I liked spacestations. They do need a way to force engagement instead of just letting enemy fleets fly through the system. Flak for stations would be a nice thing. One way to force an engagement would be to add a jump drive inhibitor.

Mines = Major suck. Sorry they are broken as you are well aware. I think most of the crashes, dumps etc... Can be credited to Mine spam. I think the cost for Tec needs to be lower. I agree with limits on how many mines can be planted. Heck I would do a seperate mine counter and limit them to a 1000/game.

As to free mines, how about you give them a spawn timer and make them run out of juice after a certain amount of time if not recharged/maintenanced. Where as tech mines are permed in place until used/destroed since you are paying per mine. Did I mention I would also half the cost of tec mines and let em drift around in system migrating towards enemy fleets?

Give each race an automatic de-mining system. Maybe assign fighters the task. It only makes sense that small ships and not frigates would do the job.

Enough from the peanut gallery. I want the next Beta release so we can break it please.