How do mines work

[Zoompet]

A quick question about the functioning of mines: Do they...

(1) magically arrange themselves into a linear structure that are unerringly rammed, one-by-one, by the lead ship of a fleet, until the mines run out or the ship is destroyed; thereafter being hit one-by-one by the second ship in line, and so forth until either the mines or ships are depleted; or

(2) magically separate themselves into Groups such that if there are X mines and Y ships that X/Y mines impact each ship simultaneously; or

(3) something else?

[Arkcon]

The image I formed in my mind was that they homed in on some "spacedock signal" that all large ships need to recognize each other in space so accidents didn't happen when docked. No one ever turns this signal off for reasons I can't explain. The mines home in, and if the signal doesn't inclue the "friendly" code, they arm and explode. Armor on ships is destroyed first, then components, one ship at a time. It never occurs to anyone to turn on the shields. Cloaking devices don't help for other dubious reasons.

There's no tactics to assign, no planning. The components are only warheads. Yes it's not very realistic. But it's simply a kludged method to provide a measure of defence easily. There are many comments on this subject. Maybe SE5 will be different.

[ October 11, 2002, 18:21: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[geoschmo]

Specifically the answer to your question would be 3. The don't all hit one ships at a time (1), or split up and evenly hit each ship in the fleet (2). What they do is more or less random. Each mine will target a ship in the fleet at random and hit it. Some ships will get more than there share of hits and be destroyed, If the fleet is big enough and the minefield is small enough some ships could actually make it through undamaged while others will be totally destroyed.

That part is actually pretty realistic. The magic comes in in that they never miss, are never duds, and the entire minefield will expend itself agains the fleet, unless it runs out of targets first.

Geoschmo

[Slick]

The first thing that happens is that each minesweeping component in your fleet or ship sweeps the applicable number of mines - 100% accurate. If you can sweep = or > the number of mines, you will receive no damage. Since the max number of mines in a sector is 100, if your ship/fleet can sweep 100 mines, it is immune to mines. As far as minesweeping components go, each can sweep the number of mines (regardless of the size of the mine) equal to their level. i.e. Minesweeper III can sweep 3 mines. So build minesweeper ships with as many of the highest level sweepers you can up to being able to sweep 100 mines.

Next the mines damage the ships. Damage is applied to ships quasi-randomly to ships in fleets. There has been some experimentation with this in other Posts. The mines start attacking ships until all ships are destroyed or all mines are destroyed. More & bigger warheads on a mine do more damage obviously.

If all the ships are destroyed, the sector is marked automatically as a minefield. Ships won't automatically go thru that minefield, but can be ordered to manually. Once all the mines are swept, the minefield marker is removed.

The max number of mines per sector can be changed in settings.txt.

Slick

[Slick]

Whoops, sorry, Geo, you posted while was typing.

[Zoompet]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
Armor on ships is destroyed first, then components, one ship at a time. It never occurs to anyone to turn on the shields. Cloaking devices don't help for other dubious reasons.

Wait shields don't help against mines!

[jimbob]

That's right, shields do you no good when it comes to mines or storms.

Slick said:

Since the max number of mines in a sector is 100, if your ship/fleet can sweep 100 mines, it is immune to mines.

As you might know, the 100 mines per sector limit is first and foremost a close approximation. I've been able to make minefields of larger size on hotseat (and run into larger minefields in PBW games). The key is to launch 99 mines. Then any ship/planet can still launch their mines in that sector... if that ship can launch 20 mines for example, you will create a minefield of 119 mines. After this point you will be unable to increase the number. Some may consider this cheating, but I'm okay with my enemies doing it to me, I just take extra procautions.
The other way is to mod the game and reset the mine limit, but this of course applies to all players.

[TerranC]

Maybe the shields are attracted by Energy or Gravity? We haven't the slightest Idea. I think it's because we don't pay our researchers enough

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by jimbob:
As you might know, the 100 mines per sector limit is first and foremost a close approximation. I've been able to make minefields of larger size on hotseat (and run into larger minefields in PBW games). The key is to launch 99 mines. Then any ship/planet can still launch their mines in that sector... if that ship can launch 20 mines for example, you will create a minefield of 119 mines. After this point you will be unable to increase the number. Some may consider this cheating, but I'm okay with my enemies doing it to me, I just take extra procautions.
The other way is to mod the game and reset the mine limit, but this of course applies to all players.

Jimbob, this was fixed in Version 1.78. With the latest patch a 100 mine limit is most definetly a 100 mine limit.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

Jimbob:
The extra-mines trick you mentioned has been fixed with the latest patch don't count on it for much longer

Mine warheads can also be given the fancier damage types.

Null space, engines-only, weapons only, and shield generators only types of damage all work the way you'd expect.
Armor-skipping is essentially the same as null space, since shields are not a factor vs mines.
Also, Shields-only warheads are useless, since shields are not used.