[geoschmo]

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