Mines

basically yes, it should be a role available to the constructor, but at the same time mine laying and mine clearing should be a role shared by the same unit, ala constructors.

agreed especially if mines are being actively dropped in an area spam the mines, spam the crap out of them and there will be nothing they could do.

So engineers building them is a good option then? Built in clusters?

I think you should have options to build just one, build them in a row, or fill an area.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Noooooooooooooo.

Permanent defense is a role for turrets. Nothing about a mine is permanent. Even today, it is blatantly apparent that persistent mines cause problems to the defender, attacker, and everyone. That's why today we build them to self destruct, after their purpose is done.

In game, a mine field's purpose is finished when there's a better place to put mines. The best way to reach those sites is to be fast and airborne.

Mines for this setting won't apply to the way we use mines today.

And also, your saying that only airborne engineers should build them then yes?

I think it would be nice to have "build brush" with some discrepancy for any build - structures are randomly placed with some distance between each other within some area under the pointer (brush radius). You may hold LMB and "draw" your structures over the landscape, whatever they is: turrets, pgens, wall sections, mines, monkeylords, nukes, anything.

Should be really handy for placing energy storages. And will work for mines too.

But really, why you need any "area denial" tool when you already have walls?

True, the ability to build some dragons teeth would be nice to slowing a tank formation.

Especially with a brush.

Don't do that. It comes across as obnoxious.

My counter-arguments in favor of mines laid by engineers:
-They would be built extremely fast, as they would be extremely cheap.
-They could easily have a self-destruct mechanism.
-You will probably have lots of engineers around to lay them.
-If minefields are too easy to create (for instance, in a single flyover by a bomber), it will be need to be balanced by making them completely ineffective.
-Having them delivered by air is totally reasonable as long as they still cost resources and you can't fill an area with them instantly.

Just like to point out that that is EXACTLY area denial. That's whats mines (in games anyway) are/should be for.

I've layed these nice and quick, now you have to spend a much greater amount of time clearing them, during which:
1. I've spotted you (wouldn't be hard to place a single, weak-ish radar amongst all those air dropped mines, would it?);
2. Worked out what will help to counter your forces a bit better;
3. Reinforced my defense;
4. Built some more units.
Now your army has more of a disadvantage going in than you'd hope for.


Hell, some may even consider skipping radars all together in lieu of placing a ring of mines a fair distance from themselves. They know when you're coming, and have a ring of radar around their base. Sure, it would disadvantage them in the long run if they have to clear it themselves, but what if they're using hover/air/artillery/orbital/WMD tactics? I know i've played many games where I had minimal defenses, and then before the enemy knew it, suddenly 10 nukes were exploding all across their base.

Even longer reply: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Satan that was long!

Anyway, what about mass deploy able dragons teeth?

Could that function in the same way, but without some of the flaws of mines?

See, my problem with this is exactly that it is far too effective as area denial. With bombers and arty you can plant mines far too quickly and easily, making the mines completely OP because, unlike bombs and shells, mines can just keep accumulating. And being able to plant mines faster than they can be removed is equivalent to having a wall that can be repaired faster than it takes damage. The only effective way to balance them then is to either a) give them a limited lifespan, which works but there are times you want permanent mines, or b) make them incredibly weak to the point that the other player can almost ignore them.

On the other hand, if mines require planning and investment to place, they can be powerful and effective weapons without being OP.

Area denial should be something that requires planning and investment and not something I just do on a whim.

Area denial thread I created: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=42648

As opposed to just mines.

I like to keep things simple.

Why not combine the functionality of mines with crawling bombs?

I.e. a crawling/walking bomb that can burrow, and unburrows to kamikaze on nearby enemies.

And you can deploy it long-range from a unit launcher.

Wouldn't this solve many of the current problems with mines? And crawling bombs for that matter?

I think this is an interesting idea. This is essentially what crawling bombs do in ZK. When not moving, they are cloaked. And depending on the unit stance, it can either not attack, blow up when enemies are in proximity, or chase a nearby enemy then explode.

Of course, I'm still a little wary of the concept of crawling bombs. As evidenced in ZK, they are VERY micro dependent for a proper ROI. Still, Uber says they want crawling bombs, so might as well make them functional.

This is all sounding very C&C / StarCraft to me.

Just saying this doesn't make it a bad idea.

I was thinking about a nice concept - magnetic mines - you know, you throw a mine into the air, where it switches on a magnet and falls down right on the target unit and explode after some time... I think its not actually the type of mines you are talking about, but I wanted to show you this my offense-mine concept.

i generaly like the idea of ground mines as a difficultier to hit/break through static defence
... imo it could look like this:
build a minelauncher/layer send it into a postion were it becomes static (borrow with stealth? no cloak) and constantly produces a carped of crawling proximitymines in a range in front of it until you decide to put te minelauncher somewhere else... producing mines shall cost a well ammount of energy ... they shall be able to soften up bigger armies and decimate small squads of light bots and tanks (at least something along those lines)

i don´t realy see a propper implementation of single mines without it getting to tedious in microing ... and rather redundant honestly ... kinda same with seamines ... the upper example is best what i personaly can think of with less micro as possible ... and/or the minelauncherturret from the BlackOpsmod for SupCom FA which works in a similar facion ...

basicly this...

Mines are great as long as they don't require too much micro - and that's definitely possible. Mines aren't "core" to the game though so I'd be happy to see it in an update. Something that builds perfectly spaced mines in a painted area is what I was envisioning with some kind of interesting counter play besides hover units e.g. radar detects mines or mine layers can also detect/extract/reclaim enemy mines.

Mobile bombs could also function in a mine capacity by digging in.

Mines have a lot of potential as counter play for cloaked units.