blast of it's main beam and only blows up when the beam has run it's course? 

5) At one point i figured it would be cute to leave the shell of mines the Vasari left around the fringes of my system because I wasn't bothering to pay of pirates, and thus was being raided heavily. (no problem for me, just XP for my ships.) but i figured it might as well be useful since i didn't want to risk using ANOTHER fleet to mine sweeping activities.  Imagine my suprise when the Pirates moved right through the mines w/ no issue what so ever. not a single one went off.

I really like what i am seeing guys. If you can get past the minidump errors i think what you have left is simply polish and balance. Right now, i think mines are just to powerful.  there needs to be a more effective counter, something that forces me to devote resources to mine sweeping. 

yes ive noticed pirates have an uncanny ability to jump in just missing a minefield.

How about starbases get a construction frigatte? It would be neat to be able to build a Jump inhibitor so that a starbase could actually work as a block for enemy fleets moving through an area, like say a magnetic storm or asteroid field, uncolonizable areas, instead of just a minor nuisance. Either that, or a jump inhibitor ability Just a thought from my initial experience with Starbases.

I and the people I play on-line with have un-installed Entrenchment due to the consistent 15 minute crashes.  I did notice in one game a pirate fleet, on its way to attack one of MY colonies, flew into a Vasari minefield and was annihilated.  I think this may have been in single-player mode.  In multi-player mode the computers starbases had fully operational upgrades, but the human player upgrades on starbases wouldn't function.  I'm wondering if the human player Vasari minefields are not working against computer players or pirates...only against other human players?  I agree that there should be a Mine Sweeping special ability for one or more of the ships.  How about this though:  if I send a Scout into a system and it has spotted the mines...why can't that scout send a report to the fleet, detailing the mine locations...causing ships to AUTOMATICALLY AVOID the mines in a light minefield or GO AROUND a heavy minefield if not specifically directed otherwise.  In a real-time game the human players should be given a LITTLE AI assistance to keep a fleet from running through a minefield they KNOW is there just because you can't be looking in 5 places at once....but the computer player can.  Vasari minefields do appear to be unbalancing, but I don't think we'll truly know the full extent one way or another until the actual bugs have been worked out.

Also, I noticed multiple times in one game that the computer DIDN'T tell me that a Pirate raid was imminent...automatically causing the raid to go against me. Is that another program bug?

On fleet selection, I've noticed in BOTH games that, when creating a fleet, the selection of fleet leader gets thrown off when I try to select all of the ships that are to be included in that fleet.  Another player in my group has seen the same problem.  Any suggestions?

Waiting for minidump fixes and slowdowns to be fixed, but overall a good improvement.

i agree with DArcTangent that some AI aid with avoiding minefields would be good, but i have to say, honestly, that what you are recommending would make minefields useless. i mean, all you have to do is jump one scout in system, then the fleet around it so the enemy cant destroy your scout, and bam there goes the whole point of mines because the ships wont fly into them. and then, imagine if you jumped 10 or more scouts in system, each of which enables your fleet to fly around mines, then the defenders have NO chance to destroy the scouts and the mines are useless.

the more i think about it the more i think the mines are fundamentally flawed, on one hand, they are great for defending, no matter what you do atm, your fleet WILL be destroyed if you just send it in willy nilly. however, any counter i can think of becomes too powerful. or not powerful enough. that is, lets say we make a new ship just for clearing mines. lets say for balance they clear at a fairly slow rate, you send a fleet on 10 in, start clearing mines, defending fleet wipes them out before they get much work done. lets say the mine sweepers clear mines really fast, i.e. the heavy armor on the sweepers allows them to simply charge through the mine field and clear the mines by detonating them. then mines become useless because u built a group of 10 or more, fly them into a system, follwed shortly by your fleet and there goes your defensive mines...

i dont know, im sitting here thinking, every counter is either too powerful or too ineffecient...

lastly with mines though, ive noticed that the mine will blow up and then the scout ship i sent to detonate it will be destroyed like 2-4 seconds later, i was like woo, free scout frigate... then boom blows up, i was like darn... maybe a tweak is needed or timeliness

also, with the pirate raid thing, ive noticed that if two sounds are played at the same time, one is just cancelled. so if a ship is built at the same time the pirate raid is announced, you dont hear the pirate raid sound

im sure that can be easily fixed with a short code detailing which sounds are more important than others and therefore which sound should play/be cancelled etc, it just needs to be done.

as for the fleet leader, ive noticed that too, dont know why, i just re-assign fleet leader and get on with my day... simple bug, sure they can fix it

Hi All,

I am thoroughly enjoying Entrenchment. I am glad to get the beta.

Like everyone else, I think the implementation of mines needs to be re-worked for a couple of reasons.

1. Clearing the mines is an excersize in tedium. There needs to be a mine sweeping unit or specific function for all races. BTW - I have only played TEC so far and Vasari mines are driving me nuts even though they are not causing much damage.

2. As more mines are laid, my systems' performance drops. I have a pretty nice system (Quad core, Nvidia 9800GT with 512mb) and the game slows down quite a bit. This problem is serious enough that if it weren't solved by the time of the final release that you consider removing mines from the game.

Otherwise, this is great. I am sure balance issues still need to be worked out, but right now I am having fun!

Engirush1

The mines to me are just another aspect of the game that I wouldn't mind having the option of turning off or on. Much like turning off the Pirate raids. Making a NO Mines Option would solve this issue for many players. Or you could simple limit the number of mines that could be placed in a system. In other words, A Limited Mines level, No Mines level and an Unrestricted Mines level, something like that. 

However, the Vasari mine dump and jump is crazy, either let all races do some version of it or not at all. Also, the AI needs to do something else besides laying mega minefields everywhere... Space is simply to large for this to be a realistic tactic, remember we are talking 3 dimensions worth of volume surrounding the gravity well of a planet, think HUGE and take that to something just shy of infinity and you might have a grasp at how big the space around a planet is comparable to...just maybe.

Entrenchment is a giant step in the right direction, Well Done.

With minefields, i just did this neat trick:

i zoomed in real close to the system, turned the camera so it was lined up on the planets equator, and told my fleet to move to the south pole.

then i told it to move to phase jump range and jump to a system FULL of mines

the fleet jumped in UNDER the mines, and proceded to clear everything (i ordered the fleet not to move so the enemy came to me and the mines werent a problem)

only works sometimes though, sometimes there are a few mines north or south of the equator or sometimes the fleet jumps in and arrives at the equator line, in which case this tactic doesnt work.

just adding my $0.02, but in the meantime, before we have a minesweeper, that works alright

because honestly, im playing against a vasari opponent now, and i cant wipe him out because he has TOTALLY mined the doorway system to the rest of his planets...

oh, one other thing, i have advent allies (im TEC) and they are stuck in another system, im playing agamemnons bounty, and they are stuck on Cancello behind the wall of mines i put there (to control traffic and everything u know)

but if they are my allies... why do my mines make them stop? they arent detonating...

here's an idea on mines......

(of course it would take stardock forever to do it.)

Add a function to block enemy mine laying(advent miner's from being laucnhed) in freindly gravity wells. Sort of added into the inhibator's design!!!!! But anywhere else is fair game!... ( i think this upgrade should apply only to TEC)

let this function be put along side the extra upgrade for gauss cannons...

let there be some differences in this game.......

i posted this somewhere else but ill post here as well just because

i noticed alot of people were struggling with a balanced minesweeper because it either:

1) has heaps of armor and, being a minesweeper, is super effective against mines, making mines useless, or,

2) has very little armor and,  being a minesweeper, is super effective against mines, making mines useless, but also means that you would have to spam 10s upon 10s or even hundreds upon hundreds to clear a sufficient space.

as such, i thought of 2 ideas:

1) the minsweeper is highly armored (as a minesweeper would be) but slow-ish. however, instead of detonating the mines, it fires an EMP at the mines (either directional blasts or omni-directional bursts) decloaking them and enabling the fleet to target them, while also disabling the mines from detonating. this, couple with the Scout idea i will describe later, could be very effective.

2) the second idea is that instead of just spamming mines everywhere in your gravity well, that there be a special band of space in your GW to place mines. this space would be bout a 5th the total space of the GW and would be set back far enough to enable either a small number of ships or a whole fleet (depening, its a detail SD will work out) to enter the system, and would not extend all the way back to the planet.

that way, a small fleet of minsweepers jumps in, clears a corridor, and then the fleet comes in and does its job.

now, for the scout idea, some other posters here recommended that as soon as a scout enters the system, all mines should be visable and de-cloak.

i think this nerfs mines, (given they are too powerful already, but still) that is, if 1 little scout enters the system, then proceeds to fly away from the planet, putting it out of range of planetary defenses, then your fleet jumps in, bam, mines become useless.

my suggestion is that:

1) Naturally, scouts should be reprogrammed to fly a picket around the fleet (perhaps with some inbetween the fleet as well) and

2 that depending on the type of fplanetary system you are in, the more scouts in your fleet, the more mines you can see and target. for instance, 1 scout gives localised sight data on mines, but not the ability to target. 5 gives same range dispersed around fleet, and ability to target visible mines, 10 gives sight data on a larger radius, but not targeting data, 15 gives targeting data, 20 gives sight range of whole GW, but not targeting etc etc

the idea is that each scout would concentrate on scanning an area, and collate all the data which is then organised and distributed to the fleet. the practical upshoot of which is that a fleet can now effectively see, avoid and destroy mines, without/before crashing stupidly into the minefield.

these are my $0.02, i think they are good ideas

I wish that mines were invisble to us if were not the owners of them. it seems that every time a scout or another ship jumps into a gw with a mine, it's become visible to us...... not very good mines if there visble but phased out.

Some very good points and suggestions have been raised on this post, you folks should perhaps send these on to IronClad, as they are the Develeopers of the game. support@ironcladgames.com