How minesweeper work

[Cipher7071]

Baron, do you mean it's a button to order a ship to sweep mines at a certain location? Similar to ordering one to lay satellites at a certain location?

[geoschmo]

I thought the reason for the sweep button was basically a manual override for the "Ships should not move into known mine fields" empire option. Normally when you have that checked your ships won't move into a minefield, even if given the "move to order", right? I may have that wrong, that's just alsways been my assumption.

[Cipher7071]

That would make sense, Geo.

[Parasite]

I have had a minesweeper in a hex mined by an ally. When we went to war, I could not sweep the mines in that hex. I believe I didn't even get the button because the ships were fleeted. After removing them from the fleet, I swept mines in the hex to no effect.

The mines did not get removed while I stayed in that hex.

I was unsure of what happened at the time, but it looks like the discussion here explains it.

[Fyron]

That is not a very useful feature then.

[Grandpa Kim]

Geo, you can order ships to move to a known minefield and they will move to it. Trusting little buggers aren't they?

But I agree with Fyron. It looks like the sweep mines button serves no useful purpose. The one thing it can do can also be done with a simple move to order.

[Slynky]

I would tend to disagree with both of you.

Though not necessarily useful, I suspect, assuming I understand its purpose correctly, it could provide the following use:

Let's suppose you do NOT want to turn off the "ships should avoid minefields" switch (in order to prevent a string of ships, for example, moving through the same minefield one after another). But, let's also suppose you have a fleet assembled with sweepers in it that you DO want to enter and sweep a minefield. Here is the use for the button.