Oh, hey! This Sector - Damage ability works quite nicely, even on mine warheads. It does some very interesting things.
I made a mine warhead with standard warhead damage, and 20 points of sector damage per warhead. If you have no treaty with the person they can sweep your mines as normal and as long as they have enough sweepers to take care of all the mines they take no damage from the sector damage ability.
If however they have a treaty with you, they cannot sweep the mines and they do take damage from the mines. Your ships do as well, but you can self destruct the minefield if you want to get by and lay another one after you do. Finally mines that can stop your allies!
If you do this you have to keep the sector damage small though becase each warheads sector damage gets applied to every ship, and it does stack. Only 19 mines with two warheads with 20 points each destroyed my light cruiser. And since the damage is given to every ship that enters the field you could have 500 Light Cruisers and they would all be destroyed by the same 19 mines. A very expensive mistake if you have one of these protecting your planet and foget it's there. You could lose an entire fleet to your own field. And your ally could as well.
Key points.
- each warheads sector damage is applied to every ship that enters the field, keep the damage per warhead small.
- If an enemy hits the field the mines do detonate so they won't Last forever like a sat with this ability would
- can be swept like normal mines as long as you don't have a treaty
Perhaps this ability should be given to a specialized mine body instead of the warhead. One that cannot have standard warheads, and does not cloak. Thus it would act as sort of a beacon. "Do not pass here, even if you have a treaty. Off limits." That sort of thing. You could then have a slightly higher damage per mine, but they would still be sweepable by enemies.
Geoschmo