Question, Armor and mines
 

Say you have a fleet with no sweepers that hits a minefield. I know that each ship that takes damage will take damage to the armor first, but if you have a ship with armor and a ship without, will the armored ship always take mine damage first? Can you have a ship with no armor in the fleet and have it be safe as long as there is enough armor in the fleet to account for all the mines?

And if you have different kinds of armor, is there a certain kind that will take damage before other kinds of armor?

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Each ship is dealt with individually. You can't protect another ship except with mine sweepers. I guess that armor works in mine combat like it does in regular combat. The smaller armor will tend to get destroyed first. Someone will have to test if Emissive Armor is effective against mines. I presume that it is, but haven't verified.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Darn, well that nixes that idea.

I am trying to come up with a way to bring mines back into the game a bit. With the new patch fixing the mines per sector limit and the damage accumulation problems I am afraid they are totally relegated to the early game, if they weren't already.

What if we lowered the warhead damage, and eliminated the minesweeping components? That would certainly change things, no? Since mine damage is applied randomly across the fleet you would not know which ships were going to get hit. You would have to armor everybody a little bit, or take the chance on your critical ships getting their armor blown away and taking real damage.

You could still have minesweepers in a way. Heavily armored ships that you sent in to soak up the mines, but you'd have to send them in unsupported, as we do in real naval anti mine operations.

This would be murder in games though of course unless you reduced the damage for each warhead. That's the key. A small fleet could get wiped out if they were stupid enough to not have armor, but a big fleet would not. They would take damage though. They could not run minefield after minefield. They would have to take it slow.

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Well Geo, that is my understanding of what a minefield is supposed to do. The point isn't so much how much damage it does, but how long it slow your enemy down to allow you to...ehhh, "prepare a surprise for him!" The damage done is just a side effect, but if an enemy fleet is bearing down on you, just one little minefield on either side of the wormhole buys you at least two turns, right? Maybe? something like that, anyway. Or am I totally misunderstanding you? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Well Sachmo, that is what it's supposed to do, but my point is that once you reach the tech that enables you to easily sweep 100 mines it no longer does that any more. Mines then become totally irrelevant, execept to catch an oppponent totally by suprise in a place he is moving ships without sweepers. Your attack fleet can roll through minefield after minefield and ignore them as if they weren't even there. At that point, they might as well not be.

If mines always did some damage, though a much smaller amount, eventually you would reach the point where your fleet was degraded to the point where continuing would be unsafe. You would have to stop and repair your armor, or build more "sweepers" to replace the ones that were destroyed.

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is IF you have enough sweepers to cover ALL your fleets and the bad guys access points http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Why not just increase the 100 mine limit? Isn't that possible in Settings.txt?

I would also suggest for your mod that you increase their cloaking factor with each tech level (3,4,5) for Mines 1-3. You might as well do away with Medium and Large mines, because people will want to build more of them faster to fill a sector more.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Mines as currently implemented in the game are just too crude to 'improve' in any meaningful way. If MM would just implement some formula for a limited number of mines to attack each ship rather than ALL of them we could do something useful. If mine sweepers would then have a real chance to hit/miss the attacking mines we'd have something vaguely realistic.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

We could look at it another way...

Avoiding mines should also have more to do with the pilot. Perhaps reducing mine damage by the fleet and ship experience %

Just a thought.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Right, but what I am pondering is an attempt to come as close to that as possible without the hard code changes whcih I cannot do. Mine damage is random already, what this idea does is allow for that damage to get through to the ships. By armoring your ships you can protect them, but you don't really know which ships are going to take the damage. There is always the chance that a critical ship will take more than it's share of the damage and cause your fleet problems.

Raising the mines per sector limit does nothing substantial to the problem except delay it a few turns. Raise the mines per sector limit and now instead of four LC's with sweepers , I need eight, or ten, or what ever the limit is. It's still just a race. The mines always win until you reach sufficent sweeping tech, and then the sweepers always win. This would reduce their strength early, but keep them in the game later as well.

Yes, changing the cloaking of mines is something else I am considering. It just doesn't deirectly relate to the damage and sweepeing, so I didn't bring it up.

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, that's not really another way. That's basically what Baron is suggesting. That the sweeper have some sort of chance of sweeping the mines instead of always sweeping them. I like that idea, it's just it would require a hard code change which I cannot do. I think my idea does make mines more "realisitc". (I hate that word btw http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Is it ideal, no. Is it better than the current, I think so. Can it be done now, yes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Geo,

IF a minesweeper can clear 100 in one turn, does it move thru as if nothing happened, or does it have to stop for one turn to sweep them? Pardon my ignorance, but I've not had a lot of experience with mines! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Sachmo, I know as long as the fleet takes no damage it can move on as if nothing happened. There have been some reports that if a ship in the fleet takes even minor damage the fleet orders will be cleared and it will stop, but I don't know for sure if that's correct or not.

Actually I am kind of counting on that to be correct for this idea to work right. Otherwise if your fleet has orders to move to point B and there are several mine fields between here and there you weren't aware of you may not have much of your fleet left by the time you get there, even if you have all your ships armored well.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

I was thinking of removing minesweepers from my mod, and making the mines large and expensive, with many warheads. Perhaps as expensive as a ship.

I want to encourage players to spread out their minefields too, rather than stacking every one of them in a huge pile at warppoints.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Do all the warheads for a single mine attack a single ship? Or does each warhead randomly attack a ship in the fleet?

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Geoschmo, why not add a component limited to bases with Sector-Damage to simulate an advanced mine field? It would be unsweepable (at least before it does it's damage) and damage every ship in the fleet. Make it like 450 KT, and do low damage, since multiple bases will stack. And make it very expensive, but possibly with a lot of built-in maintenance reduction (mines are mainenance-free, after all).

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Has that been tested IF? I intended to a while back. I thought about giving the mines themselves the sector damage ability, but I never got around to it. It's possible that ability only works on storms and such.

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

I believe I have tested it before and it worked. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Wouldn't putting the Sector-Damage ability on a component damage the base its put on? Or if the base that has it is immune wouldn't it damage anything else in the sector, including your own ships and bases?

Hate to put a damper on this but it is an important thing to consider. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

It only damages ships when they move into the sector. And yes, it damages your own ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif So it's a hazard. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Couldn't you reduce the mines per sector down to say 10, and then remove the Mine Sweepers completely?
That way, going thru a mine field would be risky, would stop large concentrations of them, and would give you the ability to lay them in strategic places in-system. It would also give more incentive to build larger mines, something I never do.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Would you consider Turn 112 to be early game? Because that's the most recent turn in my v1.67 PBW game in which mines significantly affected the turn result.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

I don't know Q. It just doesn't seem all that hard to me to build and maintain 5 or 6 LC's and include them in with my war fleets. Especially since once I get BC's I suddenly have a lot of LC's laying around to retrofit to minesweeper duty. At 100 mines per sector it just really isn't that hard to counter mines in the mid to late game. And it's TOO hard to counter them in the early game IMHO. They are an impenartrable wall, putting a crippling obstalce against any sort of early game wars. And then suddenly you throw a switch, and they are useless.

Your suggestion for settings.txt would certainly be better than the current situation. However it is beyond my power to implement. Baron has been asking Malfador for a long time for a chance based system for minesweeping and it hasn't been done. His suggestion was much more involved than a simple settings.txt entry. It allowed for differences from race to race in sweeping proficency.

You point about minesweepers having only one use and armor having more than one is valid. My ideal would be a combination of Baron's ideas, and an ability for minesweeping components that allowed them to be destroyed as they sweep. Then you could keep the warhead damage levels high. You could have the sweepers protect all the ships in the fleet, without having to armor every ship. But you would still require the fleet to stop after a few minefields and repair themselves. But all that would require hard code changes.

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, that doesn't really prove anything except there are exceptions to every rule. If the players are careful mines should be almost irrelevant by that point in the game. I have a PBW game on turn 140 where I am getting ready to take a guys homeworld with a fleet full of LC's and DUC's. But I wouldn't try to tell anyone DUC's are a viable late game weapon in most cases.

About the only use in the late game for mines would be to heavily mine the other guys territory. This would require some time to setup and either doing it under cover of a treaty, or by having cloaking devices, which can also be defeated. It is possible to do, but even then it's more of a nuisance than anything else. Sweepers are so cheap you could simply have a few stationed in each system to ferry ships around.

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

I basically agree with you Geoschmo that mines are too powerful in the early and too weak in the late game. I just think the difference is not that enormous.
The minesweeping components to clear 100 mines cost alone 10000 minerals. Therefore the cost to build and more important to maintain a sufficient number of minesweepers can be important. And if you find this still too cheap, it can of course be modified and increased.
The changes MM made in the Last patch with new mounts/damage types gives me hope that the mine suggestions could be realized too in a future patch if we continue to ask for it.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh yes. I agree totally. And I love asking for stuff. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Just an idea I am going to try:
Reduce damage of mine warheads to 1/4 = 25/50/75kT for Level I/II/III.
Create mine mount for medium and large mines that increase the warhead damage by 2x repectively 4x.
Increase tech level requirement for medium and large mines to 3 respectively 5.
Increase cost of minesweeping components by factor 4!

Expected results: small mines are quite weak, but because with the new patch their damage stacks not completely ineffective. This might balance the too high power of mines in the early game. For the later game it is important to research and use the larger mines. Minesweeping gets very expensive.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

I like the idea some. I think it would help in the early game. However I am unconvinced it will accomplish what I want in the late game. The fact is no matter what you do to minesweepeing component cost it's still a formula. You change the values of the equation some, but there is still a solution. Once the player gets to the point where they can build and support enough sweepers mines become irrelevant to the attacking fleet. It's all or nothing. Your fleet will roll through field after field with no pause or concern from the mines. I want you to have to take your time. Not to stop you completely, but to make you take your time when going from planet to planet. I want to make wars in the late game be campaigns instead of just an inexorable drive from planet to planet towards the heart of the enemy empire. The only way to do that that I can think of is to make you take some damage from the mines. Not enough to critically damage the fleet, unless the other guy gets lucky or you don't prepare carefully, but enough to slow you down and make you more methodical about things.

Geoschmo

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

I absolutely agree that it is not the ideal solution, but it was the best thing I could find without a change made by MM.
The best as I said would be a moddable percent of minesweeping failure (depending on the mine size/tech level), maybe combined with a moddable percent of hit failure of the mine itself. That would create a degree of uncertainty we both seem to like with mines.
On the other hand, if you can build many ships that cost about 50000 minerals each (that will be the cost of a minesweeper in my mod that can sweep 100 mines) don't you think that you have won the game already?

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not if the other guy can too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

If you goal is to make mines a delaying factor, change them to be a special Satellite hull instead with a special weapon (for Satellites only) that is a very long range Engine Killer with Cloaking factor. Zip there engines and you will slow the fleet down. Of course, normal weapons would be able to shoot down the Satelitte/Mines, but Minefield combat would be a nice addition. I suppose the problem would be they could avoid them and refuse to close range (except at warp points they would have to run away).

I have often wondered how you can mine a three diminsional region anyway. In space, your frontage is a plane, not a line. On oceans or land, you can go around (or fly over mines, then you are in a three universe where mines reside in a two diminsional universe). However, if you are on foot, going around will take considerable time. When laying a minefield, you have to consider a few things, how much frontage you want to cover, how dense you want the mines, and how deep the minefield extends. If you maximize frontage, you loose density or depth, thus you reduce the size of the hazard zone or decrease the odds of a hit. It would be really nice if mines had a chance to hit based on density. Something like % of a hit = Mines x 99 / (Mines + 98) for the first ship (1% for one mine, 50% for 100 mines). Divide by two for the second ship (in the same fleet), divide by three for the third, etc. This would allow fleets to have ship ordinal 1 be the lead ship. If we really want to get it right, we have to factor formation into mine field triggering. Column formation is much safer for moving through potential minefields than battleline. However, column is not very good when you encounter enemy ships. My intuition tells me that my formula should probably square the Mine factor in the denominator, which would require a much bigger constant on the top to get the percentages back up to 1% and 50% for the extremes. Linear equations are so much easier to solve though. 1% is probably way to high a probabliltiy for 1 mine though. Think of a 20x20 square plane and you move your fleet single file through one of those squares. You have a 1/400 chance to hit a mine if its range is its own square. If its range is 1, 9 out of 400. If you have 100 mines with range 1, each covers 9 squares, so you need about 33 to cover the whole grid. That means, moving single file, your fleet should detonate at most 3 mines out of 100. The other 97% are still undetected. Minesweaping is methodical and should take lots of time. Lets say that space mines drift around a bit, to fill in the wholes, so you cannot remember the path through. If they drift fast, you ought to be able to detect the buggers.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Yeah, but I don't want to think about it that much. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Note: You can mod direct-fire weapons for mines. I've done it and seen them work when deployed in combat much like satellites, but I never tried to lay those types of mines and see what happens when you cross into their location in strategic movement. Will the mines fire their weapons? Or will they fire and then ram like 'regular' mines even if they don't have warheads? Or will they just ram without using their direct-fire weapons? Would be really cool if they would fire their weapons but not ram. Effectively a bunch of 'ambush' satellites. Normal sats will just let you pass by when they are cloaked. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In the new patch mines will NOT attack if they have a 'special' damage type and the ships do not have any components that would be damaged by them. So, you can make effective 'anti-engine' minefields if you want to.

The coverage problem is why all mines should not be able to attack all ships that enter a sector. We've been proposing various 'probability' schemes for years now. I suggest that you send these ideas to MM directly. The more people he knows are unhappy with the way mines currently work the more likely he is to finally change something.

[ August 15, 2002, 23:20: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

IMHO mines are useful even in the later game because it forces your enemy to build and maintain minesweepers.
This is also my biggest argument against the "armor-mine" modification Geoschmo proposed: minesweeping component are only useful to sweep mines, nothing else. There is your decision how much resources you want to invest to be protected against minefields. Armor however is most useful in (almost) all combat situations and therefore you just end up with an increased importance of armor compared to shields.
I still think one more line in the vehicle.txt file for mines as:
"Probability to be cleared = 100"
would be great and not too difficult to implement.
If the value is lower than 100, some of the otherwise cleared mines will be missed by the minesweeping and will damage your ships.
Then you could make higher mine levels useful.
At the moment I gave small and medium mines in my mod lower cloak levels and therefore they can be detected by higher gravitic sensors. But besides that I don't see any reason to use larger mines now.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">WARNING: ONLY SPECULATIONS, NO TESTED FACTS AHEAD http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I think mines do not "ram" ships, because for ramming you have to move which is not possible for mines, but they explode and do the damage. And they always are destroyed by the explosion. The entire minefield damage is managed differently as a combat by SE IV. So I doubt very much that direct fire weapons would work as direct fire weapons in mines.
Another specialty of mines is that they skip shields. So if you put warheads with "engines only" damage, the damage should be done skipping the shields (in contrast to the combat effect now with the new patch) but also skipping armor because the damage is specific to engines only. That might be quite dangerous mines!

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

For me, the best combination is the probability of sweep and various types of mines.
Right now, the mines only do standard damage.
I'm thinking about mines that destroy engines, shield generators (emp/ion), master computers (virus), eat resources, cloack systems, etc.
With various types of mines and only a % acuracy in sweep, the minefields can be real dangerous... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Right now if you can constroy a sweep with 20 level V sweep, the minefileds are no more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Or, if you get really crazy with the mine-per-sector limit (i.e. 1000 mines per sector), 40 LC's with sweepers... I think THAT would be prohibitive, even for some of the more experienced players. Granted, you could start using larger ship hulls, but it still requires a lot of sweepers (200 sweeper V components, to be precise); that's a lot of dedicated mine sweeper ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

The problem with raising the mines per sector limit is that it makes mines potentially invincible. All you have to do is pile enough up in one place. We need some sort of uncertainty in actual effect for both mines and sweepers. Keep emailing MM. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Raising the mines per sector limit just makes the current problem worse. It makes mines that much more devestating early, and they are still jsut as irrelevant once you get enough sweepers to deal with the maximum possible number.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mines aren't the only way to acheive this. Repairing is critical for the roll to victory. Without repairing then every combat has a chance of slowing or halting the advance.
If you could only repair components at bases and planets then the end game would be a campaign, with the invading player's fleet whittling away or him spending time colonising, building bases or waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
This gives the defender more time to build ships and planetry defences might be useful.

Askan

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mines aren't the only way to acheive this. Repairing is critical for the roll to victory. Without repairing then every combat has a chance of slowing or halting the advance.
If you could only repair components at bases and planets then the end game would be a campaign, with the invading player's fleet whittling away or him spending time colonising, building bases or waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
This gives the defender more time to build ships and planetry defences might be useful.

Askan</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You are absolutely right about the enormous importance of repair. But your idea to restrict repair to bases and planets is extremely easy to implement: change the allowed vehicle types for repair components and space yards from bases/ships to bases only.
There are however major problems with this modification: 1.) You could never build bases outside the orbit of planets and therefore remote mining and ring-/sphereworlds would be impossible.
2.) You could not repair ships that have lost their engines. Human players would have to send killer ships to destroy these wrecks but the AI would be lost with this problem.

[ August 18, 2002, 06:42: Message edited by: Q ]

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Remove the repair ability from Space Yard components.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oooo, this has potential. SY components have no repair ability, and Repair bays are only mountable on bases. So you have to build repair bases during campaigns into enemy territory; repair bases that would have to be defended or scrapped (and then built all over again). The only other option would be to build colonies in enemy territory, (which has it's own inherent risks involved, ie. population captured by the enemy. Reduce the build rate of the SY components so that such bases take, say, 5 or 10 turns to build....

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That would indeed solve problem number 1. But the second problem would still remain.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

No it doesn't. Build a repair base there to repair the engine-less ship. Same problem as #1. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Well... not for the AI, but AIs don't repair their ships very well as it is. And this type of game would seem to be needing Human players anyways.

Askan, another tid-bit: you can mod repair bays to fit on satellites, and they will work perfectly fine (when the satellites are launched into space). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif May not be a good thing for your idea per se. But, if this is the only way to repair, it at least takes an extra turn to get the repairs started. And, you can't repair while moving.

[ August 18, 2002, 07:20: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That would indeed solve problem number 1. But the second problem would still remain.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, since we're modding, we could also mod in a smaller base hull, just big enough to hold command structures and a small repair bay that only repairs 1 component per turn. The smaller repair base should be buildable quickly, but as long as the bigger base with full sized repair bays is significantly more effecient at repairs/turn, the desired effects should hold...

EDIT=typos

[ August 18, 2002, 07:25: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

My point is just that the restriction of repair would create more problems than its benefit is worth. That is of course just my humble opinion. If we want to prevent a fleet from going indefinitely from one combat to the other why not play without quantum reactor and solar panels? No matter how much supply ships you have in your fleet sooner or later you will run out of supplies and you need either to return or conquer an intact colony and build a resupply depot.

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Why not do both of those things? Limit repairs to bases/planets and remove the quantum reactor (and maybe the solar panel - or maybe just make it generate supplies more slowly). It's certainly an interesting thought.

Of course, if MM would implement tugs, the whole idea would work even better - then you could tow derelict ships (either out-of-supply or all engines damaged) back to a repair base. (I know, in the current Version, to move an out-of-supply ship all you need to do is fleet it with another ship that still has supplies; but a tug could be used to grab the ship WITHOUT fleeting, and therefore without having to share supplies and only spend supplies on the tug's engines, not both ships' engines).

Re: Question, Armor and mines
 

Large mine fields could have their omnipotence reduced if the maximum number of mines attacking a given fleet was controlled by the number of ships in the fleet.

Example, suppose a fleet was attacked by 10 mines per ship. Now 2000 mines only mean multiple fleets will have to deal with the mines, but a single fleet doesn't have an impossible mass to deal with.

Then add components that fit into mines that improve their seeking (would have to be a new ability), increasing the number of mines that attack each ship. So maybe with advanced seeking heads, 15 mines per ship might attack.

Further, add another component (with yet another new ability) that makes the mines more difficult to destroy. Say add a "-1 mine destroyed per minesweeper" ability. Then, higher tech levels would balance out by keeping minesweeping components in check.

Optionally, make minesweepers have a chance to hit, and use Combat To Hit components to make mines harder to sweep.

Actually, giving to hit chance would be nice. Then allow/require mine sweeping components to double up shots on missed mines at 1/2 chance of hitting.

For example, say 200 mines are attacking and you can sweep 200 mines. Further, lets say you have a 90% to hit (just out of a hat). You kill the first 9 mines, but the 10th slips by. You take a second shot at 45% chance to hit, but miss that too. That mines damages your fleet (should automatically, or nearly always, hit a minesweeper, probably, allowing you to lose minesweeping components before you get a chance to use them). So, you've killed 9 mines and 1 blew up and hurt a ship. You've also used 11 of your 200 shots. Repeat for the remaining 190 mines waiting to attack you, the Last of which (since you only have 189 sweeps left) will get through safely.

Adding chances for mines to hit would be nice. Proximity warhead with bonus to hit but doing less damage could be cool. Proximity heads could also be harder to sweep (penalty to be hit) since they must be destroyed earlier [extra special would be reducing the chance to be hit for only double up shots, but that's a brand new ability, and probably not worth it].