Re: [GZG] Re: Mines

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

John Tailby wrote:

> For the mines to be effective they would have to have a reasonably large 
> engagement range to attack the enemy ship otherwise you would need 
> millions of the things to cover any decent kind of area with any density.

Bingo.

> I could imagine a planetary defence grid of something like the Centauri 
> blockade mines from B5. Those looked like they could move to engage the 
> targets and had a reasonable engagement range.

But note that those blockade mines were intended to stop ships that tried 
to *leave* the blockaded planet - ie., ships that had no choice but to pass 
close by the mines if they wanted to reach deep space. When attacked from 
deep space OTOH, the Centauri mines were quickly destroyed.

> I could also imagine a stealthy hunter killer robotic vessel that sits 
> plugged into a widespread sensor net, possibly even in hyper space and 
> when an intruder is detected it powers up and attacks. This kind of thing 
> would be much more cost effective than millions of mines.

It would - but it would be a robotic combat vessel rather than a space 
mine. Heck, if you have this kind of sensor net there's no reason why you 
couldn't plug your crewed warships into it as well!

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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