Minefields

Minefields

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 spacemines and laying them in space as a hazard to enemy shipping activities. hitting a spacemine within a mineifeld 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 minefields

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.

Normal Space Mines

• Mines Laid = # torps * (torp position)^2

Crystaline Web Mines

• Mines Laid = # torps * (torp position)^2

Minefield Size Formula

• Mine Field Radius = sqrt(# mines)

sweeping minefields

Standard Minefield Sweeping

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.

Colonial Fighter Minefield Sweeping

The Colonials can use fighters to sweep for mines. Each fighter can destroy 20 mines per turn from a range of 100 lyrs away. 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.
The mine sweeping fighters can travel 100 light years from the carrier when on a mine sweeping mission. to perform colonial fighter minesweep missions simply select minesweep from the starships mission menu.

sweeping with beam formulas

• Mines Swept = # beams * (beam position)^2 * minesweeprate

sweeping with colonial fighters formula

20spacemines * Fighters_on_carrier = mineswept

Damage From Hitting Normal Minefields

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. An enemy ship has a 1% chance of hitting a mine for every light year traveled. It is very likely that a ship that travels through the above example minefield (all 120 light years of it) will hit a mine, but 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.

Damage% = 10000 / ( the hull mass )]

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.

Damage From Hitting Web Minefields

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. 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. Next turn you may set a new waypoint and warp out of the web minefield and hope you don't hit another web mine. Web mines drain 25kt of fuel from a ship every turn that the ship begins the turn in the web minefield. Any ship that hits a web mine looses 50kt of fuel OR 1/6 of the amount of fuel in the ships fuel tank, whichever is the greater amount.

Web Mines Damage% = 1000 / ( the hull mass )

The above default mine hit odds can be configured by the host to make it easier or harder to hit a mine.

Detecting Minefields

The range that a ship can detect an enemy minefield can be set by the host. You will see the range that was set and all other minefield setting the host is using in the config messages that are sent from the host. You will get a report on all minefields within this detection range, both yours mines and enemy minefields. You will NOT receive sweep information from enemy minefields that have friendly codes that match your ship's friendly code.

Minefield Limits

Vgap3 has no limits on the number of minefields. however at VGA Planets Nu, There is a soft limit of 500 minefields in the game. Whenever more than 500 minefields exist, the following turn at the beginning of the host run the smallest minefields on the map which do not have any enemy ships within 200 ly will be removed until the 500 minefield limit is restored.