Minefields

Overview

A minefield is a small area of space that is peppered with warheads that track and launch themselves at passing enemy ships that are unlucky enough to trigger one of them.

Minefields can be created via lay mines or lay web mines mission on any ship with torpedo tubes by converting the torpedos onboard into mines and laying them in space as a hazard to enemy shipping activities.

Hitting a spacemine within a minefield can damage and or destroy any vessels that pass within them. Minefields can be swept away via the sweep mines mission and eliminated by any ship armed with beam weapons. colonials can sweep mines using their onboard fighters on board at a greater range than beam weapons, with greater effects.

Laying mines

Minefields are formed when a starship with torpedoes chooses the mission "Lay Mines." All the ships torpedoes are taken apart by the ships chief engineer and reprogrammed to serve as deep space mines. Higher tech torpedoes are divided into several smaller units that can cover a greater area of space.

If a ship lays mines inside an established minefield, the new mines will become part of the existing minefield if the minefield belongs to the ship's race.

$\operatorname {laid} =torps*position^{2}$

$\operatorname {radius} =floor(sqrt(mines))$

Laying mines in another identity

To lay a minefield in another player's identity, you need to set the friendly code miX, where X is a player ID from 1-u. Robotic players lose their mining advantage when laying in the identity of another player.

Sweeping mines

Standard Minesweeping

All starships with beam weapons can sweep minefields. the amount swept will depend on the number of and the power of your starships beamweapons. to perform this mission select minesweep from your starships mission menu. your ship must be within the minefields radius to effectively sweep with beam weapons.

$\operatorname {sweep} =beams*position^{2}*sweeprate$

Default settings for sweeprate is 4 for normal mines and 3 for web mines.

Colonial Fighter Sweeping

The Colonials can use fighters to sweep for mines. Each fighter can destroy 20 mines per turn per minefield within a range of 100 ly. If the ship doing the mine sweeping has beam weapons and is within the minefield radius then the ship will also use the beam weapons to destroy mines simultaneously.

To perform colonial fighter minesweep missions simply select minesweep from the starships mission menu. Fighters cannot sweep web mines, however.

$\operatorname {sweep} =20*fighters$

Mine scooping

A ship with beams and torpedo tubes can scoop from its own minefield(s) with the friendly code msc, transforming mines back into ammo. A ship set to scoop will scoop mines until the minefield is gone, or until its cargo room is full.

Scooping takes place on the very same step as sweeping by ID. It is possible for a scoop to deny a sweep, and vise verse.

Triggers

An enemy ship has a 1% chance of hitting a mine for every light year traveled (0.5% if cloaked). Even when a ship travels through over 50 ly, there is still a slim chance that the ship won't. The amount of damage done to a ship depends on the mass of the ship's hull. The cargo and fuel masses will not help to save the ship.

$\operatorname {damage} =round(10000/(mass+1))$

A ship with a hull mass under 100 KT will be destroyed by a single mine. Most battle ships are over 500 KT so they can take 5 or more mine hits before being destroyed. A ship that is under tow (being towed) cannot be hit by a mine.

Web Mines

Main article: Web mines

Web mines are smaller than normal mines, but are much more difficult to travel through. There is a 5% chance of hitting a web mine for every light year that you travel through (cloaked or not). A web mine does 10% of the damage of a normal mine, but causes your ship to become stuck in the web and your ship will be forced to stop moving.

Detecting Minefields

The range that any ship can detect an enemy minefield can be set by the host (default 200ly). You will get a report on all minefields within this detection range, both yours mines and enemy minefields.

You cannot sweep enemy minefields that have friendly codes that match your ship's friendly code.

Minefield Decay

Minefields decay as they age. The decay step takes place after mine laying and sweeping, but before mines destroy mines, web drain and movement.

The formula for mines remaining after a turn's worth of decay is as follows, with d being the decay rate (default 5%, or 0.05):

$\operatorname {m_{1}} =round(m_{2}*(1-d))-1$

Minefield Limits

NuHost carries a limit of 500 minefields per game. If a game goes over this limit, then the smallest minefields (with no hostile ships nearby) are destroyed until the limit is no longer exceeded, or until there are no more eligible minefields.

See Also

Minefields Planets Magazine