Breakable Astroids and Mining Ships Class

It's in the name, so I want to break the moon. A nuke should totally shatter a small asteroids and take chunks out of large ones. At the very least the asteroids could maybe be moved by nukes or other heavy fire power. With that said, a new game mode comes to mind, mining for He-3. Not the actual He-3 that costs real money but just as a resource in-game, it would be located in random asteroids and the team that gathers the most wins. This game mode would probably be flooded by bombers so I think there should be one more class of ships, mining ships. Ships that specialize in breaking asteroids and maybe some team support as well such as healing friendly ships. I think the mining ships should be huge, slow and cumbersome to fly but have really heavy armor and powerful mining weapons.

Some Ideas for Mining ships:

Weapon types:
Classic Machine Gun(maybe at least 4 to compensate for being so slow and big)
Lasers that you hold down the fire until it over heats. Breaks Asteroids from a distance.
Drills, no range but melee and ability to break up asteroids fast(maybe drill a hole in the side of a carrier for invading)
Scatter Missiles, rockets that split into many after say 500m possibly(the split rockets would do little damage individually)

Support Weapons:
Heal Ray, this would work like a tracking missile, You have to lock onto your teammate and hold down fire to help them regenerate shields faster.
Shield Bubble, a bubble around a teammate that adds 500 extra shield for a short period.
Docking, up to 2 players can board your ship to heal faster and recharge fuel. While players are docked on you, your ship's afterburner is increased(2 players will be faster than 1 docked).
Fuel Rods, deploy a few fuel rods behind you that can be picked up by anyone to regain fuel.

Just some thoughts but I think this class would definitely complement the current ships and add a lot more teamwork.

I like the mining ship (I think that's what it is) at around 20 seconds+ of the MB trailer video (below). Looks like its a decent size - see the Rhinos near it by way of comparison - and it'd be awesome on a one-sided map where a team has to defend it while its "mining" and the other has to try & get through the defense + destroyer escorts to take it out.



Thats not the same as your idea Cyclopic which has the mining ships carrying weapons and being pilotable, but however they implement mining there'd be plenty of scope for imaginative maps and gametypes.

so with your idea longshot, are you saying that only one team would be defending and one team attacking? and if so would there be two rounds per match to make it so each side had to defend and attack?

yep, just one team defending & the other attacking, with the time limit deciding who wins. Obviously the setup of the map would have to be well thought-out to avoid it being one-sided.

An alternative could be the mining ship en route somewhere - one team escorts and the other has to stop it. Similar idea but less static.

anyone remember UT assault gameplay? basically what has been said, but in 'stages' - first you had to make it to point X and do Y (repeat so many times), then take out a static target Z, all against the clock (ie, one team must survive/defend, other team must infiltrate/destroy).

for MB, this could work as defending mini mining stations scattered near a carrier (perhaps the mining stations slowly remove the debris/asteroids surrounding that team?), plus shield generators that prevent weapons from reaching them first, etc... end goal would be the carrier itself (or a smaller version of it - a mining command ship). to make if fair aggressors can only spawn by warp in (ref: trailer) at an acceptable distance (more than broadsides, by say 50-100%).

personally i dont want to see entire roids disappear instantly at the whim of another player, it would be way too unfair if missile play becomes very common (swarm of A80's in open space, gl bro) - i wont mind this so much if there are a lot to begin with, more than can be destroyed by even a dedicated team (but close to is ok)... perhaps if the game is/will be capable of it, only shattering roids into progressively smaller pieces (2-5 chunks at random), and the smallest tiered pieces can be vaporized totally. anyone play red faction on multiplayer? basically this... missiles should blow chunks out of asteroids too imo if this is allowed (not nukes though, irl some nukes, eg neutron bomb, cause little collateral damage), but i know how complex this will be considering how much of it currently appears to be generated at map start on the assumption it wont change (efficiency).

just some thoughts anyway...

I would love to see some more asymmetrical scenarios such as attack v. defend.

the mining theme lends it self to that well, and in an asymmetrical scenario your win condition is largely the balancing factor and tweak-able until it's just right. you just change each sides objective independently of each other.

As for breaking asteroids the idea sounds cool but functionally i have... concerns. Trolling not being the least of it, graphical load is another, now shrapnel generation would be interesting, or propelling rocks around and into things I could get behind (no pun intended). it really comes down to the context and execution of such a features implementation.

I'd also like to see a King of the Hill(Moon) type of gameplay where one team defends a moon/asteroid while the other team would warp in from all directions trying to capture the moon/asteroid. It would completely fit with the theme of the game and it can also be very very balanced as theres no racing/destroying with nukes.