Victory is Life has been by far the best expansion for minelayer boats. Not only did they get a large boost but the Hur'q are the perfect enemy for mine layer boats to fight. So a big thank you to the devs.
Since ViL a few people have asked me to share my builds so I thought a basic guide would be useful. So here is a generic build that can be altered to fit most ships or into most other builds. You do not need the entire build; just take the elements you like. This isn’t 100% comprehensive.
TLDR: for those that doesn’t want to read a long wall of text
• Front weapons: Inhibiting Chroniton Wide Angle torpedo & between 1 or 3 Transphasic Clusters torpedoes, optional Adv Temporal defence Chroniton torpedo.
• Engine, Deflator, Warp Core, Shields, Gamma Synergistic set.
• Rear weapons: Modulating Competition Mine and Advanced Inhibiting Chroniton Rapid Mines
• Consoles: Covert Munition Deployment & Ordnance Accelerator.
Space Traits: Superior Projectile Training, Hot Pursuit,
Space Rep Traits: Torpedo Pre-fire Sequence
Star Ship Traits: Parting Gift, Reverberation, Heavy Tachyon Mine, Harasser Mines.
Specialization: Temporal Operative Primary.
Active set powers: Self-replicating mines and Seeking Mine Subroutine
Doffs x3 Projectile weapons Officer. x1 crit chance on firing projectiles, x1 crit serv on firing projectiles, x1 chance to reduce mine recharge by 5 sec.
End of TLDR:
Now onto the wall of text.
First decide if you are building around single or generic damage. Before ViL I was a fan of Quantum tactical consoles with Quantum torpedoes alongside Quantum mines. Since ViL I have moved into full generic +Mine consoles. Mines still work without the tactical consoles and so can be attached to most builds. It’s a great way to deal with the Hur'q who like to swarm the rear of your ship.
Generally, I start with Transphasic Clusters torpedoes in the front slots between 2 or 3 (cluster torpedoes drop mines on hitting a target). Never fit 4 as global cool down means 1 is wasted. If you have projectile reload doffs with other torpedoes or in a ship with access to concentrate firepower you can reduce down to as little as 1 cluster and still fire at max rate. Vaadwaur clusters drop Tricobalt mines which are an alternative but I do not favour these as they damage your own ship and do not synergise well with Kemocite. Transphasic Clusters normally cause x3 more Kemocite hits over Tricobalt.
Next I tend to go for an Inhibiting Chroniton Wide Angle torpedo for the set bonus “Deep Space Mine” which is amazing for mine boats. This allows you to create a self-replicating mine field where mines that blow up are automatically replaced. Just like in the TV show and it’s very effective in game. (drop it at a spawn point)
An alternate for a front weapon is the Advanced Temporal defence Chroniton torpedo which in High Yield shoots a Chroniton cluster torpedo but shares a cool down with Transphasic Clusters so once every 15seconds max. If you have access to Concentrate firepower you might want to consider this over any clusters. If mixing into a torpedo boat, chances are you want 2 or 3 front torpedoes and 1 cluster, perhaps even zero clusters and just use rear mines.
For the most part never fit 3 or more rear mine launchers as global cool down is a problem (no longer true see edit below). With photon mines I wouldn’t bother with more than 1 launcher. One exception to this is sometimes Concentrated Tachyon, Nukara and Tractor Beam mines mixed together work. Those tractors are better then they look as you can stack up a ton of them in space at once and they last a long time. 20+ tractor beams on a target rips though hull and once the target dies they swap to a new target if they themselves stay alive.
EDIT: Due to a recent patch which has improved global cooldown it is now worth while to fit 3 mine launchers and possible 4 although you will hit global cooldown problems at 4.EDIT
Apart from the Tachyon mines keep away from lobi mines as they are terrible doing under half the damage per volley of basic mines. The Lobi Corrosive and Tethered Quantum mines are particularly bad. My two favourite rear mines are Modulating Competition Mine and Advanced Inhibiting Chroniton Rapid Mines. The Rapid mines appear towards the front of your ship and arm far faster than normal. Modulating Competition mines damage increase the longer they are in space. You can also use Rapid launcher to drop the self-replicating mine field with the full set.
Console: Ordnance Accelerator this is to mine boats what A Ferrofluid Hydraulic Assembly is to a torpedo boat. It’s as close to a must take as you can get. Not only is it needed for Self-replicating mines but it gives -1 shared mine recharge, 20% mine recharge speed, 26.3% projectile damage, what’s not to like! Next fit a Covert Munition Deployment console which gives 22.3% Quantum damage but I take this even when I don’t use Quantum damage due to the set bonus. 3 part set is a further 33% Quantum damage, 33% resistance to all mines, torpedoes and Seeking Mine subroutine which instructs all active to move towards a set target for 30seconds and you can use them from outside 10km. It’s great for bringing in all the stay mines back into the active combat zone or to target a boss ship.
For engines, deflector, shield, warp core go for Gamma Synergistic set. The deflector is a must but technically you only need 3 parts of the set for the 10% kinetic damage. Not found a better alternative yet. The deflector gives -15 resistance when projectiles hit a target and you should have far more projectile out then even an average torpedo boat. Don't expect to do as much DPS as a high end torpedo boat. But you can still put out respectable DPS.
Traits:
Space Traits: Superior Projectile Training, Hot Pursuit,
Space Rep Traits: Torpedo Pre-fire Sequence
Star Ship Traits: Parting Gift, Reverberation, Heavy Tachyon Mine, Harasser Mines.
Hot pursuit: This is far better than it sounds, highly recommended as it can more than triple your mine DPS by doubling chase distance. Torpedo Pre-fire Sequence is nice for the faster cluster torpedoes so they do not get shot down as much. Reverberation means your mines disables shields like crazy. Heavy Tachyon Mine is nice when you use beam overload, FaW, Rapid Fire, Scatter Volley or subsystem target which make you drop a powerful Tachyon Mine that also drains shields and lower resistance. The Heavy Tachyon Mine trait with a Concentrated Tachyon mine launcher synergise well with on drainx boats. Parting Gift isn’t that useful tractor beams leave a single mine behind. Harasser Mines sounds good but in practise does very little. Once every 20 seconds FaW or Scatter Volley will create a Chroniton mine per target. So about 3 mines.
Specialization: Temporal Operative Primary. Due to Phasic Artillery which gives clusters and mines 11.8k extra hitpoints. Alternatively Intelligence Officer Primary for mine flanking.
Doffs Doffs x3 Projectile weapons Officer. x1 crit chance on firing projectiles, x1 crit serv on firing projectiles, x1 chance to reduce mine recharge by 5 sec.
Mines have some semi hidden or not so well known stats.
Photon Mines
Increased tracking range of 0.5 which doubles up to 1km with Pursuit trait.
Increased stealth value from 4825 to 4875 which means you have to get around a 0.5km closer before you can see them.
Bio-Molecular photos can be Engineered to have [Radius] for +0.5km explosion radius
Quantum Mines
•Increased flight speed from 25 to 45
•Increased explosion triggering distance from 0.4km to 0.7km.
•Increased explosion radius on Detonation from 1.0km to 1.5k
Transphasic Mines come in two versions. Mine launchers have 80% shield pen. Clusters are only 40%.
Tricobalt Mines broken cooldowns with Tricobalt torpedoes, twice as long delay before being armed, worse DPS/damage then Quantums volleys and they damage your own ship more often then the enemy. Just don’t use them.
Mines have a little quirkiness to them one of which is either the entire volleys crits at the same time or nothing crits. It’s pretty deadly when the entire field crits at the same time. Think of hitting with 14 torpedoes all getting crit hits. The other oddness is Mine Disposal Patterns override previous patterns of the same type and cause mines in space to fade away. For this reason I recommend using a Dispersal Pattern Beta 3 and Dispersal Pattern Alpha 2 never Beta/Beta or Alpha/Alpha. Personally I favour Beta being higher rank then Alpha.
Dispersal Patterns are different with Tribobalt Mines and a few others but for the most part follow this pattern.
Dispersal Pattern Alpha
•Rank 1: Two launches of one mine each.
•Rank 2: Three launches of one mine each.
•Rank 3: Four launches of one mine each
.
Dispersal Pattern Beta:
•Rank 1: Launches two mines - one right, one left.
•Rank 2: Launches three mines in a triangle formation - one top, two bottom.
•Rank 3: Launches four mines in a square formation - two top, two bottom.
Kemocite Laced weapons as long as you lunch the mines while Kemocite is active the mine holds the Kemocite charge until it hits the target even if the time has hit zero. Consider using Attack pattern beta as well.
If you really want to go overboard with mines in space the Vorgon Ryn’Kodan Carrier with Elite Echentis pets. These pets have Dispersal pattern Alpha 3 and a basic mine launcher.
Think about your ship positioning and consider Area of Effect (AoE) splash damage. If a one mine launcher is doing 5k DPS to one ship that becomes 30k DPS if you hit 6 ships. Mine boats can push past 100k sustained DPS, it’s not easy compared to other builds but it is doable.
This doesn’t go down well when said in some groups but mines used correctly can kill certain groups in set situations faster than beams, canons or torpedoes. I am not saying overall DPS is higher throughout the entire mission as it is not. But if you place a mine fields at a warp in point like in Azure Nebula Rescue or Swarm the entire field will donate as the group arrives triggering a large crossover AoE blast that causes damage to multiply up. It’s kind of like shooting 30+ torpedoes within half a second at 5+ ships all doing crossover splash damage. It can be a lot of fun if you are into explosions.
Lastly on the ground you can use mine barrier alongside cloaked mine barrier and there is no such thing as using to many explosives when on a space or ground stealth mission.
EDIT: 2019
After seeing how effective mines are in the recent TFO’s a number of player have asked me about mine layers. So time for an update:
The Vorgon ships have grown on me. I still have the same criticism in that they produce fewer mines and hit less hard, in fact due to the changes in the Advanced Temporal Defense Chroniton Vorgon ships have fallen even further behind in mine production. But the speed bonus from the 3 part console set can make a large difference. A base Photon mine has a speed of 25 while a Quantum mine with the set speed bonus is 65 more than double the speed of a photon.
The Vorgon Xyfius Heavy Escort can fit an experimental Graviton Implosion Charges
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Graviton_Implosion_Charges which is like a mini grav well every 4 seconds pulling enemies near each other, great for mines. You are limited to 3 rear slots but it’s a viable build.
One of the biggest changes is the Advanced Temporal Defense Chroniton torpedo. In high yield mode the cluster shot is no longer locked out by Transphasic cluster torpedoes, no more 15 second lockout. Not only can you now effectively fire two clusters one after each other but with concentrate firepower the Chroniton torpedo can provide a stream of cluster shots every few seconds.
The Styx Terran Dreadnought Cruiser is a new high end mine layer, possibly the best mine layer in game at the time of writing. It can put out constant Chroniton cluster mine shots via x2 copies of concentrate firepower combined with a Transphasic cluster firing at max speed. While also running two copys of Kinetic Magnet and its trait Vaulting Ambition gives +175% Critical Severity vs foes below 20% health which. Works wonders with mines.
Lastly here is a video to demonstrate the mine de swarm bug and why fitting 3, 4 or 5 launchers of the same type is often a bad idea. https://youtu.be/DT-FbsTPU2M
Since ViL a few people have asked me to share my builds so I thought a basic guide would be useful. So here is a generic build that can be altered to fit most ships or into most other builds. You do not need the entire build; just take the elements you like. This isn’t 100% comprehensive.
TLDR: for those that doesn’t want to read a long wall of text
• Front weapons: Inhibiting Chroniton Wide Angle torpedo & between 1 or 3 Transphasic Clusters torpedoes, optional Adv Temporal defence Chroniton torpedo.
• Engine, Deflator, Warp Core, Shields, Gamma Synergistic set.
• Rear weapons: Modulating Competition Mine and Advanced Inhibiting Chroniton Rapid Mines
• Consoles: Covert Munition Deployment & Ordnance Accelerator.
Space Traits: Superior Projectile Training, Hot Pursuit,
Space Rep Traits: Torpedo Pre-fire Sequence
Star Ship Traits: Parting Gift, Reverberation, Heavy Tachyon Mine, Harasser Mines.
Specialization: Temporal Operative Primary.
Active set powers: Self-replicating mines and Seeking Mine Subroutine
Doffs x3 Projectile weapons Officer. x1 crit chance on firing projectiles, x1 crit serv on firing projectiles, x1 chance to reduce mine recharge by 5 sec.
End of TLDR:
Now onto the wall of text.
First decide if you are building around single or generic damage. Before ViL I was a fan of Quantum tactical consoles with Quantum torpedoes alongside Quantum mines. Since ViL I have moved into full generic +Mine consoles. Mines still work without the tactical consoles and so can be attached to most builds. It’s a great way to deal with the Hur'q who like to swarm the rear of your ship.
Generally, I start with Transphasic Clusters torpedoes in the front slots between 2 or 3 (cluster torpedoes drop mines on hitting a target). Never fit 4 as global cool down means 1 is wasted. If you have projectile reload doffs with other torpedoes or in a ship with access to concentrate firepower you can reduce down to as little as 1 cluster and still fire at max rate. Vaadwaur clusters drop Tricobalt mines which are an alternative but I do not favour these as they damage your own ship and do not synergise well with Kemocite. Transphasic Clusters normally cause x3 more Kemocite hits over Tricobalt.
Next I tend to go for an Inhibiting Chroniton Wide Angle torpedo for the set bonus “Deep Space Mine” which is amazing for mine boats. This allows you to create a self-replicating mine field where mines that blow up are automatically replaced. Just like in the TV show and it’s very effective in game. (drop it at a spawn point)
An alternate for a front weapon is the Advanced Temporal defence Chroniton torpedo which in High Yield shoots a Chroniton cluster torpedo but shares a cool down with Transphasic Clusters so once every 15seconds max. If you have access to Concentrate firepower you might want to consider this over any clusters. If mixing into a torpedo boat, chances are you want 2 or 3 front torpedoes and 1 cluster, perhaps even zero clusters and just use rear mines.
For the most part never fit 3 or more rear mine launchers as global cool down is a problem (no longer true see edit below). With photon mines I wouldn’t bother with more than 1 launcher. One exception to this is sometimes Concentrated Tachyon, Nukara and Tractor Beam mines mixed together work. Those tractors are better then they look as you can stack up a ton of them in space at once and they last a long time. 20+ tractor beams on a target rips though hull and once the target dies they swap to a new target if they themselves stay alive.
EDIT: Due to a recent patch which has improved global cooldown it is now worth while to fit 3 mine launchers and possible 4 although you will hit global cooldown problems at 4.EDIT
Apart from the Tachyon mines keep away from lobi mines as they are terrible doing under half the damage per volley of basic mines. The Lobi Corrosive and Tethered Quantum mines are particularly bad. My two favourite rear mines are Modulating Competition Mine and Advanced Inhibiting Chroniton Rapid Mines. The Rapid mines appear towards the front of your ship and arm far faster than normal. Modulating Competition mines damage increase the longer they are in space. You can also use Rapid launcher to drop the self-replicating mine field with the full set.
Console: Ordnance Accelerator this is to mine boats what A Ferrofluid Hydraulic Assembly is to a torpedo boat. It’s as close to a must take as you can get. Not only is it needed for Self-replicating mines but it gives -1 shared mine recharge, 20% mine recharge speed, 26.3% projectile damage, what’s not to like! Next fit a Covert Munition Deployment console which gives 22.3% Quantum damage but I take this even when I don’t use Quantum damage due to the set bonus. 3 part set is a further 33% Quantum damage, 33% resistance to all mines, torpedoes and Seeking Mine subroutine which instructs all active to move towards a set target for 30seconds and you can use them from outside 10km. It’s great for bringing in all the stay mines back into the active combat zone or to target a boss ship.
For engines, deflector, shield, warp core go for Gamma Synergistic set. The deflector is a must but technically you only need 3 parts of the set for the 10% kinetic damage. Not found a better alternative yet. The deflector gives -15 resistance when projectiles hit a target and you should have far more projectile out then even an average torpedo boat. Don't expect to do as much DPS as a high end torpedo boat. But you can still put out respectable DPS.
Traits:
Space Traits: Superior Projectile Training, Hot Pursuit,
Space Rep Traits: Torpedo Pre-fire Sequence
Star Ship Traits: Parting Gift, Reverberation, Heavy Tachyon Mine, Harasser Mines.
Hot pursuit: This is far better than it sounds, highly recommended as it can more than triple your mine DPS by doubling chase distance. Torpedo Pre-fire Sequence is nice for the faster cluster torpedoes so they do not get shot down as much. Reverberation means your mines disables shields like crazy. Heavy Tachyon Mine is nice when you use beam overload, FaW, Rapid Fire, Scatter Volley or subsystem target which make you drop a powerful Tachyon Mine that also drains shields and lower resistance. The Heavy Tachyon Mine trait with a Concentrated Tachyon mine launcher synergise well with on drainx boats. Parting Gift isn’t that useful tractor beams leave a single mine behind. Harasser Mines sounds good but in practise does very little. Once every 20 seconds FaW or Scatter Volley will create a Chroniton mine per target. So about 3 mines.
Specialization: Temporal Operative Primary. Due to Phasic Artillery which gives clusters and mines 11.8k extra hitpoints. Alternatively Intelligence Officer Primary for mine flanking.
Doffs Doffs x3 Projectile weapons Officer. x1 crit chance on firing projectiles, x1 crit serv on firing projectiles, x1 chance to reduce mine recharge by 5 sec.
Mines have some semi hidden or not so well known stats.
Photon Mines
Increased tracking range of 0.5 which doubles up to 1km with Pursuit trait.
Increased stealth value from 4825 to 4875 which means you have to get around a 0.5km closer before you can see them.
Bio-Molecular photos can be Engineered to have [Radius] for +0.5km explosion radius
Quantum Mines
•Increased flight speed from 25 to 45
•Increased explosion triggering distance from 0.4km to 0.7km.
•Increased explosion radius on Detonation from 1.0km to 1.5k
Transphasic Mines come in two versions. Mine launchers have 80% shield pen. Clusters are only 40%.
Tricobalt Mines broken cooldowns with Tricobalt torpedoes, twice as long delay before being armed, worse DPS/damage then Quantums volleys and they damage your own ship more often then the enemy. Just don’t use them.
Mines have a little quirkiness to them one of which is either the entire volleys crits at the same time or nothing crits. It’s pretty deadly when the entire field crits at the same time. Think of hitting with 14 torpedoes all getting crit hits. The other oddness is Mine Disposal Patterns override previous patterns of the same type and cause mines in space to fade away. For this reason I recommend using a Dispersal Pattern Beta 3 and Dispersal Pattern Alpha 2 never Beta/Beta or Alpha/Alpha. Personally I favour Beta being higher rank then Alpha.
Dispersal Patterns are different with Tribobalt Mines and a few others but for the most part follow this pattern.
Dispersal Pattern Alpha
•Rank 1: Two launches of one mine each.
•Rank 2: Three launches of one mine each.
•Rank 3: Four launches of one mine each
.
Dispersal Pattern Beta:
•Rank 1: Launches two mines - one right, one left.
•Rank 2: Launches three mines in a triangle formation - one top, two bottom.
•Rank 3: Launches four mines in a square formation - two top, two bottom.
Kemocite Laced weapons as long as you lunch the mines while Kemocite is active the mine holds the Kemocite charge until it hits the target even if the time has hit zero. Consider using Attack pattern beta as well.
If you really want to go overboard with mines in space the Vorgon Ryn’Kodan Carrier with Elite Echentis pets. These pets have Dispersal pattern Alpha 3 and a basic mine launcher.
Think about your ship positioning and consider Area of Effect (AoE) splash damage. If a one mine launcher is doing 5k DPS to one ship that becomes 30k DPS if you hit 6 ships. Mine boats can push past 100k sustained DPS, it’s not easy compared to other builds but it is doable.
This doesn’t go down well when said in some groups but mines used correctly can kill certain groups in set situations faster than beams, canons or torpedoes. I am not saying overall DPS is higher throughout the entire mission as it is not. But if you place a mine fields at a warp in point like in Azure Nebula Rescue or Swarm the entire field will donate as the group arrives triggering a large crossover AoE blast that causes damage to multiply up. It’s kind of like shooting 30+ torpedoes within half a second at 5+ ships all doing crossover splash damage. It can be a lot of fun if you are into explosions.
Lastly on the ground you can use mine barrier alongside cloaked mine barrier and there is no such thing as using to many explosives when on a space or ground stealth mission.
EDIT: 2019
After seeing how effective mines are in the recent TFO’s a number of player have asked me about mine layers. So time for an update:
The Vorgon ships have grown on me. I still have the same criticism in that they produce fewer mines and hit less hard, in fact due to the changes in the Advanced Temporal Defense Chroniton Vorgon ships have fallen even further behind in mine production. But the speed bonus from the 3 part console set can make a large difference. A base Photon mine has a speed of 25 while a Quantum mine with the set speed bonus is 65 more than double the speed of a photon.
The Vorgon Xyfius Heavy Escort can fit an experimental Graviton Implosion Charges
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Graviton_Implosion_Charges which is like a mini grav well every 4 seconds pulling enemies near each other, great for mines. You are limited to 3 rear slots but it’s a viable build.
One of the biggest changes is the Advanced Temporal Defense Chroniton torpedo. In high yield mode the cluster shot is no longer locked out by Transphasic cluster torpedoes, no more 15 second lockout. Not only can you now effectively fire two clusters one after each other but with concentrate firepower the Chroniton torpedo can provide a stream of cluster shots every few seconds.
The Styx Terran Dreadnought Cruiser is a new high end mine layer, possibly the best mine layer in game at the time of writing. It can put out constant Chroniton cluster mine shots via x2 copies of concentrate firepower combined with a Transphasic cluster firing at max speed. While also running two copys of Kinetic Magnet and its trait Vaulting Ambition gives +175% Critical Severity vs foes below 20% health which. Works wonders with mines.
Lastly here is a video to demonstrate the mine de swarm bug and why fitting 3, 4 or 5 launchers of the same type is often a bad idea. https://youtu.be/DT-FbsTPU2M