Good ideas, but they do not really help with my mature problem with mines. My problem with them is the right timing: When i use torpedos I can exactly fire them just a second before enemies shields are down, so the kinetic damage is at the highest point possible. With mines everything can come till they hit the target, the droping and aiming time is way too much. They can be killed (my qunatum torp can't), enemy can turn (or worse: fly away) or use some kind of healing power, oh and they give me enough time for brace for impact even at short range.
They could use an instant explosion option when my enemy is on my tail.
A self-activation would be useful. Why can't I order them to explode when I want it? (for example to kill a heavy torpedo behind me)
Reduction of the time till they attack enemies and make them faster.
They should be in space till I decide something else (would give me an option to deploy a ring around the Kang in Cure)
Thats some of my ideas for it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"What are his rights in this century? Will there be a trial or shall I execute him?" - Worf
"Turrets" would also be Engineering by that logic.
Ground combat career skills don't really crossover well to shipboard skills.
The expendable turrets are engineering. It is engineering Doff missions to make em, not tactical.
Ship mounted turrets that are always there are another matter, but placing mines and doing indirect damage via static defenses is an engineering/operations thing.
First of all i like the idea of mines geting some love, but i come with my idea, why no a new kind of ship? call it (suport light cruiser) which is 500 crew 10 turn rate,25k hull have inate powers like DPA, DPB, and other special that detonate at will, 3 engineer 3 sci 3 tact consoles, 3 device slots, also can load cannons 5 weapons 2 rear 3 forward, 2 lateral mine lunchers, 1 starboard 1 port (can be activated same time and can drop 4 clusters without deleting any previous cluster deployed) it has Commander engineer, Lt commander universal, Lt enginer, ensing sci also it can be used as jamer in battle with a inate console that have 2 set ups: Defensive +5 shields and engines, can deploy mines some kind of buff to mines cooldown and damage.
Offensive +5 weapons and auxiliary , can not deploy mines but can drop jam sensor probes (this probes have the same effect of the jam sensor power, but it have a wider range i think 5 is good and can hit multiple targets, the jam affects also mines depolyed by you making them undetectable by enemy the jamer remainds in the battlefield till destroyed or redeployed ) cooldown 5 minuts.
About mines:
Detection: Heavy cluster minefields are noticeable further away by sensors pasive scaners
let say 10 kilometers depending on skill and auxiliar power, but single clusters about the half depending on sensors skills and auxiliar power making tactics more viable in defending access points.
Damge: I will increase the damage to par with torps of same versions, same with procs
and AoEs if you add procs to mines then par torps with them.
Please don?t remove dispersal patterns, will ruin some Boffs set ups i have .
Activation delay time 2 seconds once deployed, faster homing speed but short range 10 kilometers is more than enough if they don hit that far they BOOOM! (homing speed never should be higer than anygiven ship with all power to engines.
Why not simply make mine skills the same levels as torpedo skills? That way if you want to buff a torpedo shot you can and if you want to use a mine you can, and there would be no danger of the wrong weapon getting the buff.
Why not simply make mine skills the same levels as torpedo skills? That way if you want to buff a torpedo shot you can and if you want to use a mine you can, and there would be no danger of the wrong weapon getting the buff.
Some people might like the slots they are currently in though. Making them the same level would break some builds.
If your going to combine mine and torpedo powers, can we have more mine laying torpedos? I have always liked the breen cluster torpedo but, it would be neat to have cluster torpedos available as a standard weapon.
(edit) Thought about it some more.
Each torpedo will carry 5 warheads (mines). The total base damage of the mines will be 1000 more than its torpedo equivilent. 2 seconds of cool down will be added. Split the buff skills so that High yield still fires multiple torpedos and spread fires one targetable torpedo with more mines.
Photon cluster torpedo MK X
Targets foe (10 max)
90' Targeting arc
10K range
8 sec recharge
Drops 5 mines for 750 damage each (3750 total)
As a time traveller, Am I supposed to pack underwear or underwhen?
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Damage is either buggy or very temperamental at best. Often a full 'complement' of even the most powerful mines will do a startlingly low amount of damage to the hull. Given that mines are on paper the strongest kinetic weapons in the game, it's even more baffling.
I know I'm two weeks late to this post, but your suspicion about mine damage being buggy is correct. We pushed the following change to Tribble on 6/29:
Mines and targetable Torpedoes will now explode, deal damage and play their explosion FX more reliably.
There was an order of operations bug that was causing the mine/torpedo explosions to not work reliably. To put it simply, when a Mine explodes, it has to do two things: Deal damage and kill itself. However, if the mine happened to kill itself before dealing the damage, it never dealt the damage it was supposed to.
I'd say that about a third of all mine/high yield torpedo explosions were not firing correctly. So for a group of mines you can think of it as a pretty substantial damage buff.
Daniel "FlyingTarg" Razza
Star Trek Online Lead Programmer
I know I'm two weeks late to this post, but your suspicion about mine damage being buggy is correct. We pushed the following change to Tribble on 6/29:
There was an order of operations bug that was causing the mine/torpedo explosions to not work reliably. To put it simply, when a Mine explodes, it has to do two things: Deal damage and kill itself. However, if the mine happened to kill itself before dealing the damage, it never dealt the damage it was supposed to.
I'd say that about a third of all mine/high yield torpedo explosions were not firing correctly. So for a group of mines you can think of it as a pretty substantial damage buff.
Sweeet. But what does it mean for the torpedos?
As a time traveller, Am I supposed to pack underwear or underwhen?
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
if you want to make mines more useful then why don't you just make mines more useful instead of mucking around with the BOFF abilities?
for instance, give mines a "greater than torpedo" affect to the target's crew injuries. even if the mines hit a full shielded target they would still cause havoc to the ship's crew as the ship is banged and beat on by the mine strikes.
I don't like removing the patterns personally. Because it allowed players to have mines and torpedoes abilities on different cooldowns, which could be a boon to a tactical captain with tactical initiative.
I think you got the reasoning why mines need to be changed wrong. Noone argued if he wants to use torp or mine in certain situation. The problem with mines is that they are quickly destroyed by FAW spam and every explosion around kills them. Even if you put them on existing torpedo skills, not many people will use them, except for the part to clutter the screen.
An escort, could shoot HYT torpedoes front and drop mines with DP on target. Now you can only do one thing, or plant too much ahead and do both. However, it's not optimal. So from my point of view (as a mine user in some build) is that it is nerf damage wise, it will just free cmd.slot.
The question is, will mines still be on different cooldowns that torpedo launchers ? If so, will transphasic breen cluster torpedo count as mine or torpedo ? I loved my escort that could drop 32 transphasic mines behind it.
As I said, the main problem with mines functionality is that they are visible and targetable.
---
I personally would keep the existing patterns. But gave them additional buff - The dropped mines would be MESed up to 0,5-1km.
Because really, what's a point of a mine enemy can see. Beside, it would give +sensors another value, it could also give another reason to use tachyon detection grid on nebula.
Hidden mines are not clutter the screen.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
Good to see devs interacting with the community about game mechanic changes. I like
This thread is tl:dr so forgive me if this has been addressed.
I run my cruiser with the ferengi missile launcher set to auto fire. That thing fires every 2.5 seconds. If I had mines and activated high yield or spread I'd likely have less than that time to move my mouse to click on the launch mines icon.
So whilst I like the idea of rolling it into one boff skill it can break functionality.
I was thinking that activating high yield or spread would enable that skill for all torps/mines on your ship, but they can be activated/cool down separately for the two torp and mine types.
E.g. I activate high yield, all torps and mines get the upgraded buffed icon. I fire a torp and it gets the buff and removes the buff from all torp launchers. All mine launchers would still have the buff available until activated or cool down time out.
That way I can activate the boff skill and launch torps and mines when I choose without loosing the ability for each.
Also I'm not sure on mine damage as I've never had the desire to use them but if mines can do massive amounts of damage vs torps then that'd go a long way towards convincing me to try them out. Cause with mines I'd image you have to get in close and in the path of your enemy before deploying to make it worth while, where as torps you can be 10km away and still fire for effect. Mines you'd have to be <3km and in their path which doesn't happen as often.
So yeah bigger detection radii and if they travel faster I'd imagine would be a good thing.
Using Mines can be fun. I see how 80% bleedthrough on transphasic can turn out really ugly in some specific build with minimum investment.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
I know I'm two weeks late to this post, but your suspicion about mine damage being buggy is correct. We pushed the following change to Tribble on 6/29:
There was an order of operations bug that was causing the mine/torpedo explosions to not work reliably. To put it simply, when a Mine explodes, it has to do two things: Deal damage and kill itself. However, if the mine happened to kill itself before dealing the damage, it never dealt the damage it was supposed to.
I'd say that about a third of all mine/high yield torpedo explosions were not firing correctly. So for a group of mines you can think of it as a pretty substantial damage buff.
Are you going to release mine updtaes as a whole patch or one by one update?, also is there any ETA about the update?.
Can you explain a lil about the high yield torpedos not firing correctly?
if you want to make mines more useful then why don't you just make mines more useful instead of mucking around with the BOFF abilities?
for instance, give mines a "greater than torpedo" affect to the target's crew injuries. even if the mines hit a full shielded target they would still cause havoc to the ship's crew as the ship is banged and beat on by the mine strikes.
I agree with this. I think that mines should do more damage than a torpedo.
From a logic perspective, they seemed bigger than torpedoes when the Defiant was laying them at the mouth of the wormhole. Logic would dictate that it would therefore contain more boom material.
From a game perspective, something that follows you shouldn't deal more damage than a stationary object as you have less chance of the stationary thing hitting you than the targeted object.
Based on these arguments I think that mines need to buffed and owing to their damage being higher than torp, the boff abilities need to be higher to balance the game.
To expand on my earlier statement (the problem with Mines is endemic): Mines don't do anything a Torpedo can't do just as well and more reliably.
Except for Tricobalts, there's very little reason to consider a Mine Launcher over a Torpedo Launcher, and so, Mines do need to be more powerful than Torpedoes to justify slotting them.
Making them use the same BOFF abilities won't solve anything, as they'll still be "less reliable Torps".
In the current state of space combat, Mine Launcher weapons are generally seen as undesirable. Yes, many of them serve specific purposes for which they can be especially effective. But on a whole, if faced with a decision between equipping a Torpedo Launcher and an associated Bridge Officer skill, or the same for mines, the choice is nearly always Torpedoes.
This is seen as a design imbalance. We want players to feel as though everything they can do in the game, and every piece of equipment they can obtain, has a purpose and utility that is on-par with other choices from those same categories.
In an effort to address this inconsistency, we are currently in the process of considering some rather major changes to the way in which Mine Launchers function. This effort includes shifts in two separate core mechanics:
1) Eliminating "Dispersal Pattern" bridge officer abilities, and rolling their functionality into existing Torpedo abilities.
2) Improving the utility of each separate type of mine, in various ways.
Eliminating Dispersal Patterns
As mentioned above, this comes down to an inconsistency of choice. The situational use of Mines when in comparison to Torpedo utility causes the vast majority of players to choose, almost unilaterally, to invest in Torpedo bridge officer abilities over Mine-based ones. Which is actually perfectly understandable - you simply get far more bang for your buck from a Torpedo High Yield, than you do from a Dispersal Patten Alpha, due to the larger number of situations in which Torpedoes can potentially outperform Mines.
This situation is exacerbated by the fact that Mine abilities are unlocked one rank higher than Torpedo abilities (Dispersal I is Lieutenant, while Torpedo I is Ensign).
Under this new proposal, the following changes would be seen by players:
1) Dispersal Pattern Alpha (also known as Mine Trail) would be replaced with Torpedo: High Yield on all existing Bridge Officers, and reduced in rank accordingly.
2) Dispersal Pattern Beta (also known as Mine Spread) would be replaced with Torpedo: Spread on all existing Bridge Officers, and reduced in rank accordingly.
3) Torpedo: High Yield abilities would gain the functionality of Dispersal Pattern Alpha in addition to their existing functionality.
4) Torpedo: Spread abilities would gain the functionality of Dispersal Pattern Beta in addition to their existing functionality.
5) Both Torpedo: High Yield and Torpedo: Spread would be renamed to fit their new dual-functionality.
Once this change was made, players that have both a Torpedo and a Mine equipped and activate a Torpedo bridge officer ability would see both of these weapons display their upgraded firing mode. Activating either the Torpedo or the Mine at this point would consume the firing mode, just as happens currently when multiple Torpedoes are equipped.
I see that as a massive negative. I run projectile based ships and if I understand this right it means I can never use Bride officer ability's on my mines while I am using bridge officer ability's on my torpedoes. Effectively you are cutting the amount of BO skills I can use in half making this end up worse than the current system. Or I cannot leave mines and torpedos on auto fire without having the wrong object trigger at the wrong time.
I run 4 torpedoes in front slots and 3 mines/x1 torpedo in rear. Right now I can use BO's on torpedos and mines at the same time. After the change the BO will randomly trigger on either mine or torpedos.
If anything the changes on the first first post would force me to have to stop useing mines. Which I do not want to do.
But I am glad you are looking at mines and responding to feedback.
To expand on my earlier statement (the problem with Mines is endemic): Mines don't do anything a Torpedo can't do just as well and more reliably.
Except for Tricobalts, there's very little reason to consider a Mine Launcher over a Torpedo Launcher, and so, Mines do need to be more powerful than Torpedoes to justify slotting them.
Making them use the same BOFF abilities won't solve anything, as they'll still be "less reliable Torps".
Unless of course most of the mines have been failing to do damage, and once fixed they will do a lot more damage when they hit than a torpedo would, making the trade off damage vs reliability.
The only thing about the above that remotely makes Mines look appatizing is the Transphasic Change to 80% Bleed through. Personally, I've always felt that Mines should always be at least 50% Bleed through already, with Transphasics given the 80% would also make sense for Transphasics.
I mean think about it, from a Cannon Sense.. The Jem'hadar would no way have been afraid of the Mines in STO. Because a Mine doesn't do nearly enough damage in STO to even scratch the paint of a ship with it's Shields up.
Right now, as it Stands, Plasma Mines and Chroniton Mines are the most used because A: Plasma Mines DoT damage makes them actually do damage. And B: Because of the Chroniton Slows, which you mentioned. (Which are already getting tweeked on tribble)
This. The low bleedthrough is the main reason for mines seeming so weak despite having as much kinetic damage per mine as torpedoes. If all mines had at least 30% bleedthrough (as opposed to the default 10%), then they would be a credible threat to shielded ships.
Thank you all for the great feedback we've gotten in this thread.
I wanted to drop in and give an update on our intentions for this revamp project.
After reading the various concerns over combining Mine and Torpedo Bridge Officer powers into a single functionality, as well as realizing that consolidating their disparate rankings would be a significant technical hurdle, we've decided to do away with that portion of the revamp entirely, and focus solely on improving mines on the basis of their individual functionality per energy type.
The changes mentioned in the initial post, related to each individual energy type of mine, are still our working concept of the changes that will be made to their behavior. No significant changes have been made to those designs, at this time.
In addition to those changes, we've decided to widen our scope a bit to take the general functionality of ALL mines into consideration while making these changes. What, exactly, that will result in, is yet to be seen. We don't have any solid design decisions that've been made just yet, on that subject.
And, just another reminder that these changes, whatever they are, are not likely to happen until at least a few weeks after Season 6 has landed.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Any chance for additional new abilities (especially for Tactical BOffs) ?
Variation is good, since it allows players to make CHOICES, and CUSTOMIZE their ships according to play-style. Cryptic is big on customization, are they not?
Any chance for additional new abilities (especially for Tactical BOffs) ?
Variation is good, since it allows players to make CHOICES, and CUSTOMIZE their ships according to play-style. Cryptic is big on customization, are they not?
Especially on ships that have 3 Ens Tac powers. Though, they're not quite as bad as the Gal-R with a nigh useless 3rd Ens Engy.
Glad to see mines getting some attention! I am sorry to see you dismiss the idea of combining Torp and Mine Boff abilities, but the new abilities on the mines look good.
One big improvement in regards to STF's and new fleet events is these being an option like the transphasic buff to mines that was mentioned could really help the varanus and other support ships like it on the fed side become a stable damage vessel where as right now they are a little under powered to contribute the same as an escort/bop/raptor/HBC.
Especially on ships that have 3 Ens Tac powers. Though, they're not quite as bad as the Gal-R with a nigh useless 3rd Ens Engy.
Indeed. I realize this is the "Mine Launcher Revamp" thread, but I do believe there is a more serious issue at hand, other than the possibility of merging two types of "projectiles" into a single ability. It's not that we need LESS abilities, we need MORE abilities. Especially for Tactical and Engineering BOffs.
As it currently stands, every ship is better off having 4 pre-defined Bridge Officers, and leave the 5th one as an Ensign Universal, so as to allow the players to choose for themselves, which of the "bad, ensign powers" they want to use.
Or... add new powers, so that we have to make new choices.
Glad to see mines getting some attention! I am sorry to see you dismiss the idea of combining Torp and Mine Boff abilities, but the new abilities on the mines look good.
I'm not against the idea of merging various projectile powers into one. Mines and Torps as one ability, sounds good... on paper. Going through such a merger, you might as well start merging the "Energy Weapon" powers as well. And it would be really weird merging a "Cannon" power together with a "Beam" power, would it not?
So it really comes down to 2 choices:
Leave the powers as is, but fix their various individual issues
Merge Torpedo and Mine powers, but don't forget to give a similar treatment to Energy Weapons
The changes mentioned in the initial post, related to each individual energy type of mine, are still our working concept of the changes that will be made to their behavior. No significant changes have been made to those designs, at this time.
In addition to those changes, we've decided to widen our scope a bit to take the general functionality of ALL mines into consideration while making these changes. What, exactly, that will result in, is yet to be seen. We don't have any solid design decisions that've been made just yet, on that subject.
Overall those initial changes look good. Also, I assume the latter refers to things like the tractor beam mines, tetryon mines and Breen-transphasic mine-torp thingy. As long as all are useful, I totally support it! (I also hope that these changes aren't too abrasive to the PvP crowd...)
Comments
Ah, okay.
"Turrets" would also be Engineering by that logic.
Ground combat career skills don't really crossover well to shipboard skills.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "I weary of the chase. Wait for me. I shall be merciful and quick."
They could use an instant explosion option when my enemy is on my tail.
A self-activation would be useful. Why can't I order them to explode when I want it? (for example to kill a heavy torpedo behind me)
Reduction of the time till they attack enemies and make them faster.
They should be in space till I decide something else (would give me an option to deploy a ring around the Kang in Cure)
Thats some of my ideas for it.
"What are his rights in this century? Will there be a trial or shall I execute him?" - Worf
The expendable turrets are engineering. It is engineering Doff missions to make em, not tactical.
Ship mounted turrets that are always there are another matter, but placing mines and doing indirect damage via static defenses is an engineering/operations thing.
Offensive +5 weapons and auxiliary , can not deploy mines but can drop jam sensor probes (this probes have the same effect of the jam sensor power, but it have a wider range i think 5 is good and can hit multiple targets, the jam affects also mines depolyed by you making them undetectable by enemy the jamer remainds in the battlefield till destroyed or redeployed ) cooldown 5 minuts.
About mines:
Detection: Heavy cluster minefields are noticeable further away by sensors pasive scaners
let say 10 kilometers depending on skill and auxiliar power, but single clusters about the half depending on sensors skills and auxiliar power making tactics more viable in defending access points.
Damge: I will increase the damage to par with torps of same versions, same with procs
and AoEs if you add procs to mines then par torps with them.
Please don?t remove dispersal patterns, will ruin some Boffs set ups i have
Activation delay time 2 seconds once deployed, faster homing speed but short range 10 kilometers is more than enough if they don hit that far they BOOOM! (homing speed never should be higer than anygiven ship with all power to engines.
My 2 cents
Some people might like the slots they are currently in though. Making them the same level would break some builds.
(edit) Thought about it some more.
Each torpedo will carry 5 warheads (mines). The total base damage of the mines will be 1000 more than its torpedo equivilent. 2 seconds of cool down will be added. Split the buff skills so that High yield still fires multiple torpedos and spread fires one targetable torpedo with more mines.
Photon cluster torpedo MK X
Targets foe (10 max)
90' Targeting arc
10K range
8 sec recharge
Drops 5 mines for 750 damage each (3750 total)
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
I know I'm two weeks late to this post, but your suspicion about mine damage being buggy is correct. We pushed the following change to Tribble on 6/29:
There was an order of operations bug that was causing the mine/torpedo explosions to not work reliably. To put it simply, when a Mine explodes, it has to do two things: Deal damage and kill itself. However, if the mine happened to kill itself before dealing the damage, it never dealt the damage it was supposed to.
I'd say that about a third of all mine/high yield torpedo explosions were not firing correctly. So for a group of mines you can think of it as a pretty substantial damage buff.
Star Trek Online Lead Programmer
Sweeet. But what does it mean for the torpedos?
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
for instance, give mines a "greater than torpedo" affect to the target's crew injuries. even if the mines hit a full shielded target they would still cause havoc to the ship's crew as the ship is banged and beat on by the mine strikes.
I think you got the reasoning why mines need to be changed wrong. Noone argued if he wants to use torp or mine in certain situation. The problem with mines is that they are quickly destroyed by FAW spam and every explosion around kills them. Even if you put them on existing torpedo skills, not many people will use them, except for the part to clutter the screen.
An escort, could shoot HYT torpedoes front and drop mines with DP on target. Now you can only do one thing, or plant too much ahead and do both. However, it's not optimal. So from my point of view (as a mine user in some build) is that it is nerf damage wise, it will just free cmd.slot.
The question is, will mines still be on different cooldowns that torpedo launchers ? If so, will transphasic breen cluster torpedo count as mine or torpedo ? I loved my escort that could drop 32 transphasic mines behind it.
As I said, the main problem with mines functionality is that they are visible and targetable.
---
I personally would keep the existing patterns. But gave them additional buff - The dropped mines would be MESed up to 0,5-1km.
Because really, what's a point of a mine enemy can see. Beside, it would give +sensors another value, it could also give another reason to use tachyon detection grid on nebula.
Hidden mines are not clutter the screen.
This thread is tl:dr so forgive me if this has been addressed.
I run my cruiser with the ferengi missile launcher set to auto fire. That thing fires every 2.5 seconds. If I had mines and activated high yield or spread I'd likely have less than that time to move my mouse to click on the launch mines icon.
So whilst I like the idea of rolling it into one boff skill it can break functionality.
I was thinking that activating high yield or spread would enable that skill for all torps/mines on your ship, but they can be activated/cool down separately for the two torp and mine types.
E.g. I activate high yield, all torps and mines get the upgraded buffed icon. I fire a torp and it gets the buff and removes the buff from all torp launchers. All mine launchers would still have the buff available until activated or cool down time out.
That way I can activate the boff skill and launch torps and mines when I choose without loosing the ability for each.
Also I'm not sure on mine damage as I've never had the desire to use them but if mines can do massive amounts of damage vs torps then that'd go a long way towards convincing me to try them out. Cause with mines I'd image you have to get in close and in the path of your enemy before deploying to make it worth while, where as torps you can be 10km away and still fire for effect. Mines you'd have to be <3km and in their path which doesn't happen as often.
So yeah bigger detection radii and if they travel faster I'd imagine would be a good thing.
Are you going to release mine updtaes as a whole patch or one by one update?, also is there any ETA about the update?.
Can you explain a lil about the high yield torpedos not firing correctly?
I agree with this. I think that mines should do more damage than a torpedo.
From a logic perspective, they seemed bigger than torpedoes when the Defiant was laying them at the mouth of the wormhole. Logic would dictate that it would therefore contain more boom material.
From a game perspective, something that follows you shouldn't deal more damage than a stationary object as you have less chance of the stationary thing hitting you than the targeted object.
Based on these arguments I think that mines need to buffed and owing to their damage being higher than torp, the boff abilities need to be higher to balance the game.
Except for Tricobalts, there's very little reason to consider a Mine Launcher over a Torpedo Launcher, and so, Mines do need to be more powerful than Torpedoes to justify slotting them.
Making them use the same BOFF abilities won't solve anything, as they'll still be "less reliable Torps".
I run 4 torpedoes in front slots and 3 mines/x1 torpedo in rear. Right now I can use BO's on torpedos and mines at the same time. After the change the BO will randomly trigger on either mine or torpedos.
If anything the changes on the first first post would force me to have to stop useing mines. Which I do not want to do.
But I am glad you are looking at mines and responding to feedback.
Unless of course most of the mines have been failing to do damage, and once fixed they will do a lot more damage when they hit than a torpedo would, making the trade off damage vs reliability.
Vornek@oberlerchner123 - Join Date: July 2008
This. The low bleedthrough is the main reason for mines seeming so weak despite having as much kinetic damage per mine as torpedoes. If all mines had at least 30% bleedthrough (as opposed to the default 10%), then they would be a credible threat to shielded ships.
I wanted to drop in and give an update on our intentions for this revamp project.
After reading the various concerns over combining Mine and Torpedo Bridge Officer powers into a single functionality, as well as realizing that consolidating their disparate rankings would be a significant technical hurdle, we've decided to do away with that portion of the revamp entirely, and focus solely on improving mines on the basis of their individual functionality per energy type.
The changes mentioned in the initial post, related to each individual energy type of mine, are still our working concept of the changes that will be made to their behavior. No significant changes have been made to those designs, at this time.
In addition to those changes, we've decided to widen our scope a bit to take the general functionality of ALL mines into consideration while making these changes. What, exactly, that will result in, is yet to be seen. We don't have any solid design decisions that've been made just yet, on that subject.
And, just another reminder that these changes, whatever they are, are not likely to happen until at least a few weeks after Season 6 has landed.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Variation is good, since it allows players to make CHOICES, and CUSTOMIZE their ships according to play-style. Cryptic is big on customization, are they not?
12th Fleet - Engineering
Indeed. I realize this is the "Mine Launcher Revamp" thread, but I do believe there is a more serious issue at hand, other than the possibility of merging two types of "projectiles" into a single ability. It's not that we need LESS abilities, we need MORE abilities. Especially for Tactical and Engineering BOffs.
As it currently stands, every ship is better off having 4 pre-defined Bridge Officers, and leave the 5th one as an Ensign Universal, so as to allow the players to choose for themselves, which of the "bad, ensign powers" they want to use.
Or... add new powers, so that we have to make new choices.
I'm not against the idea of merging various projectile powers into one. Mines and Torps as one ability, sounds good... on paper. Going through such a merger, you might as well start merging the "Energy Weapon" powers as well. And it would be really weird merging a "Cannon" power together with a "Beam" power, would it not?
So it really comes down to 2 choices:
Overall those initial changes look good. Also, I assume the latter refers to things like the tractor beam mines, tetryon mines and Breen-transphasic mine-torp thingy. As long as all are useful, I totally support it! (I also hope that these changes aren't too abrasive to the PvP crowd...)