Mine Follies

[The Puke Empire]

MoonDragon, if u don't use boarding, I'm sure you will lose some of the battles or even colonies. I dont use it cuz it makes things too easy, the AI never had security stations.

[geoschmo]

I only research mine tech to get sweepers. I am not a fan of fixed defenses (mines or bases) or the micro-managing it takes to maintain a mine field. I prefer ships/troops and am usually expanding so fast it doesn't make sense to throw up a mine field. I think I would probably use them as a planetary defense to protect against a sneak attack in a multi player game, but I have yet to see the AI use that particualar tactic.

HAL! We are on the edge of our seats. Please tell us what happened in your game. Were you able to fight back the invading hordes or did you finally fall to there onslaught?

[Sinapus]

Maintaining a minefield doesn't take much micromanaging. Build a minelayer, pick one planet to manufacture the mines and use the repeat command to have the minelayer pick up and launch mines at the warp point you want to mine. As the minefield gets swept/used up by blown up ships build some more mines on the planet.

I was wondering one thing: is it possible to sweep mines while you are at peace with someone? (Might be grounds for declaring war, but still...)

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough
to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a
pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors
come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless
eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your
associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[Tomgs]

If you have a non agression or higher treaty with someone their mines are not affected by you nor you by them. They will be as open space to you because they are invisible and they will not detonate when you pass through. If there is another race around that has no treaty with them you may notice the dissapearing ships around the wormholes though.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 10 January 2001).]

[MoonDragn]

If I don't use boarding its still not too hard. The computer just doesn't know how to build ships.. In the early game a good ship with Phased weapons will destroy their ships easy. In the late game some imaginative ship design will always beat them in tactical
In any game I always expand too fast so by mid game I got half the galaxy conquered
Its easy to conquer in a way that there are only a few points of entry into your empire...
The only vulnerable spot I see is still intelligence, when you got all the AIs sending intelligence attacks at you, its not very defendable at all, you just can't make enough projects to defend against all of them.

[rdouglass]

To Seawolf:

Another reason you may not be able to directly give the command "Sweep Mines" for your sweeper is if there is another "marked" minefield in the path that your ship travels to the minefield you want to sweep. Any ship (It seems) will not go thru a marked minefield. The only way that I know of to "unmark" the minefield is to send a ship there.

For instance, if a marked minefield is on a warp point, you may have to tell it (the ship) to go to the other side of the warp point, then "warp", THEN proceed onto the sector you want to sweep.

This was also in SE3, and can be a pain if you don't have "ship trails" turned on. It happened to me once: Had a good fleet just finished capturing a nice AI system. I sent a scout ship to the other side of a warp point and found a minefield and another nice AI system. The minefield damaged my scout and it couldn't move. I then gave the command to my fleet to attack one of the better planets in the new system. Unfortunately there was another path to that system thru 3 other systems! It (the fleet) took the long way around 'cause the minefield where the scout ship was was still marked. I did not realize the fleet took that route untill 3-4 turns later. Meanwhile, the AI went and toasted my scout, went thru that WP, and I lost quite a bit of "slave population" 'cause the AI just glassed the planets I had taken only a few turns ago.

[HAL]

Mostly messed around with my machine race Last night, but did put in a few turns on my Halogen game. It is looking very grim.

The AI swept part of my minefield and then punched through a 10 BB, 15 CR, and 5 CL fleet. My pitiful 5 CR and 1 CL minesweeper fled before them. I kept hearing that line from Return of the Jedi, "We can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" I am now down to six systems. I remain hopeful though. The system I just lost was a speed bump system. I have been building up behind it, and may yet be able to turn the tables.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.