Mining an enemy planet

[LintMan]

Has anyone tried placing mines on an enemy planet?

I had a fast (5 tactical move) minelayer ship that I used to attack an enemy planet that had 2x5 fighters, a cruiser, and a transport stationed at it. I ran the minelayer around the edge of the map laying 1-2 mines per turn. The enemy fighters and cruiser slowly followed, destroying the mines rather then chasing directly after the minelayer.

Combat expired after 30 turns with about 15 mines left in orbit with all the ships. I moved the minelayer away, but the enemy ships remained in the new minefield around that planet. It then stayed that way for many turns, with my mines and the enemy ships peacefully coexisting in orbit. Unfortunately, the demo turn limit hit before the enemy moved any new ships into orbit.

I'm curious - it this a bug? Should the enemy have triggered the mines the next turn (or at least have gone back into combat with them)? Would a newly arriving ship have triggered the mines even though the current ships didn't? If I was to send another ship there to fight, would the mines still be positioned in the same places I dropped them?

[Comar]

I suspect that a new ship entering the mine field would have set it off.

[Tomgs]

I Have mined enemy planets. The only way they go off if if another ship not a treaty partner with you goes into that sector. If it is a ship built in that sector they will not go off unless the ship leaves the sector and comes back, even if you initiate a combat with the ship in that sector. By the way it is a truely evil thing to offer a non aggression pact with someone then mine all their worlds and then break the treaty. But it works well to decimate large fleets.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 01 November 2000).]

[Comar]

Now that is evil. However, I suspect if you try it in a multi player game you will draw a reaction that will not be favorable for you. :}

[Repo Man]

Seems to me that mining an friendly AI should cause the AI to dislike you AND cause it to begin a minesweeping subroutine

[Tomgs]

You cannot detect that the mines are there until the treaty is broken or another race with no treaty goes into that sector and somehow tells you about it, that could happen with human players but not the computer players. Of course you may wonder why such and such a races ships always dissapear when they try to go through that warp point while you go through with no problems. As long as the treaty is on the mines are invisible I think I may be wrong but I have had other races mine places and I never saw the mines untill they were triggered.

[Comar]

True, but unless you have serious cloaking tech, the ship that lays them is not. I know I would be very curious about a minelaying ship that just happens to come visiting. Wouldn't you?

[Taqwus]

Sounds like a good use for the scanner tech. Without it, you can't look at their ship designs, IIRC, without entering tactical combat.

OTOH, in a multi-player game, you should probably be paranoid about ANY "allied" ships hanging around in your space -- be they minelayers, planetary bombers, or simply ship-killers...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Repo Man]

Then I guess the fix should be to make mines visible. This seems to be a pretty serious loophole.

[General Hawkwing]

It would be really interesting to have mines that you can trigger remotely. That way you could trigger them after combat if dropped during combat, or if the "mined" planet builds a ship. Damage would be less because it was not a direct impact. The damage would also be applied to all ships in the sector, regardless of empire.