[Hotfoot]

Originally posted by Pooka:
Hmmm.....
How many mines does an escort suck up when running through? How many does a fighter suck up?

*ponders evil, evil designs*

Not enough to really be useful, I think. You're better off using dedicated minesweeper ships.

Will mines force cloaked ships to decloak? The big problem with sending minesweepers through is that it'd require me to fight off his fleet of 40+ ships which is /also/ parked there.

Cloaked ships will take full damage from mines, and cloaked minesweepers do not sweep mines. Mines ignore shields and do damage directly to the ship, starting with any armor they might have and then continuing until the ship is dead. Your best bet would probably be to make suicidal minesweepers (with tactics of "ram" and cobalt warheads as mentioned below) go through the WP uncloaked, but seperate from your main warfleet, at least if you want to avoid a straight-out fight. The minesweepers will die, which is regrettable, but if you're lucky, you'll have swept the mines away and cleared a path for your primary cloaked harassment fleet, as well as hopefully doing some damage to his fleet with your ramming minesweepers (don't count on that being very significant though, it would just be a nice bonus, if anything). Once your fleet has slipped through, you can start doing some serious damage. With any luck, you can get him to split his forces, maybe even making him think that you came around another way to attack. The more you make him spread out, the better it will be for you when you finally do invade in force.

Also, since your group seems to be heavy into the RP aspect, try to gain more allies, and maybe even slowly work at disrupting his alliances with others.