| Re: Minefield overflow |
Fri, 22 September 2023 12:39  |
|
 magic9mushroom |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
|
I have done some investigation of my own.
There are two anomalies with laying into large existing fields with large amounts of minelayers.
1) The minefield can "vanish". I use the scare quotes because it's not actually destroyed. Rather, the code for checking how the centre shifts is bugging out and moving the minefield's centre outside the map. I don't think it's going to (0,0); I think it's a bit over -2000 to the X and Y values from what they should be (2048, maybe?). A code dig on the .m and .exe would be needed to verify the exact amount.
If you only go a bit over the threshold, you won't be able to see the minefield afterward, hence the false idea of it "vanishing". But if you put an absurd amount of mines into the field, it can still overlap the map. And of course, it still counts as existing for the purpose of the minefield limit, and it's not going away any time soon since it's huge, probably doesn't overlap any planets and the off-map portion can't be swept, so you're basically playing with one less minefield cap for the rest of the game.
2) Under some circumstances (seems to involve higher mine amounts than needed to trigger #1), a fleet will lay a new minefield rather than laying into an existing one. I'm not sure whether this is a bug; it may be a not-quite-successful attempt to avoid triggering #1 (which is definitely a bug).
I also tested laying new fields; that works fine up to at least 57 million. Presumably a limit does exist, since the #mines entry in the description of the field presumably has a finite size, but it seems unlikely or impossible to hit it (that 57 million is slammed up against the cap for a non-SD with one design, since that's 32,000 36-minelayer nubians; you could go higher with SD and/or multiple designs, but come on). With that said, there's a bit of a hitch somewhere between 10 and 57 million: the decay rate drops to 50. As in, not 50% of the minefield like normal - 50 mines per year.
[Updated on: Fri, 22 September 2023 13:25] Report message to a moderator
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