Aegis Nautilus

[Danakar Endeel]

Aegis Nautilus Q&A

 

How long is the lifespan of the different mine types and how long do they persist during logout? What happens if the parent ship is destroyed – can mines be retrieved afterwards in such occurrences?

• Once deployed and in use, a mine’s components start to degrade, though their lifespan is dependent on the environment and how they are used. For example, regularly engaged weapons platforms will likely wear out and proximity mines will likely detonate before they degrade. If live but untriggered, we envisage a mine’s lifespan to be measured in days rather than minutes. Mine lifespan is not influenced by the state of the parent ship, be it destroyed or not. Deployed mines ‘remember’ the original deployment ship, so can be retrieved afterwards.

Are drone bays like the one in the Nautilus universal? For example, can they equip repair/refuel drones and likewise, can other drone-carrying ships like the Vulcan and Carrack equip NEMO drones?

• The Nautilus can equip and use drones from the Vulcan and Carrack but lacks the equipment to repair or refit them for their specified roles. Similarly, the Vulcan and Carrack can equip NEMO drones but don’t have the means to store mines, so they would have to disable them and leave them behind.

What’s the rationale behind a near-capital size minelayer only having 24 mines to use in the infinite vastness of space?

• A single mine covers a significant area, so a huge number of mines aren’t necessary. This combined with not wanting players to have to deal with an unwieldy number of mines and the technical implications of keeping them around resulted in the capacity of the Nautilus.

Will the mines communicate data back to the mothership, for example, where they’ve autonomously moved to, whether they’ve been activated, and what they’ve detected (hostile vs. friend)?

• Once deployed, mines enter a pseudo ‘read-only’ state where the deploying player can see limited information about them, such as the expected wear and degradation level and their status.

Since the mines track and follow targets, can they operate within a planet’s atmosphere?

• The mine’s thrusters only work in Zero-G. If they’re deployed or end up in-atmosphere, they will be unable to maintain their position. The mines will abort tracking a target if it’s beyond their capability to intercept.

Could a stealth ship (like an Eclipse, Raven, or Sabre) bypass mines with relative ease? Will other ships be able to scan their surroundings to detect mines or is the Nautilus the only ship capable of doing that?

• Any ship can detect (and be detected) by mines as it uses the game-wide signature and radar system. Stealth ships will naturally be harder to detect, so stand a better chance of safely bypassing mines. Ships with specialized radar/scanners will find themselves much better suited to detecting mines at distance.

Can the cargo hold be used to store additional mines? If so, how many can it store?

• No, the cargo bay is purely for cargo storage and is not large enough to get mines in or out (mines are approximately 4×4×4m).

Are mines set to friend or foe targeting? If a teammate lays a minefield, will it automatically only target enemy/unknown contacts?

• The player deploying mines can set a friend or foe status using the existing faction/hostility system. Providing a player’s teammate is in the same faction or has the same hostility level, they will not be targeted. However, players can deploy mines without any of these protections if they wish.

Are more mine variations being considered?

• There are plans for more mine types in the future, but none have progressed to the point we’re happy to discuss their details yet.

What is the detection range of the mines and sentries (how far away before the mines engage an enemy)?

• The maximum detection range is another tricky statistic to quantify as it completely depends on both the components of the mine (they use regular adjustable ship items) and the emissions of the target. That said, we expect each mine to have at least a minimum engagement radius of between 5 and 10km. They will pursue targets a fair distance beyond that too to allow relatively small quantities of mines to cover a moderately large area.

Will we be able to create precise patterns for our mines, such as spheres or triangles, and have the mines go to their designated locations without having to fly the Nautilus in said pattern and guess when to release?

• The mine control room allows the operators to see the position of where the mines will end up, but we don’t currently plan to let the user pick from specific post-deployment patterns. Instead, the Nautilus crew must work together to place mines in what they deem to be the best pattern given the ship’s movement capabilities and the launcher’s tube position. Flying at a lower speed allows for much more accurate deployment.

Will the laying of mines be considered a crime?

• As you might expect, it depends. The legality of minelaying is dependent on the laws and jurisdiction of the area, as well as the authority (or lack thereof) of the organization tasking you with laying mines. You can probably assume that laying mines in the vicinity of a heavily inhabited UEE planet would be a very criminal act. On the other hand, being tasked by a UEE mission giver to deploy mines around a Jump Point to a Vanduul-occupied system would likely be legal. There are all kinds of possible circumstances in between too, which inhabit various legal grey areas.

Can mines be remotely hacked?

• Yes. The NEMO drone performs this task as the range that mines can be hacked from is short.

The brochure says the Nautilus has two large quantum fuel tanks, but the stats page says it has one. Which is correct?

• The brochure is correct – the stats page will be updated. Also, the brochure doesn’t specifically list the missile turret as a separate item, instead it accounts for it in place of one of the listed S3 gun turrets. These differences were due to adjustments that took place after the brochure had gone to print, which was many weeks ahead of the release of the ship and before some of the internal review gates.

Why do mines have a much smaller payload compared to their size? A S7 mine correlates with a S5 torpedo’s payload despite being more challenging to deploy and retrieve.

• Once all the internal components of the mines are accounted for, the remaining space is appropriate to the current payload. If in further testing we find that mines are under or overperforming, we’ll adjust their performance to suit.

[VoA]

From Voon

[VoA]

Voon's comparison of the Nautilus to the Polaris

[VoA]

Since the mines track and follow targets, can they operate within a planet’s atmosphere?

• The mine’s thrusters only work in Zero-G. If they’re deployed or end up in-atmosphere, they will be unable to maintain their position. The mines will abort tracking a target if it’s beyond their capability to intercept.

My guess is that CIG will eventually make other Mine Laying ships with different types of specialty mines - since there is no reason why different types of mines shouldn't exist (and we should also have smaller minelayer options) - per my question 

 

Can Mines be employed in each of these 4 mediums ?

• Mines in Space
• Mines in Air
• Mines on Ground
• Mines Underwater

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I think there currently are Mines in the Air of Lorville enforcing the No Fly Zone

 

Are more mine variations being considered?

• There are plans for more mine types in the future, but none have progressed to the point we’re happy to discuss their details yet.

 

My guess is that we will also see other types of specialty mine layers (per above) since it is common to have a Large / Medium / Small ship version per the profession and obviously the Nautilus is the Penultimate (large) minelayer option.

 

Can mines be remotely hacked?

• Yes. The NEMO drone performs this task as the range that mines can be hacked from is short.

It would be nice to have a small minelayer also have the option to disarm mines directly without needing a NEMO drone.

[Boildown]

I've never liked the idea of mine-laying in space.  Area (or volume/space) denial of this type is just going to be griefing style gameplay, similar to gameplay people who want invisibility/cloaking-devices/super-stealth will employ.

I also think that "mining space" simply won't work.  Space is huge, the odds of someone running close enough to your mine at non-quantum speeds (you have to assume that a ship in quantum will come and go before a mine can activate, and that they don't have quantum drives of their own) is incredibly small.

So mining will be done around points of interest, places where people drop out of quantum to do anything.  I think the most legitimate non-griefing use of mining could be to establish an early warning perimeter around non-combat focused commerce sites.  For example, you find a particularly good asteroid that will take hours/days to mine (the other (other) definition of "mine").  You don't want people to come in and gank you while you're vulnerable mining, so you call in the minelayer to put a defensive perimeter of mines around you and your asteroid.  If one of your mines detonates/activates, you have time to stop what you're doing and ready yourself before the potential shooting starts. And if no one interrupts you, then you call in your minelayer again to pick up their mines after you're done.

The problem with this is that 24 mines isn't really enough to create a large enough perimeter.  You have to assume that you want your mines to not have gaps in coverage while leaving the middle out of any explosive radius / be far enough away to be effective early warning.  60 mines would be a better number.  Only 24 mines would let you do something like this, but as you can see, the distance between any two mines is not much shorter than the distance of any mine to the center, which means you're in danger of being in the blast radius.  You really need 2 or 2.5 times as many mines to deploy an effective sphere-ish minefield large enough, assuming the blast / detect radius of any given mine is large enough to overlap with blast/detect radius of the neighboring mines without impacting the neighbors directly.

[VoA]

Quote

I've never liked the idea of mine-laying in space.  Area (or volume/space) denial of this type is just going to be griefing style gameplay, similar to gameplay people who want invisibility/cloaking-devices/super-stealth will employ.

That's like saying I never like the idea of "Flight" in a WWI game....... or "Nuclear Weapons" in a WWII game........ unfortunately what we like or dislike ...... should take last place vs reality.   It wouldn't make sense to "not" have mines or stealth......... just have to balance it to make the game-play fun is all.

9 hours ago, Boildown said:

I also think that "mining space" simply won't work.  Space is huge, the odds of someone running close enough to your mine at non-quantum speeds (you have to assume that a ship in quantum will come and go before a mine can activate, and that they don't have quantum drives of their own) is incredibly small.

CIG answered this...

What is the detection range of the mines and sentries (how far away before the mines engage an enemy)?

• The maximum detection range is another tricky statistic to quantify as it completely depends on both the components of the mine (they use regular adjustable ship items) and the emissions of the target. That said, we expect each mine to have at least a minimum engagement radius of between 5 and 10km. They will pursue targets a fair distance beyond that too to allow relatively small quantities of mines to cover a moderately large area.

9 hours ago, Boildown said:

So mining will be done around points of interest, places where people drop out of quantum to do anything.  I think the most legitimate non-griefing use of mining could be to establish an early warning perimeter around non-combat focused commerce sites.  For example, you find a particularly good asteroid that will take hours/days to mine (the other (other) definition of "mine").  You don't want people to come in and gank you while you're vulnerable mining, so you call in the minelayer to put a defensive perimeter of mines around you and your asteroid.  If one of your mines detonates/activates, you have time to stop what you're doing and ready yourself before the potential shooting starts. And if no one interrupts you, then you call in your minelayer again to pick up their mines after you're done.

A Nautilus is defined as a support ship so laying mines around an Endeavor Hope or even an 890 Jump or Hull E would go a long way to help defending that ship.   Yes they would essentially have to stop in space to gain this protection but most of these ships are slow anyway and easy targets while moving.

Dropping  a minefield into a Asteroid field would be a great opportunity for an Ambush for the Nautilus......... but that is no different than an Eclipse doing the same thing...... or even a non-stealth ship...... just turning off power and parking close to an asteroid.   And no - this isn't griefing...... it is strategy and tactics.

Traps are a reality of life........ just deal with it ....... since complaining about it does not good.   Even in nature there are many plants and animals that set up ambush traps (and even use stealth - like camouflage)

9 hours ago, Boildown said:

The problem with this is that 24 mines isn't really enough to create a large enough perimeter.  You have to assume that you want your mines to not have gaps in coverage while leaving the middle out of any explosive radius / be far enough away to be effective early warning.  60 mines would be a better number.  Only 24 mines would let you do something like this, but as you can see, the distance between any two mines is not much shorter than the distance of any mine to the center, which means you're in danger of being in the blast radius.  You really need 2 or 2.5 times as many mines to deploy an effective sphere-ish minefield large enough, assuming the blast / detect radius of any given mine is large enough to overlap with blast/detect radius of the neighboring mines without impacting the neighbors directly.

CIG address this again - see the Q&A.   A 5-10km engagement range per mine makes a pretty large area.   As I mentioned before you can't make a planetary defensive grid with mines... but that would be a bit over the top anyway - right?

[VoA]

Good theory-crafting and questions of the Q&A

 

[VoA]

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NAUTILUS MINELAYER - EARLY DEVELOPMENT EXPLORATIONS - PART III

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+115 views

[Switch]

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/e0B62J

[GRIZZ]

2 hours ago, Switch said:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/e0B62J

This is fantastic, great videos showing all over the ship in detail.  In case the artist removes them, someone should backup the videos for refrence.

Here is a Reddit post in case the above link goes dead.

 

[GRIZZ]

On 6/18/2020 at 10:27 AM, GRIZZ said:

This is fantastic, great videos showing all over the ship in detail.  In case the artist removes them, someone should backup the videos for refrence.

 

I was right, the videos were taken down, it was released too early.

https://streamable.com/cul7ox