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[Idea] - Bring Mines Back
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Tidurious
Blatant Alt Corp
#1 - 2012-01-24 05:55:26 UTC
So, first off - it's hard to look for threads about mines without coming up with 100 threads about mining, so I apologize if I'm repeating another post. I looked through the first 16 or so pages of search results without coming up with anything; there were 58 pages and I didn't have the patience.

I know that mines were once part of EVE before my time. I know they were removed, but the reasons for that are unknown to me, other than I heard about large mine blobs that were causing lag and/or considered to be 'abusing' the mines.

I think that Mines should come back. How is it that with all our spaceship technology, we don't have mines? I think that mines should be similar to the ones seen in the movie "Galaxy Quest" in that scene near the beginning, when they encounter the mine field for the first time. The mines float in space until a ship comes very close to them, say for EVE purposes, 2.5km. Then, the mine fires up a little motor that can propel it at a given speed (2000 m/s?) for a maximum of, say, 10 seconds. The mine explodes when it gets within 100m of the target ship OR after 10 seconds of being active.

Because of their detection method (proximity), mines cannot be placed closer than 5km apart, or interference from their sensors will cause them to detect each other and activate, which will result in the mines targeting and destroying each other.

Mines cannot be placed within 18km of a gate, POS, nullsec station, or other structure because the large signature would cause mines to activate and target the structure. Mines would be activated by asteroids but can be placed in belts, as long as they are not within 2.5km of an asteroid.

Mines should show up on dscan but not on overview.

Now for damage:

I think that 2 mines should be capable of destroying a pod. Perhaps the mine does 2000 AOE damage, one mine for each racial type. However, damage will of course be reduced based on speed of the ship, etc.

Mines should have little resistance to any damage type but their own and can be easily destroyed if shot at. They do, however, have a long lock time based on their small signature radius.

The blueprint should require enough materials that mines cost about the same as a bomb, 1-1.5M

Finally, mines should have a long enough anchor time that it is not practical to deploy them in battle. You cannot use modules while setting mines (for fear that interference will cause it to detonate prematurely) and they take 60s to become active. Mines will then activate on ANY ship, including the ship that set them.


So, to recap, bring back mines:
2.5km detection range
10s to catch up to a target and detonate
2000 AOE damage
Cannot be placed closer than 5km together
Cannot be placed closer than 18km to a structure


Thoughts? I think that mines could be an interesting part of the game, and add a fun nullsec component. To reduce mines staying around forever, it could be that mines last for, say, 10 days and then run out of fuel. Mines that run out of fuel automatically explode to avoid capture by the enemy, ie. mines go away after 10 days.
Valea Silpha
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2012-01-24 06:53:32 UTC
You seem to have solved most of the problems that mines had back in the day, but at the price of making them dismally underpowered.

Yes, mines caused insane lag. Also, CCP really doesn't like AOE damage, particularly when you can set off a lot of them at once.

Like I say, you've thought through and shown your working, as it were. The minimum distances, the anchoring delay, all that stuff, sounds really good, it stops them being tossed out in their millions in places where people are just going to wander into them.

But at the same time, your concept has little damage dealing ability (needing 25+ mines to hurt anything cruiser sized) and not being able to use them on the fly relegates them to being forgotten if they were introduced in this form. I just... I don't understand where you want people to put them.

My feeling would be to litter THOUSANDS of them around a POS tower (and it would take bloody thousands of them), along with a whole bunch of bubbles as 'free' damage, and to discourage cloakers from coming too near my POS. But that would take until I die of old age, and even then they would just screw with people not kill them. So maybe not.

And that's the crux of the problems with mines. To be certain they are effective, you have to put out vast numbers of them, and with that number of them out, its impossible to get the damage worked out to be balanced, particularly when you start to think about how many you can put in what area, and how far away they will trigger. It'll either be 'meh' or instasplat. If it doesn't immediately get you kills, its just not worth it in this game, particularly when you need billions of isk invested in them.

I get where you are going. I would LOVE for there to be a way to make a hideout in hostile space inside a minefield that you only have bookmarks to get inside without triggering them. But its just not feasible with the game as it is now.
Sigras
Conglomo
#3 - 2012-01-24 08:18:45 UTC
Every time I see this topic come up, I have to link this picture

Because you know that this is what every 0.0 alliance would do to all of their systems . . .

But on a more serious note, I wouldnt be opposed to the idea if you could keep them balanced, but I see no way to do that . . . No matter how weak you make them, I can always just put more of them out there, and if you limit it to a certain number of mines per character what is a reasonable number? 5 per character? 10?

Lets say you allow 10 mines per character . . . you realize that goonswarm would then be able to put a field of 1,000 mines around 70 different gates?!

What about going the other way and saying that only 2 mines are allowed per character . . . well then an alliance of reasonable size like Circle-Of-Two would have trouble getting a minefield up around two gates effectively . . .

the balance issue is really the problem here for me.
Iris Bravemount
Golden Grinding Gears
#4 - 2012-01-24 08:36:01 UTC
One word : Haegemonia

In that game, mines were deployed by "mine layer" ships.

A ship can lay up to 20 or 40 (depending on t1 or t2). They come out of the ship and spread evenly in all directions, slowly floating away from the ship until they form a sphere around it. They have a relatively short lifespan (1 mine lives as long as it takes to lay the maximum number of mines), so that the minefield won't last long if the ship moves or stops laying mines for any other reason. The ship has to sit there and keep laying mines if it wants to keep it's mine sphere up.

Now to balance... in that game, the ships could lay mine through games and each mine was powerfull enough to destroy medium sized ships in a single blow. Obviously this would be OP. The activation radius was OK though, about half the radius of the sphere.

I don't know how much damage they need to do exactly for this, but with the explosion radius and speed mechanic, we can allready dampen the effect on small ships. IMO they should be very intimidating (not instapop, people need to be able to go away or even try to make it through in very tanky fits), especially for big ships. Maybe rage torpedo like explosion radius and velocity with more damage.

"I will not hesitate when the test of Faith finds me, for only the strongest conviction will open the gates of paradise. My Faith in you is absolute; my sword is Yours, My God, and Your will guides me now and for all eternity." - Paladin's Creed
Nnamuachs
Kiith Paktu
Reeloaded.
#5 - 2012-01-24 11:23:03 UTC
Besides lag, the other real issue that mines had was their ability to be dropped and forgotten. I remember hearing stories of people wandering around high sec and getting concorded because someone had run into their mine out in nullsec. Issues like that would also need to be cleared up before any thought of mines coming back into the game.
Tidurious
Blatant Alt Corp
#6 - 2012-01-24 19:27:24 UTC
To everyone above - thanks for the input. You have some very good ideas and suggestions. Thinking about them, here are a couple of more ideas, and responses to what you mentioned.

Iris - I like the idea of a mine-laying ship. Every part of this ship is designed to facilitate the laying of mines without setting them off, and that is really all it does. I don't find the "mine sphere" to be a good concept in EVE, however. I think that a mine-laying ship would be a good feature to go along with mines.


Sigras and Valea - I agree, work needs to happen to keep them from being overpowered. What about increasing the AOE damage to, say, 4000, but leaving the distance alone. I think that a frigate should be killed by a couple of mines fairly easily; however, a frigate with a MWD can outrun them or a frigate that initiates warp as soon as it sees mines should be warped out before the mines hit, unless the pilot is drunk or stupid.

Additionally, to work on the damage, here's another idea: Mines activation proximity stays 2.5km; however, when a mine detonates, all mines within 7.5km are activated by the blast and then seek the nearest target, which would generally be the original target, I would assume. I'm not so sure about that one, but perhaps.


Sigras - I agree, there needs to be some limit to the number of mines that are put out. I don't like limits based on "x mines per player" because to me, that makes no sense with regards to the game, it's completely arbitrary. However, I think that we should limit the number of mines on grid at any one time. Even if the limit is, say, 100 mines. These should not be the main defense for structures, but should be another deterrent. I also see a good time coming from placing a warp bubble, laying a bunch of mines around the bubble, and letting those hit trapped ships until I get to the bubble.

I agree that large alliances could use mines more than individual players - however, I think that ANY new module/ship that is beneficial always benefits the larger alliances more, due to their wealth and playerbase. I don't think that's a reason to NOT have mines, and limiting the number of mines on-grid at any one time would keep MASSIVE fields from appearing. Having too many mines on the grid at once causes their sensors to overload and they activate, fire in a random direction, and detonate :)

Nnamuachs - good point. CCP simply needs to ensure that damage that happens in nullsec does not cause criminal aggression in hisec. I think this would be an easy fix. Anyone trying to lay mines in hisec will get the "Concord Warning" box and then be destroyed by Concord if they actually lay a mine; concord would then destroy the mine as well. This should prevent "accidental death by Concord".

Keep the ideas coming guys, thanks for the support!
Kavrae Veila
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2012-01-24 20:21:49 UTC
An idea based upon your Gate and Station comment; let the detonation distance be based upon signature radius, not a hard-coded value. This would allow the small and fast ships to maneuver around them whereas larger ships would need to give them a wider range.

This would also open up a second line of ships besides the mine layers; Minefield Runners. Since this is such a niche role, it may have to be combined with another ship role. Perhaps complexes based upon avoiding increasingly difficult minefields? Perhaps transport ships? While it's a bit of a stretch, I would love to see T1 ships with the ability to get closer to mines without setting them off and a T2 version with the same ability plus cloaking. Similar to a blockade runner, but much smaller.
Tidurious
Blatant Alt Corp
#8 - 2012-01-24 20:33:57 UTC
That makes sense to me, Kavrae - I like it. Distance to activation determined by ship size. This will also help mines be more effective against larger targets while not being completely OP for smaller targets.

Good idea!
Nekopyat
Nee-Co
#9 - 2012-01-24 20:34:14 UTC
Nnamuachs wrote:
Besides lag, the other real issue that mines had was their ability to be dropped and forgotten. I remember hearing stories of people wandering around high sec and getting concorded because someone had run into their mine out in nullsec. Issues like that would also need to be cleared up before any thought of mines coming back into the game.


Actually, that would be kinda funny to leave in ^_^

I have always kinda hoped for the return of mines in some form, it is a mechanic that has felt rather absent from EvE.
Valea Silpha
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#10 - 2012-01-24 21:58:15 UTC
My inclination is that making them deployable anywhere is why they just can't be made to work.

I'd rather see fairly powerful mines that you can only deploy around POS. I don't know what form they would take, other then each one being a one use, disco-bs, but at the same time if they get refitted into a POS defense rather than strewn around eve wherever you fancy kinda thing then we'd be much more onto a good thing.

Alternatively, how about making them an intergrated part of a new t2 bubble. Same size as a t1 bubble, but ships that land inside it get swarmed by mines after... say 5 seconds. Does sig-related damage, and randomly alternates between ships in the bubble. Doesn't work on cloaked ships though.

So yeah, you can use them in very specific forms of camp, and to interdict POS and WH maybe.