mines and fighters

[raynor]

Originally posted by PeterD:
Does anyone have an opinion on whether mines
are better in or out of the game.

For their roleplay effect, mines are awesome. But the AI does have some problems dealing with them. If a human player encounters a mine field blocking access to a warp point s/he wants access to, the human player will likely shift production to solely build ships with mine sweeping components on them. The AI does not have this capability. The AI is designed to maintain a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet. As those ships are destroyed, the AI will build more. But it is doing this because it has been coded to always keep a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet and not because it has encountered a mine field.

When the AI bonus is set to low or none, I think the human player can severely hamper the AI players through the use of mines. On medium and high bonus, the AI researches faster and builds faster, and mines are less effective, in my opinion.

[Suicide Junkie]

Mines can be fixed by reducing the limit per sector, cutting down the damage each does, and removing sweepers.

Then you can plow through them and take some damage in order to secure territory, instead of either being wiped out or sweeping them all harmlessly.

[Atrocities]

Mines and fighters become nearly obsolete by mid to late game. So don't focus to much upon them after you have a good level in mine sweeping and point defense tech.

[PeterD]

Thanks for all the advice

[PeterD]

The AI does seem to build a lot of sweepers. Can
this number be altered?

In settings the number of mines/sector is set at
100. Is this per wormhole or in the whole sector
map?

[Alneyan]

The limit is per sector, so you can put 100 mines in every single sector of a given system.

The main use for units (that is, fighters, with possibly some drones thrown in for good measure) is when you have a rather long period of peace, allowing you to build a host of such units without any maintenance. But in such cases, you should either go for big or stay home, as one or two hundred fighters won't do much against even a moderate fleet.

However, the main problem of units is to strike the enemy, since fighters cannot warp and drones aren't the most versatile hull around. So good luck for sending these fighters against an enemy fleet when warp openers are running. Now if Warp Openers are not available, a few thousand fighters would make for a very nice taskforce for your defence.

Mines might remain useful even in the endgame, if you use them to bother your foe by putting them in his systems for example. If Warp Openers are disabled, you might also use them to make scouting your systems harder, requiring a minesweeper just to reach the other side of the wormhole alive. Or in short, an opportunity may arise for you to use mines, but you shouldn't hope them to do much good to repel this fleet of three hundred warships currently heading for your homeworld.

[ May 30, 2004, 09:56: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by raynor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by PeterD:
Does anyone have an opinion on whether mines
are better in or out of the game.

For their roleplay effect, mines are awesome. But the AI does have some problems dealing with them. If a human player encounters a mine field blocking access to a warp point s/he wants access to, the human player will likely shift production to solely build ships with mine sweeping components on them. The AI does not have this capability. The AI is designed to maintain a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet. As those ships are destroyed, the AI will build more. But it is doing this because it has been coded to always keep a certain number of mine sweeping ships in its fleet and not because it has encountered a mine field.

When the AI bonus is set to low or none, I think the human player can severely hamper the AI players through the use of mines. On medium and high bonus, the AI researches faster and builds faster, and mines are less effective, in my opinion.

---

Actually, the AI is indeed smart enough to react when it encoutners mines. Not as well as a human, of course, but it does have the ability to respond. It will try to research mine sweepers if it doesn't have them, for example, and will send mine sweepers to the just hit minefield if this is possible. Exactly how extensive these 'special' routines are I can't say, since I don't have the source code to the game. But this is what MM has told us in the beta forums.