E-Mine RAGE!

[Morgoth]

So if e-mines are gonna get nerfed or improved depending on what your opinion is, after all its not going to be possible to please everybody, will we see more Narn ships carrying them in 2e? after all they are a weapon trully assocaited with the Narn yet very few lower priority ships seem to have them.

 

[Locutus9956]

Dont missunderstand me though, the 'innacuracy idea' is not intended as a nerf, far from it, I would like to see it introduced to compensate for a BIG improvement to the actual damage output of the emines. Id like to see them as potentially scary antiship weapons but not QUITE so perfect as antifighter defence...

 

[H]

well, until we see what this new damage dealing potential is, lets take it all with a pinch of salt. They may well need some re-nerfing if they have swung too far the other way!

 

[Reaverman]

well, until we see what this new damage dealing potential is, lets take it all with a pinch of salt. They may well need some re-nerfing if they have swung too far the other way!

Agreed,

though I can see the forum might be busy for another 6 months.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Well it may as well be autokill vs Nials but what if your talking about T-Bolts or Pak fighters? They arent LIKELY to survive but they still COULD in theory. But I digress.

My point overall Tza is not that its hard to hit a spot at all. It's a gameplay mechanic, pure and simple to represent the fact that emines are NOT instant hit weapons like lasers and that enemy ships and fighters might move to avoid them. You arent just targeting a chunk of space with emines your trying to target a bit of space that IS effectively moving as your trying to hit where your enemies ships/fighters are going to be. Simply put because of the way firing and movement in ACTA is done its not practical to target your mines secretly before movement so the logical alternative is to make them less acurate when fired, simple as that really.

You have to appreciate the difference between a rule introduced to make the game work better that represents whats going on in a very abstract way rather than specifically trying to represent reality. 'Innacuracy' in emines is not representing ACTUAL inacuracy of the mines themselves but rather the targets abilities to change course!

The part I don't understand is why ships or fighters should be able to move to avoid an E-Mine any more than it can move to avoid a railgun, plasma cannor or pulse cannon, expecially when the E-Mine has a milti-kilometer blast radius. B5 ships are simply not that fast. It is not like we are talking warp-drives here.

I guess what I am trying to say is I don't see why people would think the e-mine should be that much less accurate than any other weapon when all it really has to do is hit a stationary point in space. Truthfylly, it doesn't even have to hit the particular point, it just has to be close. The rules assume that with a blast area that big it isn't possible for it to miss by enough to have to worry about targeting. I think that is a reasonable assumption.

Tzarevitch

 

[emperorpenguin]

well to repeat what I said before, what if......

it could also be that the exact time of explosion for the mine isn't controllable. that would effectively give you scatter, if it explodes +/- even 5 seconds from when you want it to, given the speed it travels at.

Not that ships are avoiding it but the weapon might not be that pin-point, that specifically fused.

 

[Locutus9956]

Well you have to ROLL TO HIT with other weapons!!! And scatter is not a huge thing, even 2d6 scaltter will put you off target by, on average about 4" (with a 3" blast radius).

And look at the screen, Emines aint all that fast and once theyre in flight they cant be redirected like missiles (furthermore theyre rather large and bright and easy to spot to avoid, whereas a little metal slug travelling at 1/3 lightspeed is somewhat trickier to dodge

 

[emperorpenguin]

Well you have to ROLL TO HIT with other weapons!!!

you have to roll to hit with e-mines too!

 

[Greg Smith]

In the scene where we see the Narns fire thier emines against the incoming shadows, there are two factors that might effect the accuracy of the emines - the shadows are moving and the emines are relatively slow.

They may possible have a proximity fuse or remote controlled detonators, in which case the speed of the target made no real difference - the mines simply detonated at optimum distance. So no deviation occured.

It maybe that the Narn gunners calculated well enough to get the mines to explode close enough to catch the shadow ships in the blast radius but not dead on target, in which case there is in essence some deviation.

Now there is no drop-off effect with energy mines, should there be? In which case deviation might be an option, ie 2" radius for full effect, 4" radius for half effect.

Personally I think there shouldn't be deviation, since there is no drop-off. I'd hate to fire my mines and miss all together. Especially since they would be wasted for two turns.

 

[lastbesthope]

Who's to say that deviation wasn't factored into the blast radius, maybe if we had a deviated version the blast radius would have been more.

Just a theory/what if

LBH

 

[Tzarevitch]

Well you have to ROLL TO HIT with other weapons!!! And scatter is not a huge thing, even 2d6 scaltter will put you off target by, on average about 4" (with a 3" blast radius).

And look at the screen, Emines aint all that fast and once theyre in flight they cant be redirected like missiles (furthermore theyre rather large and bright and easy to spot to avoid, whereas a little metal slug travelling at 1/3 lightspeed is somewhat trickier to dodge

First, there isn't anything to indicate the speed of an E-Mine round other than: 1) it is much faster than the launching ship, although how much faster is open to debate, and 2) it is much slower than a laser.

Second, nothing I am aware of also confirms or denies whether or not it can be steered in flight. Perhaps it was making in-flight corrections just not very obvious ones. Who knows.

As I recall the E-Mine is basically a proximity-fused fusion bomb (or antimatter bomb or something) fired with a magnetic launcher. That is not that different a launch method than centauri matter cannon or EA railguns which use magnetic launchers to fire a solid mass. So I still cannot see why the alleged slowness of an E-Mine round would cause it to miss a stationary point in space when similarly launched railguns and matter cannon can hit a moving ship without an additional roll to see if the round is even in the ballpark BEFORE you even roll to hit.

Note also that as has been pointed out previously, E-Mines still do have to roll to hit. Round is merely assumed to detonate in the point of space at which it was aimed.

The reason that B5Wars used that silly scatter and guesstimating on where to place the mine was because those weapons did not roll to hit their target. As I recall, if they landed in the correct hex they auto-damaged everything in that hex and the adjacent ones. The only way to balance their lack of hit roll, was to have them roll to target hexes before the move and add a chance of mistargeting.

ACTA uses the more elegant system of assuming that E-mine ships have as competent a targeting system as any other ship and that they can hit a stationary point in space. The attacking ship then has to roll to see if the target is hit by the blast or escapes it. Note the possibility that the ship may be able to dodge the blast is subsumed in the fact the weapon has to make an attack roll and without any form of AP or SuperAP to help it. It auto-hits the point in space at which it is aimed, it does NOT auto hit anything in the blast area.

Tzarevitch

 

[Target]

Who's to say that deviation wasn't factored into the blast radius, maybe if we had a deviated version the blast radius would have been more.

Just a theory/what if

LBH

Are you meaning a random blast radius?
That might be good, could replicate the unstableness of e-mines.
Maybe 0-3 iches, 1 for 0 2-3 1" 4-5 for 2" & 6 for 3"
You might be better to target a ship just in case you rolled a 1.

 

[lastbesthope]

Not necessarily a random blast radius, just that an E-mine mechanic that factored in deviation of the target point might have been given a larger radius to offset it slightly.

LBH

 

[Reaverman]

Not necessarily a random blast radius, just that an E-mine mechanic that factored in deviation of the target point might have been given a larger radius to offset it slightly.

LBH

No where in any episode, has someone on the Bridge of a G'Quan was any hint about deviation. Nobody turned to the captain, or G'Sten and said "Sir, is that wise with the inaccuracy of E-mines".

The fact is, we have to some extent sorted out E-Mines. They are'nt over powered, but they have some effect. So what if they smeg fighters, that's the way it goes. You can't create a charge that can be so selective, that it igniores fighters. In fact I'm sure it's not just an explosion, of kinetic energy. I bet it also uses EMP, and hard radiation. Something no pilot, or fighter could stand.

 

[Target]

They always had an effect, it's they aren't the ship destroyers that some people want them to be. They are ideal for softening up smaller ships that hang in squadrons. They added the no dodge because people were taking hordes of T-Bolts & Narn had no real defence against but that was also due to fighters firing first as well.
In no episode did we see them take out a fighter but we have it.
If i was in a fighter & seen a E-mine being fired in my direction, I would getting the hell out there real quick. We do see e-mines being as a reasonably slow weapon in the show.
Maybe if they fired in Movement phase with markers being place so you could choose to avoid that area, a lot harder in a Cap, Damn having to move forward. To compinsate make them SAP & do crits. Ignoring the same stuff. Fighters would avoid these areas like the plague & force the Narn to use some Goriths for fighter defence, it's not like Narn ships don't carry enough fighter, Ka Toc's anyone. In effect you could force ships to break formations, keep fighters off certain ships.
Just need a e-mine counter.
Just to clarify what im thinking is when you move your G'Quan, you choose to fire your e-mine & place the marker then.

 

[katadder]

well shadow ships can be SM and they didnt avoid the e-mines so the e-mines are fast enough. also the blast you see is huge and i doubt any fighters could clear the area that quickly anyway.

 

[Target]

They just didn't care obivously as it didn't do anything to them or
they wanted to close the distance so they could fire so took the risk.
If ships don't want to go through the e-mine then it has done it's job especially if they can't fire at you.
When talking about the the speed im not talking the explosion but the mine itself traveling to the target area.

As for fighters speed in ACTA they are way to slow compared to Caps, fighters are always seen zooming past Whitestars & various other ships. There should no way caps other than with APTE out run a fighter & thats a very fast cap. Thats just a little bugbear of mine about fighters.

 

[lastbesthope]

Not necessarily a random blast radius, just that an E-mine mechanic that factored in deviation of the target point might have been given a larger radius to offset it slightly.

LBH

No where in any episode, has someone on the Bridge of a G'Quan was any hint about deviation. Nobody turned to the captain, or G'Sten and said "Sir, is that wise with the inaccuracy of E-mines".

I never said they did, I was discussing possible game mechanics, someone mentioned adding deviation or altering the radius, I postulated that this may have already been considered.

We all know game mechanics and show canon are seperate entities, otherwise the outcome of some games would be decided before a single die was rolled.

LBH

 

[Reaverman]

Not necessarily a random blast radius, just that an E-mine mechanic that factored in deviation of the target point might have been given a larger radius to offset it slightly.

LBH

No where in any episode, has someone on the Bridge of a G'Quan was any hint about deviation. Nobody turned to the captain, or G'Sten and said "Sir, is that wise with the inaccuracy of E-mines".

I never said they did, I was discussing possible game mechanics, someone mentioned adding deviation or altering the radius, I postulated that this may have already been considered.

We all know game mechanics and show canon are seperate entities, otherwise the outcome of some games would be decided before a single die was rolled.

LBH

Sorry I was not having a go at your comment, you were just at the bottom end of the 'Deviation' comments

 

[lastbesthope]

Now orries Reaverman, sorry to snap like that, loved that Comic Relief vid you did.

LBH