Mines are gross and disgusting, and the only way to balance them is to remove them from the game.

</rant off>

Seriously, how can such a cheap technology

- Infallibly tell friend from foe

- Defeat the most advanced sensors and scanners in the universe.

- Somehow be able to move faster then any warships (static mines couldn't possibly cover the amount of space in one sector).

- Attack all ships simultaneously so that none of them have the chance to, say, notice the explosions and change course.

Obviously, in a game with fantasy technology, you can build in whatever technical assumptions you like. But it seems a shame that most of the other parts of the tech-tree involve time and effort to get high-powered resullts, while mines have all this built in at the first level. But what I really don't like is their effect on the early game, where they essentially paralyse all attempts at warfare, and allow for evil tricks like laying mines in allies territoty. I'm pretty sure people would notice that sort of thing.

Personally, I'd like mines to be completely re-done. There should be a probability of being hit depending on minefiled density. Sweeping should take time (that's the only way to do it safely), and again should be based on probability. Mines should be detectable. Then better mines could be harder to detect, harder to sweep, etc. Given that's a big programming job for a peripheral technology, let's go back to my original proposal - get rid of them.

Mark