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One tip for air dropped mines. They are better used to mine Japanese forward bases that you have under air and sea cover. This will hamper fast transport supply and troop runs. As said before, I rarely use them beyond Allied air cover as they are spotted right away and very easily swept. You cannot use them to mine your own bases or any enemy base that does has a level 0 port....Go figure..

ORIGINAL: crsutton

One tip for air dropped mines. They are better used to mine Japanese forward bases that you have under air and sea cover. This will hamper fast transport supply and troop runs. As said before, I rarely use them beyond Allied air cover as they are spotted right away and very easily swept. You cannot use them to mine your own bases or any enemy base that does has a level 0 port....Go figure..

I suspect the reason is to mirror real life. Patrol squadrons even today , require crews to practice minelaying at least once a year. From my experince, even with a good crew, under ideal conditions , it's pretty hard to place a mine with 100% accuracy. At night ,without advanced navigation equipment , (probably no RADAR, just a guy with a stop watch and a map.BTW , the USN did not have designated Navigators till the 1960'[s...in WW2 the "navigator" was an off duty pilot or aircrewman), it's really hard to get in a small area. Like a mile square. You don't want that kind of randomness if you are going to be using the harbor (no real safe lanes). You love it against the enemy."OK . we've swept the lanes"..."Damned! Where did that come from?".

As far as the 0 port, I'm guessing it probably is a similar reason. It's hard enough to pick out a port (at night, when your getting shot at) let alone a random strech of water. There's nothing to mark it, hence, nothing to differentiate it from another equal patch of water. In a harbor , you can always say "go drop it somewhere in the middle". In a Zero port, there's no middle.


As I said , I don't KNOW the reason, but this would be my guess.

I'm going to sound dumb yet again, but you'll talk of restocking mines and knowing how many are "available" in your ports, yet I don't know where that ammunition lives so I can "see" it! Also how do you find out the mine production "rate"? I did look at the manual, but didn't see it. Thanks, Hal

Press the "I" key. Bottom 2 buttons on the right hand side take you to your production and pools. Press the pools button, then sort in alpha order.

Alfred

Ahhhh, knowledge is power. Thanks Alfred.... Hal