Mines [land,sea,other] & How To Make Them Work

This. The spider mines were cool but worthless.

ZK roach (crawling bomb) cloaks when stationary, decloaks when moving. Works well.

Simply this no need to make fancy units deploying minefields. Some crawling bombs that cloak when standing still = minefield.

Its a Volca, a Conrad Units [according to Unit Universe] unit for Core & cleaned up by MAD-TA for their UTASP pack. Could shoot through terrain but not wreckage but I had Karnajjars [an actual MAD-TA unit] for that ^-^

My suggestion would be to have a minelayer unit- that could lay light, medium, or heavy minefields (each with different densities of mines) over a dragged out area that you'd define. Each mine would cost a certain amount of resources and time to build.

The mines wouldn't be OP because a minesweeper unit could clear a small hole in the field and you could sweep all your units through that hole (we'd need good AI to not just plow straight through though)

it also encourages throwaway scouts (losing them in a mine explosion would be better than seeing an expensive tank go out), and minimize the impact of spy satellites in viewing defenses, as well as giving unsuspecting opponents thinking they found a 'weak spot' a bad surprise

(other methods of doing them could also be implemented, of course- but I'd say they should be more expensive (the cannon/moveable mine idea)

overall, to make a difference, you'd literally have to use a lot of mines- but it should be an option

i really don't like the idea of having to spend resources for the mines themselves. to my mind it's supposed to be almost some kind of turret, and you don't need resources to have them shoot, except maybe a bit of energy. of course you'll need to build the minelayer (or whatever drops the mines)

and more importantly, i think what matters most is that the mine field shoud be maintained automatically, i proposed in the other topic to have the minelayer to automatically replace detonated mines. the cloaked building that tends a mine field is a good idea, but i prefer a turret that spit mines at long range, or the airdrop mines (with auto-refill of course).

basically i like setting a mine field trap for my opponents, but i don't want to spend my life replacing them manually, and i don't want to spend a resources on mines that will maybe never get kill anything


also, if i had a right of veto regarding limited lifespan mines, i would definitely use it, those are crap.

On the issue of having to build mines individually or being able to deploy mine fields with one action, I believe that with the current Macro and Micro required in mid and late game having to micro mine field construction would become tedious and no one would use it unless the player is an extreme turtler and has left over macro.

Therefore, it would seem that the best way to deploy mines in dead zones between bases would be air dropped or cannon fired. These mines would be deployed in groups of 5-10 with just one action, i.e. dropped from a mine bomber or fired in a capsule from a cannon at a specific point and expelling the mines around 50 meters from the target location. This way, a player can build one unit, identify where he needs to place a buffer between him and his enemy, and with one action deploy a group of mines in a small area. Of course, this might lead to being able to queue up actions from this mine cannon or bomber to allow the player to deploy mines in a large area with only a few Shift clicks.

Anyways, it is something I would love to see and test out.

It might be a lot of hassle, but, what about some kind of tool?

You select your minelayer units, you designate a zone with some kind of surface selecting tool thing and the minelayers would deploy an evenly spread minefield in the designated area.

Would stop enemy assault bots from just mindlessly running into your base.

im +1 for this, give me a HUGE *** (like really big factory like footprint) which is a minefield (maybe randomized placement of the mines inside this footprint) and im satisfied. HEAT mines prefered !

field engineer to the win also, as the guy before me posted, minelayer unit with AREA COMMAND "LAY MINEFIELD"
multiple ones of these fabbers built this field then much faster ofcourse.