Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed

[Deathstalker]

Recently, during my modding for the StarWars AI (to be released in a little while, still in beta testing) I decided to change how Mine Sweepers were used. Since shields do nothing when encountering a mine field I scrapped them entirely and went full armour. Worked great until stealth/scattering armor was discovered. Now all the ships auto-cloak and head for the minefield, then go 'boom' and do not sweep. It seems cloaked ships cannot sweep mines, really quite disturbing to see a dreadnought fully loaded with armour/sweepers get blown away by a few mines.

Hopefully MM can fix this, either by allowing cloaked ships to sweep or finding some way to 'de-cloak' them b4 hitting the field. Until then it seems my 'new' minesweeper is not quite worthwile.(although the armour does soak up quite a few mines, maybe I'll just replace ALL the components with armour, that might work).

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

[Magnum357]

I'm sorry, but I think I have to disagree with you. I think how it is now is more realistic and provides better game balance. First, It think it is more realistic because in my opinion, a clocked ship with minewarefare equipment (whatever that might be) would probably require active Emissions of energy (or whatever scanners and sensors use) to detect mines in space so the Mine component can destroy the mine. If you activated your ships specialized scanner equipment while clocked, enemy ships would be able to detect you at long distance and would make the clock useless. Secondly, if ships with cloaks were able to use mines effectily, it would give cloaked ships more advantages then uncloaked. Why build uncloaked minewarefare ships. To unbalancing in my opinion.

[Marty Ward]

You would think if it was a known minefield that the ship would automatically un-cloak and sweep the mines.
I don't see why cloaked ships can't sweep for the AI. What is the differance between them moving, uncloaking, sweeping and cloaking in one turn and sweeping while cloaked. At the end of the turn they are still cloaked.
Hopefully this will be fixed soon as the AI needs all the help it can get regarding mines.

[geoschmo]

Shields don't protect you against mines? What sense does that make? Is that confirmed?

Geo

[Lerchey]

Shields do not protect against mines. Shields are considered to be "tactical" components, and are only activated during combat. That's why they don't help against mines or damaging warp points. Armor never turns "on and off".

Lt. Col. John

[Erhardt]

ouch...This is news to me.

SO shield's do squat against mines?

Huh?

[Askan Nightbringer]

Well armour has to be good for something. Bit rough if shields have it over armour in every department.

The cloaked ships not sweeping sux a bit thou. In turned based it easy to decloak and recloak but there is no such luxury in simultaneous.

Askan
(my typing still sux)

[This message has been edited by askan (edited 04 June 2001).]

[Q]

The whole issue, if cloaked ships should be able to sweep mines, is a question of balance. In SE III where you couldn't detect cloaked ships at all (you just could prevent them entering a sector cloaked) cloaked minesweeper made mines practically obsolete. In SE IV cloaking is very weak and can be defeated easily by system wide acting scanners. So I think it would not be unbalanced, if you allow cloaked ships to sweep mines.

[Saxon]

Minesweepers really upset me, so I am happy to hear that they can not cloak. Mines are an important part of the game, they stop it from being too fast flowing and letting the fleet that wins one key battle from trashing empires. I may have lost my fleet, but you still need to get through my static defenses and a nice, visible minesweeper is a nice target for my slowly rebuilding fleet to aim at.

Most of my combat support vessles have a mine sweeper or two thrown in with the point defense and supply modules. It is not as specialized as it could be, but it does make the ship more flexible in those unpredictable situations. It also makes me more comfortable when dropping into a new system or a system I expect to be mined.

What do people think of this jack-of-all trades approach?

[Nitram Draw]

Guess it depends on how many mines you run into