Mines/Sats, are they worth it?

Mines are very important to guard your borders. 'No Mines no glory'.
Later on you'll need more mines, or more powerful mines to keep attackers with minesweepers out.

Mines are very important!

Satelites I find not very useful as weapon platforms. It is however useful to use Sensor Satelites around your worlds and in open space. They allow you to see where the enemy is!

I think the largests satelites can also be equiped with mining equipment for remote mining.

~Myrath

For relativly cheap expenses, you can put 50 Capital Ship Missle sats on a border warp point. Since the enemy ships come through in waves, you can do quite a bit of damage to an enemy fleet, maybe destroy them, maybe do enough damage so they head back for repairs.

And, you can move the satellite defense grid, unlike mines, as your border moves during a war.

Sats are the king of system recon / radar.
Mines + sats in a warp point is a very difficult nut to crack

Actually you can move your mines too, through the manual method of moving your ship over your minefield, and selecting the Transfer cargo command. You can transfer your mines back into your ship's cargo hold and move it on to the new border warp point.

I'm not sure if its an exploit. If so, I don't see why it's lasted since the game has been out.

Space Empires Wiki

When ship enters hex with enemy mines, minesweepers sweeps mines, then mines attacks ships and THEN combat aginst something ocure. By this time all mines are gone or all attackers are gone.

In BM, you can launch mines during combat and they are visible there (happens with minelayers and planets). If enemy moves right to them, they explode (IIRC), but practicaly enyone can destroy them.

I've had fleets survive minefields without sweeping them completely.

Don't ask me how, but I have had it happen.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

Also keep in mind that you can produce mines/sats on any planet not just from a shipyard, this I find can be substantially important for defending borders becuase with limited shipyards you could wait 5+years for 50 ships, where as to make a few frieghters to deploy mines or sats would only take a couple of turns with your other planets kicking out the actual mines and sats!

They can be launched during combat in stock as well, it's just that you can't see them. It took me ages to figure out why my ships started exploding for no apparent reason when chasing down enemy minelayers.

There's a setting in VehicleUnitTypes.txt - Hidden in Combat. You could add this ability to any unit type. Super-stealth fighters

when ever i can be bothered to build mines i set them to auto launch. with sats i dont use as recon, i use them as missile launchers and point defence, second turn of a game you can have 1 point defence cannon and 1 capital ship missile, and a lill bit of storage, and you can leave them in the planets cargo to launch only when the planets attacked. i generaly leave system sensors to the random ships i have floating around and repair bases on large and huge planets.
tho i suppose early game one could use recon sats as well as the type i described, until your sensor tech is high enough for the bases alone to cover the systems.

a note for using point defence sats; i find it usefull to change/copy one of the stratagies to attack seekers, fighters and drones primarily, and anything else how ever you want, as the sats would use the cannons to attack the aboved mentioned, and fire the missiles at anything else that comes near.
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

I'll take intel over pretty explosives any day. 17 years in the U.S. Army Infantry, you should listen to me when I say crap like that. So, to my play style, sats aren't useless. Anywhere I can hide them, I will. Look to the writings of Sun Tzu if you want to know why...
Ok, I'll tell you why... if I can see you coming, I know where you'll be. I can marshall my forces, and meet you (or not), I can slash and burn, I can manuveur behind you; at my choosing. The battle is normally won BEFORE the opponents start shooting.

What is my play style? Do I build more attack ships (*saved from the cost of mines), spot you with sats (which you promply kill confidently), move around your incoming fleet with my attack ships (what do you have in the back lines for defense?) and frag your main systems while you're attacking what you think is my best planets?
Or, do I find a place to ambush you with my fleet, because I know where you are and where you're heading?
Do I fall back to my planet, and play Possum?
Or do I mix it up, and put mine fields where I think you might go, but sats so I can see you? Sacrifice some intel for killing power, and then pounce with what I have left. There are only Finite resources, the balance in an empire is how to do what you need with finite resources.

Shit, if you want to have it all, just enable cheats! I'd like to see more annoying things in SEV... why? Cause there are a lot of annoying and unexpected things in real life. However that might make the game unplayable to Gen Y, because they like everything to be predictable, as Gen X has made it for them? Reliance on/in more then one type of aspect in this game, from what I've seen so far... when I get to multiplayer, I will fragg you, because seems to me the Developer was looking out for the 'only do things this way' aspect of his game, and put so many variables in that you can't begin to think you are confident, unless you're Homer Simpson.

I'm only on my 3rd game with the Demo version. (Quit twice cause I was riding the wall), and I've played it in Moo2 Fashion. New race, declare war! In the demo version, and I imagine stock version ( I won't play any mods, even though I see it's moddable.) Well, the road to stellar conquest is paved with burnt out planets and regret. I want a game where I can actually be a diplomat on my end... and get something for it without mods, if I try hard. Looks like it. I also want a game where I can fight hard (hell AI is hard in a simple game, so no regrets, but better AI is good) or I could just play MP against all you know it alls, and pretend you have Intelligence, woohoo! So, it's important to improve the AI, but I got 22 guys in line to play (my old clan from WiC) and learn from me, and me from them. Wouldn't an 8v8 in SEV be awesome, all human?

Intel, that's what sats are for. If you try to make a mine or weapons platform out of them, you're spending too much, not learning enough, and probalby... losing.

Casca
The Immortal Soldier

Never use mines or sats now. I usually use fighters in their roles. More flexible.

I'm still new at this game, but I'm a big fan of Sats, mines to a certain extent.

I'm using my Sats for all sorts of things:

Recon/Sensors, at home systems as well as enemy systems.

Re-supply: I have a freighter with a Sat Launch bay. Stored inside is 1 Recon Sat as well as a supply sat with solar collectors and ordnance vats. I pop them out when I need to resupply in enemy territories.

Warp point guarding: At the warp points I want to guard I have a mix of High sensor sats, re-supply sats, missile sats and point defense sats, plus mines of course. The resupply sat keep the missile sats well ordnanced at all time.

My med freighters are all Q-ships with Sat launching capabilities... I like watching films of where a player will attack it with a couple of frigates and I'll cackle with glee as my missile sats eat them. It makes them think twice about how much resource to chase after an "unescorted" freighter.

Sats do make great sensor buoys.

havent really played around with mines yet, from what i hear they are useful on multiplayer i think

i built a load of cheap missle sats a few times to gaurd a warp hex, i just placed about 25-30 of them in a circle around it and nothing ever got through for a while, i just left them there and the computer lost quite a few junky ships to them and they lasted for a long time but i would imagine this wouldn't work very well against carbon based lifeforms

When I was playing SEIV, I would use mines when the AI had me backed up against the wall early in the game and I needed to buy some time to build up my research. Mines are really quite nice for destroying an enemy attack fleet coming at you with blood in their eyes. 2-5 mines will destroy a ship for a tenth of the cost of a ship, and you don't have to worry about an attack while you are rebuilding your forces. In essence, mines are great for defence and making a "thinking" opponent wary of entering a warp point. With the superior AI in SEIV, they were extremely effective, and after the AI adapted by sending in Minesweepers, I would start building armed minelayers that would destroy the sweeper if it survived the sweep and then lay more mines. And when I was feeling really nasty, I would send in cloacked minelayers deep into enemy territory and mine the warp points there. In SEV, haven't really run into a situation where they were required so far, but I've only played a few games.
Don't really like Satts, as their components can't be upgraded, and this makes them wasteful in my opinion. Build up 10-20 Satts that are obsolete in a couple of turns; I would rather build Space Stations that are maintainable instead, if I am going to use fixed defenses (Which I don't). A couple of squadrons of Fighters backed up by a few weapons platforms on the Planet, and I can tear up just about anything the SEV AI throws at me.

I think Sats are worth it,
also are mines.

There was a long time i didn't use them, ( SE4 and the begin of SE5 ) And I hated the AI for mining their Warppoints especially in SE4 ... and the only thing I researched Mines for where the Sweepers.
But I didn't use ministers either.
Now, I grow quite fond of the ministers, and the more I learn about them and Empire Automation the more I like Sats and Mines

Sats are a dirt cheap and easy way to block Warppoints and Secure Planets in the early game.
I don't care if I can't upgrade them, I just put the more recent designs with them, one missile more is one missile more .. and some day the old crap will be shot down .. so no worries

The same goes for mines .. except they go boom .. so no worries about upgrading

I still love to block warppoints with BIG FAT Bases .. just to have those wonderfull massive base mounts
But I also put Space Yard Bases on warppoints for repairs, rebuild and stuff .. and it is only so little additional work to slap all kinds of launcher on them and let them produce sats and mines all the time

About players .. I don't like multiplayer because its so tedious with SE5, but yes .. yes a thinking being can deal better with SATs and Mines and all other Stuff you do to defend yourself ..
But they have to deal whith .. and thats my whole point .. humans can do alot better then the AI in every way .. but its still expensive, and they have to think strategie and tactics .. and sometimes the get annoyed .. so yes everything that my enemy doesn't expect, everything that costs my enemy resources and time, and everything that annoys my enemy is GOOD !!!

Can you elaborate Juju on Empire Automation and Sats/Mines? I foresee a need for building fixed / semi-fixed defenses (mines, sats, bases) at a warp point soon, and am not eager to tackle what looks like a big micromanagement nightmare.

Outside of a freighter running pickup / dropoff routes, have you found any further help the AI can provide?

Basicly thats it

Minister controlled planet with autolaunch .. or bases .. and launchers with repeat routes ..

i plan to put bases with autolaunch on warppoints to make it easier but i am not so far yet

else i rely heavily on the population minister who ferries my population all around and the scout ship minister
which is quite enough for me atm for i tend to like micromanagement

if its not tedious repetive stuff

uh why has nobody talked about gun sats. put 20-30 of the on a warp Point. 2 DUCs/AP beams on each sat fast reload lots of pain quickly note to self: don't open unfamiliar doors some lead outside

which minsiter moves population around??

The ship-population transport minister ( as i remember )
in another thread astorax mentioned the planet-population minister who undomes too

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

The Colony-Population minister does undome planets but it doesn't move the population per se ..except perhaps out the airlock, heh.

Yeah I know

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

The main thing with SATs is they are cheap and fast to make. You can recon yor whole system in a matter of a couple turns. Every Component has a use and SAT are great recon platforms.

I've started play SE5 from 1.66 version. And I've played only 3 games so my experience is low but...

I use sats as PD + defence perimeter around planets. Attacking fleet need few seconds to sweep sats and planet's weapon platforms use this seconds to attack enemy fleet. Resupply sats are good at enemy territory. They can resupply you ships (very useful when energy weapon comes to play).

Mines are good to guard borber warp points. AI love sent small fleets
and minefield can completely destroy it. Also I love lay mines around empty planets so AI can't colonize It sends single colony ship, but hey, it doesn't know minefield code. Boom!

my favorites:

Satellites 2 uses:
a: sensor bouys
b: warp point blockades, a few hundred on a warp point can dish out some major hurt to any sort of invading fleet.

I always give my older sats missiles, this way they'll always be able to dish out some hurt, regardless of how old they are.

mines are best used as a nasty surprise for your enemy. Drop them directly in front of an incoming force to take them off guard. If you don't leave mines deployed, even a human opponent might not remember sweepers if they see a clear sector the turn before.

i always use lvl2 sattelites for advanced recon, a 100kt sat is enough for all sensor equipment (long range scans: 20, basic: 10, cloack detector 40) plus a self-destruct (10), core (10), and two armor plating (10) = 100.

they are costly.. about 3000 minerals each, with suufficient tech lvl, it is a guarantee that you will know what will be coming in your dirrection.

On heavier sattelites, i add a cloacking device and a solar collector big enough to feed it.. or a quantum generator if in a sunless system (harder since more expensive and long to research).

Expensive, but knowing is half the battle.

When i design sats meant for war.. i use bomblet PD and longest ranged missiles i have. Long ranged, sure to hit. Keeps ennemy PD busy.
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Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

How does the re-supply sat work. Do you have to go over and load supply with cargo pick-up?
~Slimbo

Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design...

Yep. It just floats in space making supllies it can't move them anywhere on its own.

I personally prefer using frigates for that use though.

Sats in usefull anyway... And in compare with ships you do not need to pay high upkeep over them

I use (I have to use) every now and then resource gathering satellites.

Wenla
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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

I love to use satellites espe not use it as especially in the early parts of the game whn I am waiting for my weapons technology to advance. I do not start bulding fleets till at least 10 years have past. Satellites, during this time, act as could defenses and recon.

As for mines, I do not use them as much. However, they are powerful as hell when fully developed.

I use a mix of large Standard mines with a combination of Neutrino and Ionic warheads. I like a ratio of 40/30/30. They are the best passive defense systems Minerals can buy.

The courage to endure.

Q-ships with Missile Pods eh? I can appreciate that.

I do so enjoy David Weber books.

(Actually I am suprised the idea didn't occur to me. Dang)