Minefield Limit Loophole

[Beck]

I haven't much experience using minefields in previous games and have been using them more in my current game. I thought the current Version (and from some time ago) had reduced the limit to minefields to 100. I have discovered that this is not a hard limit. If the minefield had say, 97 mines in it, the game allowed my single minelayer to lay its maximum allowance of 32 mines (has 16 minelayer III's) to bring the total in the minefield to 129 mines. Any further attempts while the minefield was above 100 would result in the error message about the limit of 100 mines to a sector. So it appears the game only engages the limit on laying mines once the threshold has been reached and does not prevent you from laying mines in excess if done all at once while under the limit. As I only have the one minelayer I haven't been able to test having a fleet of minelayers attempt to add to a field to see how high above 100 one can get.

You should report that bug to Malafador ! 100 mines is enough without making it unpredictable to boot...

[rdouglass]

It must be checking the count before it deploys sats or mines instead of during It does the same thing with sats.

Personally, that fix would be quite low on MY priority....unless of course PBEM's (and such) abuse happens. I know I have a sat layer that says (in the spec's) it will launch 60 per turn and I have put 105 on Warp Points routinely (15 at a time in Repeat mode 'till full). If someone built a baseship loaded with Sat or mine layers, could they potentially lay say 250 or so mines??

You quoted a 32 mine max - was that a limit of your ship / tech config or a game limit??

[Q]

I too think this is not a relevant bug. If you don't like over 100 mines in a sector you may reduce this number in the settings text file. For me personally this is not important, I prefer this uncertainty: even if your fleet has the ability to sweep 100 mines, your not 100% sure that all mines are gone!

[Nitram Draw]

I agree with Q, the more uncertainty the better.

[Suicide Junkie]

I don't see why there should be any limit to the number of units in a sector, so I always set the unit limits to 10,000.
You can always sweep out a minefield if you build wave after wave of sweeper ships, and sats & fighters can be rammed quite effectively when you emerge from a wormhole.

I have not used fighters since the first week I got the game because they die too easily. Something just occurred to me though which would make them very usefull ! Launch them on the strategic map one at a time into different squares and have THEM sweep the minefield one at a time ! Put just a cockpit and engines on, making them really cheap. So if you are not able to sweep free with a minesweeper, you might be able to clear it with fighters....

[zen.]

The DevNullMod (I've installed but haven't played), I think, allows Point Defense to shoot down mines. This certainly gives even regular combat ships some chance of taking down a few mines. Although IMHO, if ships can shoot down mines, more than 100 mines per sector should be set.

In a related question, how many thousands of units/ships do y'all set before it actually -slows down- your computer/turn processing? I've kept my units at 4000 and 2000 ships per empire, but haven't played a game to that point yet.

zen

[raynor]

quote:

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I have not used fighters since the first week I got the game because they die too easily.

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Fighters die entirely too easy if you launch them from carriers in a strategic battle. But they are immensely powerful if you launch the fighters in one large group *before* entering combat and then fight the battle.

[Nitram Draw]

Especially with the bug in the to hit/to miss modifier! The only drawback to large Groups of fighters is IF you get hit by a high damage weapon you have more potential losses and they still die like flies to dedicated PD ships.