Re: Mines..

At 11:17 AM 4/3/97 PST, you wrote:
>
>The Mines in FT are too week.	So just add one more die to the attack.
>  Since a fighter torpedo costs the same as one mine it should do
similar
> damage.  However, since Mines lie in wait for the enemy indefinitely,
> there needs to be a payoff.  So I make mines conduct an A battery
attack
> at close Range (3D6, 1-3 no effect, 4-5 1 point, 6 2 points)	If you
want
> more punch drop three clustered together for a 9d6 beam attack.

There is a problem here, though, that I mention elsewhere. Unless you
make
it less likely for a minesweeper to accidentally detonate the mine,
you'll
find your minesweepers dying before they've done more than cut a thin
channel through the minefield. Minesweepers should be able to clear a
dense
field without the risk of destruction, let alone a nice, clear path.

>  The next question is:  are Mines invisible on the board.  

In my PBEM game I used rules suggested by Robert Montgomery. Mines were
invisible at long range. They showed up only when scanning. However,
mines
were detected at half the range of regular scanning. Passive scanning
detected the mine at 18" and active scanning detected the mine at 27".
This
worked well in my game but some may find that the ranges are too great.
I
worked on the assumption that mines are designed to channel and
otherwise
modify a ship's movement, not necessarily destroy the ship. You lay a
minefield to stop someone from going somewhere, not to necessarily to
catch
them unawares. 

> If a cloaked
> ship drops a mine cluster, do the mines show up on the board?  

Dropped mines (of which we had two in the game) were detected the same
way
as other mines.

> What Phase
> does this occur.  

In my case, movement. The owner of the mine plotted at what point in his
move he was dropping the mine. So he would plot something like 1S+5 M3",
meaning that he would drop the mine after travelling 3".

>If the Cloaked ship had this pre-plotted, is it 
>revealed?

If I was doing cloaked ships, I would not require a cloaked ship to
decloak
in order to lay mines. However, if he lays mines within sensor range of
another ship, that ship would see the mines suddenly appear, thus giving
it
a pretty good idea of where the cloaked ship is...

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage