Tale of A Ship Idea That Failed

Marty Ward · #1 June 3rd, 2001, 10:44 PM

You would think if it was a known minefield that the ship would automatically un-cloak and sweep the mines.
I don't see why cloaked ships can't sweep for the AI. What is the differance between them moving, uncloaking, sweeping and cloaking in one turn and sweeping while cloaked. At the end of the turn they are still cloaked.
Hopefully this will be fixed soon as the AI needs all the help it can get regarding mines.

geoschmo · #2 June 4th, 2001, 03:20 AM

Shields don't protect you against mines? What sense does that make? Is that confirmed?

Geo

Lerchey · #3 June 4th, 2001, 04:11 AM

Shields do not protect against mines. Shields are considered to be "tactical" components, and are only activated during combat. That's why they don't help against mines or damaging warp points. Armor never turns "on and off".

Lt. Col. John

Erhardt · #4 June 4th, 2001, 04:17 AM

ouch...This is news to me.

SO shield's do squat against mines?

Huh?

Askan Nightbringer · #5 June 4th, 2001, 05:26 AM

Well armour has to be good for something. Bit rough if shields have it over armour in every department.

The cloaked ships not sweeping sux a bit thou. In turned based it easy to decloak and recloak but there is no such luxury in simultaneous.

Askan
(my typing still sux)

[This message has been edited by askan (edited 04 June 2001).]

Q · #6 June 4th, 2001, 07:00 AM

The whole issue, if cloaked ships should be able to sweep mines, is a question of balance. In SE III where you couldn't detect cloaked ships at all (you just could prevent them entering a sector cloaked) cloaked minesweeper made mines practically obsolete. In SE IV cloaking is very weak and can be defeated easily by system wide acting scanners. So I think it would not be unbalanced, if you allow cloaked ships to sweep mines.

Saxon · #7 June 4th, 2001, 06:01 PM

Minesweepers really upset me, so I am happy to hear that they can not cloak. Mines are an important part of the game, they stop it from being too fast flowing and letting the fleet that wins one key battle from trashing empires. I may have lost my fleet, but you still need to get through my static defenses and a nice, visible minesweeper is a nice target for my slowly rebuilding fleet to aim at.

Most of my combat support vessles have a mine sweeper or two thrown in with the point defense and supply modules. It is not as specialized as it could be, but it does make the ship more flexible in those unpredictable situations. It also makes me more comfortable when dropping into a new system or a system I expect to be mined.

What do people think of this jack-of-all trades approach?