Mines and weapon scores.

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

So im making a ship that has deployable STL and FTL mines (One is a standard mine that guides itself into the path of enemy ships, The other FTL rams causing damage).

I have a question in regards to things like mines as there are only a couple examples on the wiki.

My question is about STL kinds of mines that are deployed and are guided (there are no shipping lanes in a system to mine. Ships travel wherever so to speak so it would be a mine that guides itself into the path of a ship instead of just going after it like some kind of guided missile.) Does something like this count towards DR score or a ship? On one hand its technically a weapon. On the other they are single use, and like 10-15 of them on a ship with at least a tier of 10-11 because they are meant to harm ships or outright cripple them and that would literally take up almost all the DR score of a low tier starship and a chunk of one a tier or two above it even if i made it some kind of launcher and those the ammo.

Its not a dedicated minelayer. Just a ship with a good few mines or so onboard because i think there should be ships with different quirks like this one having a couple mines, and i'd rather treat it as a utility and not have it take up a lot of DR score for something that contributes nothing to a fight like a main armament and makes no sense IC to neuter a ships weapon capabilities because a space on the ship barely larger than a single shuttle means it can only have half the weapons as any other ship its class.

@ 'ing @Wes as someone that dictates DR changes like that and as FM of yamatai who im pretty sure ive seen minefields on the map for yamatai before. and @Syaoran and @Ametheliana as my fellow NTSE who know more than i do~

Tho anyone else can give their opinion or answer and not just them.

 

[Syaoran]

Personally I would say it really depends on how the minds end up working out and getting statted. But in all likelihood the system that lays the mines itself would count as a weapon once.

 

[Toshiro]

This is likely similar to how we currently treat missiles under DR. While we would consider dedicated missile launchers toward the DR of a ship as the maximum Tier of missile they could fire, ships are often allowed to have a small number of belly-mounted or wing-mounted missiles (up to four in practice that I've seen, but never really defined to my knowledge) that aren't counted. As such, it would likely depend on how many mines you were carrying in this instance since your craft isn't employing minelaying equipment. For reasons listed below, STL Mines could double as missiles, so they'd have to count as active ship weapons.

STL Mines would have to move as swift as a missile to have a chance of working, if only because of how absolutely massive space is and the low density of mines in a given area. That space would also likely have to be limited to being within a star system or key areas of it. The necessary number of mines for even covering that "limited" an area would be more massive than any single ship could ever hope to deploy. It's probably one of the reasons mines have seen a decline in use. STL minefields take time to put up even in that limited a scenario and the sheer number of them means you're better off using those resources to make more ships once covering a large enough area.

FTL mines are far more interesting, and something I want to make/implement as well. Current weapon rules only allow for ramming attacks and nothing else employing FTL (even FTL-capable missiles have to drop to STL before delivering explosive payload), so the FTL mines would have to convey most of their damage via ramming and perhaps the effects of destabilizing the enemy ship's propulsion. If a ship is hit by an FTL mine, nearby FTL mines can then capitalize on the advantage if the ship is knocked to sublight speeds and cannot recover, even if it managed to survive the initial strike somehow. FTL mines would also have to be evadable to a degree due to the large distances involved and to be at least potentially survivable for the defenders without explicit point defense options. Some newer Yamataian ships like the Plumeria 2E, Chiaki 1B, and Azusa have countermeasures for FTL ramming attempts that make it easier for them to evade, but other craft likely do not.

TL;DR, we need to define balance.

Given that FTL mines will likely not have the same speeds as ships, their placement will also be important to plan and they will have to act like the STL missiles you describe. Their speed will act as a force multiplier of sorts that allows them to be deployed in densities that are somewhat attainable to cover an area, but not foolproof. They likely also have the capacity to act as STL Mines/Missiles and likely count as active ship weapons because of that.

 

[Firebrand]

I always figured we could count SMALL missiles, like minimissiles, as per individual launch system rather than by launcher or launch cell or tube. Larger missiles could be counted like, per tube or cell, but with each one counting 1/4th of the cost because they're basically one shot and its done kinda things- with reloadable launchers being treated normally (or maybe half price)