Proximity Mine

[Basroks]

Mines have for a while been the cornerstone of my raider defense, sometimes so effectively that it makes every assault a completely trivial routine event. Still, I like the idea of specialized anti-personell mines a lot. I think explosives should eventually be made into several techs you can research separately:

• Rock blasting - using mining skill, colonists can drill into rock and blast it into rubble. Much faster than mining pick. Slight danger of accidents. Useless as weaponry.
• Upwards-firing proximity mine - instantly kills any human-or-larger target that steps directly on it, nobody else affected.
• Omnidirectional mine - triggered by nearby activity, posibly tripwire. Instantly fires a large number of bullets in random directions. Should be pretty easy to implement, and much more realistic and interesting than the predictable fixed-range, fixed-damage blasts we currently have.
• Claymore mine - fires a bunch of bullets in a 60-degree arc, in a direction determined when laid down. Remotely triggered, but instant, or possibly trip wired.

I kinda like the idea of a mine field so you won't have to put down mines individually, but this may be a bit tricky to get just right.

About the "friendly fire" issue; keep in mind that mines are specifically made to be hard to spot, and while those who laid them will know the general area, they can't possibly remember exactly where each one is. Accidents will, and should, happen in the game. No-go zones is a necessary mechanic, but let colonists sometimes stumble one or two squares into such zones, so that you can't just make a bunch of 1-square zones exactly on top of all the mines. You have to make large actual fields where the colonists know there are mines, without knowing each individual mine.

Edit: Further idea - let quality mines be weapons you buy from arms dealers. You can build crude, home-made versions, but these are dangerous to make, dangerous to store, dangerous to deploy, and often don't detonate when they should. Could make for fun "oh shit!" moments. Also, maybe you'll sometimes get to recruit a guy with rare bomb-making skills, allowing for a bit of variation in your gameplay. Until he suddenly dies in a tragic bomb workshop accident.

[TimMartland]

Firing 'A bunch of bullets' would be cool, like a shrapnel bomb. Maybe you could get fragmentation grenades with a similar effect, as well as an explosion.

[Coenmcj]

Yes, while were on the subtopic of fragmention why not have the frag grenades work like how you want the omnidirectionals?
They would be more fragmention grenade and less ultimate destructive force in a can

[keylocke]

if you force attack using a drafted troop with a frag grenade to attack an area, they will keep doing that. i usually use two of them in sequence, aimed near a choke point to minimize the explosion delay. i find it cheaper than using the blasting charge anyways, since repairs to the outer wall usually costs less than a single blast charge (unless your troops have horrible aim or if you aim too close to the wall). most times it costs nothing and your ammo is infinite.

what would be nice is to have traps that slows the mobility of opponents or helps to prevent them from escaping. something that you can reset and repair when damaged... (like bear traps or something)

[Vas]

I like the no danger zone option that was presented earlier.  Like a "Set Home" region in blue, the danger zone would be red and colonists wouldn't be allowed to go out there unless specifically told to go out there, no automated orders would allow them out there.

Maybe colonists with photographic memory as a trait can enter red zones without triggering any explosives, as they'll remember the exact location of every single mine.  I did happen to have one with photographic memory earlier after all.  Traits aren't in use right now though.

Proximity mines would just be an omni effect in a short range.  Wouldn't do critical damage to an enemy like current mines do and have much less range.  So they basically injure the enemy and possibly slow them down with an 'injured' status (like burning, but just slown down rather than running around like crazy).  Maybe 10 to 20 damage, 20 at the blast center, less the further out.  At highest 2 blocks away would get 1 damage.

The current mines should be left in game but should be made more obvious and visible to enemy raiders, not completely visible, just easier to spot so a raider would have a % chance better of seeing it than seeing another smaller mine.  This mine should be buyable only from arms dealers, and would be considered "packed mine" until you select a plot of land for "deploy mine" and select it as the type of land mine you want.  This would also apply an injured effect, if it doesn't kill that is.  The highest amount of damage would be at the center of the blast, and would always kill.  If it's possible, you can also reduce damage done to squares past entities, so say one guy is directly on top of the land mine, all squares around him get 50% less damage due to him being on top of the mine when it goes off.  And another guy standing to his left takes 50% of the damage he would have, while knocking down the damage 50 more % to everything else towards the left side, or past him.  But, that might be to complex to code so early on in development.  It's just an idea.

Rock Blasting mines is a good idea, though accidents should be rare if handled by someone with proper explosives training and mining skills.  I like trip mines as well.  You simply build some mines into your wall with a trip wire that goes across to the other wall, with mines layed out under that wire in the ground, the mines themselves are invisible and the trip wire is very hard to see.  This won't be detected till either someone with high skills of seeing traps sees it, or the first raider trips and explodes over it, then the raiders would stop and look around, checking for more traps.  Just like in a mine field where one guy explodes, the raiders go "ohshit, guys, don't move." then start looking around for signs of mines and either avoid them or trigger them with fun fire or even throwing large rocks.  Anyhow, the ones built into walls or door ways, would be known to all of your colonists, so your colonists could avoid them perfectly fine and go on about their lives as if nothing were different.   If the wall is destroyed, then they detonate.  If the wall catches fire, it will detonate once the wall becomes largely damaged (aka in the red).  Actually, I prefer laser wire mines, instead of a physical wire, you have a laser to detonate them.  This way, you can activate a base defense mode which turns on all the lasers, and turn off base defense mode which turns off the traps.

Claymores are interesting.  Would be good for sticking in places you never plan to go, and will detonate when animal or person steps into their proximity and firing range.  This'd be about the same as the earlier mine I mentioned, the first one with at most 20 damage, only it does all of that damage in one direction so it may be 70% more effective.  The issue with this mine is that it is obvious and perfectly visible so you have to hide it around a corner and hope a raider walks past it before seeing it.

Again, most of these would explode even on your colonists, land mines don;t choose sides.  They just explode.  So you'd need danger areas to keep people out of an area.

One thought I had for mines as well was a control console, a screen with a map of the territory you've discovered so far and the location of mines on it.  This could let your colonists not need red zones, they just look at the map before heading out.  And the control console would let you hook wires up to your mines so you can detonate them remotely, so long as there is someone at the control console. This would also work in conjunction with turrets, so turrets would no longer fire automatically but require people at the control console to fire them, but that's something for a different topic.