Mines

I don't want ubiquitous mines. They have to be balanced in to a role distinct from normal defences otherwise they are just a cloaked version of defences.

Zero-K has a minelayer artillery unit with mechanics implemented to solve some of the problem bought up here.

• Very low accuracy.
• Non-chaining mines.

Very low accuracy minelayer artillery can be used to deny an area but will not always hit a single target. The spread also leads to better minefields. Sure you can attack a clump of units or defences which in the ZK case is one of the intended roles. It is easy to make minelayer arty which cannot directly fire on units by activating the mine a few seconds after it lands. This way nearby units can kill the mine before it arms.

Chaining is a problem for haphazard minelaying. But this does not mean armour types, mines do not have to explode in the conventional way. Mines which detonate by firing missiles at nearby targets do not chain.

One thing to be careful of is if we include mines that are easy to lay, they need to be easy to remove. In the generals example, you could only lay mines so often. In PA we wont have silly limits like that, so if mines are useful they are going to get spammed by at least some players. I like detect and anyone can shoot them, but they fidily bit is in what detects them. T3 radar makes radar detects almost too easy, but if they require omni, you need a semi common onmi equipped unit and that impacts stealth tactics. I'm not sure I like the idea of equipping scouts, other selected units with mine detection. I will have to think.

Only RTS I can think of with good mine implementation is SC:BW. There was a good number of reasons why they were so nice. Firstly you could easily spot and get rid of them in the right conditions; they mostly had a effect of delaying an enemy or use in tandem with other units in a battle. Also they were "free" if you built vultures, so it never was a tradeoff between making units and mines (building only mines would be boring).

In comparison most everywhere else mines I've seen are either underpowered, overpowered, or just plain boring. "Lose X amount of units when entering this area", is not really fun, especially if there's no way to deduce X before the fact - it's a gamble.
In Starcraft you know that the enemy WILL have mines (if you've seen vultures at all), and you know that you must do in order to defuse them. And when used with vultures, it opens up all kinds of tactics, that a slow defenseless minelayer cannot do.

I like the 'idea' of mines but I worry they would be a trojan horse for a lot of micro entering the game.

Bringing over the discussion from is sidetracking another thread;

Why not give mines engines and call them "rockets"? :mrgreen:

The one game where I have personally been able to deploy mines to pretty good effect(instead of just ignoring them) is in Balanced Annihilation's free for all matches. This is thanks to the Spring engine's more powerful building placement modifiers; which not only allows you to drag rows as in Supreme Commander, but also fields, as well as adjust the spacing between buildings. This translates well into mine laying- it's made possible to drag an entire field of individual mines to the precise size and density you want from just a single order. Usually the problem I have with utilising mines in RTS games is the micromanaging hastle of laying down each mine one by one; even when later games tried to alleviate this this by making each 'mine' unit a mini-field.

Although, even with this I find myself not utilising mines a whole lot in Balanced Annihilation- mainly because in that game mines can only be built from a specialised constructor, which becomes its own hastle to build and lug around just for a single purpose utility- and I wonder if it would be better to just let ordinary constructors build mines like any other building.

I have to agree with what jurgenvonjurgensen said waaaay back on the first page. The reason I don't make mines in most games is because I have to lay them one at a time. Nothing was worse with TA mines than when an enemy recon jet flew over and saw me laying mines. Because then he just knew to send in peewees first as there was no way I could have made enough mines to stop a major offensive since his last recon cycle.

I think Generals did do it best not only in the option of laying entire minefields at once, but also with the option of letting engineers assist in building/repairing those fields. I also like the idea of being able to airdrop a static 'mine layer' onto an area and just having it build mines in a pattern around itself. Of course if the player were to run low on power, the minefield and layer would of course decloak (since that's only fair, I think).

I also think that mines should be something that's available right at T1. At T2 I can imagine mines become less effective in numbers as the huge battles meant for lots of little bots (where every little bot counts) go away in favor of larger, meatier bots who could absorb a hundred mines. Maybe make the T1 minelayer be like the Zero-K implementation and make them an artillery unit for the minefield-laying unit (instead of launching singular mines, they launch the minefield laying unit with the range of a standard T1 artillery).

An artillery mine launcher might use ammo, but it doesn't need to. Expensive ammo means more damage and longer lasting. It's a bigger investment overall, and is likely something that can be powered through with a single ounce of "Detection". I don't like it, mostly because it doesn't really match how we treat minefields today- cheap and easy to plant, easy to notice, but hard to deal with.

The cannon could just as well fire "dots" that do the same thing, for a mere cost of energy. Tell it to fire at an area, and it keeps filling the terrain with mines (limited by duration or control cap). In this case the threat is easy to spot, but not necessarily easy to deal with, as mines are constantly being replenished and may be difficult to shoot (I imagine glowing dots of doom). If they aggro and chase units down, all the better.

Mines are ideally deployed by bombers. Fly in, pepper the terrain with poison, and get out. Carpet bombing some mines is fairly easy, and not very different to what we do today. The craft doesn't necessarily have to be fast or well armored, because it is never meant to work in a real battle. Artillery offers the chance to go long range or perhaps across worlds.

If it sounds a bit like Demoman sticky bombs, that's pretty much what it is. Those are pretty well balanced, at least when everyone isn't funneled through a single chokepoint. Add a few seconds of vulnerable arming time, and it's all good.

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I think it's important to not think of mines as a "Base building" or "walling" tool. Rather, they should be something that is actively deployed and redeployed, to deny extraction points or reinforcement lines. A land based deployer was just silly. Individual construction made mines both cumbersome and stupid to use. Static cloaked bombs always have issues; either you're waiting for the sweet spot, or you want to blow up early, and the AI can never do it right. It's a micro nightmare, never quite working as the macro tool it needs to be.

Bombers make deployment fast on a macro scale, and allow mines to be quickly redeployed on a planetary scale. The player input is fairly simple on both sides(spam 'here', 'shiny' there). AoE is deadly, but they'd likely work better as single target seekers, relying on sheer numbers to block the way(think of plasma loaded fireflies, rather than buried nukes). This can make them a powerful tool for land denial, no matter how simple they might be.

Well like I said, it is far for the only implementation that can work, and really in the end the "right" implementation also depends on the Context of other units/structures/things and a lot of the details can change based on balance.

Mike

Heh, what a copout! :lol:

Suffice to say, typical mine layers haven't worked very well in games. Passive units in general suffer from being passive, and passive is easy to ignore or destroy. A more active implementation proved to be better, so continuing along those trends would likely work best.

I think the biggest issue is making sure that players don't feel like they "wasted" a mine. If a situation changes or the battlefield moves(which is to be expected), a masterfully crafted mine field can end up being useless. If those mines cost money, the player is doubly punished for something outside his control. Instead the cost can be kept with the deployer, and mines can be extremely cheap/free to use. Using and redeploying mines should not be punishing(and should even be encouraged), so they can continue to create indirect havoc on the front. That is a role few other units can truly lay claim to.

Relegating mines to pure defense is doing them a disservice. If a player really wants static defense, he can just build static defense. When it comes to reshaping the field in no-mans-land, mines are the way to go.

Not very plausible at all. First, your comment about orbital velocities being high is irrelevant. It could be travelling at 50,000 m/s, but that doesn't matter - what does matter is the relative velocity. You need a high speed compared to whatever you'd want to destroy (unless you used explosives, which would need some form of shrapnel due to there being little air for shock-waves to carry through).

You could achieve a high speed by going in a purely opposite orbital direction, but this is not feasible. Firstly, it's likely most satellites would launch off for a geo-synchronous orbit - one that stays stationary relative to a point on the equator of a planet. To get a mine in an orbit that is the same, but retrograde, you'd need multiple times more fuel in order to overcome the planet's rotational speed that is "gifted". To destroy an enemy satellite this way would be pointless because the cost for you to destroy their satellite would be far greater than the cost for them to send up a new one.

Even if they are in stranger orbits, there comes another issue - not all orbits are perfectly circular. Many are ovals. You'd need to synchronize the orbits exactly, and hope that the relative speed where they encounter is high enough to destroy the enemy satellite.

The chances of hitting another object, even with advanced guidance systems when in opposing orbits is practically nothing. It'd make more sense to try going for an orbit where you have some room to account for mistakes, which would be one equal to the object you are attempting to destroy.

In order to get even within several hundred kilometres of a satellite, you'd need to wait days, weeks, months or even years depending on the orbital velocities required at altitudes, and you'd need advanced computer guidance systems. The chances of hitting a satellites purely by chance (unless "clouding" the area above a launch pad temporarily) is almost nil.

Then, when you get close enough you'd probably need to have enough fuel to get to destructive speeds, and you'd need to be able to achieve these speeds without altering your orbit significantly, which would throw you off course, or an alternative destructive device that works sufficiently in space.

On top of all of this, you'd need to hope these satellites don't move an inch off their orbit, otherwise the entire procedure starts again.. You'd need to synchronize orbital planes, orbital speeds, everything.

The mine laying in sins of a solar empire is quite good, just select an area and it starts laying an appropriate ammount of mines on it's own, so that you don't have to place every single one.

Minelaying is an interesting proposition, the biggest issue i have with mines is that they die in their attack, it needs to be hassle-free to lay fields with a possibility of replacing lost mines

not to mention mines can easily get used up with cannon fodder, if you send a bunch of raiders ahead of the big guys, the raiders die and the heavy hitters survive to take on the defenses. add in the possibility of rush tactics that would wear down a field regularly.

Earth 2150 (where i take GOLAN from) provided a fairly simple mine-laying system through complexity of many different options. to explain, the ED and UCS factions could build minelayers (the LC faction could not and were unaffected as they relied on hover units) the minelayers could hold 10 mines each or 20 if upgraded, players could place mines in several different ways:
Mine point: droping a mine on the indicated point
Mine Line: allows the player to draw a line with mines
Mine area 100% allows the player to fill a rectangular area with mines on every square (its an old game from about 2000)
Mine Area 50% fills an area with mines skipping a square for each mine laid (mine, no mine, mine)
Mine area 25% fills an area skipping 3 squares after each mine for 25% saturation.

the limited mines mechanic never made minelayers useless, Earth 2150 had a ammo mechanic for vehicles defenses and aircraft, reloading vehicles, and defenses and indeed mine-layers was fairly painless by the implementation of an aircraft that could gather ammo and take it to any ground unit or structure that needed it.
minelayers also could be built with weapons for self-defense, they also had mine clearing equipment and were the only units that could detect and clear mines.

so here is what i think of making mines for PA: players can build land and aquatic minelayers at tier 1. they can produce minefields of differing density like earth 2150 they produce mines through nanolathe and can assist each other's mine building, the minelayers however not only produce minefields, but can also manage them, players can set a holding area for an inactive minelayer, when any of its mines are destroyed it can be sent out to replace them. minelayers can also remove mines by spraying nanites on them and deactivate the mine, mines should not be cleared by attacking them i found this to be an issue with their implementation in CnC3, all to often they were found and easily removed, serving as either a delaying tactic or simply bomb the enemy. mines may however be activated by AOE weapons. If Uber decides to add morphing (likr zero-k) or upgrading (through the tech tree) then minelayers could also be effected minelayers could be armed, cloaked, shielded add extra armor, even a cannon to shoot mines with (ala mine artillery) and can be done with both forms (so the aqua miner can shoot land mines onto land and land miners maybe even shoot water mines). mines will need a parachute if shot or will detonate on impact. depending on the air mechanics i would suggest an airborne miner be a tier 2 unit, and may not be allowed to drop mines in the enemy base.

I also like the idea of multiple types one idea is to have a set of Anti-light and anti-heavy mines. in terms of zero-k the anti-light is designed to wipe out masses of raiders, they don't pack a big punch but have the larger AOE. Anti-heavy are meant to take out the non-raider units, and will ignore light raider type units so they can take out any of the riots, skirms, assaults that are following raiders, they pack a powerful punch are more expensive and have a smaller AOE focusing the blast onto a single or tight group of heavy units.

TLDR: minelayers produce minefields (1 at a time like a qued system) with a possibility of laying different mines that may attack or ignore light raiders. they also manage the field replacing any lost mines. minelayers also clear mines. Minelayers can be morphed or upgraded for stealth defense or shooting mines through an artillery cannon.

Instead of a dedicated minelayer unit why no just make mines something any engineer can build on the spot?
Select your engineer and with a couple commands you say "hey, you're clearing this battlefield of wreckage/capping this isolated mex/building a row of PD, while you're at it why not throw down some mines?"

Yep. That's exactly how not to do land mines. In short, it's too much hassle for something that just won't work in this game world. Land mines should be just like one of those "as seen on TV" rotisserie ovens:

Huh. I forgot how it goes. Anyway, here's a good read on Land mines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mine#Warfare

In short, mines are used for terrain denial. They're cheap, indiscriminate, and made to spook an attack rather than devastate it. Realizing this in-game is no easy task.
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Modern land mines are deployed in three ways:
A) Meticulously by hand
B) Shot out of artillery
C) Dropped from aircraft

Since the first one is NOT a war crime, it clearly has no place in this conflict. For the other two methods, deployment doesn't matter. The only goal is to scatter as many mines over an area as possible. That sounds good for the user, as they end up very easy to use, and the attacker will likely try to clear them in droves anyway.

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The terrain denial thing is tricky. For this one, it's not necessarily the killing power or the surprise aspect that scares opponents away. Rather, the theory is that clearing mines is itself a very difficult task. That's not something you can do with 5 or 6 buried bombs, and certainly not with a field built by hand. Rather, the minefield itself has to be durable, supported by sheer numbers or difficult targets or some combination that's very difficult to deal with. If a tank force can barge through it, then it clearly wasn't effective at denying anything.

Floating mines can be effective here. They pack much more tightly into a 3D space and offer a chance to rip through fast aircraft. Land units can have great difficulty trying to shoot at small moving targets, making a field that's simply a PITA to deal with. If they get too close, then they get pelted by a brazillion bolts of exploding plasma. If they hold still, then the minefield was still successful at stalling the army.

Mines that can be easily replaced will also be effective. After the first field is destroyed, another can be quickly deployed to act as another obstacle. Easily replenished mines mean that they will always be a hassle, so it can continue to mess with enemy movement and deny terrain. That's why cheap/free mines are a good fit, where the full cost is part of the deployer rather than the mine.

@bobucles - the difference between attacking a mined area in game and in real life is that I don't lose public opinion when i drive the cheap infantry through the minefield to clear it.

What? Mines? Oh, fine! Let's remove shields, but add mines as even more annoying thing.

We all love to see our bots blow up by unknown force or micro some special scouts/minesweeper bots before our forces into _every_ land attack. I'll also add sea mines, space mines and air mines. Just to make live happier.

Oh the irony.

Based on the above discussion of what mines should do (easy to deploy PITA to fix area denial) and how they should play out in game (minimal hassle from both the dropper and dealer), how about this very simple minefield mechanic?

1) Deploy mines in an area, preferable by just drawing an area on the map from either a dedicated mine-bomber or a basic worker
2) Do not cloak mines. They are area denial, not some hidden attack. Let players realise what they're about to deal with
3) Any unit except something with minesweeping abilities or a certain level of armor rating (that would make it impervious) moves through the field at 25% speed in order to avoid mines, and takes extra damage from all attacks (showing cute little explosions from the ground when it's getting shot at)
4) The minefield will regenerate itself after all units are gone, assuming the unit that dropped it is still attached to the field
5) A dedicated minesweeper or very heavy tank will just plow through the field (with more cute little explosions from detonating mines) and allow other units to move full speed behind it)
6) Unit AI would obviously need to make minesweepers and heavies take point in a minefield, with others trailing behind it.



That should fix the problems both from the "minefields should have a clear role" and "they should be easy to do and deal with from the UI side". I think they'd simulate the actual role of mines fairly well, even if they don't simulate the romanticized notion that people have of them (the one where they suddenly pop up all around and decimate an entire army, that is)