Spring RTS Engine

This man's opinion is gold a made of win and brilliance:

kaiserj wrote:i always thought minelayers could be improved by giving them more things they could build; radar, llt, solar and metalmaker.... they would essentially be a t1 freaker / consul sort of role, decent BP but not able to start many constructions themselves. giving them the option to capture and stealth also might make them a lot more interesting.

Except they should also be able to build mexxes as well. Essentially... Turn them into a utility constructor.

Um then just make cons make mines?

JohannesH wrote:Um then just make cons make mines?

My point exactly. Why do we need a specialized unit to perform a function like this?

You don't need a specialized unit, but do keep the mines themselves.

Imo you need a specialized vehicle if you want mines to stay vehicles only. Giving it to the con units means that you'd have to make K-Bots & planes build them too because otherwise it would be percepted as not really making sense. If you planned a dedicated minelayer K-Bot anyway it would be ok though...

Then there also is the issue of getting rid of mines. I don't know where you placed the Juno but apart that I think it's lame to have it already at T1 it's lame to have it as not only the single but also ultimate way of cleansing mines. Having the minelayer as sweeper is very handy. In MA I also didn't just make it sort of immune to mine damage but also gave it a rather short range mine sweeping missile with some AoE. Works out pretty well imo...

Concerning the use of mines they imo are extremely effective against flash spam and the like. As this only makes sense on certain maps (as you cannot spam them on the entire map) and people tend to rarely use them it's not just a surprising tactic (if you manage to not let them see your minelayers) but people usually have no Junos to counter them. Forcing them to make one doesn't just give you time until the enemy will start an attack but also will kill some of his resources while doing that...

So imo mines definitely should stay just as minelayers. Just think about extending them in the described way, maybe give them the ability to reclaim and work as fast wreck getter and maybe introduce an EMP mine if you didn't do so already. If you still have a nuke mine in AA get it out - it never made sense to me as mines are just really useful against T1 and well killing one with just a Juno kills its use apart from having the possibility of either killing your own stuff or reacting on an enemy scout killing pretty much nothing...

Just use Lua to de-cloak mines within a certain radius of minesweepers, or specialized minesweeping devices. Trigger a COB that turns their cloak off if used. Then you could have "missiles" that were "remote mine-clearing devices", "sensor scans" that revealed all mines in an area, etc.

Doesn't it make more sense to allow kbots to have minelaying abilities rather than vehicles?
As in,Kbots laying mines on flat passages on hilly maps..

I guess the initial idea was not making K-Bots too viable (just having them suck in BA doesn't mean it always was that way) as they are an excellent counter to the vehicles' speed and it probably has a connection to our reality where we have minesweeper / -layer vehicles...

It depends a bit on the gameplay you want to have but in general it makes sense imo...

It makes sense to have all land units that actually touch the surface capable of laying land mines and all sea units which make contact with the water capable of laying sea mines. This means hovers and aircraft are the odd ones out.

How does that make any gameplay sense?
Minelaying or mine clearing is not that fun that you'd want each unit spamming mines..Oo.were you joking?

from a war perspective it makes sense for aircraft to be able to make mines, as they can do both sea and land as well as be able to get in and out

A reason for keeping minelayers, as oppose to having cons do it, is that it's a give away. I see my enemy with a minelayer I immidiatly stop to make a mine clearer (this is xta though and I understand in BA players may not care and just charge but meh), it can also be decieving as you see a minelayer and go "eek he has mines" when in actual fact the minelayer is just reclaiming or something...

and @gota about sense in having kbots better for mines, it works the other way, vehicles putting mines at bottom/top of hills to ensure they dont get flanked and they can concern themselves with the flat lands

Isn't that silly?Since kbots are the ones that operate using the terrain to their advantage but are slower cause of that,while vehicles don't do well on hilly terrain but race through flats.
Laying mines on flats makes sense as another kbot way of using terrain height differences to their advantage.

yes but that doesnt mean vehicles shouldnt be able to have something waiting for them, and being able to lay mines on the flat kinda contradicts it, as they're using mines to win flat land and they have the superiority on hills

They are using mines to block movement on flats thus having an advantage cause they can climb hills.

Sorry, I didn't think I needed to specify that I was referring only to constructors from each build tree. Only trees which actually traverse land or pass through water should have access to mines so they can set them up in said medium in a matter which will not compromise their side-specific safety mechanisms or cause them to explode prematurely.

From a "war perspective"?

So, mines would be interesting to the extent that they add a specific (fun) dynamic to the field of play; if, rather than bogging play down, they altered it in a tactical or strategic way.

Like, mines only good versus Kbots, can be placed in large dispersed fields with one click, but make Kbots cheaper and spammier- basically making KBots into "poor bloody infantry" for a bloody war of attrition.

OR mines stun vehicles and are otherwise useless, can be built quickly by Kbots only (or placed in fields via one-click as an "ability" for a specific KBot) , Kbots set them off but suffer no ill effects. Vehicle assaults would therefore usually be preceded by an expendable Kbot wave. In this case make vehicles relatively cheaper or more power per unit cost.

In C&C Generals mines were only able to be deployed very close to the base, so they were of no concern except to make raiding risky. In Dawn of War their main contribution was to disrupt infantry so others could kill said infantry: as a carefully placed surprise in conjunction with other defences they could give a player and edge but they were not effective as weapons in their own right.

They don't really bog play down as it is...

Look, there are a lot of problems with the way mines are currently implemented in BA. For one thing, they have no "footprint" so you can build infinitely many mines stacked one on top of the other .

Next, for the sake of making Junos "used", they were given an OP mine clearing weapon. Hence the mines turning into liabilities after the 5 minute mark.

Mine cloaking costing energy is dumb. It taxes T1 economies too heavily. I suggest giving mines permanent cloak, and then having the mine layer be a mine "detector", as others have suggested.

Finally, the types of mines that are available is wrong. Mine layers get light and heavy mines, T2 engineers get medium mines??? Heavy mines are too costly and do too much damage for T1 units, they're more suitable for T2 units. But light mines have too little aoe, so you need to pack them really close to deal good damage. Suggestions for improvement are XTA type mines, EMP mines, etc.

Caydr wrote: Why do we need a specialized unit to perform a function like this?

you dont NEED it perform a specialized function; you don't need more than one type of tank, one type of power plant etc. one of the joys of *A mods in unit bloat, you are able to pick from many options which are all able to perform the same tasks. of course, doing something like striking kbots from a mod completely is a bit of an extreme example; i just feel that the minelayers COULD be useful, if handled delicately.

just talking about BA here, i've never played AA... kbots get a "specialty" constructor, a rezbot. why not give vehicles something fancy and different as well; making minelayers faster than constructors and able to capture would make them ideal for army support (anyone whos seen a pack of rezbots chasing after rockos healing them knows what im on about)

i think revenge makes some very valid points in his post; mines are handled... strangely... in BA.

junos are a bit OP, id suggest if they are to fulfil the same function, give them a smaller AOE.

Junos op? 16k e to build, 16 e for every shot. How the hell is that effective, let alone op. Youd need to take 13 heavy mines each shot just to get even with the e cost of the mines.

And isnt mines cloaking pretty much insignificant strain on ones economy compared to actually building them.