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Originally Posted by reinloch
Several things:
1. Minefields are not showstoppers. But they have their pros - they stall enemy forces. While the defender assembles/prepares/maneuvers his forces for battle.
2. A determined force will not have any problems clearing a minefield. The minefield is only effective if defending forces are on station to exploit the enemy mine-clearing endeavor.
3. These mines use IIR sensors (at least) or some advance variants of passive optical sensors which do not react to space junk. Upon identifying a valid target, they propel themselves along a precalculated intercept course, probably making minor corrections with their limited maneuverbility. Given the massive relative velocities of cruising warships, if they miss their intercept, they probably can't maneuver to intercept again, so they will explode in proximity with a frag warhead.
4. Due to the vastness of space, mines are deployed near strategic locations like bases, depots, transit lines, etc. But this affects civilian shipping, since IFF codes can't be issued to civilian vessels.
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This actually makes a lot of sense (it's similar to how minefields are used currently, though obviously the mines would have to be significantly more advanced). But as mentioned, it's only a stopgap. The problem is that when laying thousands of mines, it becomes expensive. Resources are limited, rather than sinking that money into a minefield, it could be spent on something else. I'm not saying mines aren't a good answer, but there's a limit to what you could do with them. If I sunk my entire defense budget into building enormous protective minefields, I've got nothing to actually fight with.
I agree with Kaoru, this has been my favorite thread all week, I've learned a ton from researching things that were mentioned here.