I can't help but notice that every change made to mines is a boost to their effectiveness:
* The Doom will now avoid its own mines if they are a danger
* Improved placement of mines by the Mine Strike ship system, especially against ships whose center-of-rotation doesn't match the center of the ship sprite
* [ship AI] Reacts more quickly to "primed" friendly mines
I've always hated mine strikes and thought they should be removed from the game, because they're ridiculously overpowered against frigates (and have infinite ammo unlike all other powerful explosives, how is that balanced?); and they're getting a buff?
I'm aware that these aren't buffs of the conventional sort, but a bugfix that favours the user is a buff.
Seriously though, mine strikes feel very out of place in this game, and completely ruin the combat dynamics.
It's super weird and overpowered because:
* It's as powerful as a torpedo, and yet rapidly replenishes ammo and has an unlimited fire rate, making it far far better than torpedoes against anything which can't avoid the mines (is moving too fast, or isn't in control of its movement)
* It's easier to hit targets the faster they're moving, the opposite to every other weapon (making it super powerful against fighters and frigates)
* It's the only weapon that can hit with almost instantly from any direction other than from the firing ship, which is a big deal given that knowing what angle you're about to be hit from is massively important in this game and AI ships are just as dependent on knowing this
On a different note, I see that the reputation penalties for dealing with punitive expeditions have drastically reduced and the frequency is still low, but still it should be remembered that getting reputation is painfully slow and grindy in this game. Basically everything costs reputation, and the only way to get it back is to take on easy-peasy missions that take so long that it only feels worthwhile if you can get at least three going to the same place. I don't have an objection to how reputation loss works currently (except that perfect stealth takedowns are impossible), but reputation gain is a total pain.
I really want to play as Space Mafia, but dull missions are the only option for gaining a lot of reputation to keep up with various losses. Can't I use my drug money to fund some government programme, or make some corrupt authorities not investigate too deep into a few unimportant fleets going missing?