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I was wondering if anyone has had ships run into their own defensive mines. I have had subs run into their own just laid mines, but I have never had a convoy come into Peral Harbor and stray into one of the minefields. I think I read somewhere that it could occur, but I've never seen it in any of my games. Anyone have it happen?

ORIGINAL: rockmedic109

I was wondering if anyone has had ships run into their own defensive mines. I have had subs run into their own just laid mines, but I have never had a convoy come into Peral Harbor and stray into one of the minefields. I think I read somewhere that it could occur, but I've never seen it in any of my games. Anyone have it happen?

had that happen, not just once -but it is still happening very rarely... I think it always happened the same turn when the mines were laid, so it could be the same as when subs hit their own just laid mine fields...

Perhaps they forgot to inform the captain of the new minefield? [:)]

heavily damaged on of my own transports with a freindly mine off ceylon. was laying a few eggs to catch some of my opponents subs and messed up

There is always a chance of hitting mines, that are either friendly or unfriendly. Only the chance of hitting a friendly mine is much smaller.
 
Nice detail about mines, you can lay thousands of friendly mines at your base, but as soon as the enemy captures that base they suddenly ALL become unfriendly (like you have no idea where they are )..... [8|][8|][8|]

I once lost a destroyer to a minefield I just laid at Wake.  I was going to fire the captain but he went down with his ship.

And it happened in real life too frequently.
 
In 1942, a convoy was returning to the US from Murmansk.  The pilot errantly steered the convoy into a friendly minefield near Iceland and 7 ships went down in 15 minutes.

You can hit 'friendly' mines when they are in enemy bases or open water hexes. (e.g. invasion TF runs into sub- or air-laid minefield in that base)
You can not hit friendly mines when they were laid in a friendly base and the base has not changed posession meanwhile.
You can hit friendly mines when they were laid in a friendly base but the enemy captured the base - even if you recaptured the base, the mines can hit your ships.

ORIGINAL: WhoCares

You can hit 'friendly' mines when they are in enemy bases or open water hexes. (e.g. invasion TF runs into sub- or air-laid minefield in that base)
You can not hit friendly mines when they were laid in a friendly base and the base has not changed posession meanwhile.
You can hit friendly mines when they were laid in a friendly base but the enemy captured the base - even if you recaptured the base, the mines can hit your ships.

Not sure if this is entirely true - i have (once) had an AK (or AP, not sure which) hit a mine that i had laid in a defensive minefield, and base had not changed hands... that was several years ago, however, and so did not happen in the game as it currently stands (version 1.806).

As far as I can tell, no matter where you lay them, if a SUB put the mines there, anybody is fair game. If a ship (ie ML) put them at a friendly base, I have never seen someone run into one and I have so many mines at Pearl that it doesnt even list them anymore (over about 35,000).

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

As far as I can tell, no matter where you lay them, if a SUB put the mines there, anybody is fair game. If a ship (ie ML) put them at a friendly base, I have never seen someone run into one and I have so many mines at Pearl that it doesnt even list them anymore (over about 35,000).

35,000? That is almost worth working out the actual navigable ocean area in the Oahu hex and finding out how dense that field is. Probably be able to walk from Pearl to Molokini.

Is there an upper limit on number of mines that the game engine uses? I keep wanting to say I've read {in UV maybe} that more than 1000 makes no difference. As a result I have been keeping 1000-1500 in my fields. At 35,000, I would be concerned that the engine has a max number and once you have more mines than the max number, it restarts from 0 again.

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

As far as I can tell, no matter where you lay them, if a SUB put the mines there, anybody is fair game. If a ship (ie ML) put them at a friendly base, I have never seen someone run into one and I have so many mines at Pearl that it doesnt even list them anymore (over about 35,000).

if a sub places a dozen mines somewhere then they are more effective than if you place 35000 mines with MLs... must be a different routine... [8|] while it would make sub laid mines 100% useless if they would be treated the same as other minefields, I still wonder why sub laid mines should be special. In my game against Swift my ships have hit more sub laid mines than any of my ships hit ML minefields in any other PBEM. Just had a TF PASSING through Baker, where a dozen sub laid mines were and one AK hit a mine... The chance for something like that would be 0.00000000001%... So whenever there are sub laid mines they zoom in at your ships from a range of 30 miles or more to hit one. If there are 10.000 ML laid mines, your ships are safe...

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

As far as I can tell, no matter where you lay them, if a SUB put the mines there, anybody is fair game. If a ship (ie ML) put them at a friendly base, I have never seen someone run into one and I have so many mines at Pearl that it doesnt even list them anymore (over about 35,000).

if a sub places a dozen mines somewhere then they are more effective than if you place 35000 mines with MLs... must be a different routine... [8|] while it would make sub laid mines 100% useless if they would be treated the same as other minefields, I still wonder why sub laid mines should be special. In my game against Swift my ships have hit more sub laid mines than any of my ships hit ML minefields in any other PBEM. Just had a TF PASSING through Baker, where a dozen sub laid mines were and one AK hit a mine... The chance for something like that would be 0.00000000001%... So whenever there are sub laid mines they zoom in at your ships from a range of 30 miles or more to hit one. If there are 10.000 ML laid mines, your ships are safe...

It MIGHT have something to do with the DL of the minefield... a small minefield undetected is more effective in damaging ships than a large minefield that everyone knows about and avoids. The larger the minefield, the more likely it is to be spotted, i think.

However, this being said - the enemy is probably going to have a hellacious time trying to invade at a spot with 35000 mines... the few times i've personally seen invasions on hexes with less than 1/10 number of mines this were absolutely devastating to the invaders. Invading a spot with 12 -24 mines with a large force probably isn't going to cause a lot of problems.

I beieve that the situation is that it is the number of minefields that matters more than the number of mines itself. Each time a minelayer TF (whether it is five MLs or a single sub) lays mines that creates a seperate minefield that has to be detected. The more different minefields you have, to more likely one of them is going to go undetected and is thus more likely to get a hit.

ORIGINAL: castor troy

if a sub places a dozen mines somewhere then they are more effective than if you place 35000 mines with MLs... must be a different routine... [8|] while it would make sub laid mines 100% useless if they would be treated the same as other minefields, I still wonder why sub laid mines should be special. In my game against Swift my ships have hit more sub laid mines than any of my ships hit ML minefields in any other PBEM. Just had a TF PASSING through Baker, where a dozen sub laid mines were and one AK hit a mine... The chance for something like that would be 0.00000000001%... So whenever there are sub laid mines they zoom in at your ships from a range of 30 miles or more to hit one. If there are 10.000 ML laid mines, your ships are safe...

The reason am I getting a good feel for mines in my sole game (PBEM, Allies, Scn 15, stock, now in May 1943) is my opponent has undertaken a huge campaign of mine warface against my bases with his subs for the entire time of our game. I have the same problem as Castor where one of his subs will lay mines and I will move through the next turn and hit it, even with MSW's in the task force. I actually have a problem with having far too few MSW's to be able to cover even close to all my bases with just ONE MSW per base. AFAIK, neither side used this many mines, except maybe the Allies in the late war with air dropped mines. It just seems odd that the USN has so FEW MSW's. All of my active ones are from Australia and Canada.

As for my large number of mines at Pearl, it was an experiment to see how many you could lay there. The number correctly showed how many mines (all ship bourne, no sub ones as you can hit your own sub ones, but as I said above, not your ship ones) were there until I hid around 32000 mines. Then it is just went blank on the base screen, but it still showed the mine icon on the map. It doesnt say anything about mines, it appears as if there are no mines there in the base screen. The first time it happened I stopped putting mines down and waiting a month or two and sure enough, after enough mines had erroded away, the number was back at 32000 or so.

Another note, has anyone tried laying mines via subs at a friendly base and have it correctly show in the base screen how many mines are now at the base? It doesnt work for me. It shows the mine icon on the map, but it doesnt say anything in the base screen.

Chad

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison


As for my large number of mines at Pearl, it was an experiment to see how many you could lay there. The number correctly showed how many mines (all ship bourne, no sub ones as you can hit your own sub ones, but as I said above, not your ship ones) were there until I hid around 32000 mines. Then it is just went blank on the base screen, but it still showed the mine icon on the map. It doesnt say anything about mines, it appears as if there are no mines there in the base screen. The first time it happened I stopped putting mines down and waiting a month or two and sure enough, after enough mines had erroded away, the number was back at 32000 or so.

Another note, has anyone tried laying mines via subs at a friendly base and have it correctly show in the base screen how many mines are now at the base? It doesnt work for me. It shows the mine icon on the map, but it doesnt say anything in the base screen.

Chad

the problem was the same coding error that was causing planes set to over 33000 ft to be handled like they were at ground level; something with anything over 32 something flips to a negative # or something like that. Never went that high myself, 25k seemed sufficient to me.
As to the sub laid mines, I believe the routine is that all sub laid fields are "offensive" in nature and are dangerous to both pretty equally; as opposed to minelayer laid at friendly base, where the base owner has extremely little to no chance of hitting a field.

LtFighter mined the crap out of Saipan-Tinian-Guam in our game, he said something like 35,000 mines. Whatever it was, he put the max there.

I didn't actually have invade the islands tho. I sent a MSW TF in to begin clearning the place and,

[thunk]
"Ooops, we missed one..."

ORIGINAL: tabpub

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison


As for my large number of mines at Pearl, it was an experiment to see how many you could lay there. The number correctly showed how many mines (all ship bourne, no sub ones as you can hit your own sub ones, but as I said above, not your ship ones) were there until I hid around 32000 mines. Then it is just went blank on the base screen, but it still showed the mine icon on the map. It doesnt say anything about mines, it appears as if there are no mines there in the base screen. The first time it happened I stopped putting mines down and waiting a month or two and sure enough, after enough mines had erroded away, the number was back at 32000 or so.

Another note, has anyone tried laying mines via subs at a friendly base and have it correctly show in the base screen how many mines are now at the base? It doesnt work for me. It shows the mine icon on the map, but it doesnt say anything in the base screen.

Chad

the problem was the same coding error that was causing planes set to over 33000 ft to be handled like they were at ground level; something with anything over 32 something flips to a negative # or something like that. Never went that high myself, 25k seemed sufficient to me.
As to the sub laid mines, I believe the routine is that all sub laid fields are "offensive" in nature and are dangerous to both pretty equally; as opposed to minelayer laid at friendly base, where the base owner has extremely little to no chance of hitting a field.

Except for the one time i hit my own mine as noted above (and i don't think that was a sub-laid mine)- i've never had a problem with defensive minefields laid by subs... and yes, i do use them (sub-laid minefields) extensively at my own bases.