Should large mines be counted as three mines for sweepers?

[Suicide Junkie]

I think that having larger mines have more hitpoints against minesweepers is a good idea.

Say 10, 15, 20 HP for the mines,
and a minesweeper does 10 damage per hit.
(MS V gets five shots.)
Then, large mines are harder to kill, but not too much more.

[Nitram Draw]

The way I thought mine worked was each mine attacked a ship and if , after taking the armor into effect, the ship was destroyed then the next mine attacked the next ship. If the first mine did not kill the ship, all damage was considered repaired and the next mine attacked the ship and so on. Is this correct?
If it is then there is a good reason to build large mines, as they can do more damage. If not then large mines don't appear to be very useful. I have only used small mines so I don't know how it works exactly.

[rdouglass]

Also, take into account that Organic Armor III can basically ignore all mines except Large Mine w/ 2 Warhead III's. It has been stated in other threads, so check 'em out. Organic tech is pretty powerful as it is - if you only use small mines (per discussion below) you will NOT be effective against Organic tech.

Also IMO, a mine is a mine is a mine.... Sweeper I, sweep 1 mine, Sweeper II sweep 2 mines, etc..

[AJC]

I dont think the large mines should be considered three mines.

the game allows for 5000 units.

[This message has been edited by AJC (edited 10 April 2001).]

[Aussie Gamer]

I say increase the limit of units in space and leave the mines alone.

If you shoot a explosive device, no matter it's size, you basically stuff it. It would be disabled or destroyed by the gun shoot.

So one mine per sweeper gun is realistic.

If you want to protect the large mines then either mix in unarmed small mines, cheapness!, or design a dummy mine which is very cheap and weighs only 1kt. This would add more realism than changing the sweep/ mine ratio.
Why don't you also have a high level mine head which skips armour!!!! So much for high level organic armour <insert evil laugh!>

[This message has been edited by Aussie Gamer (edited 10 April 2001).]

[Daynarr]

Nitram Draw and rdouglass, you have it wrong. The damage done is not per mine but per warhead. Each warhead in mine will hit ship separately, so it won't make any difference if you are using small mine with Warhead I or large mine with Warhead I. You will only make more hits, but won't be able to penetrate organic armor (100 mine warhead I damage vs. 150 organic armor 3) or any armor that has such resistance (like crystalline or stealth armor).

Basically in order to penetrate high resistance armor you need better warhead that makes better punch. Usually mine warhead II is enough to penetrate all armor.

Large mines have purpose in later games when large class starships come into game. When a fleet of 50 dreadnoughts enters a minefield (with restriction of 100 mines per sector) you won't be able to destroy them with 100 small mines, but large mines will do the job.

[AJC]

[quote]Originally posted by Aussie Gamer:
[b]I say increase the limit of units in space and leave the mines alone.


during a recent game I had 1400+ units in space. I set the limit to 5000 units. You can make this the default in the settings.txt file as well as bump it up during set up.