I think a lot of mods are reducing the count for planet size/importance. Home planet stays default where other Terran can be reduced 25%, volcanic/ice maybe 40% reduction and asteroids 60%. Everyone has there own preferences but it's an idea. Maybe add a slot count for increasing beyond the new default, say if an asteroid is a choke point. 

Also the models were reduced in polys by SivCorp for TSOP. I for one never ever zoomed in on a mine until I made the models SoaSE compatible for SivCorp but I can see the need or people that do, there are some sweet models in Sins but more than a few have potential for many poly reductions and still be great quality.

Edit: Others also cut the numbers in half but double up on the HPs. This was also done for the Strike Craft and Cargo Ships (reduced numbers, increased capacity) TSOP add-ons.

Also the returning pirates can eventually lead to 100s of ships at the pirate base.

A little off track but is it possible to have strike craft auto dock when not in use?

Touching on what myfist0 has stated, mines really do need a poly count reduction and in many mods having a reduction of mines per gravity well has not affected game play other than reducing the amount of memory consumed. In order to make mines more 'fun' to play with I would like to make them more dangerous both in physical damage as well as any secondary abilities. With this statement I would also suggest making the clearing of mines easier whether it be a research ability for ships (passive or otherwise) that consumes anti-matter or requires tech tree research. I'm not suggesting the removal the ability from scouts but rather an additional options.

Mines need to to easier to deploy for TEC. While its neat both Advent and Vasari can deploy them on the fly, They deploy them en-mass. TEC has to build each one or 2 at a time. Lame.

What we did in Distant Stars, was reduce the over all number but increase their damage output accordingly. It helped us deal with ingame lag.

I have to disagree with you boshimi, mines are fairly easy to deal with scouts. Honestly if you give an alternate method to mine removal, scouts will be even more useless. But the scout role is a different topic.

Anyhow, TEC needs easier deployment, addtion debuffs would be neat for each race. And I personaly thing and decrease in over all numbers but increase in damage is the way to go. Makes them a bit more tactical, you cant fill half the grav well with mines. And will make them actually worth the effort if do hit something.

Wow, glad to hear you're looking at this feature.  Mines need love, that's for sure.

Currently, players use mines as thickets instead of walls.  Because they're so easy to go around, they don't make effective barriers and the way the AI uses them is laughable.  Large clusters of mines really only work for Advent, and even then it's more an annoyance tactic since homing mines need to be manually cleared if you don't want to lose scouts repeatedly.  Instead, mines are used sparingly as thickets to hide your units in or behind.  You're free to pass through (since mines have no friendly fire properties) but the enemy cannot.

If we want to cut down on the memory/cpu hogging through gameplay, you probably want to eccentuate this role since it leads to much more sparing mine usage than we presently see from the AI.

The simplist thing I can think of to just reduce their numbers is to make them more powerful, with more range, but a lower limit per gravity well. Four times the damage and four times the range would (hypothetically) mean you would need a quarter of the number of mines (right? you'd need less, anyway ).

Taking the 'more' as a cue, here are some other areas of concern, most of which seem to require little more than some tweaking of numbers:

Trade ships/refinery ships:  why do these rebuild so fast?  They have to have phase drives, yet they rebuild far faster that constructors.  Is the bounty for destroying them working- do they even have any reason for existence at all?  Could we consider slowing them down to perhaps half speed to make them easier to interdict?  If they have no impact on the game what about the technologies that improve them, like civilian ship safety and the Advent retribution?

Colony pods are extremely expensive for the return.

Resource Focus will almost never be cost-efficient at the current level of boost.

Vasari volcanic population upgrades give far too little return for the investment.

More generally, refineries are only viable in exceptional situations, and could use either a cost reduction or some change to the mechanic.

Pinpoint Bombardment- is this some kind of cosmic joke on novice Vasari players?  What is it intended to achieve?

Martyrdom- never researched in its current form, becuse of the lack of any effect.

Planetary shields- extremely expensive and high tech for the limited effect after the introduction of auxiliary government in Entrenchment.

Insurgency- again, Entrenchment had a severe impect on this high-level technology. 

Wave weapons and other non-phase missile weapon upgrades- wave weapons are the worst, extremely expensive and with a very limited effect, but some others are almost as bad.  Perhaps weapon upgrades which are not widely used by a faction's ships could be 10% improvements not 5%?

Advent hangars/hangars in general- the antimatter recharge rate is far too low on hangars at present.

Deliverance Engine- if this is only to give combat bonuses to a fleet, in which case it would be rarely valuable to have more than one or two, then it would be okay.  However, if it is intended to threaten to eliminate enemy planets due to culture then it is truly woeful at present and does practically nothing, even against planets where the enemy hold is already weakening before the weapon is fired.

More generally the culture mechanic could use work, unless it is intended that there should be no purpose at all in building multiple culture propagation centres.

Carrier capitals- are about the only type of capital in multiplayer.  I have suggested that it should cost them AM to build strikecraft, perhaps at 25%-33% the rate of carrier cruisers, but still some cost, as it reduces skill to have anything built for nothing.  The Halcyon and Skirantra have received too many extra squadrons since all the carrier capitals were upgraded and are now substituting for carrier cruiser fleets, one reason being that they can still kite LRF while the carrier cruisers can't.  

Everyone has their own opinion on capital ship abilities, but here are some generally regarded as rubbish- Shield Restore has become far inferior to Surge and the Dunov can't even heal itself; Animosity is totally ineffective; Subversion is far too situational and costs too much, if you raid a back area with a bunch of trade ports it does nothing; the Radiance equivalent of Gauss Rail Gun does twice the damage and is an interrupt plus disable; Guidance has been described as merely using up antimatter more quickly without providing any real benefit; Incendiaries do far too little damage.

Capital ship speeds are an area where some of the balance mods make an improvement- particularly the close combat battleships are made more viable with a speed improvement.  After all, this is the principle of the game at frigate level, that greater range means less speed? 

Actually 4 times the range (radius) covers 16 times as much space (in 2D ignoring up down). With 4 times the damage as well you are looking at more like one sixty fourth of the current number of mines

This is a good point.  Should the mines just be made invisible absent scouts or special abilities?  The price for deploying them would probably need to be raised but they'd also probably get used more often.  One problem is that players might not be aware that they are hitting mines with their ships; there would need to be some sort of special visual effect to make it clear that a ship has been hit with a mine.

Personally I would want something done about vasari mines being laid in the midst of subverted ships to be dealt with before making them invisible or more powerful.  Mines shouldn't be an offensive weapon but more of a defensive one in my opinion. 

[_]-Greyfox

Advent can easily deploy mines hidden by the fact the ship that deploys them are carriers. Can use repulse to push enemy into the mines.

Blair I would increase the radius for both radius, activation and aoe of all mines.  Tec mines are the worst. How about an upgrade to make them invisible because its the only mine that cant be set in enemy territory.  Vassari mine upgrade to disable rather then destroy doesnt make since unless the duration is greatly increased or becomes invisible.  Why disable when you can destroy

The Advent mines can be docked and deployed when needed.  They travel as fast as SC so cant be destroyed easily as you make it seem.  They are not auto targeted by fighters or flak unless is the only type of SC around.

You can start pushing a fleet back with repulse then deploy the mines behind the enemy.  Use a 2nd guardian to push the other fleet into the mines. Ships under repulse have a hard time moving already

Good point, though still easily killable with a little micro once they deploy.

You still have to work for it, and the enemy has a fair opportunity to try to get out of the setup.  Much harder to avoid and prevent the Vasari variety, and much easier to spring the trap.  Never said it's a bad tactic; quite the contrary, that's a great combo, just not quite as great as the Vasari variety.

Furthermore, a proper change to repulsion would fix this combo, since the issue is more the immobilizing effect of this ability (which has ALWAYS been an issue).  We actually got a great version of repulse in the Project Equilibrium mod that didn't completely immobilize units, but still would push them out of the area of effect quite nicely.

Less so with vasari.  No more than you would be doing with subverters anyways and its basically uncounterable without strike craft superiority(an iffy thing against vasari anyways since they tend to go overboard with SC anyways).  It takes a lot of forethought to position to repulse someone into mines already laid.  As mentioned already, the vasari is likely going to have a lot of bombers to shoot them down as they are being laid.  It is a lot harder to pull off as advent at any rate and impossible with TEC.  To be clear, I don't want mines used offensively by advent either.

[_]-Greyfox