Please, make the minelayer a feature.

[Jaybeanstalk]

I have been brainstorming ideas for the usage slaving and features of a minelayer system and have come up with this:
The minelayer launches an entity a few blocks away from the module where it stops. When an entity, (including the launcher) impacts with this mine, the mine emits an explosion damaging nearby blocks or shields.

Clearing
The most efficient and effective way to clear the mines is using beam shotguns or turrets. This is because they are not damageable with cannons though the will attract and explode missiles.

Slaves:
When slaved as a secondary to a weapon, the mine layer causes the beam or projectile to have a longer lifetime and move slower. At a 1:1 ratio this can cause missiles to behave almost exactly like mines, allow you to create gates of beam weapons or even make large stationary flak clouds out of cannons.

When a damage pulse is slaved to a minelayer, the mine becomes more powerful and consumes more power.


When missiles are slaved to the minelayer, the minelayer launches multiple smaller and weaker projectiles.

Notable uses: When a Heat effect is added, this can be used as chaff to distract swarmers

When Damage Beams are slaved to the minelayer, the mines go up to twice as far out and up to twice as fast.

When cannons are slaved to the minelayer the minelayer gains rapid-fire launching but the amount of damage is reduced.

Notable uses: can also be used as chaff

 

[cyberus111]

First thing they are going to have to do for a minelayer system is figure out how to keep it from becoming the king of griefing tools.

As I've mentioned in other threads about minelayers, it doesn't take much imagination to see some nimrod laying a bajillion of these thing around 2 2 2 spawn and every shop in a 5 system radius and laughing his arse off at every newby that gets blown up

 

[Control]

Cap their duration. They're not physical objects but stationary energy which will dissipate in 10 seconds? 15 seconds? 30 seconds?

 

[karkinosz]

Cap their duration. They're not physical objects but stationary energy which will dissipate in 10 seconds? 15 seconds? 30 seconds?

What about if they are attached to a logic clock?

 

[AtraUnam]

What about if they are attached to a logic clock?

The mines themselves don't move so you'd just end up with a ton of mines sitting directly in front of the output of you're stationary mine layer.

 

[DivineEvil]

I'm afraid mines will not going to get any reasonable popularity. Similar to Pulse, their own functionality will be limited to creating anti-missile chaff, and that's about it. Unless Schine team will decide to make DPS a variable value, there's no way to make them work effectively as a viable alternative to present weapon systems. In it's core, weapons are tools to deliver a destructive energy into the hostile target. In that regard mines a basically worthless. As a defensive weapon, mines can indeed be introduced, but as a permanent entity, like ships. This would require to implement some mechanics like mass signatures, which would prevent ships to see mines on navigation, unless Scanners are used to detect them. Making a separate entity controller, other than the Ship Core, specifically for such objects like mines, cargo containers or beacons, would also help to void unnecessary calculations for these entities.

Not only I'm negative for mine-layer weapon system, I'm also very confident, that a present Pulse master has to be redesigned into a slow-moving, short-range, large AoE cannon weapon, keeping all the Slave properties, but having a more effective short-range features by itself, that wouldn't emphatise ship collisions to use it properly. It can be renamed as Blaster, Mortar, Howitzer, etc; it can have some interesting mechanics tied to it, like homing ability, proximity priming and burst-fire when different weapons are slaved to it.

 

[Lecic]

There's already a minelayer system, including slaves, already thought up. Cannon/Minelayer was flak (projectile that exploded into multiple cannon projectiles at a certain distance), Beam/Minelayer was a charge beam (hold the mouse to increase damage, release to fire), and Missile/Minelayer was sleeper missiles that would activate when enemies got near and seek it out.

The solution to mine spam is a limited number of mines per sector, plus a mine-despawning mechanic in all territory you don't control.

 

[cyberus111]

Hey, I'm personally ok with the concept, IF it can be done with proper safeguards againt being used as a griefing tool. The short lifespan idea is good, making damage versions only placeable in homebase sectors would be good too.