Cruiser Command

Upgrade that will increase from 10 to 20 to 30 so we can keep minelayer viable as close support in later games when everything has more dps and health. and just makes minelayer more fun but worthwile but not OP

I think that's exceedingly risky when paired with the battlecruiser. Using 30 as an example, the minelayer can probably fire about 5 sprays a second. Since each hit would heal 30, that means it has the potential to heal 3000 life points (before accounting for energy regeneration) by going from full energy to zero. By contrast that also means with full energy upgrades it would have the potential to heal 150 health a second, and if you assume it has maximum energy upgrades this means it could sustain that effort for nearly 30 whole seconds. And that's if you only want to assume one minelayer is put in play.

Overall I don't think the minelayer is under powered or useless, but I do agree that its healing capabilities are a bit underwhelming. I think rather than increasing the amount it heals per second, I think reducing the energy cost of the heal would be a far more reasonable solution, and in exchange perhaps increasing the cost of minelaying as it's exceedingly cheap for it's cooldown.

Also, given the new speed of ships, the minelayer's heal becomes difficult to use on anything other than the battlecruiser in a combat situation. Rather than having both sits coordinate to sit down and start a repair, it's a lot simpler to simply return to base with the current speed. I can see some use of the 'healing in space without docking' concept for small ships, but it's too difficult to execute right now. I think if you extended the length of the cone (without increasing the width) and the speed of the projectile, it might become more applicable to be used on small ships since it can still be used as 'spray and pray' at a distance, but it would become much simpler to strike an intended target at a medium range rather than having to get directly next to the target. Alternately you might consider some 'lock on' ability to allies, but I don't think that would feel right.

The problem of the minelayer, in my oppinion, isn't the healing speed/energy rate but the targeting.

As Whyte mentioned, it is hard to use at high speed and makes it useless as support for small ships. I'm thinking that maybe changing it for a less ... random technique would make it easier. More like the medivac healing. click on the target you want to heal, make sure to stay in range and voila. no missed shot

It's also much more newb friendly.

or maybe increase the range of its healing - it's actually a bit hard to heal while moving because the ships need to be so close to each other, and that causes crashes

Dutrinium Stabilizers: Minelayer

Increases accuracy and range of nano and nanites (hulls and sheilds healer) and increases speed by 25%

This way we can give the option of support in combat or just using the minelayer for BC downtime healing

WhyteDragon wrote:I think that's exceedingly risky when paired with the battlecruiser. Using 30 as an example, the minelayer can probably fire about 5 sprays a second. Since each hit would heal 30, that means it has the potential to heal 3000 life points (before accounting for energy regeneration) by going from full energy to zero. By contrast that also means with full energy upgrades it would have the potential to heal 150 health a second, and if you assume it has maximum energy upgrades this means it could sustain that effort for nearly 30 whole seconds. And that's if you only want to assume one minelayer is put in play.

Overall I don't think the minelayer is under powered or useless, but I do agree that its healing capabilities are a bit underwhelming. I think rather than increasing the amount it heals per second, I think reducing the energy cost of the heal would be a far more reasonable solution, and in exchange perhaps increasing the cost of minelaying as it's exceedingly cheap for it's cooldown.

Could you also increase the cooldown rate with an upgrade? Just 10% or so, and throw the increased range in the upgrade too?

I always feel like im running out of energy before healing a damaged BC up and it isnt very viable in supporting other ships except for regenerating their sheilds because still the projectiles are hard to use fully effectively in a battle

I think that is part of the point.


Oh! Idea... Mobile power transfer? Minelayer is meant to be support ship, (Healing, Sheilds) what about mobile small energy transfers in case somebody actually does take it out for a complete raid attack? It would drain from the ship's energy store of course. Handy for corvettes and destroyers, keeping them firing and working longer.

Meanme wrote:Handy for corvettes and destroyers, keeping them firing and working longer.

Yes that would be helpful for corvettes, as for destroyers, they dont need any energy from anything to continually fire their bombardment, we should give the destroyer more abilities =P