Mine feilds

Sounds neat. Perhaps they could be a tech tree. Say regular ones which your enimies can see but are still good cause there more and likely to go around which funnels them toward strong points less risk damage unless them have anti mine weapons on their ships. An upgrade would be cloaked or disguished mines (self expanitory). Then perhaps self replicating mines which inflict tons of damage and are hard to destroy. I think they could be either deployed by a miner or perhaps be deployed between two military space stations as a chain between them.

I think a mine layer would work better because 1) you wouldn't have to build two starbases first 2) You could place them anywhere like in a ship hot spot or a freighter line.

I think the best idea for possible space minefields is a Space Minelayer (ironically) similar to a Space Miner. Not quite a Constructor, but you go to the square you want to defend, say "Drop Mines," and for the next three turns it lays a minefield. Then you move to the next place, and so forth. This way a minefield isn't prohibitively expensive in terms of costs, but one can't simply say "Oh, a war started, better lay out a minefield." That makes it more of a strategic, peacetime decision than anything else.

Any square that mines were laid can't be passed by trader ships (and laying a minefield on an existing trade route cancels said route). So if you have a high-PQ gem that you have a large population on and many factories and even a wonder or two, you can whole yourself up but can't take advantage of trade if you do. A small disadvantage, I guess, but a disadvantage nonetheless.

Just my two cents on the matter.

Mmm... minefields...
I liked Rasori's idea.

I think laying mines should work like this, instead of placing individual mines manualy or having ship auto place them, you just hit the "place mines" button and then 5 random spaces that are within 2 spaces of the minelayer are mined. And a minelayer can't move the same week it places mines.

Also if a mine lands on your trade route, your trade route should not end because the mines have sensors that tell friend from foe. And an enemy trade route with mines on it will end eventually anyway because of the trader blowing up.

I dunno about you, Shadow, but I'll trade with the Drengin even if I'm good. They're my enemy, but it's my trade route. So, how do these mines determine who's friend and who's foe here?

Who you are at war at I suppose.

Yes, like that. Like if you have your ships auto-attack when your not at war, they wont shoot or move, same thing.

space is 3d think of the scale of the mine field in order to stop a ship it would be astronomic

Yes, it would be huge! making it even more cool!  

if a ship had a sensor range of 5,000,000 miles (space is big), a mine would probably have a similar sensor range too, so it may be huge, but you wont need that many mines.

yes you would! again space is 3d making a wall of mines has to be like an actual wall or you can just go under, above or around with great ease

While you are correct in that any wall of mines would have to be laid in a plane, or a spherical shell to cover a planet, there are a few points to consider:

-You have to know the minefield is there to avoid it.

-If you know where the target is going, you don't need to mine quite so large an area.

-We can assume space mines won't be direct contact mines. Those would indeed need absurdly high density to hit anything. Instead, they would be more like missile launcher-armed buoys that launch at anything that comes in range. This would allow each mine to cover a decent area.

-While space is 3d, star systems tend to be rather flat. Everything of any importance is located within a few degrees of the ecliptic. That may not matter much in interstellar space, but inside the system it's a significant factor.

-This is not a reality simulator, it's a game. Specifically, it's a game that treats space two dimentionally. Thus a ring of mines would be effective around a planet, even though you might need a sphere in reality     

My personal plan of attack: a high speed minelayer with one point of any weapon. Dash in, blow up asteroid mines, mine asteroids to kill off miners trying to rebuild. Also effective to mine around an enemy starbase, to kill off constructors trying to upgrade it   

There is also the possibility (if we want realism here) of mines as add-ons to space stations and asteroid mines, giving them another defense mechanism. It's feasibly possible to lay a minefield around something as (relatively) small as one of these, and could be of use as well (haha, you want to convert to another race, silly mine? Well, my mines will blow up the mine if you do! hah!)

I like your style, blow 'em up if they change their lousy contract.

But actually, why are the miners so vulnerable to another cultures imfluence? I mean you could provide for the things for 10 years and they would still default. MAybe you could have asteroid loyalty, or give them raises to shut them up.

Never! Raises aren't in the tax budget for the next 150 years!
And I tend to play neutral or good.

And you're good?

Well if you were evil you could just put a fail-safe system. They would cheer and jeer.....little did they know they had cyanide pills put in their brains and they are now leaking into their brains!

I like the idea of sentry drones (I'd rather call it this because it doesn't ram the ship and blow up like conventional mines). It wouldn't sacrifice the "mine" itself and (since it's stationary and doesn't need engines) it would have quite a heavy setup of weapons.

--> *ALSO, lets stay to the idea of 2d space mining since this is a suggestion thread.*

There could be a tech branch just for mines. At the beginning, you will only have the technology for more conventional mines, later you will get sentry drones. And the weapon each mine or sentry uses will be dependant on what weapons you have researched. (lasers, missiles, guns)

One possible justification for space mines, outside of the automated, one shot missile launcher idea (or perhaps as an extension of it) is that the warheads could contain some absolutely absurd yields. After all, movement capabilities and space aren't much of a concern on what is essentially an auto tracking disposable missile tube. If you have the capability of sending high yield nuclear devices at a target, a single mine could cover a very wide space while retaining a low profile and cost. Hell, a society advanced enough to manufacture antimatter in large quantities (admittedly, that's pretty advanced) could stuff a couple kilograms of the stuff in and make one HELL of a big bang.

The only catch is accurately detonating the damn things when your target is a light minute away.

The sentry could luanch a homing device at its target which could guide the missiles in.

A homing device wouldn't help matters, since it too would be bounded by the time lag and accuracy issues.

Probably, the best way to go about it would be miniature warp drives on the mines themselves, and just launch themselves at the target. They'd be expensive as all get out, but that resolves the accuracy issue.