Mines

I would disagree with the don't cloak option, perhaps make them visible at quarter-visible and and once detected always remembered. Stealth detectors (spy planes?) should be able to see them at normal range though. Provides a little bit of surprise and reduces the countered-before-encountered issue of just area attacking the area.

Who said anything about shooting at them having any effect?

You could of course radar cloak them but make them show up on visual. If you want them to function as area denial, then seeing them just before you run into them should be close enough. The extra 2 seconds and one explosion before you realise you're in a minefield don't really add much I'd think. They're area denial, not surprise ambush weapons.

(And spyplanes would indeed see them through their normal vision, so you can scout ahead for them.)

Well im just assuming that (admittedly based on TA/Supcom/anything made in the spring engine) given that every other unit and building in existence is affected by splash damage the same would apply here.

Although if you want to use proper minesweepers then make them super resistant to damage to something. They should still be damage if someone is emptying a few arty barrels over the area. Perhaps prevent mines from regenerating if they were damaged recently?

A mine is basicly a bomb underground, in my opinion they should be cheap and do huge damage. Basicly destroying things 10 times there own value easily, since they cant move (they are just a bomb with some sort of trigger, should be cheap and powerfull).

They should also easily be build in wide areas and be underground (so cloaked and stealthed unless you have a unit made to detect underground things).

But they should also be easily detectable and removed with the right equipment/unit (Maybe some sort of tremor machine or missile that causes every mine in a wide area to explode).

Ohh and also, mines shouldent be able to recognise freinds from foe. Basicly any unit that travels over them should trigger them (Mines are cheap, unable to move and powerfull, thats the whole idea with a mine, if they add techno gismos to see whos a freind and foe then its most likely not cheap anymore).

If they add hover units they could make it so that those units do not trigger mines.


That is my opinion on mines, make them weak or expensive and they are useless (you build units instead). Make them recognise freinds from foes and they are OP.

Make they easily built and easily destroyed. So that you can spread them out to prevent suprise attacks and harass, but they are kinda useless on the enemies main approach becuse hes allways gonna spend some resources to check that path for mines.

Yep, but that's a bit of a gameplay vs goal issue vs what you're simulating I think. It makes sense ingame to simply carpet the whole mine area with AoE explosives to clear them, but this
A) requires more involvement from the player (unless you make units auto-shoot mines, in which case they would be useless)
B) changes their role completely from area denial to "make units wait for a few seconds while they carpet bomb the area clean"
C) makes them not behave like mines, because the whole idea was "easy to drop PITA to remove".

In a real world application, mines work because it's not feasible to simply blow them all up with explosives. So I think that restriction should be copied if you want to end up with something that resembles the real world application of minefields.

Otherwise we're designing something new that probably won't behave like a minefield.

I don't think it's neccesary to let a dedicated minesweeper take damage from mines. Of course, you can still shoot the thing with other units while it's working, stranding your enemy in the middle of the minefield.

As for regenerating; they'd need the unit that dropped them nearby, which is probably not one you'd want to risk while there are enemies in the area, so that's a natural regeneration preventative.

Although if you want to use proper minesweepers then make the mines super resistant to damage to something. They should still be damage if someone is emptying a few arty barrels over the area. Perhaps prevent mines from regenerating if they were damaged recently?


^Sorry, fixed.

Defeated by a single scout. Not denial at all.

Defeated by a single scout, a single bullet, or by simply not being there.

A mine is an area denial weapon. Where it is located is irrelevant. The explosive yield isn't that important either, as long as it makes an opponent take pause. What matters is how effectively it can deny terrain!

If a mine field can not do the one thing it is meant to do, then it is no longer a mine field, and it has no place in the game.

Oh, it certainly will BEHAVE like a minefield. It just won't LOOK like any mine field we know today, simply because the game world works differently. How do you block an army that has perfect intel, long range guns, and an over eagerness to use them? Our standard mines today are simply not up to the task. A lot of upgrades are needed.

I repeat, this isn't something that needs to be overthought. You don't need dedicated minesweepers or minelayers. Just make the engineer both. You make mines a ridiculously cheap structure that any engy can build, make them cloaked but easily destroyed by AOE damage, and give engies built in passive minesweepers and have them reclaim mines automatically. Done. Nothing complicated.

You could have multiple types:
A basic mine that destroys light bots outright but only damages anything else.
A heavy mine that is only set off by heavier units.
An EMP mine.
An air mine (not cloaked).
A sea mine.

And the mechanic doesn't get any more complicated for having more than one type because they're all just built by engies.

(Oh and it goes without saying that they shouldn't chain explode)

Would we get a Sins of a solar empire spread to building mine in groups of like, 15 at a time?

Spread randomly over an area, they could be built in bulk (As in you build all 15 at once instead of 1 by 1), to cover a small area.

Give them a resistance to being attacked (But make them insta-die but not explode when reclaimed) and you get your area denial weapon thats easy to set up, and can be eaisly taken down with the right tools.

Mine sweepers already exist. It's called "shoot the damn thing". A more difficult to shoot mine means that fewer units can clear it. More mines mean that more shots are required. And replacing mines elsewhere for (nearly) free mean that you're only wasting your time.

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In many games, some kind of detector was needed to reveal the mines, at which point clearing was trivial. It was a hard counter that worked both ways- bring a detector and there's no problem, or fail to detect and get massacred.

Cloak balance is a funny thing: the more cloaks you have, the more detection you need. The more detection you have, the worse cloak becomes. Cloaked mines would be a never ending threat for any battlefield. Because of this, players will NEED a cheap detector that they can bring everywhere. That feeds directly into ruining cloak balance, ruining the play field for everyone else that wants to have cloaking. Assassins, raiders, and especially the Commander will suffer if they depend on abilities that end up trivial to counter. It actually ends up ruining the point of mines, as players will generally have no idea where mine fields are, and thus will always have to hard counter them no matter what.

Mines are typically small things, and are probably the smallest things on the field. Given the game's scale, there is a real problem with making units that are "too small to see". Even a moderate view would end up littered with icons that would be nearly impossible to avoid, lest the player suffer premature eye damage from endless squinting. True to real life, a mine field should be showy and flashy. It should advertise itself and taunt the opponent, as if to say "here's a mine field, what are you gonna do about it?" Because a land mine is not about killing everything it comes in contact with (though it helps get the point across). A mine is about telling your opponent that he has to work extra hard to claim a piece of land(or air, or space).

Because in a very abstract way, a mine field is exactly like a wall. With teeth. Made out of fire. You could even be so silly as to call it a "dragon's tooth".

You make excellent points about cloak balance.

certainly constructors could be modified to lay and clear mines, that is not something i would mind, you might need a special type of engineer to do it though or a special prerequisite structure to unlock mines (given a tech tree is as promised not implemented otherwise mines would be unlocked via research) but certainly as in the case of Earth 2150 there should be many options for how to lay a field with them. there should be an easy way of spacing mines to prevent sympathetic detonation

very good points about cloak balance indeed.

i was going to make a post even:
we have a choice mines need a special minesweeper unit to clear without taking damage, and the mine is impervious to fire, but is not stealth standard (some modifications can get a stealth mine), or Mines that can take damage from fire would have to be balanced out by being cloaked. that speech pretty much made up my mind on that.

lets have mines that are visible (don't show up on radar), but must be removed by minesweepers/engineers and cannot be killed by shooting at except by possibly some AOE weapons. I would also like to suggest that players can build a special structure that can give your units extra protection from mines, but the structure would be expensive (metal, energy, and time) and it could make your units slower to compensate.

i saw the counter post, they can be caught by proper scouting, the issue with that is that it depends on scouting, while scouting is normally important its certainly used more for what a base contains and not for its defenses, ala i scout to see that superweapon you are building, my attack forces are all i need to see your defenses (could just be my personal playstyle though). with orbital and interplanetary elements scouting should be easier than ever, just point that spy sat at the enemy's base and voila you see the whole thing. to this i do suggest that Orbital and interplanetary scouts not see mines, aircraft as well (though if there is a terraforming element added i might suggest a mined area show signs of terraforming for the air), of course having a prerequisite for mines or the minelayer nearby can certainly tip off a scouting player.

i also must think that mines arn't just for area denial, they are also capable as an added layer of defense certainly if you can hold a planet for more than a minute you can have the time to start building a defense, and uber has shown interest in battles that take many hours across several planets which several may at any time be owned by a single player or team uncontested. Earth 2150 had the option of creating layered defenses, a low high armor defense in front a high defense with less armor and good firepower that can be placed right behind benefiting from the armor of the front defense, certainly mines can be used as a deadly extension, and something that always got me in earth 2150. stick mines in front of your fixed defenses and the enemy must deal with both, which is not an easy prospect. the minesweepers often not heavily armored get focused down by the fixed defenses, the assault units get blasted by mines and defenses. this was a issue i had in earth 2150 the minelayer/minesweepers couldn't survive the defenses while the heavy units that could would get shredded by the mines.

thus lies another problem with mines, if minesweepers and assault units won't work try lots of cannon fodder. and certainly with planetary scale, it might be fairly easy but not particularly allowing diversity.

anyways i do point out the issue with minelaying bombers and artillery is they don't involve planning and can be used on your enemy directly, this was a problem with CnCs mine bombs, why use the mines to deny an area or the front of your base (which was easily spotted by stealth detectors) if you can use it to harass your enemy directly, you don't have to deny an area your enemy might not have to travel through if your enemy doesn't have the economy to attack you in the first place. having a specific minelayer or enginner deploy mines requires that minelaying cannot be used offensively. and mines should be purely defensive imo.

as for replacing lost mines i have stated before the minelayer can also be a minefield manager, that will automatically replace lost mines, players can determine that while idle it can sit in a holding area (behind the defensive line)

I also want to reiterate from my earlier post that we can have some mines that will blow up on anything and thus are vulnerable to cannon fodder, and have another mine type that requires a heavy unit to blow up, and thus resistant to Cannon fodder tactics. some types i like (ok not all of the ideas are mine):

light mine: cheap easily mass produced high AOE but more ineffective against heavy units, blows up on the cannon-fodder
anti-heavy mine: More expensive not as easily mass produced but will ignore light units, and blow up on the heavy stuff, higher damage lower AOE better for killing such units.
EMP mine: High AOE Emp. expensive like anti-heavy
Goo mine: very high AOE, slows units. cheap like light
Napalm Mine: Covers the area in fire damaging over time, any units hit will burn for a while.

Nuke Mine: special mine very expensive and never mass produce-able. use this to hide on areas your enemy may expand to, the explosion of the Nuke mine is hard to miss, therein its benefit, may require structures to be building in the area (so not to det on random scout or passing heavier unit)

as for mines blowing up on friendlies i have to say no for the planned fields, it is true real mines don't have friend foe and perhaps there are too many RTS that have friend/foe identification on mines, but its the distant future so the tech is there and if you want to use mines defensively its best they not kill you. as for mine-laying artillery and aircraft they can drop dumb mines that will blow up friendlies, if you can use mines offensively then it should be able to backfire.

as to posts about mines being flashy i disagree the purpose of a mine is to be discreet, its why they are meant to be buried and not spotted until it is too late, the only flashy part is when it explodes.

sorry for the wall of text, my ideas get me and i just put it all down. i assure you i try to be entertaining.

Tl,DR: Minefields can be produced by special units or engineers that perhaps themselves are specialized for they task, or there is a prerequisite structure for minelaying, either way there are several easy options to build whole fields, and these fields can be replenished by their creators which can be given a holding area to wait in. Mines are visible to ground units but cannot be spotted from the sky or space (but also indicators that a minefield may be there) mine-sweeping tech built into the layers (engineer or otherwise) is needed to clear mines without taking damage but may be vulnerable to fixed defenses. Mines should be used mostly defensively and not be another option for offensive strategy unless it can backfire. there will be several types of mine that can help you in a variety of situations.

Seeing something does not mean it's defeated. Unless of course you responded to something without bothering to actually read the idea, in which you might think that.

I'd like to point out that a "buried bomb" is not the same as a mine field, and they do not share the same purpose. A mine field denies access to an area; a buried bomb encourages it. One is a lethal barrier, the other is a trap. Enemies fight over traps, but NO ONE fights over a mine field.

Most games have mines of the "trap" variety. Plant it down, say your prayers, and hope for a lot of kills. This doesn't work very well in games, because passive units are just terrible units. OP or UP doesn't matter, because every trap has the exact same hard counter that is impossible to fix in an RTS- brain cells. If the opponent doesn't fall for the trap, then no amount of numbers can make them effective, ever.

Everything added to the mine is about recognizing that they can't work as traps. There are, however, many ways to make them effective at denying terrain.

Oh, I'm sorry. My explanation was incomplete.

See it, shoot it, and it's gone. It's not denial at all.

That's a brutal issue to deal with. It comes with the same problems as cloak- bring the sweepers and win, don't and lose. It's actually even worse, because a sweeper has to clear mines in a hostile environment, while a detector merely needs to point. As already mentioned, any hostile action can render a clearing attempt nearly impossible.

There's no reason why shooting a mine can't disarm it. It works for pretty much anything else, right? No one said it had to be easy, though.

Can they? If mines are direct fire, and they can't go after stationary targets, then they can't even scratch a base. It's even less dangerous than a particular mine from a particular beta, as resources in the PA series come from structures.

Add an arming time or pod (anything that can be shot, really), and dropping into an enemy force isn't very damaging. Direct fire units can stop the arming, most units can shoot the mines(takes a while, though), and any form of AA shoots down the bombers. It's not that bad at all.

Even without an arming time, mine layers are back loaded units, which deal their damage by preparing an area beforehand. Their raw DPS won't compete with direct attack units, making a direct assault pretty dumb regardless. Damage dealing 101.

And no, you don't need half a dozen mine variants to get the point across. If one type of mine can't figure it out, then it's time to stop pegging a square hole.

so let me get this straight you prefer mines that can be cleared by tossing rocks on them? that have a big neon sign on them that says minefield here wipe immediately!!

what you propose it isn't even area denial its "here take a few minutes to clear these mines i just dropped in 2 seconds with artillery or a bomber" quite frankly your idea of mines i have to say constantly barraging the area with artillery would be more effective, denies the area and the artillery can be used again. same with getting aircraft to patrol over the area

you also took apart the pieces of what i said you thought you could go at without seeing them as part of a whole.

the idea of minefields is to put them underground and use them as traps, the Idea is for the enemy to step on them get blown up and create panic, make them screw up, and avoid the area until it gets swept

I pointed out in my wall of text that the mines could only be detected from the ground, however the prerequisite structures/units can be spotted from the air. just because there are mines does not mean they will be used by every player especially with the options that should be available to us in PA, spotting the prerequisites should make you alert for the mines, and prepare acordingly

also ignoring that they cannot be defused by just shooting them, quite frankly a terrible idea, cooked up by lazy developers (EA, and all FPS i know of that have mines that can be thrown like grenades).

as for the final point i have to point out that is what they were mainly used for in CnC harassment. while the collectors are all structures the engineers, commanders and other units in a base in general are not. should such artillery and air dropped mines that aren't buried be easily detected and removed, hard to say possibly this is all the more reason to have engineers lay and sweep mines, if the enemy decides to sprinkle mines over your base, well you have a commander caretakers and engineers that can remove them before they become active else-wise they should be easier to spot while still needing the readily available engineer to remove them and not sweeped by an assault rifle.

as for the comment on minelayers being back-loaded, PA is in the future, it doesn't have to follow todays rules, again they could be made with engineers. mines generally are cheaper than fixed defenses or units, having them be easily missed can cause an enemy to walk right into them, Mines arn't meant to be visible, except the ones that are air dropped or that you think of.

finally different mine types is predicated on the fact that mines are traps, different mines for different purposes trap in different ways, Emp leaving them open to be taken apart from fixed defenses or units, goo mines make it hard for the enemy to escape your wrath, heavy mines wait for heavy units so it can kill them, nuke mines in general being expansion denial.

This is a fine idea.

Two things:
1. Specialized minelayer/minesweeper units are a hassle for both players. Engineers should be enough for building/reclaiming mines. Most importantly it doesn't force you to build any units you don't already have access to. I suppose you could have additional specialized minelayers besides the engineers (such as mine-bombers), but I wouldn't want them replacing engineers entirely in that function. And certainly no specialized minesweeper unit. Those are horrible.

If you require special units for both functions, here's what's going to happen: mines will almost never see the light of day, and then when some player decides to go for them and build them all over the map the other player goes "ugh, now I have to build this special unit I never build, possibly don't have the tech for, and will have no use for once the mines are cleared. Great."

Another way to clear mines (again, in addition to the engineers and not replacing them) might be to have certain tracked vehicles with bulldozer blades in front that can drive though and uproot the mines without setting them off. But these would be combat units, not specialized units.

2. If mines are visible, you can't program units to avoid them automatically or they become useless. But if they're visible and units don't avoid them automatically you have players banging on the keyboard screaming at how stupid the AI is.

the idea with a dedicated unit would be that it would double purpose in mine-laying and clearing as was the case in Earth 2150. that beeing said you pretty much set me on engineers would be the unit that would lay and clear mines, that and of course the commander, caretakers can remove them, build them if they can build (not sure what they will be going with on caretakers if they can build). commander as a damage sponge, and dealer could of course make short work of mines in more contested areas *hoping commanders will be strong enough to say bring it bitch* side-grading to clear mine abilities, i love side-grades can't get enough of them, just as long as its usable.

as for mine visibility and AI, well again they are not spottable from air or space, and have no radar signature, chances are you the player will be likely to miss the mines, until you start losing units, or if you were looking for them ahead of time, you can avoid them. Mines as well will be very easy to lay in fields, the engineers would have an ability that will lay a field automatically distancing the mines to prevent sympathetic detonation. so in essence it is not up to the UAI to avoid mines it is up to the player, the mines discreet but visible keeps it from affecting stealth balance.the player can avoid the mines but with move commands the units will ignore the mines. to make it easier to avoid the mines without the AI not following orders and walking in the player may be allowed to mark the field as a Don't go in here zone, that will keep units from wandering in.

i also have an idea that Uber could add in veteran mechanics and it would improve UAI which could make them smart enough to avoid the mines, but of course only working with units that have earned the rank.

So...what you're saying is you agree with me? I'm confused.

This is assuming you can shoot them. I already gave the idea for a minefield that cannot be shot, because shooting to clear a minefield makes no logical sense.

Also, if you have to shoot at an area for a long time, your passage is still being denied. If I can drop a cluster of mines in 2 seconds and you need 10 seconds of fire to clear it, I'd say they're doing a good job of denying you passage.

Yes. It's called a "soft counter". A soft counter is when many units can solve a problem, but they just aren't very good at it. A hard counter is when one or two units obliterate a problem, and you are screwed without them.

Giving soft counters for a problem that can be anywhere at any time is a good idea.

:lol: A game where robots blow up planets, and they can't solve a problem by shooting at it.

These are not today's rules. They are gameplay rules, and are pretty fundamental to making units that are not OP.

A unit's damage output determines how much it can kill. A mine layer can continuously prepare for battle by planting damage dealing devices. This gives it excellent damage potential when undisturbed. If a mine layer can deal excellent damage within battle, then it becomes a direct combat device, and is no longer working like a mine layer. Damage dealing 101.

Mines are meant to be difficult to defuse. Low visibility helps in the real world, since a mine that can not be found can not be disarmed. It does not help in the game world, where a detector can reveal anything and everything for summary disposal.

There's no law that states a mine has to be buried underground. In fact, sea mines hang out directly in the open, ready to snatch up anything that bumps by. They are very difficult to deal with, as every layer has to be worried about the mines, not just mobile land units.

A mine can work the same way here. Flying out in the open, all they need is to pounce units foolish enough to get close. Units can shoot back, but trying to hit a tiny flying wisp isn't an easy task. Easy replacement compounds the difficulty of mine removal.

Expensive mines are a fine way to bleed money for no gain. As soon as you use them once, the opponent is going to be wary of mines and won't fall for them again.

Who says a mine's payload has to be a huge explosive? It could be a bolt of plasma, run directly into the unit's face. It could be a powerful corrosive, compromising armor and movement. It could be a blob of vicious nanomachines, hacking control systems and maybe even taking control of the unit. It could be a time vortex, disconnecting a machine from its commander and forcing it to self destruct. Nah, that'd just be silly.

Explosive mines are for kids.