Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The problem with mines wasnt the concord point, it was that people would deploy 100,000 of them around a gate causing huge lag and instant death to anyone who jumped in in a fireball of twisted metal carnage.

**** what am I saying, that sounds AWESOME.

+1

Srs post -
Mines are difficult to balance without imposing difficult to code and arbitrary limitations on them to prevent huge clusters being effective.

I recall that the existing mine mechanics (deactivated since ~2004) included a bit of "homing" in that once inside the proximity range of a mine it would move towards your ship and explode on contact. They were also AOE (as were torpedoes, if you can believe it).

If they were to be reintroduced they could work like current bombs do (maybe half dmg and smaller AOE) but activated by proximity. To prevent extreme clustering you could make mines set off each other if deployed inside the proximity sphere. Obviously youd make them undeployable in empire. Even then I think people would be tempted to lay 1000+ mine deathspheres around gates so not sure it would work. I'm not sure it would ever be balanced.

Deployable guns also have lots of balance issues. A load of deployed bubbles and some deployed guns on a gate is an entirely automated gatecap, and i'm not sure thats the kind of gameplay CCP wants to encourage.

A more interesting idea might be deployable gun that works like an oversized sentry drone, takes up 125 bandwidth, but has the ability (like carrier fighters) to operate while the controlling ship is offgrid (and can be assigned). It would be difficult to ensure they didnt just replace fighters in all similar situations however.

The only way mines could work is if they acted like asteroid fields where ships could dodge through them
- gaps of about 10km between mines in an omni direction
- would have to be set away from any gates at least 30km away
- damage akin to smart-bombs
- omni damage
- only does damage if a ship gets within 1km of a mine so 1km AOE damage
-mines are destructible so HP of rockets
- only usable in 0.0
- 2 hour life before disappearing
- would require a specialist ships to lay them and activate mine field after deployment

Sentry guns would have to set apart in a similar fashion
- destructible
-omni damage
-expensive to produce and maintenance costs

Mines would be pretty much worthless then. I guess you could drop 500000 outside a hostile station for giggles, or a blob like that all around your ihubs etc, but they still wouldn't be worth the hassle if they only last a couple of hours.

As for sentries, No. A bunch of those on a gate with a drag bubble and you have a gatecamp you don't even need to man. Why is that good?

So dropping a sentry gun would prevent hostiles from bubbling a gate? How would that not be overpowered?

I don't see a good reason to add player controlled sentry guns on nullsec gates.

I think the "defense" of your system should not be from NPC's (police, gate guns, etc), but from you & your alliance mates patrolling it. If, sentry guns on the gate were short range (100km's max), and took a long time to engage targets (like target must be on grid fro 60+ seconds before they started attacking), they might be "balanced". But even then, I feel they are simply too much.

I personally solo a lot in frigates in nullsec by flying around enemy systems, and annoying the locals until they chase me. This would be much more difficult if I had to worry about gate guns on most gates!!!