SE4 Advanced brainstorming

[Suicide Junkie]

The problem with sweepers is that they all hit before any mines attack. So if you have sweepers, minefields go pfft.

You just bring enough for the max mines, and then you can fly full speed ahead without fear.
If you increase the maximum mines per sector, then the mines all get dumped on the warppoints... and if you don't bring enough sweepers, your fleet gets vaporized by hundreds of mines... if you do bring enough, you take no damage at all.
At warppoints, you can't see the mines on the far side anyways.

With no minesweepers and a low maximum on mines...
Your fleet moves, and takes a couple hits to armor. Each mine hits a random ship, so the damage is spread out. The low maximum means your fleet is not going to get vaporized.
A bunch of ships will lose a couple armor plates, and if you're unlucky, one of your ships may take two hits.
You can press on if there is low risk of counterattack while you are weak, stop to repair, or send unlucky ships home.


In any case, mines should definitely be a disableable tech area.

[Kana]

AT was talking about this in another thread.

Mines could be satellites or more than likely drones that have a combat move, cloak, with a kamakazi attack, and a warhead. You emplace them in a sector, hidden, when combat is initiated, they will seek the enemy ships, they have armor, and % chance to be hit or missed. Make appropriate 'minesweeping' weapons, and have these defend your fleet, once the mines or the enemy are destroyed, or combat turns run out, your down. Lather rinse repeat. I guess the only problem I can think f right now is if a cloaked sat will initiate a combat with out specific orders, IE automatically. Also they would be nasty if defending a WP, due to the close proximity to the WP.

If they are drones, I don't know if they will require supplies, and have their automatic self-destruct when they run out of supplies, but it could be considered a good form of maintenance on the minefields, by having to replace them occasionally.

[Suicide Junkie]

Combat only starts if a non-cloaked object can see an enemy.
But if you weren't planning on having minefields be stealthy, that would work.

Just launching zero-move drones (with afterburner ability for combat move) into a sector would work fairly well.
Having the monthly supply use until they fizzle would be quite effective at preventing an unlimited number of them from being stashed in a sector.

It will still result in piles instead of system-spanning fields, but that's not too bad.

You should probably include the option of cloaked dronemines; they would be useful around planets and at defense bases...
- Once combat starts with the enemy attacking your planet or base, the dronemines would activate and go forth to kill.

[Urendi Maleldil]

I like the idea of giving kamikaze satellites combat movement. I don't however like the idea of removing mine sweepers completely. I think it would be better to make them more cumbersome to use. For example, make them 100kT each, very expensive, damage first, remove a maximum of 2 mines per turn, and have a large combat to hit defense minus.

This way you couldn't just slap a few mine sweeping components onto a combat ship. You need some sort of dedicated ship. That ship would be large and expensive since you'll probably want to put more than one sweeper on it to be worthwhile. Therefore it will be slow to build, very weak in combat, and take up a large chunk of resources that could be better used for combat ships. And if the max mines per sector is 200 and a typical sweeper ship has 5 or 6 sweepers on it, the most it could remove per turn is 10 or 12 mines. Meaning it will take about 20 ships to clear a single maxed out mine field. And that's not all.

If the mines are not cloaked, it will be possible to force your opponent to choose which mine fields to clear and which to leave in place. A nice new strategic tool. Too bad the AI won't be able to use it.

[Suicide Junkie]

Combat accuracy does not in any way affect the number of mines a sweeper will kill. Every point of sweeping ability is a guaranteed mine kill BEFORE you enter combat.

[Urendi Maleldil]

I know that. The combat minus is to discourage putting mine sweeping components on combat ships.

[Suicide Junkie]

You mean a negative combat sensor ability?
I thought AIs were the only ones who put minesweepers on warships anyways (since they can't balance fleets)

As far as I know, all of the gnarled veterans simply make:
A stack of N dedicated minesweepers (N = max mine stack / number of mines swept per sweeper) plus a set of M warships (where M approaches infinity)

Dedicated sweepers don't need shields guns or armor, so they are far more efficient. And the warships get to use all their tonnage on guns and shields.
And critically important, you're not wasting any tonnage on superfluous sweepers if you add more ships to the fleet.


Think of my "remove minesweeper ability" suggestion as making minesweepers be "destroyed on use", with the bonus of protecting against direct fire too.

[Kana]

Suicide Junkie said:
Combat only starts if a non-cloaked object can see an enemy.
But if you weren't planning on having minefields be stealthy, that would work.

Just launching zero-move drones (with afterburner ability for combat move) into a sector would work fairly well.
Having the monthly supply use until they fizzle would be quite effective at preventing an unlimited number of them from being stashed in a sector.

It will still result in piles instead of system-spanning fields, but that's not too bad.

You should probably include the option of cloaked dronemines; they would be useful around planets and at defense bases...
- Once combat starts with the enemy attacking your planet or base, the dronemines would activate and go forth to kill.

You could have a bunch of cloaked kamikazi mines, and one command mine, so the command mine would intiate the combat, and the others would join in.

Would that work?

[Suicide Junkie]

Yes, but all of the mines in one stack would have the same visibility level.

You could also have a little mini-base with a SY and a drone launcher.
Repeat build dronemines, and launch drones with repeat orders on.
It builds up the field until they die from supplies as fast as they are built, and the uncloaked mini-base triggers the combat.