Minefield Dropping and Sweeping
Minefield Dropping and Sweeping: There are four different types of mines: laser mines, web mines, barbitic
mines and gravitonic mines. Only ships that are equipped with one of the four
different types of mine dropping devices can lay a mine. If a ship has all four
different types of mine droppers it has a choice of laying any type of minefield
that it wishes. Mines are made by the mine dropper device by converting combat
ordnance into mines. You must use at least 500 ordnance units when laying a
minefield. You can use increments of 500 ordnance units up to a maximum of 5000
ordnance units. The radius of the minefield produced is equal to the square
root of the number of ordnance units dropped. A 5000 unit minefield has the radius
of 70 LY and a 500 unit minefield has a radius of 22 LY. Minefields can
overlap other minefields. Laying mines in the middle of another minefield will not
add to the existing minefield, rather it produces a second minefield. Minefields
stay the same size over their entire lifetime. Minefields have a limited
amount of power. Minefields have between 20 and 50 turns worth of power when first
dropped. When the minefield power reaches 0 the minefield disappears. Ships that
have a mine sweeper device are able to destroy a minefield that they are in as
well as pick up any minefield belonging to their own race and convert them
back into ordnance units that can be reused. If a minefield is swept the whole
field is destroyed. The mine sweeping ship is able to sweep the field as long as
it is inside the field. A sweeping ship can only destroy one field per turn.
Both mine sweeping and mine laying takes place before ship movement. An exploding
barbitic minefield destroys all other minefields that have a center point
that is within the radius of the exploding barbitic field. Mines can be dropped in
a cloaked state. Cloaked mines are invisible and protected from enemy mine
sweeps, but not from exploding barbitic minefields. Enemies have a very hard if
not impossible time of detecting a cloaked mine. The owner of the cloaked mine is
able to uncloak and recloak the minefield at any time. A cloaked mine
continues to use energy while it is cloaked. You can recover your own minefields while
they are cloaked. The amount of ord that is recovered from a minefield is
proportional to the remaining amount of energy that the minefield has compared to
the amount the field had when it was first dropped.