Suicide Junkie writes:
"The combat map uses a totally different time scale."
Yes, a scale that nevertheless allows for mines to be launched, detonated, and swept.
"And these are very much not like terrestrial mines."
Amen.
"Plus it is all abstracted."
No argument there. It's just that the abstraction is wrong.
Phoenix-D writes:
"Given that the mines are 10 KILOTONS in size..that's not entirely unreasonable." [range of 150 million miles]
OK. I scatter my mines along the orbit of Mars and I've covered all 4 of Sol's inner planets plus most of the asteroids. In battle, my 10 kt mines greatly outrange my 60 kt heavy ship mount APBs, and they NEVER miss (despite lacking the 10 kt Combat Sensors my primitive ships require to hit at long range). Plus, as tesco samoa points out, my undetectable mines can "see" and hit cloaked ships before the rest of my forces have the tech to even detect them.
As I implied in my earlier post, such contradictions are reduced (but not eliminated) if mine effectiveness is limited ONLY to choke points. In fact, some day when I have more experience with Space Empires I may try creating a mod with NO mines; besides increasing "realism" it should help the AIs against human players.