Couple of Qs - retrofitting and minesweeping

[MegaTrain]

1. Does retrofitting an experienced ship cause it to lose it's experience level? (Back to Novice +0%) I would hope not, but I want to make sure before I try it.

2. Minesweepers: Is it sufficient to simply include minesweepers in an attack fleet and then send them roaming through enemy territory? If mines are encountered, will the sweepers do their job and clean the mines and then get out of the way for my attack ships (if there are also enemy ships in the same sector as the mines)?
Or do the minesweepers actually need to precede the attack fleet and be given the orders to "sweep mines" for a specific location?

This is for a simultaneous turn PBW game, if that makes any difference. THANKS!

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-MegaTrain-
Athlon 1.3 GHz running at 1.6 GHz on an iWill KK266

[Suicide Junkie]

1) Retrofits do not reduce experience. Capturing a ship via troops or psychics will cause loss of experience.

2) All of the sweeper components in the fleet fire when the fleet enters the sector.
If there are enemy vessels in the sector, your sweepers will be in combat.
The sweepers can break formation and run to a corner while the ships fight.

So sending attack ships and sweepers together means:
- the full sweeper effect occurs
- attack ships enter combat with enemy ships & units.

[MegaTrain]

Thanks! Just as I had hoped...

Also: I heard somewhere that there is a limit of 100 mines per sector? Is this determined by the game-creator? Or is this a hard coded limit?

So if I include enough sweepers to sweep 100 mines per turn, I should never have a problem with mines?

[capnq]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I heard somewhere that there is a limit of 100 mines per sector? Is this determined by the game-creator? Or is this a hard coded limit?

So if I include enough sweepers to sweep 100 mines per turn, I should never have a problem with mines?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Maximum mines per player per sector is an entry in Settings.txt, so it can be modded.

However, the hardcode implementation makes this a "soft" limit. If there are less than 100 mines in the sector, you can add as many more as you can launch at the same time. Once there are 100 or more mines, you can't launch any more.


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Cap'n Q
My first SE IV mod! Hypermaze quadrant (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/Forum25/HTML/000018.html)
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Suicide Junkie]

Personally, I always use the highest possible value.

My settings.txt uses Max = 100,000
but the game cuts that down to 5000.

For me, that's 5000 units in space and 5000 units in one sector.

But yes, if you include enough sweepers to clear the maximum size minefield, you will never run into trouble.
But note that the maximum size is "max per sector" PLUS "Number launched at once" MINUS one.
If the player used a baseship filled with mine launch bays, or even a Starbase filled with launch bays, that number could be very high indeed.

[Baron Munchausen]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
1) Retrofits do not reduce experience. Capturing a ship via troops or psychics will cause loss of experience.

2) All of the sweeper components in the fleet fire when the fleet enters the sector.
If there are enemy vessels in the sector, your sweepers will be in combat.
The sweepers can break formation and run to a corner while the ships fight.

So sending attack ships and sweepers together means:
- the full sweeper effect occurs
- attack ships enter combat with enemy ships & units.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I seem to recall that destruction of the crew quarters or life support in combat was supposed to cancel crew experience, too. But I haven't seen it work. Am I remembering an SE III feature?