SE4 Advanced brainstorming

[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.

[Urendi Maleldil]

Do you guys know if the skip armor damage ability works vs weapon platforms?

[Suicide Junkie]

Units do not have armor, just a pile of hitpoints.

[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.

[douglas]

We're talking about drones here, they don't combine into stacks.

[Suicide Junkie]

Right. Mines would, drones wouldn't.

[Urendi Maleldil]

What do you guys think about adding standard tech ruin abilities to a majority of the planets in the game? That way you get a small random technology each time you colonize. That could lead to some nice research surprises and better reflect the way invention and inspiration strike people in real life. Of course, colonization would have to be slowed down a bit.

[Suicide Junkie]

Just make that an optional sectortypes.txt file.
Then you can make research disableable in the game setup, and presto, you have a Junkyardwars conversion.

[Urendi Maleldil]

That's not a bad idea. The mod will need a good ReadMe though so people know they can swap out one sectortypes file for another.