Mine grouping pains

thorfrog · #1 January 2nd, 2001, 06:32 PM

Is there any way to be able to group mines layed in a sector. It's becoming a pain to laye mines in a sector in Groups of 7. I have over 10 Groups of 7 in a sector and it makes it difficult to suffle through when you place your own fleet there.

Baron Munchausen · #2 January 2nd, 2001, 07:30 PM

quote:
Originally posted by atomannj:
Is there any way to be able to group mines layed in a sector. It's becoming a pain to laye mines in a sector in Groups of 7. I have over 10 Groups of 7 in a sector and it makes it difficult to suffle through when you place your own fleet there.

Once they have been deployed, no. You are stuck with a mine group once it has been created until it is "used up" or you self-destruct it. BUT... if you use "remote deploy" to lay your mines instead of doing it manually the new mines will be added to any existing mine Groups in the sector instead of a new group being created as it is in manual deployment. Weird, eh? So just use remote deployment to keep the number of mine Groups down.

thorfrog · #3 January 2nd, 2001, 08:54 PM

Thanks I'll try that.

Ebonyknight · #4 January 2nd, 2001, 09:19 PM

How do you remote control mines? I have been doing it manually because I couldn't do it remotely.

Seawolf · #5 January 2nd, 2001, 09:48 PM

Ebony,

Remote lay is a ship command not remote control. Onde laid mines need no control they just go boom.

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Seawolf on the prowl

Psitticine · #6 January 3rd, 2001, 12:09 AM

Umm, to expand a bit on Seawolf's post, to Remote Deploy units (including mines), you need to select the transport carrying the units and click on the Launch Units Remotely button on the command bar (it's in the top row, two to the right of the Launch/Deploy Units button and looks just like it except for having arrows going both in and out of the square launch bay) and than click on where you want the units to be deployed.

One feature of this order is that you don't get direct control over the number of units deployed. The transport will now go ahead and deploy all the units it can once it moves to the selected location.

I haven't used this feature since the new change in the number of units that can be launched in a strategic turn so I'm not sure if the ship will now only launch the most it can in one turn, carrying on launching in subsequent turns until empty, or if maybe Aaron forgot this bit and they'll all get dumped at once.

Sinapus · #7 January 3rd, 2001, 12:50 AM

It won't deploy all of them. It will deploy as many as it can in one turn, leaving the others in the bays. If you want to drop all mines in that place, then you would have to add an extra movement set that moved the ship away from the launch point then back at least one turn later to launch the rest of the mines.

Personally, I just altered the settings in components.txt to let you launch enough mines to empty the bays, but not to allow the "one mine layer plus a bunch of cargo bays" strategy.

Hydraa · #8 January 3rd, 2001, 01:34 AM

I was wondering. Can you use a ally that does not have a peace treaty with you to allow you to lay more mines. My idea is to have the ally place a ship at the point you want the mines to be and you move your mine layer there and attack the ship. Have both ships basically on do not get hurt orders. Then the minelayer gets to lay mines for each turn of combat or even each combat round. I have not tried this but it could be a way around the slow strategic laying of mines.

You might be able to use a variant of the white elephant tatic mentioned earlier. Gift a enemy a ship with no engines and then attack it with your minelayer

Puke · #9 January 3rd, 2001, 01:57 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Hydraa:
You might be able to use a variant of the white elephant tatic mentioned earlier. Gift a enemy a ship with no engines and then attack it with your minelayer

Thats diabolical. the only problem is you cant do it to an ally (cant engage combat with them) so you would have to do it to a enemy or someone with a NI treaty. then the problem occurs when a warship not set to 'dont get hurt' wants to move through the sector where you are laying mines, and greases the white elephant.

I like the idea of editing the component file alot more, as it is (a) reliable and (b) invokes alot less complaints about cheating.

Daynarr · #10 January 3rd, 2001, 03:05 AM

quote:
I like the idea of editing the component file alot more, as it is (a) reliable and (b) invokes alot less complaints about cheating.

And it wouldn't work anyway, I may add. All the units deployed during tactical combat are RETURNED to their carriers after the combat including mines, satellites and fighters. So, as you see, that tactic wouldn't work.