Fighters vs Mines Question
 

Newbie question about fighters. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

1) Are fighters destroyed when they encounter mines?

2) Can fighters cause damage to a planet?

There is nothing in the newbie fax on this and I would think the answer to both is yes, but confirmation would be appreciated.

I am in the middle of doing a turn in a complex PBW game and am unable to test the above.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There is a line in the Settings textfile that controls this. In the unmodded game it's set to "true", which means yes they are.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">By weapons or ramming?

The ability of weapons to hit a planet is set in the Components text file. As long as that weapon has "planet" in its weapon target line, it will hit a planet. I think unmodded fighter weapons can hit planets, but I don't recall exactly.

Fighters can ram planets.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

Thanx General http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Of course they can... missile pods can make lots of damages to planet facilites. Beam weapons are less deadly, but they Last during the whole combat...

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, they are. I tried using them to sweep mines in a PBW game, but some people see it as an exploit to use fighters, drones, or colony ships to soak up damage from a known minefield. Malfador may have changed some things lately to prevent this.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Out of curiosity, what is explotive about using fighters, drone or colony ships as mine sweepers? I could understand that fighters may not be able to set them off due to size (i.e. too small of mines to target) but drones and colony ships?

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The drone warhead component and the colonization component have lots of hit points. An early Version of SE4 had the mine explosive warhead do so little damage, with no partial damage stored ... therefore, one drone, or one colony ship, resulted complete sweeping of a 200 unit minefield.

That exploit has been removed.

There's still an unspoken stigma against using non-minesweepers against minefields. I don't really understand it myself.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

drones, it makes complete sense to me to use those projectiles to set off mines - after all thats how you do it without proper minesweepers.

As for fighters doing damage to planets, they actually do, and they're good at it. I once tried this interesting setting in SP against the AI, i gave all my battlecruisers or battleships (dont remember) a fighter bay or two and loaded them with fighters with small napalm bombs... they're good at it! if there are no targets, they just stay out of combat... if there are... woe to the planet! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif they pump out some neat damage with those - 90 damage per shot, ROF of two. is it a problem to have 50 fighters flying around? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You can always open a second copy of SE4.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The amount of damage done by the warheads was never changed. It was the low level warheads that were exploitable because they do not do enough damage individually to destroy a colony module, SY, strong drones, etc. The only change was that the mine damage is now stored and stacks if no comps are destroyed by a warhead. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ July 08, 2003, 19:56: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

I might have initially thought, when I was newer to a game, that fighters could "soak" up mines thinking that one mine would be used up to destroy one fighter. But these days, I guess fighters are considered a stack and therefore, there would be no "soaking" of mines.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

Slynky, my guess is you are right, although I haven't tested it.

I would think the effect is the same as shooting at a stack of sats...where more than one sat can be destroyed with a shot, more than one fighter can be destroyed by a mine.

[ July 09, 2003, 14:47: Message edited by: tbontob ]

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

If you are not talking about mines on the other side of a warp point, you *could* launch fighters in Groups of 1 (cumbersome at best in simultaneous games) as mine fodder. This way each fighter would take out a mine. In simultaneous games you would have to transfer fighters around to have only 1 fighter in the launching ship/base/planet each turn since even 1 Fighter Bay I will launch 4 fighters per game turn. I personally think this is too much trouble for my taste, though.

Slick.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

You can launch a stack of fighters, move them one at a time to separate sectors, then have them all head towards the minefield. In simultaneous games, they should arrive separately and trigger one mine each. You can do this if you really want to but yes, it is a lot of trouble.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Is there a way to break up a fighter stack in simultaneous games? I need to learn how to do this.

Slick.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

I think the only way is to launch from different sectors or on different turns. All fighters launched from the same sector where there are already fighters, or other launches in the same turn, will form one stack.

You need to launch each group in its own sector each turn to get multiple stacks.

So if you have a big fighter stack, have several carriers load from it, and then have them move to different system sectors and launch them. The launch capacity, and number of fighters aboard, a carrier, will determine the size of the group it launches.

Pretty limited and silly, but that's how it works.

PvK

[ July 10, 2003, 20:58: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

You can also build single fighters at many different locations, launching and moving them every turn. It will be a lot of trouble and probably not worth it.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

Just launch 'em from the factory each turn, and then move them to the military base separately.

Re: Fighters vs Mines Question
 

Yes, if they arrive at the same point from two or more different locations they will not combine into a single stack.