I thought about this as well - then you would use mines to effectively close off phase lanes or set up nasty traps that a fleet without a spotter would be unaware of.  However, it struck me as odd that if the technology existed to jump between stars that the species wouldn't also be able to build in some sort of basic friend/foe recognition system in mines.  Of course, we also wouldn't hear ships exploding in space, so who am I to nitpick? 

Another thought would be if your ships traveled through your own mine field, they would destroy the mines simply by having these huge ships run into them (without the mines detonating).  That seems like a better compromise to me.

Why should trade ships get free passage through a mine field? They're made to block off ships. Cargo carriers are ships.

Mainly because you currently lack the ability to designate trade routes to your trade ships.

If I could tell my trade ships route x if a no fly becuse I put a minefield in the way it'd work nicely. However becuse they lack the brains to fly around the mine fields (in that they would have intel data on where they were placed so would naviagte around your own fields) one would need to give them immunity, or script in the ability to define trade routes.

I would argue that any "friendlies recognition" would expose the mines to the enemy because some type

of energy would be used to transmit a signal and recieve a "disarm" signal.  Certainly as sophisticated as

the ships are at this point in history, they would have figured out a way to detect this signal as an indication

that mines are about. 

as for cargo ships, the AI (and you) shouldn't be foolish enough to place mines where you can visibly see

cargo ships going. 

I would also like a default auto placement for mines where you are asked "would you like to place mines

around X structure?"  Or, "would you like to set mines at in/out phaselane?"

Something like this.

I don't agree. The mines are phased out of normal spacetime. You can actually detect them(read see them on your game) but not interact with them at all aside from the scout's ability to de-phase them. At that point you can blow it up.

Therefore, there can not be any possibility of a chainreaction, because the other mines are still in their cloaked mode and invincible.

The solution here is to automate the scout's behaviour. When he is not on a scouting mission, just park it in a gravity well with enemy mines and he should automatically start to go and destroy those mines one by one without any additional player micromanagement. You can create a fairly effective mine clearing force of a dozen or so scouts and they can clear out any mine fields quickly enough, but not too quickly. The mines are still doing their job of delaying the enemy, it takes time to disarm them still, just not the player's attention as well.

The vasari can phase out their missiles but it needs research that the other 2 races haven't mastered. However a missile and a statonairy mine are a tad different, so it should be easier to phase out a mine compared to a missile, but both of them are much smaller thatn even the smallest ships. I can only guess at exactly how phase space works but i assume that the overall mass of an object and maybe even the amount of energy contained within it have an effect on how easy it is to phase out. Capital ships obviously have more mass and more energy than smaller ships, thats why it takes longer for them to make the jump. Mines have almost no energy in them besides whats needed to phase out and they don't move, so it shouldn't be that hard to phase them out.

Instead of the mines broadcasting a signal all about, because that would give them away, I assume that allied ships would broadcast a signal at the mines and the mines would just receive the signal. I know that that isn't that hard to do, my tv does it, I push a button ona  remote and it turns off.

I didn't feel it was nescasary to go into specifics and exactly how the mines would work, but seems it was needed.

I assume that instead of a general "don't blow up" signal the mines would probably need a password of sorts. Again, its not really that hard. So allied ships would have to broadcast something like this, "Bravo9445-T64Zeta, Temprorary disarm, Standby. This message would need to be on the right frequency and directed at a specific spot on the mine, and it would need to be done to every single mine in the area.

Notice the 3 parts of my little message. The first part is a password, that would only be known to people of certian levels of security clearence. The second part is the comand sent to the mine, you could also ask the mines for a status report, to self destruct, to phase in or out, or to rearm themselves. And last we have Standby, which means that the mines should be waiting for another command, in this case an order to rearm after the allied ships have passed through.

The password itself could change to another preset password every hour so some one would have to know the entire list to trick them into disarming. Different minefields would have different passwords, infact even different mines could have different passwords. Also you would need to know the location of every mine to be able to disarm them all, information you wouldn't have unless some one gave it to you. And finaly like most websites if you imput a wrong password 3 times in a row it could lock down for a certina amount of time.

wile I can't stand those that want the mines removed I leave a gap that is open so the the enemy has to run into the defenses and waiting star base with out any other way out or around

i think it'd just make things more frustrating if your own mines killed friendly units, as for your comments about real world mines sins is set like what? 1000 years or sumin in the future, I think it'd be a bit odd that such advanced races that who can construct giant ships an send them instersteller distances wouldnt be able to design a recognition system that could tell their mines not to blow up their own or allies ships

my goal is to force the AI to use mines less. 

so many ideas, when all we need is a cap per gravity well, I dont see why that wasnt implemented in the first place

aye their probably are but a cap would have prevented so many problems in first place, particularly the mine spam grr

personally I'd be content with them if they were capped

EDIT: now i think about it it would be nice if the ships didnt have to be right on top of a mine to set it off, they'd be more effective if they had a proximity detonation, or even have that as a researchable extra, obviously not a massive proximity otherwise scouts couldnt detect them without going boom but something to make them more effective

Wow, I never thought of that. You, sir, are a genius!