Suggestion to improve mines in X4

[Falcrack]

Mines have always existed in the X series, and always felt like an afterthought. Here's some ideas I think would improve them.

1. Allow them to function in low attention

2. Have special command to deploy groups of mines in a certain field, ie you can specify number of mines and radius of mine field. Same would apply to laser towers.

3. Limit detection of mines so that they only come up on radar within a relatively short range, but once discovered, they can be automatically targeted by turrets.

[LameFox]

I would figure that mines would be an entity sort of like a laser tower that just fires its very short ranged "weapon" once and dies, but that does depend on how range even works in low attention. Maybe it would end up with all the mines in the area hitting a ship at once in a very unrealistic way or something...

[Raptor34]

I would figure that mines would be an entity sort of like a laser tower that just fires its very short ranged "weapon" once and dies, but that does depend on how range even works in low attention. Maybe it would end up with all the mines in the area hitting a ship at once in a very unrealistic way or something...

There are real mines that are just torpedoes. You could do the same here, mines are just missiles.
Maybe even bigger packs too. Disposable missile boxes firing off 6 missiles or something.

[LameFox]

I would figure that mines would be an entity sort of like a laser tower that just fires its very short ranged "weapon" once and dies, but that does depend on how range even works in low attention. Maybe it would end up with all the mines in the area hitting a ship at once in a very unrealistic way or something...

There are real mines that are just torpedoes. You could do the same here, mines are just missiles.
Maybe even bigger packs too. Disposable missile boxes firing off 6 missiles or something.

That is certainly more realistic for a space mine. In all that room it's not going to wait until you fly into it...

[Raptor34]

Give them stealth so you can only detect them within say 5-10km, tune as required. Give a pack 6 heavy torpedoes. And voila, perfect anti-capital mines. Heavy torps are already a proven weapon after all. Though this wouldn't have the benefit of the launching platform's velocity.
Anti-fighters can carry light smart, heatseeker or swarm I guess.

I wouldn't make it completely undetectable of course, I'll make it so that when you get within say 15-20km, and the range of values here is intended, you'll be able to detect that something is there. But you'll only know that it's roughly in that area, but you'll need to send scouts in to find and kill them.

This idea could help stiffen defenses all around too. Consider the Xenon for instance, you can't just sweep in with destroyers blindly if they have these torpedo pods laying around. And of course the other benefit is that these would be purely defensive items. Though a ballsy commander could deploy these in the enemy fleet. But that's for the player to do and shouldn't affect the AI balance of power the way an offensive weapon would.

[vvvvvvvv]

Mines have always existed in the X series, and always felt like an afterthought. Here's some ideas I think would improve them.

1. Allow them to function in low attention

2. Have special command to deploy groups of mines in a certain field, ie you can specify number of mines and radius of mine field. Same would apply to laser towers.

3. Limit detection of mines so that they only come up on radar within a relatively short range, but once discovered, they can be automatically targeted by turrets.

Last one could result in ship blowing itself up, the first two are reasonable. Honestly, I'd expect them to function in low attention by default.

[Falcrack]

I like the idea of mines that are basically stationary torpedoes. Maybe heavy mines could be tuned to only respond to L/XL ships. Smaller mines could have a smaller warhead, but are faster, and trigger to nearby S/M ships.

Maybe there could be EMP mines as well, which do not damage, but when triggered, knock ships out of travel drive, thus making them more vulnerable to stations, fleets, and minefields.

Mines like this would represent a credible defense, both in high and low attention.

[Alan Phipps]

I like the aspirations, but I think there's a whole lot of dev work implied as widespread use of active mines IS and OOS, each with their own real-time or OOS tick target validity, 3D target range, and 3D effective damage radius calculations would be a huge computational drain and a major new development, balance, and testing load too. Now add in the player ship individual mine detection computations with all the various 'stealth' modifiers and it all adds up very quickly. The alternative less onerous approach would an RNG 'struck a mine' event that some players would hate and rage-quit over. We haven't even really got LTs or missiles working ideally OOS yet.

[Raptor34]

I like the aspirations, but I think there's a whole lot of dev work implied as widespread use of active mines IS and OOS, each with their own real-time or OOS tick target validity, 3D target range, and 3D effective damage radius calculations would be a huge computational drain and a major new development, balance, and testing load too. Now add in the player ship individual mine detection computations with all the various 'stealth' modifiers and it all adds up very quickly. The alternative less onerous approach would an RNG 'struck a mine' event that some players would hate and rage-quit over. We haven't even really got LTs or missiles working ideally OOS yet.

Then just have them be missile turrets with fixed detection radius. We already have that in the form of missile armed ships, this would be the same, except they would vanish when empty. Just make it you can target them for weapons at say 8km or something. Note we already have stealth in one of the hull modifications as well.
And of course they should finally change it so that not all deployables are the exact same size... If a torp pod carries 6 and is size 10, a standard scout ship can drop off 6 pods, that's 36 heavy torps. Enough to give any ship a pause for thought while not being so dumb that one scout ship can deploy 50 LTs.
Fixed mines are dumb anyway, and frankly would never work out well. Witness that Timeline mission, where I basically lucked into flying in the minefield for so long I thought it was cosmetic. Then I blew up of course, but I wouldn't say I was the best pilot, and I wasn't actually actively avoiding mines either.

[vvvvvvvv]

I like the aspirations, but I think there's a whole lot of dev work implied as widespread use of active mines IS and OOS, each

If mines do not work OOS I'd consider it a bug. Stuff like Timelines definitely looked like far more work than making mines functional.

[LameFox]

Personally I really don't like stuff that only works when the player is or is not around. It pushes us to either babysit things or avoid experiencing them at all, and it ruins immersion by making it always a consideration that maybe this thing would work better if I just teleported to it or away from it.

If it's simply too hard to make mines of a sort that work in low attention, then IMO they should not have had mines in the game. Right now their primary function doesn't even really seem to be as a mine anyway, but rather a better version of the spacesuit bomb for players to blow up stations, and in some cases a background decoration that can hurt you if you try hard enough to provoke it (but conveniently never appears directly in your path).

[Agrefits]

To make mines worthwile there must be.

a) A more efficient way to lay them
b) A more efficient way to use them
c) A more efficient way to remove them

A and C would be a good opportunity to increase the importance Spacetugs and scavenging mechanics.

Regarding of Use, i'd look more into Area Denial for OOS (using the hazardous Area mechanic)

Like drop a"Minefield" Plot in the Station Plot Menu, assign a Tugs to "Maintain the minefield" .. if not maintained, the field degrades over time (as in station health ticker) .. as long the field ia active, NPC's will act as if its a hazardous area.

[mr.WHO]

I have better idea that doesn't make mine single entity (this would be performance nightmare, just like sattelite spam).


Instead of making mines an individual entity each mine is amunition, like missiles.


Make that minefield is zone (like plot zone) where you can define x,y,z coordinates - the zone volume would also define "max capacity".

Then you fill the "capacity" with mine munition, just like you do with missiles at station manager screen.


"capacity" fill will be approximation of dammage chance in OOS (e.g. field with 500 mines out of 1'000 capacity would have 50% chance to inflict dammage).
Similarly in high attention, filled capacity would also define approximate automatic zone mine spawn rate.

every time mine detonate, filled capacity would be reduced.


This would be also great for ease of managment and ressuply (e.g. you could assing trade order to resupply used mines).

The system would be also convinient and flexible enough for AI factions to use as well (e.g. pirates and main factions).

The only possible complication would be how each type of mine would work (e.g. if we mix mine type, if mine field logic would allow to spawn multiple types of different mines).