GCU Grey Area wrote: ↑Tue, 23. Feb 21, 13:52
MSterling wrote: ↑Tue, 23. Feb 21, 13:40
Aye, and if you do it anyway, as you say you clearly do, and as I CLEARLY SAID ALREADY: might as well drop a mine instead. It won't waste your time and will remove the flies chasing you.
Have tried the mines, don't like them. In practice they're simply not as effective as laser towers in this regard (if they were that's what I'd be using instead). Also unsure why you think the laser towers are 'wasting my time'? They're doing precisely what I want them to - floating near my ship & being shot at.
Another option for lasertowers is to increase their range. Sure it won't make the mission to destroy laser towers any harder because they aren't hostile to you until you start shooting, and you start shooting generally within the current range of the lasertowers anyway, and it is their rating onto you that makes them meaningless as a threat.
However, you could use them tactically, if they had a 10km range (as an example). You would drop them down, facing the way you are headed, toward the enemy you are 14km away from, and you move to attack, you meet after the towers range in on them, and they ping the target. At 10km, they can rate onto those ships at that range, but if it decides to rush toward the tower, it likely will survive unless it is poorly armoured, but it takes one enemy out of current action against you. It could be used by all races, including Xenon, to defend stations from about the range that mainship batteries operate, meaning you have to remove them first to open a bombardment of an emplacement. That is kinda what such defensive structures should be doing: slowing down attacks before the defenses are in danger. The minefields on the Normandy beaches weren't there to blow people up, they had guns to do that, they were there to slow things down and keep them on the beaches while engineers and minclearing machines deloused what had always been clearly labelled "Minefield" and had mines in them (if you faked it out merely to save a few mines, then you would put a doubt in minefields and if you had used that fake out again, then the fake minefield did nothing at all but make you think you would have time and prove too late it did not.
EMP mines could prove a useful area interdiction to destroyer fleets, by shutting down engines and shields of affected capital ships, making them vulnerable and unable, even if the only effect was engine shutdown, to proceed to bombard positions, but if it shut down shields, also make them vulnerable to normal fire they would previously ignore for a minute or two. You would have the fleet either stopped and vulnerable or having to send in something to clear the minefield, during which time a rescue fleet for the station being attacked can get there and turn it from a problem for the station because it was surrounded, into a problem for the attacker, who are now pinned against the station guns and minefield interdiction on one side and the rescue fleet's guns on the other.
If this sort of tactic works, then it provides another class of ship, one that has more guns to the sides than forward pointing, so that it can screen and defend the fleet as it has to present its side between two opposing forces. The best defense is a good offence works in naval tactics and many military situations, because if you can point a gun at the enemy they won't rush in so quickly, or at all. See the pikemen.
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