[Suicide Junkie]

In an ideal tigga-friendly world, I would view minefields as an irritant, something to soften enemy fleets up with rather the sword of damocles the damn things are now....

I'd say they are nothing more than an irritant right now, except without the ability to soften up fleets.

All you need is a handful of minesweepers, and you can walk unopposed through minefields.

I just had an idea:
What if mines were made extremely large? Each "Mine" you design would be a sector's worth of mines in some pattern.
Now, each mine would take a significant amount of time to build. Say two turns or more.
Each mine would also hold 4-8 warheads.
Remove minesweepers from the game for now.

So with even one array of mines (One mine vehicle), you can lightly damage 4-8 ships, or thrash one smallish ship.

And best, you can spread your mines thinly across a starsystem, and still have a great effect, since they won't be swept.

EG: a modest enemy fleet enters the WP. Hits one mine array. Half the ships take armor damage, one takes light internal damage and has to either return home for repairs, or hold up fleet's repair ships.
If they press on, next turn they hit another minefield on the path to your homeworld. 1/2 the ships have armor damage, and 1/4 have light internal damage and one or two take heavy internal damage (because they were already damaged).
The fleets can also use dedicated armor ships to suicide in your fields, but that can get expensive.