Orbital minefields would be a great counter to orbital commander snipes. They would be built and removed by the orbital fabber. Should be powerful enough to significantly damage a Helios, but not so powerful that you can neglect other orbital defenses.
sounds like a concept worth thinking about. Didnt the orbital warfare mod even have this kind of thing?
Yes, but we also made changes to the intel layer of orbital so you couldn't just see everything all the time. That way you couldn't just pick the weakest spot and exploit it - you had to scout first.
I think that it would be pretty simple to send a scout that arrives a split second earlier to play minesweeper for you, right before the Helios jumps in. Not sure that's a really good solution. Maybe if it left a EMP field behind it that disabled units for a while, but that would be a totally new mechanic. Which honestly might be cool for mines in general
The idea was that the minefield complements other defenses and allows some protection against sniping, but doesn't outright replace them.
The trick would be getting mines to wait to detonate until all or most of the units in an attack wave had arrived preventing people from using a few avengers as chaff to clear the area for advancing ships. Otherwise sounds good.
I like your idea, and I have another idea to discuss. Should we have anti orbital unit with area of effect? For example, the T2 vehicle Storm is an AA unit with area of effect. Storm can clear the T1 bomber group very effectively. However, it gets a shorter range than the T1 AA unit Spinner gets. I think this similar mechanism can be applied to orbit, too. The T2 flak cannon also gets less range than the T1 AA Galata, while the T2 flak cannon provides area of effect. Maybe we just need a T2 advanced umbrella.
If there's an exploding orbital unit, it should be called the Kessler. I'm still ambivalent about the orbital intel change, though. I can understand how the orbital radar was redundant after a point and only punished you for forgetting to make one, but there ought to be something more interesting than all vision all the time...
