The Cloaking Minister and Minesweepers

[Slick]

I created a separate thread on this just so that everyone has a better chance of seeing it. I mentioned in another thread:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...t=2#Post304644

that a friend told me of a method to overcome the "minesweepers don't uncloak to sweep mines" problem. Well I tested it and there is a partial solution with some other rammifications in the game. First, I'd like to say that I don't consider this an exploit and I checked with one of the Moderators and he does not consider it an exploit either.

Simply use the Cloaking Minister. [How could anyone consider using a Minister an exploit?] In simultaneous games the Cloaking Minister will uncloak minesweepers just prior to engaging a KNOWN or MANUALLY TAGGED minefield, even if the ship was cloaked when you hit "end turn". If the Cloaking Minister does uncloak the minesweeper to sweep mines (or suspected mines), the minesweeper will end that turn UNCLOAKED. If the Cloaking Minister remains on, he will probably re-cloak the minesweeper at the start of the next turn, if not manually done by the player. The Cloaking Minister will NOT uncloak minesweepers when encountering UNKNOWN minefields; in this case, ship(s) will take mine damage as usual without any minesweeping.

I can see some rammifications to gameplay:

- Players can place manually tagged minefields in sectors of high probability of mines (warp points, planets, etc.) to aid their minister on uncloaking; this also keeps the ship cloaked for the max amount of time. Guessing wrong or encountering minefields in random sectors could make this tactic unpopular.

- Not Tested, but probable: the Cloaking Minister will probably act the same way when used while attacking ships/fleets/planets such that the attacking ship/fleet will stay cloaked until just prior to attack. This assumes that the attacking ship/fleet can "see" the target. Someone else can test this to be certain. I only tested this with the Cloaking Minister engaged on my minesweepers with all other ministers off. There is a small chance that using other ministers might modify this behavior.

- This in no way allows bypassing mines nor sweeping them while cloaked. Also, minesweepers will be visible after sweeping in all cases for at least 1 turn. All this really does is allow a player with superior cloak tech to get closer before uncloaking.

- Now that this is general knowledge, each player can decide if this is something they wish to do and/or agree upon for multiplayer games. Hopefully nobody gets upset that I posted this.

Slick.