I would like BS ships and aboe to be able to deploy a mine field. I will go into some detail of how I think it could work. Of course I would love suggestions to be added or this idea evolved.
The mine field itself:
So the mine field would be deployed from a Battleship or larger vessel.
The minefield would cover a spherical area of around 22km radius from the ship in the centre.
The mines would do specific damage types just like missiles.
The mine field would do some 5k damage per mine to a maximum of 15k (3 mines being detonated) if a ship flew in the mine field on a sraight line vector towards the ship in the centre.
Mines would not affect rats, drones or fleet mates.
Mine fields cannot be stacked and only 1 per given volume of space.
Detonated mines will harm the ship in the middle as well as approaching ships.
Mine fields cannot be deployed near stations within X range.
Mine field can be deployed around gates.
Interferance from a mine field prevents the stable forming of Warp Interdiction Spheres. This will force a choice for gate campers between a mine field to get small craft or a warp bubble to get non nullified craft.
How the field is controlled or deployed:
The mines live in the cargo bay. They are quite big but should fit in a Battleship hold with other ammo types. (plus one or two spare to form the full field) So if it takes 12 to form a field then 15 units should fit in a hold with room for ammo. The fit should be snug however.
The mine field is controlled by a mod that sits in the mids and this mod would consume cap. This will have a balancing effect because you are either losing tank on Shield ships or some other vital mid slot on Armour ships.
The mod will of course require CPU and Power that puts it beyond a cruiser class ship.
The Mod when activiated will prevent warping and moving. Much like a cyno effect the ship becomes immobile.
Sig radius increases when deployed. This will balance the fact that you have a mine field arond you but can be shot at from far away.
The mod will have a cycle time that is say of 2m or so. Once you have the mine field out it will have to stay there for the duration.
Potential uses for the mine field I could see are as follows:
Gate camping in null. There is risk and reward here now. Do you park a big BS on a gate and mug all the small craft coming through or do you use current methods with a bubble.
Ratting/Mining in null. So you park your ship in question and deploy the mine field. Now any small frigate size ship is going to get blown up by the field preventing you from being tackled by light tackle. A cloaked ship approaching you is going to die as well. However the likes of a Lachesis with its ranged tackle or a Force Recons like a Pilgrim will either avoid entering the field or survive the mine field due to more EHP. This prevents bigger ships being tackled by frigs but still allows for ships to be tackled by countering in a way I just suggested.
Structure defence. Prevent booshing ships charging you having mine fields deployed.
Being a little tinker!. Deploying in relic data sites at warp in. Poor little explo frigates are going to have a shock.
So I have made my case and possible scenarios for use and how to counter. This should not be overpowering if the balancing is addressed as I laid out or indeed new ideas are added to the mix.
Agreed the old mines had a flawed dynamic.
These mines can only be present on the grid with the ship in question using them. This will prevent a system from being mined to death and repeating the old mistakes of days gone by.
I have listed methods of use and how to counter this new suggestion but I have not listed them all. I have spent a considerable time theory crafting this proposal and i ask that you all think about this for more than ten seconds.
This does not address a problem or enhance gameplay or make it more interesting, but it does severely damage existing gameplay.
Yes, your model does mitigate some of the problems of the old mine system, namely by limiting mines to one per ship; however, it makes BSes + capitals overpowered against subcapitals for no good reason. Numerous details of your proposal such as their radii and damage amounts are downright absurd, in particular, the inability field a warp interdiction sphere and the need for a deployment module since all deployables in game do not require such a module. Even if these absurdities were addressed, the concept itself is unreasonable. The game will not benefit from mines - instead of fielding mines, enlist fleetmates to accomplish what mines do.
The game does not need enhanced mechanisms by which to gate camp, rat, mine, or improve structure defense outside of player cooperation.
A ship that has deployed mines is immobile. A sitting duck . There is balance to this.
I wish people would use their imagination and see beyond arrgg its something new and actually consider the changes being proposed. I guess it is too much to assume people can theory craft or imagine. Oh well.
Are you implying there wasn’t risk and reward before?
Ah, there it is. This entire thing is a disguised cloaky camping complaint thread. Makes sense why this section is so much larger than the others, because the other sections are just idle ideas thrown in there to make it look like you’ve put thought into it.
as long as it is “blap any frig sized thing as soon as it jumps in or tries out to jump out of system while AFK” it is a horrible idea. With smartbombs you have to, at least, push the buttons and be aware.
The only reasonable situation in which I could see mines being reintroduced to the game is as a structure service slot module exclusive to the citadel line. Basically, imagine it like the old offgrid fighter assignment except in stead of fighters assigned to a friendly ship, you assign mines to a beacon launched the way a cyno is, but the beacon lasts 24 hours. Systemwide visible on overview as “minefield” and hostile to all ships, friend or foe.
The basic utility here is to use service slots to create pockets of “no man’s land”. This would give you excellent passive coverage of as many areas as you have modules fitted, cost fuel to run the service, but come at the cost of also locking your allies out of that grid.
Give the minefield service modules a specific max range from the structure than can be enhanced by rigs and lows so you have to make fitting choices between fitting against direct attack or system coverage.
Make blops fleets hull bonused against mine detection and let them hack the mine beacons to deactivate them.
This would make forts function more effectively as forts and give blops an expanded role in sov operations while cutting down both the utility of and need for the proliferation of extreme force projection.
