Like for the troops trick? Empty small mines first, then biggies Last. The problem is with 100 mines max for each sector, thats a lot of risk to have a lot of fake mines.
mmmh, does someone tried to lay warhead-less mines? I wonder what happen, do they still explode?
I remember now a Stars! trick which could be interesting : empty hulls as decoy. The problem with SE IV is that you have a big fee for any ship, because you must pay these survivals&controls systems, so I'm unsure if its worth it. And you have to prevent long range scan too. Still perhaps barebone DN would cost a fraction of a normal DN and still can act as a repellent.