You know, I've just played a game of Stars! since I hadn't for a long time. I find the treatment of mines in Stars! to be MUCH more logical. Wouldn't it be great if a minefield in SE IV could be an attribute of a sector, like a storm is? You would just put a mine-layer equipped ship in a sector with the order to lay mines and a "minefield" would appear with the number of mines as an attribute. No screwing around with individual mines. I have to wonder why it was considered too much micro-management to have to build your missiles and carry them, but not considered too much for mines.
Anyway, a minefield in Stars! is just an area where you have a percentage chance to hit (or be hit - depending on your view of how mines work) by a mine. And, minefields DECAY with time as the mines get old and break down. Now there's a cool idea. If this were added to SE, suddenly you wouldn't be able to build mine defenses up to infinity (or the unit limit). You'd have to MAINTAIN your minefields. Either leave a mine layer "on patrol" in the sector or send one back periodically to renew the field.
You would not necessarily be completely destroyed when you hit a mine, either. So, you'd have crippled ships slowing a fleet down, or having to try to get home somehow, or getting slaughtered by a "sentry" fleet posted nearby. All much more realistic -- and interesting -- than guaranteed total annihilation. The percentage chance to hit a mine would have to be different in SE since the navigation grid is much "coarser" than in Stars! but otherwise this would translate quite well, I think. And it would save a lot of overhead on the game to not treat mines as individual units, just as it saves to not treat missiles as individual units. So, drop mines as units and add drones!
Re: Laying Mines problem since new Patch, Bug?
Threaded Mode