My first thought there would be that the mine spawns inert (or is "teleporting in") and is destroyed harmlessly if it collides with a ship or fighter within ~3 seconds?
This is an interesting idea. It certainly has me thinking about the interaction of mines with fighters. Currently, you can drop mines far too close to fighters, and they trigger a detonation. Also I sometimes feel like bombers in formation don't dodge mines, like ships do.
Simplest complaint first, Mine Strike is as close to a direct damage ship system as it gets. You spawn 2000 HE damage bombs anywhere in the pretty wide radius instantly for mere 1000 flux a pop, on a ship that benefits from soft flux if anything, thanks to T2R.
Not sure what you mean by an instant weapon? Tachyon lance? Paladin PD shooting over allies. Xyphos Ion cannon? These can strike instantly in a sense, and the later two over allies. I mean, mines are clearly designed to give you a few second to react. It is the fact that the AI doesn't react well is the problem. If the AI handled mines better (do I have sufficient PD, and is the PD directed at the mines? Don't bother shifting shield unless impact is imminent in that case).
The one situation where it is effectively instant is against fighters, as noted above. However, in that case my suggestion would be to change mine mechanics to treat fighters as weapon projectiles or on a separate layer (like ships) instead of treating the like ships - given well, fighters don't seem to dodge mines well or at all, nor do mines respect the space around fighters. So in the proposed new mine strike system, if a fighter runs into a mine, it's like the mine was shot down by PD and thus no explosion. Or simply no interaction with the fighter itself perhaps. That would tend to make heavy fighters a natural counter to a Doom.
No other ship can attack from two directions at the same time, except Doom.
What about Salamanders? Also I think you're indicating this is a problem in player hands, specifically. A pile of frigates worth 35 DP has no problems flanking a ship. Comparing to a single Hyperion isn't really fair given it costs 15 DP to deploy. 2 Hyperions can flank quite easily and still cheaper than a Doom in terms of deployment.
Combined, this means that Doom is also great at crowd control (want to discourage enemy ships from coming your way? Just pop some mines between you and unwanted attention or behind them and watch them scramble) and dealing with fighters (big AoE, instant mine deployment and impact fuse means spawning mines on top of fighters either destroys or overloads them instantly), same fighters which incidentally are one of the better ways for dealing with phase ships... Just not this one. I've just heard that AI Dooms don't handle fighters well at all, this issue might not apply.
This I agree is a problem. I think one of the above suggestions could help bring the system in line, without having to overhaul it too much. At the very least, respecting fighters in terms of mine placement like it respects ship space and put it farther out from said fighters so they have a chance to fire PD at it would help. Sparks should be a counter to mines, not make mines even more effective by hovering around an escorted ship causing the mine to go boom early from fighter contact. It also means the AI only needs to take into account movement on the ship layer to determine if mines are going to go off, potentially making AI handling of mines perhaps easier to improve, since it wouldn't have to worry about anything causing an early detonation except for a ship's contact with the mine.
