Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've been reading a few threads on this suggestion forum about how to implement minefields, and I don't think this particular variant has been discussed.

In the game "VGA Planets" (www.vgaplanets.nu), they implement minefields by creating an area of effect within which you have a percentage chance to hit a mine. One race (The Tholians) can lay a particular type of minefield that does less damage, but also stops you and drains fuel; another race (the Robots) can lay quadruple-size minefields. Minefields can overlap, and in the overlapping area, the probability of hitting a minefield is doubled. Minefields decay at a certain percentage of "mine units" per day; "mine units" are created by disassembling torpedo munitions, higher tech level torpedoes generating more mine units. Mines can be destroyed simply by firing beam weapons into the minefield, which destroy them at a certain rate, or by deploying a counter-minefield. In VGAP, minefields act as a passive interdiction system over an area of space.

With that background in place, I propose the EVE version, the deployable minefield array, which is an anchorable object that you "fill" with mine units, and which projects a bubble minefield out to a radius depending on the number of mine units currently contained therein. Larger minefields require geometrically more units. The minefield array sits in the centre and maintains the minefield (basically, a bubble within which you have a chance of hitting a mine), which slowly degrades as interplanetary debris takes its toll. The chance of hitting a mine is then entirely dependent on distance travelled within the interdicted sphere of space, perhaps modified by speed and ship signature (small ships going slowly could have nearly no chance of hitting the mine, large ships under MWD would plow through them very dangerously).

From that base, there are a lot of directions that EVE could go. Some existing munition could be used to create mine units; perhaps a variety could. A minelayer could have a static bay with a maximum capacity. If you want to fill it with light kinetic missiles, that's the damage and type it could do; a "hit" then would be the same as being hit by a light kinetic missile, and would leverage all the existing code in that respect. You could hypothetically fill it with heavy missiles, faction missiles, anything with an explosive payload.

Each faction could have minelayers with different properties - increased radius, bonuses to damage types, penalty on mine hit (a Caldari minefield could have some ECM effect, a Gallente minefield might have a limpet effect, an Amarr minefield might reduce your weapon tracking speed if you hit..).

Countering a minefield would involve targeting the minefield array and firing, or laying a counter-minefield; opposing minefields cannot overlap, but allied minefields can. Its "HP" is the size of the minefield, the number of remaining units in the minefield, and some formula determines how many you destroy with each volley.

This approach would, I think, reduce lag, add some interesting game mechanics, add options for POS defence and gate interdiction, and jibe well with existing mechanics.

Yes; as I understand it, those reasons were lag (thousands of anchored mines around a stargate) and broken mechanics.

I believe a projected minefield, as opposed to individually-anchored mines, would solve the lag problem, and a bit of tuning could solve the other.

As to bubbles, I don't see. If you're caught in a bubble, a projected minefield would make movement a little more difficult, and cloakers would have a little more risk associated with moving. If you stay put, there's no difference. If you move, you have a risk of hitting a mine. In a small ship, moving slowly (like a cloaker, say) that risk would probably be near-zero.

I see minefields as a defence more against large ships. Someone who has minefield interdiction over an area has an additional freedom of movement that an attacker lacks. In many areas, like wormholes, the overwhelming advantage accruing to an attacker by dint of choosing terms of engagement could use an extra counter.

A player running combat sites or mining operations could pre-emptively deploy a minefield to give some measure of defence against cloakers.

There's any number of variables that could be tuned. Maybe minefields won't be allowed to overlap an anchored structure, so that they could cover a wormhole, or surround a POS, but not overlap with it.

"Might" get killed, not "will" get killed. Hitting one wouldn't be inevitable. Say, 10% per kilometre traveled or something, to pull a number out of my ass, modified by sig radius. Maybe you cloak-warp into the middle of one, you're still cloaked, maybe there's a gang waiting inside it. If you throttle down and pick your direction carefully, you could have a 99% chance of escaping or something.

As a defender, I might do overlapping minefields to reduce that chance, but it would become expensive and logistically difficult to maintain that kind of a blockade, with minefield decay.