Fighters vs Mines Question

[tbontob]

Newbie question about fighters.

1) Are fighters destroyed when they encounter mines?

2) Can fighters cause damage to a planet?

There is nothing in the newbie fax on this and I would think the answer to both is yes, but confirmation would be appreciated.

I am in the middle of doing a turn in a complex PBW game and am unable to test the above.

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by tbontob:
Newbie question about fighters.

1) Are fighters destroyed when they encounter mines?

There is a line in the Settings textfile that controls this. In the unmodded game it's set to "true", which means yes they are.

2) Can fighters cause damage to a planet?

By weapons or ramming?

The ability of weapons to hit a planet is set in the Components text file. As long as that weapon has "planet" in its weapon target line, it will hit a planet. I think unmodded fighter weapons can hit planets, but I don't recall exactly.

Fighters can ram planets.

[tbontob]

Thanx General

[trooper]

Originally posted by tbontob:
Newbie question about fighters.
2) Can fighters cause damage to a planet?
PBW game and am unable to test the above.

Of course they can... missile pods can make lots of damages to planet facilites. Beam weapons are less deadly, but they Last during the whole combat...

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by tbontob:
Newbie question about fighters.

1) Are fighters destroyed when they encounter mines?

Yes, they are. I tried using them to sweep mines in a PBW game, but some people see it as an exploit to use fighters, drones, or colony ships to soak up damage from a known minefield. Malfador may have changed some things lately to prevent this.

[wanker]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
I tried using them to sweep mines in a PBW game, but some people see it as an exploit to use fighters, drones, or colony ships to soak up damage from a known minefield. Malfador may have changed some things lately to prevent this.[/QB]

Out of curiosity, what is explotive about using fighters, drone or colony ships as mine sweepers? I could understand that fighters may not be able to set them off due to size (i.e. too small of mines to target) but drones and colony ships?

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by wanker:
Out of curiosity, what is explotive about using fighters, drone or colony ships as mine sweepers? I could understand that fighters may not be able to set them off due to size (i.e. too small of mines to target) but drones and colony ships?

The drone warhead component and the colonization component have lots of hit points. An early Version of SE4 had the mine explosive warhead do so little damage, with no partial damage stored ... therefore, one drone, or one colony ship, resulted complete sweeping of a 200 unit minefield.

That exploit has been removed.

There's still an unspoken stigma against using non-minesweepers against minefields. I don't really understand it myself.

[Taera]

drones, it makes complete sense to me to use those projectiles to set off mines - after all thats how you do it without proper minesweepers.

As for fighters doing damage to planets, they actually do, and they're good at it. I once tried this interesting setting in SP against the AI, i gave all my battlecruisers or battleships (dont remember) a fighter bay or two and loaded them with fighters with small napalm bombs... they're good at it! if there are no targets, they just stay out of combat... if there are... woe to the planet! they pump out some neat damage with those - 90 damage per shot, ROF of two. is it a problem to have 50 fighters flying around?

[Fyron]

I am in the middle of doing a turn in a complex PBW game and am unable to test the above.

You can always open a second copy of SE4.

The drone warhead component and the colonization component have lots of hit points. An early Version of SE4 had the mine explosive warhead do so little damage, with no partial damage stored ... therefore, one drone, or one colony ship, resulted complete sweeping of a 200 unit minefield.

The amount of damage done by the warheads was never changed. It was the low level warheads that were exploitable because they do not do enough damage individually to destroy a colony module, SY, strong drones, etc. The only change was that the mine damage is now stored and stacks if no comps are destroyed by a warhead.

[ July 08, 2003, 19:56: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Slynky]

I might have initially thought, when I was newer to a game, that fighters could "soak" up mines thinking that one mine would be used up to destroy one fighter. But these days, I guess fighters are considered a stack and therefore, there would be no "soaking" of mines.