Advent homing mines

I don't usually loose more than two or four mines to a single scout, and I usually arrange my homing mines as close as possible to the planet and around my defensive structures, so the scout ususally has to go out of it's way to set them off. But generally mines are only a good investment when you have a shortage of tactical slots, starbase and repair bays are better.

Im talking about mining phase lanes. No skilled opponent will let his ships close to a minefield if it can be avoided.

Both Vasari and TEC mines that are near the edge of the grav well can be dealt with by warping in flak frigates and scouts.  The scouts will quickly reveal mines in a large radius, and the flaks will remove them before other defenders can even react.  So really, it's not that much harder to create an opening in Vasari and TEC minefields.

That's kind of the point.  Mines got a considerable cost reduction in the most recent patch, so I'm going to give them another try.

Well, luckily, not all homing mines will explode if triggered by the scout, they will just end up in a different spot. On a side note, I find it fun to run a capital ship through homing mines for some reason. About 50 mines will kill a cap though...

My biggest complaint about mines is that they all say they are cloaked, or out-of-phase. And yet you can still see them, but nothing will attack them until a scout checks them out, specifically with the ability "decloak mines". To me this would mean that you cannot judge their placement or amount until you use said ability. So make them invisible fer crying out loud. If i jump into a planet without good enough recon and the place is filled with mines I cant see and I have made no plans for them, let me get chewed up. because as it stands, i can scout, se that there are a lot of them but they are all on the right side of the GW and I can just jump in from a little to the left of the phase lane. Avoidance should only be part of it.  I realize this makes the game MUCh harder if we don't have minesweepers or a minesweeping ability. Unless we make the mines attackable, we shouldnt be able to see them until a decloak is used on them.

my second biggest complaint about mine is that they deploy too few at a time, with too low a limit. Decrease the dmg done per mine, but increase the number of mines per deployment and maximum number of mines per GW. Then it might be an actual defense instead of a "oh noes! i lost a ship that was already super duper damaged and was turning the wrong way when i wasnt paying attention." presently mines are a lot like trees on the side of the road, the only way they are going to hurt you is if something else has already gone really wrong.

They were originally like that 52500, but it made games last too long and caused tons of performance and stability issues. Also any decently defended world (10+ fighters) can destroy a scout before it does much minesweeping, unless you bring your whole fleet to protect the scouts, which obviously isn't a very good option either.

If you use mines much like they are used in modern day, to create virtual walls on the battlefield, they can still be useful, if not in preventing the enemy fleet from going around a planet (that's the starbase's job), in protecting the planet from siege frigates and making it much harder to take out orbital structures.

ok, so game mechanics wise, it works.

i tend to get "big-picture" about space warfare. I get wrapped up in things like assault defense and vastness of space.

regardless, i think smaller and more would be ok. out of phase being visible... i guess i could accept that. but really if you did it my way, later in the game having mine busting or sweeping ships would be necessary. personally i would send about 30 scouts in a wide formation to open up a space and then bring in the fleet.

actually you can jump your entire fleet into a mined gravity well without hitting them. Before you jump out push your Fleet to the very edge where they just wont go any farther outside the gravity well. Then jump them into the Enemy gravity well with the mines and they will jump in on the outer edge of the GW well out of the reach of the mines, Also attach 5 or so Scouts to a fleet for the purpose of gathering intel prior to jumping aswell as revealing mines.

If only mine laying was like in Homeworld2...where you can order your ships to make lines of them, instead of guessing where they are going to land from phase space.

Or better yet, make mines be an upgrade of the planet. Each upgrade adds mine density around the planet. At max level, nearly the entire gravity well is saturated.

then you had better make sure that the IFF works well or else you are restricting all trade vessels as well. saturating a GW would be counter productive. just coating the phase lanes would work well enough.

I second that motion, that's brilliant.

/agree

It'd be logical that there would be certain paths not mined for trade vessels or refinery ships to pass through. All but those lanes would be mined.

  I had about 30-35 Mines detonate on my Kol, (lvl 7, i think,) and lost it.