Minelayers

[Chris21wen]

This is more irritation than anything but is there a way of find out which minelayers currently have mines on board without going into the ship screen or putting them into a tf.

[RangerJoe]

Always load them. Always make sure that when you lay a minefield that you will have enough mines to reload your minelayers. Only use the minelayers in a minelaying task force so they don't unload the mines.

Other than that, I can't think of any way to make sure that they are loaded other than looking at the ship itself or the ship screen.

[Chris21wen]

Thanks Joe, thought that was going to say that be the case but keeping them loaded is not my style of play. Seems a very minor irritate isn't going to go away.

[PaxMondo]

Thanks Joe, thought that was going to say that be the case but keeping them loaded is not my style of play. Seems a very minor irritate isn't going to go away.

Agreed.

As IJ, it also isn't a viable strategy. You simply don't generally have enough mines to keep your ships full, or better to say: the mines you do get you want them in use, not sitting idle in a ships' hold. So, yeah, I do just the opposite of RJ as the IJN: the ships are ALWAYS empty. I have a prioritized list of locations and numbers of mines needed, and when I have any mines in inventory, they are used. Then wait a week or two for inventory to build up and use them again.

I mean IJ only gets 302 total mines/month. That is basically just one port/month. 12 ports/year. You have to be really selective as IJ as to what you mine and what you do without. Particularly during your expansion phase, there are a lot of important bases you just can't mine before the allied assualts start.

Granted the allies aren't exactly swimming in mine production either (571/month), but they also start with most bases having complete minefields AND when they finally get to their conquest phase, they aren't in much danger of an IJ counter-assault. Meaning, they don't really need to worry about too many of the conquest bases having a minefield or not.