SE4 Advanced brainstorming

[Urendi Maleldil]

I like the idea of giving kamikaze satellites combat movement. I don't however like the idea of removing mine sweepers completely. I think it would be better to make them more cumbersome to use. For example, make them 100kT each, very expensive, damage first, remove a maximum of 2 mines per turn, and have a large combat to hit defense minus.

This way you couldn't just slap a few mine sweeping components onto a combat ship. You need some sort of dedicated ship. That ship would be large and expensive since you'll probably want to put more than one sweeper on it to be worthwhile. Therefore it will be slow to build, very weak in combat, and take up a large chunk of resources that could be better used for combat ships. And if the max mines per sector is 200 and a typical sweeper ship has 5 or 6 sweepers on it, the most it could remove per turn is 10 or 12 mines. Meaning it will take about 20 ships to clear a single maxed out mine field. And that's not all.

If the mines are not cloaked, it will be possible to force your opponent to choose which mine fields to clear and which to leave in place. A nice new strategic tool. Too bad the AI won't be able to use it.

[Suicide Junkie]

Combat accuracy does not in any way affect the number of mines a sweeper will kill. Every point of sweeping ability is a guaranteed mine kill BEFORE you enter combat.

[Urendi Maleldil]

I know that. The combat minus is to discourage putting mine sweeping components on combat ships.

[Suicide Junkie]

You mean a negative combat sensor ability?
I thought AIs were the only ones who put minesweepers on warships anyways (since they can't balance fleets)

As far as I know, all of the gnarled veterans simply make:
A stack of N dedicated minesweepers (N = max mine stack / number of mines swept per sweeper) plus a set of M warships (where M approaches infinity)

Dedicated sweepers don't need shields guns or armor, so they are far more efficient. And the warships get to use all their tonnage on guns and shields.
And critically important, you're not wasting any tonnage on superfluous sweepers if you add more ships to the fleet.


Think of my "remove minesweeper ability" suggestion as making minesweepers be "destroyed on use", with the bonus of protecting against direct fire too.

[Urendi Maleldil]

Do you guys know if the skip armor damage ability works vs weapon platforms?

[Suicide Junkie]

Units do not have armor, just a pile of hitpoints.