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Minefields

K

Kevyn

Inactive Member
I was browsing through the image boards when I found this:

https://stararmy.com/starchan/images/653/jun_plan.png

My brainstem almost throttled my cerebrum when I saw what appears to be minefield a few dozen times larger then a solar system.

Now, perhaps I'm missing a major part of this picture, but right now it looks like someone, at some point, expended the resources of dozens of solar systems to mine this area.

Could someone please explain this before I hurt myself?
 
Yeah, those are huge, huge fields of long-range mines.
 
How does that work? You'd need trillions of them, even with FTL!

That's an area of space that's more then ten light years across. Even with something like ZPE, that's an obscene amount of resources to expend for limited strategic gain. You'd be better off using those resources to build a Dyson shell or a matrioshka brain. The former of which, I note, has only been attempted once at Hoshi no Iori, and that's only a dyson ring.

Why wouldn't they just make a swarm of energy gathering satellites, carpet a spherical area around their home system with them and use the energy generated to churn out a swarm of battleships and carriers. A much more flexible defense and a fraction of the resources. With this, you'd only need to break down a single solar system for resources rather then the dozens that would be needed for mining an area of space that large to a sufficient density to meaningfully deter an intruder.
 
build a Dyson shell or a matrioshka brain
Click to expand...

Nepleslia calls dibs on these, by the way.


And if it's any consolation to you Kevyn, Nepleslia doesn't use minefields to guard our national boarders. We use big satellite/spacestation/torpedo platforms. My only guess is that minefields in SARP are following the Rule of Cool, instead of practicality. It happens a lot, and it's not THAT bad.
 
Yeah, fleets that big are something we've been moving away from.

I've love to see an international summit where all the big nations agree that mines are bad.
 
We did take damage, but it was minimized by using a Star Fortress as a plow and by letting cheap scout ships clear the way.
 
Wes said:
Yeah, fleets that big are something we've been moving away from.

I've love to see an international summit where all the big nations agree that mines are bad.
Click to expand...

I'd love to see the chiefs of staff for the respective nations sit down and agree that mines are impractical of their return. There's nothing morally wrong with marked minefields.
 
Hey, I wonder if those mines could be re-engineered by thier makers as bombs for invading army to disable outgoing FTL drives and disable a planets communication systems*. They could be a cheaper version for SA and other armies to use instead of other technologies. What do you guys think?

*An EMP-deployed in the upper-ion sphere could do major damage to planetary communicatons.
 
How old are these minefields, and who created them?

I'm thinking that if these mines are ancient - and self-replicating - perhaps the minefields weren't always their present size....
 
The most common type of mine is a modified AS-7 Torpedo, which make up many of the minefield lines around the Hanako/Samurai military zone.
 
Wes said:
We did take damage, but it was minimized by using a Star Fortress as a plow and by letting cheap scout ships clear the way.
Click to expand...
Hurray for needless waste of resources and lives (even if the ships were run by sprites).
 
Wes said:
The most common type of mine is a modified AS-7 Torpedo, which make up many of the minefield lines around the Hanako/Samurai military zone.
Click to expand...
The AS-7 is an SAoY munition.
Wes said:
We did take damage, but it was minimized by using a Star Fortress as a plow and by letting cheap scout ships clear the way.
Click to expand...
SAoY ships don't have to blast their way through an SAoY minefield.

So who laid those mines?
 
The SMX, of course. Most SMX minefields have been cleared.
 
So those minefields:
--were laid in the contemporary IC era?
--were originally laid in their "present" size?
--no longer exist in the locations where they appear on the star map?
 
Even more funny: by a precedent done by one of Wes' plotship, we can fly over them.

...

No, the light-year spanning minefields and the FTL deadzones weren't my ideas. In fact, I adamantly oppose their presence and currently wish they could be off the map. All those red lines and markers add clutter and make space navigation seem more restricted.
 
Fred said:
Even more funny: by a precedent done by one of Wes' plotship, we can fly over them.
Click to expand...

Thus displaying the uselessness of such a tactic unless you totally envelop an area with them. And even then its primary use would be keeping things in/out of a limited area, but it would be ineffective to try restricting travel from one large section of space to another neighboring section.
 
Xerena said:
So those minefields:
--were laid in the contemporary IC era?
--were originally laid in their "present" size?
--no longer exist in the locations where they appear on the star map?
Click to expand...

1. Yes.

2. Yes.

3. No, the map is accurate.

I think you're confusing the old SMX minefields with the newer, linear ones laid by the Star Army.
 
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