How come there are no satelite sweepers?

[gregebowman]

I was in a game awhile back, and there were minefields and satelite Groups stationed at warp points. I could create a fleet of minesweepers, but how come I can't create a fleet of satelite sweepers? It seems to me that the principle would be the same. The only solution I could come up with was to create drones, and send them in one at a time. It's really the first time I used drones, so maybe there's a better way of doing that. What can one do?

[Fyron]

Satellites are NOT mines in any sense, nor are they similar to them in any sense. They are essentially small automated space stations (think of those satellites orbiting Earth in various episodes and movies of Babylon 5). Satellite sweepers are various weapons, such as DUCs, APBs, etc.

[Suicide Junkie]

Satellite sweepers are just regular weapons...
Shoot 'em with your guns and they die.

[Wardad]

and Point Defense - ouch!

[Atrocities]

You can mod a new weapon that targets Satellites only. Call that your Sate Sweeper.

[Arkcon]

I make a couple ships per fleet with only one weapon and loads of point defence. They really do slice through sats, even 100 of them. This point defence ship is good for the hordes of missiles the AI has left on its homeworld or fighters, as well.

I've tried to see if sats can be useful late game, I lay sats with shields, sats with armor, weapons sats. But they are very easy to cut down by the average fleet. With the bonuses the TDM modpack races take, even regular weapons just slice through.

[Karibu]

Yup. Sats are pretty useless in stock game. However, some mods give them good uses. For example Devnull mod missiles are half the size and satellites have more space. Furthermore, the mod includes one-shot missiles which takes only 10 kt of space. Therefore you can put 7 missiles in one small sat and if you put 100 of them in one place... I would call that a place I would not want to be.

[Lord_Shleepy]

But SHOULD satellites be useful? In my humble opinion satellite effectiveness (and mine effectiveness for that matter) should only be taken so far...or absurd...or, mostly, just plain boring...situations can result. Ships are at the heart of SEIV gameplay...they add motion and unpredictability to a game. Allowing heaps of static...yet practically impregnable...defenses to sprout up around every major warp point can lead to an extremely tedious game where a petty potentate can rout the galaxy's finest by simply churning out swarms of bland little death bots. Endless sat/mine sweeping drudgery has no honor and little entertainment value.

[gregebowman]

Originally posted by Lord_Shleepy:
But SHOULD satellites be useful? In my humble opinion satellite effectiveness (and mine effectiveness for that matter) should only be taken so far...or absurd...or, mostly, just plain boring...situations can result. Ships are at the heart of SEIV gameplay...they add motion and unpredictability to a game. Allowing heaps of static...yet practically impregnable...defenses to sprout up around every major warp point can lead to an extremely tedious game where a petty potentate can rout the galaxy's finest by simply churning out swarms of bland little death bots. Endless sat/mine sweeping drudgery has no honor and little entertainment value.

Well, it was getting pretty tedious sending one drone at a time thru this warp point. I usually don't deploy mines or sats unless someone else does, then it's usually a matter of catching up. So, as someone mentioned below, if I create a ship that's pretty much all armor and one good weapon that can be used against satellites, then that can be my sat. sweeper? I'll have to try that the next time the situation occurs.

[Sinapus]

One at a time? In turn-based mode you can select a group of them and they'll go through the warp point at the same time. (If they reach the warp point before they run out of movement. Otherwise, the next turn one drone goes through and you have to tell the others to follow for some reason.)

I don't know what it's like in simultaneous.

Otherwise, I kind of like it. Had a game over the weekend where there were 200 satellites (yes, I upped the limit) waiting for my minesweepers. Since the defender fires first and all of them were in range, well, they didn't come back.