[ENTRENCH] Mines suggestions

Mines are a good thing.  Most games don't have them; no game does them properly.  Entrenchment gets close, but for two issues.

 

Firstly, each mine shows up in the tree as a separate ship, which is ridiculous.  It renders the tree near useless once you've dropped a few hundred mines.  Even if they were a) stackable by different amounts (I'd say 50) and b) in a slightly different 'mine' colour would allow people to track what's a mine and what's a ship.

 

Secondly, the minelayers aren't automated enough.  Being able to queue mine 'points' is great, but they need an autocast function to replace mines lost to prevent the absurd micro of replacing a minefield every time a single trade ship flies in.  Once you drop mines, the game knows the volume they occupy - if the minelayers would auto-cast minelaying within this volume, a nice dense minefield could be maintained without eight million clicks.

 

Entrenchment is about digging in; the starbases being able to move removes much of the suck of static defenses at a stroke.  Mines are powerful and hilarious, but they require too much player focus, espcially considering they're triggered so easily.  It'd be a big decision to turn it on of course, because of the cost, but for people like me who are fond of dropping hundreds of mines in a jump zone, but who don't want to constantly check and re-check every 5 minutes to re-lay the minelayers.

 

Additionally, it'd be nice of the minefield-maintenance would allow the minelayer to be in an adacent system rather than exposing itself to battle; indeed, you could propose a 'mine factory' that would work like the resource factory, sending 'mini minelayers' to adjacent systems to drop new mines as old ones are exploded.  

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Reply #1 Top

Just thought ad mention tht moving star bases doesnt undermine the entrenchment idea. When people say they want them to move they dont mean move them from grav wel to grav well they actually mean moving them within the gravwell which i think could be a god idea

I mean obviously you dont want the advent and TEC bases able to keep up with ships like the vasari one, otherwise the uniquness of vasari ones would be taken away but even if it took 15 or 20 minutes to move a starbase to the other side of a grav well it could be very helpful as you would be ale to move your starbases location to where ever the situation needs it.

Say for example you build it at one side of a colony to defend against invaders coming in from that way, its not much use if later on another enemy tarts attacking the other side so it would help to be able to relocate depending on stuation demand. And it wouldnt make it able to pursue a fleet like a ship because a fleet of caps should be able to run rings around it :)

 

if you get my point

Reply #2 Top

advent mines can auto deploy...and the computer is actually smart about where to put them to

Reply #3 Top

Even if they were a) stackable by different amounts (I'd say 50)
End of quote

If you don't mind everything else on the empire tree stacking, you can actually change the stack size for yourself in your user.setting file. It's global, so ships and such will also stack up to that number as well.

Reply #4 Top

Well as far as stacking mines on empire tree, I don't see any reason that mines shouldn't alls tack in 1 square with jus thte number of miens present.

Reply #5 Top

I just realised your comment about mine ship auton layers. During the beta there was an auto cast ability, the devs chose to remove it whilst they observe the results with the new mine system, I reckon eventually they will restore the ability