advent mines: useful in SP?

Answer to everything except last question is NO!

I personally find mines to be very useful in SP. The AI is almost as bad at dealing with them as starbases. You lay them out and AIs come smashing (and dying) through. Though yes, you need to do it manually. Never trust the AI in placement of anything.

As you say, they just don't do a lot of damage.  Sure, enough of them will destroy some ships and soften the enemy fleet a bit, but they won't do much to stop a determined attacker.  If you have a lot of cash, you could always put some out there to create an added deterrent layer to your defenses, but they are no substitute for fleets and defense structures.

They can definitely work, and are probably one of the best ways to kill forces that greatly outnumber you without resorting to starbases.  The big problem, especially against the highest difficulty AI's, is that every target that so much as strays nearby these things is going to trigger them, which means you have to be careful to deploy them right before the battle happens otherwise they'll just get depleted before they do anything useful.

Homing mines + Malice is pretty damaging...but it is really hard to pull off and is a costly investment...I have used homing mines to some effect in MP but that was a very unique situation...against the AI, there are much better things to invest in, namely technology or capital ships (for that juicy XP)...

I just wish the AI didn't sometimes get trapped in a logical loop where it decided all it can have its drone hosts do is either build homing mine squadrons or lay homing mines. Seems like a terrible waste of squadron slots for homing mines. On the other hand using mines themselves doesn't seem very useful vs upper level AIs for the very reason Darvin3 mentioned.

The issue isn't so much building too many mines...the issue is that the AI does not understand the concept of scuttling, so any SC the AI builds is permanent...

I believe that the AI strategy (as in Agressor, Defensive, Researcher, etc...) affects the likelihood of mines being built...reducing the appropriate values in the gameinfo file would likely prevent massive amounts of worthless homing mines...

Makes sense, so after a long enough time the AI (depending on the personality) ends up with only homing mines since as the bombers and fighters get destroyed they tend to be replaced by homing mines which are often not targeted.

Its too bad you cant designate areas or queue movements so that they could at least be auto-placed effectively. And they clearly need to be upgradable, either through current tech or new tech.

Oh well. Im assuming they also don't work offensively.

You can designate areas and queue movements. I do that constantly with TEC and Vasari mines. It is a bit more difficult with Advent, but if you wait for long enough for the carriers to produce 150 mines you could queue them that way. And yeah, agree with the need for upgradable mines. We use them in Distant Stars ourselves.

As for offensively, No. When it was discovered that you could use them that in the early beta it was fixed so as not to be possible. I have heard there are certain Vasari abilities that can help you attempt this or if you distract the enemy long enough for the activation of the mines occur you can pull it off, but it is difficult.

can you explain the advent queuing?

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well it would require that you have about 50 carriers each building the mines at full capacity (3 squads each)

when they are built, you release each and every one to specific locations of your choice