Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Recently, during my modding for the StarWars AI (to be released in a little while, still in beta testing) I decided to change how Mine Sweepers were used. Since shields do nothing when encountering a mine field I scrapped them entirely and went full armour. Worked great until stealth/scattering armor was discovered. Now all the ships auto-cloak and head for the minefield, then go 'boom' and do not sweep. It seems cloaked ships cannot sweep mines, really quite disturbing to see a dreadnought fully loaded with armour/sweepers get blown away by a few mines.

Hopefully MM can fix this, either by allowing cloaked ships to sweep or finding some way to 'de-cloak' them b4 hitting the field. Until then it seems my 'new' minesweeper is not quite worthwile.(although the armour does soak up quite a few mines, maybe I'll just replace ALL the components with armour, that might work).

------------------
"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

I'm sorry, but I think I have to disagree with you. I think how it is now is more realistic and provides better game balance. First, It think it is more realistic because in my opinion, a clocked ship with minewarefare equipment (whatever that might be) would probably require active Emissions of energy (or whatever scanners and sensors use) to detect mines in space so the Mine component can destroy the mine. If you activated your ships specialized scanner equipment while clocked, enemy ships would be able to detect you at long distance and would make the clock useless. Secondly, if ships with cloaks were able to use mines effectily, it would give cloaked ships more advantages then uncloaked. Why build uncloaked minewarefare ships. To unbalancing in my opinion.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

You would think if it was a known minefield that the ship would automatically un-cloak and sweep the mines.
I don't see why cloaked ships can't sweep for the AI. What is the differance between them moving, uncloaking, sweeping and cloaking in one turn and sweeping while cloaked. At the end of the turn they are still cloaked.
Hopefully this will be fixed soon as the AI needs all the help it can get regarding mines.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Shields don't protect you against mines? What sense does that make? Is that confirmed?

Geo

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Shields do not protect against mines. Shields are considered to be "tactical" components, and are only activated during combat. That's why they don't help against mines or damaging warp points. Armor never turns "on and off".

Lt. Col. John

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

ouch...This is news to me.

SO shield's do squat against mines?

Huh?

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Well armour has to be good for something. Bit rough if shields have it over armour in every department.

The cloaked ships not sweeping sux a bit thou. In turned based it easy to decloak and recloak but there is no such luxury in simultaneous.

Askan
(my typing still sux)

[This message has been edited by askan (edited 04 June 2001).]

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

The whole issue, if cloaked ships should be able to sweep mines, is a question of balance. In SE III where you couldn't detect cloaked ships at all (you just could prevent them entering a sector cloaked) cloaked minesweeper made mines practically obsolete. In SE IV cloaking is very weak and can be defeated easily by system wide acting scanners. So I think it would not be unbalanced, if you allow cloaked ships to sweep mines.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Minesweepers really upset me, so I am happy to hear that they can not cloak. Mines are an important part of the game, they stop it from being too fast flowing and letting the fleet that wins one key battle from trashing empires. I may have lost my fleet, but you still need to get through my static defenses and a nice, visible minesweeper is a nice target for my slowly rebuilding fleet to aim at.

Most of my combat support vessles have a mine sweeper or two thrown in with the point defense and supply modules. It is not as specialized as it could be, but it does make the ship more flexible in those unpredictable situations. It also makes me more comfortable when dropping into a new system or a system I expect to be mined.

What do people think of this jack-of-all trades approach?

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Guess it depends on how many mines you run into http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

I suppose they could do it this way. Have a minsweeper auto-decloak when encountering a mine field, sweep the mines and then re-cloak, and you would recieve a message in your 'turn box' that a 'cloaked ship was detected in X sector, ' this could go along with a message that 'X mines were swept in X sector'.(which it currently doesn't I think, unless the mines were activated to do damage as well.)

------------------
"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Nitram,

I will admit the Jack of all Trades works better against the AI than my evil human friends. The AI doesn't create obscenly large feilds like a certain individual I know...

Quick question. Many small mines (harder to sweep them all) or a few big ones (putting larger holes in ships)? Which is better for killing folks. Related question. Do larger mines get swept first or is it random? Though bing that you could mix them, hoping to flood the minsweeper and still have some big ones to hurt people with.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>(which it currently doesn't I think, unless the mines were activated to do damage as well.)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I got a little message about my minefield being swept & activated by cloaked ships once. Saw one little DN sitting on the wormhole licking its wounds, so I sent one of my DNs in to finish it off.
Boy was I ever surprised to see 10 more DNs decloak as I attacked!
Half a year of repairs later, my $100,000 DN is finally back in service http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

I always build the biggest mines I can, if they get through I want them to hurt! Some people think this is a waste of resources if your opponent can sweep them all but by the time I can build mines I usually don't have many resource problems.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Saxon:
Quick question. Many small mines (harder to sweep them all) or a few big ones (putting larger holes in ships)? Which is better for killing folks.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Well it used to be small mines were better since you could put more out there for the same resources and it was more efficient. However, with the size of the mine field being limited to 100 mines now I am not sure that is true anymore.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> Related question. Do larger mines get swept first or is it random? Though bing that you could mix them, hoping to flood the minsweeper and still have some big ones to hurt people with.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good question. Not sure. Will have to run some simulations and see if I can figure it out.

Geo

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

You can go bankrupt in radioactives early in the game with double warhead small mines. I am building single warhead small - see TDM-Modpack politics in really big game. Later when I have a higher yard rate and excess rads I will build double warhead small. I think larger mines make no sense until minesweepers do different rates based on size. If you expect the entire field to be swept, park a fleet of fighters on the minefield. If you can afford it, put bases on the field - lower maintenance than ships. If you are throwing away surplus, put a fleet of dreadnoughts on every minefield. Then when the field is swept, skip replacing it.

P.S. When you are near the limit on units in space it makes more sense to use large satellites to defend warp points. They get that first shot before ships can move out of range. Be sure to put the best shield on them or they will die like flies.

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 04 June 2001).]

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>P.S. When you are near the limit on units in space it makes more sense to use large satellites to defend warp points. They get that first shot before ships can move out of range. Be sure to put the best shield on them or they will die like flies.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Large Nullspace or PPBs work very well in this situation.

Cripple the enemy before they can react with the nullspace, and then cut the remains to pieces with PPBs.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Early in the game you are much better off building the most powerful mine you can. The chances are higher that the mine will hit as most races will not have a large minesweeper ship(s) and you will take out more ships with less mines.
No matter what limit you set, once you can build enough minesweepers capable of removing all mines from any location there isn't much point in using mines at all.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>No matter what limit you set, once you can build enough minesweepers capable of removing all mines from any location there isn't much point in using mines at all.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Thats why I set the limit to 100,000 http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Just means you have to build more minesweepers http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif..ok a LOT more

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

I thought somebody said in another thread that there is a hardcoded limit of the limit itself to a max of 5000 per player (total 100k + 100k) to keep the savegame file size down ? If 100k x 20 is ok, then go for mines. The problem is that if 5000 is the max then at 250 systems you only have an average of 20 per system, typically 7-10 per warp point. That does not count what you use up in planetary orbit....

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Hey, SJ, you're a General now!

As for mines... You don't need an obscene number of them everywhere, just at strategic locations. IE, for the problem of the 250 system empire, that means there are a max of 5 systems for enemies to be in (hardcode limit of 255 systems because of char array). That means that you will only really have to have mines a few systems in from those five, and over important planets. Not to mention that if you have all your enemies down to five systems, you could easily send in a "small" fleet for your empire to swat them out of existance http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

For the mine size... if you have mines early and enemy ships are around LC size, then small mines are ok. If you can't fill up a sector with large mines, but can with small, use small. If your enemies have enough minesweepers to clear a full sector, screw the mines, build fighters for warp defense (depending on weapon strength, Groups of 10-25 put into a fleet work nicely). Satellites can work too, but they'd be in one big group, and can only fire at one ship at a time, and can't move (which sucks if you end up at the opposite end of the warp and can't get some point-blank shots in).

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Will - in my realy big game with 20 empires those suckers will be in EVERY system by turn 50 from 10 good starting planets each. They already claim all but a few systems at turn 30. If lucky I MIGHT control 35-45 myself, but even that cuts me down to 100 per system. So at 5000 I will really not have much use for mines or fighters on wp by mid game. It is true that a stack of sats can only target one ship per combat round. But that ship will be DEAD MEAT and any others that remain in range will be too. So IF they cooperate then sats on the warp point can take down a fleet of 30 dreadnoughts. Attrition may be 50% or more, but that fleet is GONE and replacing the sats should require only about 100 yard turns while replacing 30 Dn is 200+ yard turns. Economically sats make sense in mid to late game. I have not used sats for a long time because I always jumped from early game 39 colonies at turn 120 to end game all conquered turn 150. But this map6 I am playing with 7000 planets is going to be a whole nother ballgame.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

Ehm, Satellite Groups can fire at more than one ship at a time. Each single satellite can only fire at one ship (unless it has a Multiplex Tracking I suppose, but why bother?) but a group of 50 satellites can fire on 50 ships during one turn. So a large group of Satellites can be quite nasty to a fleet of ships.

What I'm wondering is what happens when a group of sats have sats with different type weapons. Say I have one design with Shield Depleters and another With Wave Motion Guns. I want the Shield Depleters to fire first and switch target as soon as the shields are down and then I want the Wave Motion Guns to pummel the ships with no shields to death. In tactical that's not a problem, just MM hell. But how the hell do I accomplish that in Strategic?

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>What I'm wondering is what happens when a group of sats have sats with different type weapons.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I'm not certain of this, but I think a satellite group fires in the order the sats appear in the display when you click on it. So when you're placing the sats, you want to launch some of the shield depleting sats before any of the other designs. Once some depleters are in place, all the sats of the same design will cluster in the first display box.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[This message has been edited by capnq (edited 05 June 2001).]

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

you can also click on the wpn to deselect it, fire the shield depleters, then reclick the group (which IIRC reslects all the wpns) It's kind of a pain.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:

Quote:

No matter what limit you set, once you can build enough minesweepers capable of removing all mines from any location there isn't much point in using mines at all.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thats why I set the limit to 100,000 http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Does that limit of 100000 work?? I thought the limit of 5000 was hardcoded.

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

I just threw a stack of zeros on to the end of the limits in settings.txt, and I haven't run up against a limit yet.
I'm getting close to 5000 mines in space in one game, with over 1000 on each of my "backyard" wormholes, and hundreds scattered throughout my 2 colonized systems.
If I hit a limit I'll be sure to report it http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Magnum357:
I'm sorry, but I think I have to disagree with you. I think how it is now is more realistic and provides better game balance. First, It think it is more realistic because in my opinion, a clocked ship with minewarefare equipment (whatever that might be) would probably require active Emissions of energy (or whatever scanners and sensors use) to detect mines in space so the Mine component can destroy the mine. If you activated your ships specialized scanner equipment while clocked, enemy ships would be able to detect you at long distance and would make the clock useless. Secondly, if ships with cloaks were able to use mines effectily, it would give cloaked ships more advantages then uncloaked. Why build uncloaked minewarefare ships. To unbalancing in my opinion.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't share your opinion on this one Magnum. I think the problem here is that it would be unbalancing if a human player could cloak and sweep, but the AI does not know to uncloak, sweep, and recloak. Regarding the technical issues I see no reason why the sensor suite for detecting mines should be active rather than passive. For that matter a narrow beam active sensor like a LIDAR would be pretty hard to detect via ESM at range. I just see this as a way to make up for a handicap in the AI's operational procedures.