[WhiteHojo]

Found I forgot to finish my thought in that Last post...So my thought is this - if you could a) either modifiy the armor comp'nt to include some type of minesweeping ability (leave out the "real life problems and realistic arguments", I'm goin for game balance here) or maybe modify the shield comp'nts also since all races seem to use either armor or shields in their designs or b) somehow alter the design files of all races to include some form of minesweeper comp'nt in all designs, maybe a smaller Version of the minesweeper comp'nt wouldn't this lessen the impact of mines? Some may say just reduce the damage done but I've found that the amount of damage from mines is not cumulative on the ships, nor does the amount of damage done per mine appear to be the total of the damage of the warheads in each mine. Ex done in test - colony ship w/1 colony unit (200 dam res'tnce), 1 crew,bridge&life suprt @ 10dam per, 5 engines @ 20 dam res'tnce per & 2 armor at 40 dam rest'nce per enters minefield w/19 sm mines w/100kt warhead (2 per mine). Ship is damaged but not destroyed - every result is 1 col unit undamaged and 1 random unit left undamaged... so it appears that each warhead damage is calculated by itself and the damage done to a comp'nt does not carry over to the next warhead... doesn't make much sense but it's the only explanation that fits. So reducing the amount of damage each warhead does would render all mines worthless - which is not my goal - just to make em less effective and unbalanced.

sorry for the long Posts