Talk:Cluster Mines/@comment-454133-20160628002445

TL;DR: Seems too pricey for what you get (odds just too low), but maybe works great with Sabine for the bonus damage.

So just over a 1 in 3 chance per die to deal a damage, and each mine is 2 dice. It's about a 61% chance of dealing at least 1 damage per detonation. You'd expect them to clip 1 to 2 tokens if you're lucky, or all 3 if you're amazingly lucky or positioned perfectly. But you're still burning 4 points on a very tricky-to-use, one-time-use weapon, and that's not a lot of expected damage. In contrast, for 1 more point you can have a proton bomb, which slips a crit right under their shields with no rolls needed.

No way to focus or target lock the rolls. It's nice that the enemy can't roll defensive dice, but it's also hard to tag the small, evasive ships that would normally be hurt most. I'm tempted to bring them on a k-wing & friends with prox mines, conner nets, and extra munitions and spend any unproductive turns just dropping them all over the field, to shut down my enemy's options and try to force them to make worse decisions than plowing through them. But that's absurdly pricey. Maybe they're also amazing against huge ships, who can do little to nothing to avoid them?

Though when I get my punisher maybe I'll warm to cluster mines. That looks like a ship designed specifically to mine effectively.

Or a K-Wing with Sabine as crew. Sabine probably makes cluster mines amazing with the guaranteed bonus damage per hit (and that damage doesn't have to hit the ship that triggered the bomb). I'd expect an average of maybe 2 damage per token with her, and the k-wing can advanced slam to try to position just right.