The image I formed in my mind was that they homed in on some "spacedock signal" that all large ships need to recognize each other in space so accidents didn't happen when docked. No one ever turns this signal off for reasons I can't explain.
The mines home in, and if the signal doesn't inclue the "friendly" code, they arm and explode. Armor on ships is destroyed first, then components, one ship at a time. It never occurs to anyone to turn on the shields. Cloaking devices don't help for other dubious reasons.
There's no tactics to assign, no planning. The components are only warheads. Yes it's not very realistic. But it's simply a kludged method to provide a measure of defence easily. There are many comments on this subject. Maybe SE5 will be different.
[ October 11, 2002, 18:21: Message edited by: Arkcon ]