How minesweeper work

[Cipher7071]

Baron, do you mean it's a button to order a ship to sweep mines at a certain location? Similar to ordering one to lay satellites at a certain location?

[geoschmo]

I thought the reason for the sweep button was basically a manual override for the "Ships should not move into known mine fields" empire option. Normally when you have that checked your ships won't move into a minefield, even if given the "move to order", right? I may have that wrong, that's just alsways been my assumption.

[Cipher7071]

That would make sense, Geo.

[Parasite]

I have had a minesweeper in a hex mined by an ally. When we went to war, I could not sweep the mines in that hex. I believe I didn't even get the button because the ships were fleeted. After removing them from the fleet, I swept mines in the hex to no effect.

The mines did not get removed while I stayed in that hex.

I was unsure of what happened at the time, but it looks like the discussion here explains it.

[Fyron]

That is not a very useful feature then.

[Grandpa Kim]

Geo, you can order ships to move to a known minefield and they will move to it. Trusting little buggers aren't they?

But I agree with Fyron. It looks like the sweep mines button serves no useful purpose. The one thing it can do can also be done with a simple move to order.

[Slynky]

I would tend to disagree with both of you.

Though not necessarily useful, I suspect, assuming I understand its purpose correctly, it could provide the following use:

Let's suppose you do NOT want to turn off the "ships should avoid minefields" switch (in order to prevent a string of ships, for example, moving through the same minefield one after another). But, let's also suppose you have a fleet assembled with sweepers in it that you DO want to enter and sweep a minefield. Here is the use for the button.

[Asmala]

Originally posted by Slynky:
Let's suppose you do NOT want to turn off the "ships should avoid minefields" switch (in order to prevent a string of ships, for example, moving through the same minefield one after another). But, let's also suppose you have a fleet assembled with sweepers in it that you DO want to enter and sweep a minefield. Here is the use for the button.

You can still use the move to command even if you have the "ships should avoid minefields" switch on. Just order the ships to move to the sector in question. You can also remove the tagged minefield using Ctrl-R.

[Fyron]

Exactly. It is redundant, and therefore useless.