Suggestions for mines

[Crimson Echo]

Mines are currently basically worthless, but they are based on a cool idea. (defensive weapons for traders/small/slow ships)

1) Have mines not be resolved on the scanner except at extremely close range (not showing up at all until very close to the mine). The idea being they are designed to be too cool to resolve. (The possibility to use the pulse scanner to help spot the general location of mines might be another idea.)

2) Screening mines variant.
Primarily generated a senor disruption that blocks line of sight of a wide-ish (perhaps 500m to 1km radius?) area. Accidentally flying too close to the mine might blind sensors completely for say 10-20 seconds. (as a deterrent from trying to boost through the distortion field willy nilly)

3) Beam mines variant
Intended to be a distraction from the main target as they go silent. Not capable of significant damage. (acts like a decoy that can fire weapons.)

4) Missile mines variant
Similar to beam mines, but only fires at nearly point blank range. Intended to impart negative sensor/fsd/drive effects. (via engineering or variants.)

5) Doppelganger mines (more like a missile, but fired like a mine) (large and huge hardpoint sizes only)
Reverse engineered thargoid or guardian tech. Very expensive. Intended to give ships an edge against aggressors/gank wings long enough to escape. Once fired mimics a small ship like a viper or thargoid scout for a set time limit (~ 2min?) attacking hostile ships aggressively. Balancing this so it is not viable in offensive uses will be difficult.( possibly will not track if the launcher fired first due to 'command interface interference' ?) One approach might be the 'special alien based weapons' be more effective against ships firing weapons etc or via anti-weapon special effects?.

 

[Screemonster]

1 - absolutely, yes. What's the point of a minefield if your opponent can see it from kilometres away and fly around it?
2 - I like it. Very flashy chaff bombs that obscure line of sight through their field and break target locks sound like a neat defensive tool.
3 - mini-sentry go! Depending on how long they last I can see them being hilarious to just drop a dozen of them in the middle of a CZ.
4 - not sure how "missile at nearly point blank range" is different to a mine tbh
5 - this is just an slf with extra steps

 

[ArchEmperor]

If you see a potential threat that has it in for your cargo, just stop and drop out of supercruise. Put a mat of mines in front of you and back off just enough to where they usually spawn when entering your low wake.

The result is amusing.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Mines should also be magnetic and be mildly attracted to ships within a close range (say, <100m).

 

[MarKr The Real One]

I'm sorry to revive this but I don't want to start a new thread about the same thing.

I would totally say yes to the mines not showing up on sensors or at least not over several kilometers range. Mines are defensive weapons and deploying them when the opponent can see them from such a distance is like telling them "oh look out, you might want to dodge this". They should show up on the sensor when you're few hundred meters away so that it would require a quick reaction to dodge them or at least not fly directly into them. Point Defense should also not target mines until they show up on your sensor.
This could also be a way to give more utility to higher grade sensor types. Currently most people use just the "D" grade because they are the lightest and higher grades provide no significant advantage. Higher grade sensors might have longer reveal range for mines which would provide more time for evading them + give more time to your PD to shoot them down, in case you have a PD equipped.

The arming time is also ridiculous if you're trying to get away from a fight and your opponent is 5 seconds behind you, you're pretty much gone already because you are in most cases out of their weapon range and just waiting for the FSD to charge. Maybe they could be changed so that they would arm themselves once the mother ship leaves its blast radius.

As for the suggested new types of mines - the screening and beam variants sound cool and useful. The beam version could reveal itself on sensor once firing, so equiping PD would be a good counter to them. One thing that might be a problem is that the mines don't have any "friend or foe" detection so dropping them in a combat zone might result in a friendly fire (in case of standard and beam mines), the screening mines would blind the targetting of everyone caught in the AoE which could be a pain in the ass. On the other hand, one PD could still make short work with them so maybe it would not be such a problem.

 

[Screemonster]

I'd love to see remote-release mines like the flechette and flak launchers that give you a proximity signal on the HUD when they're near to a target.
I'd very much like to see something in the tech brokers that resembled the caustic clouds that scouts drop when they die. Don't even proximity-trigger them, have them pop a couple of seconds after they clear the tube so anyone chasing you has to turn away, slow down, or fly through the cloud - they'd not be much use for ganking people since noncombat fits are going to be docking soon anyway, and they'd be less practical for a gank than existing weapons are anyway, but they'd be hugely inconvenient to anyone looking to hang around in supercruise and attack people.

Frankly, Elite has a serious lack of effective weapons that will mission-kill a target rather than actually kill them. The main one I can think of is stripping someone's weapons off with packhounds, since it's a highly effective GG that will make someone useless in a fight, but doesn't have OP killing power. Neutering someone's offensive capability, or mission endurance, has hella tactical value.
Even better if mission NPCs and pirates were scripted to be "driven off" by those sorts of things and didn't bother you again when you went back to supercruise.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Even better if mission NPCs and pirates were scripted to be "driven off" by those sorts of things and didn't bother you again when you went back to supercruise.

Properly stripping the weapons off an NPC will get it to high-wake, and then you won't see it again for a bit. (give it time to dock and repair)

 

[MarKr The Real One]

I'd love to see remote-release mines like the flechette and flak launchers that give you a proximity signal on the HUD when they're near to a target.

Wouldn't this be a bit clunky? I mean...when the ship gets within the blast range, the mine explodes. Why would you need a remote-release?

I'd very much like to see something in the tech brokers that resembled the caustic clouds that scouts drop when they die.

This sounds very cool! I guess it would be kind of a in combat zones where it is often a cluster with allies and enemies and this would give a big chance for friendly-fire but for trader ships as a defensive measure it would be great! It would also give some use to the decontamination limpets even outside Thargoid combat.

Frankly, Elite has a serious lack of effective weapons that will mission-kill a target rather than actually kill them.

I was thinking about this too and when I saw the hatch-breaker limpets, I immediately thought of the...not sure what they were called in one of the Star Wars movie..."sabotage droids" or something? They were released in a group, attached to a ship when they got close and started to damage system. Maybe something similar could work not for mines but for limpets where you would target some external module, launched a "sabotage" limpet and it would travel to the ship, try to attach to it and slowly start damaging given module. Hatch-breakers can be shot down by Point Defense so it could be the same case for these. They would also have some speed limit so faster ships would be able to out-fly them or they could have some other compensation in order not to be OP.

Another thing that came to my mind was sort of an EMP mine which would for a few seconds shut down power-dependent modules. Maybe modules with the "shielded" engineering could be immune to this effect or perhaps many modules could get some experimental "shielding" effect that would protect them from EMP effects. As this mine type would be very powerful (especially if mines were no longer detected from such a long range), this type could have longer reveal range or limited ammo storage or just something to compensate.

 

[Friedenreich Xante]

Seeker mines are also a funny thing. They basically scan for nearby foes and start chasing them (at slow speed, that is).

Anyway, I too would like to see more variety in mines. The current ones are almost useless, and almost only used by NPC.

 

[Barmatyr]

I have just try to use mine launcher on a large ship for combat purpose. My opinion is that mine are only threatening the ship who drop them.

The thing is, this should not be called mine launcher but mine dropper. They have a great aoe effect but are drop few meter away from the launcher threatening mostly the user. The dispersion is ridiculous if you use two opposite drop point. Having them launch effectively is important (for safety at first), effectiveness (even more if they are easily spotted) and could justify the fact that it cost energy and heat to "launch"/drop them.

For this two reason (being dropped and spotted), they are completely useless in combat situation, even more in pvp. And at best dangerous for the user. This can just be use while fleeing versus a dumb AI. That's sad.

The best thing would be to be able to launch them properly and even better set up a launch power or distance.


Mine were launch from both side of the ship. Just moving forward will have them explode on the corvette. That's not an effective "launch"

 

[MarKr The Real One]

Yeah, this is another thing - on some ships are mines only useable on certain hardpoints. I tested this on Type 9 - if you place the mine launchers on the small hardpoints in the front, the mines are launched "up" which in this case means directly into your hull so you need to use specific hardpoints to make room for launching the mines. Same case would be with your exmple here.