Would Minefields Work in Space?

[@theishiopian68]

Personally, I love the idea of self-propelled mines. These are basically just modified torpedoes that sit in orbit. Essentially undetectable, as unless their engines are active they give off almost no heat. However, as soon as they detect hostile movement, or perhaps if they are triggered remotely, they lock on to the nearest heat source and fly in swarms towards the target.

[@patbracken]

Spacedock mentioned missiles loitering in space with passive sensors, which is my favorite sci-fi minefield type.

[@kingssman2]

There's submarine mines like this. They're torpedoes that sit on the ocean floor and then fire up when a sub or ship is nearby.

[@nicoferguson1215]

The US has such, called Captor mines i do believe

[@nemesis7774]

To be fair, historically speaking at one point torpedoes could be used to designate both mines and torpedoes. Like missile for the military javelins. Funny thing that now javelin is a missile.

[@UGNAvalon]

@kingssman2 3:37

[@AlRoderick]

A thing we have now that science fiction writers didn't really think of too much is what's called a loitering munition, basically a suicide drone that can hang out in an area for an extended time waiting for a target to appear. That fits the profile of what most space mines seem to be, but the term hadn't been invented when a lot of this science fiction was being written.

[@Ensign_Cthulhu]

Suicide drone = guided missile.

[@MjolnirFeaw]

On a functinality level that's equivalent to a roaming torpedo. And I think these has existed for a long time.

[@Kalebfenoir]

The Stars at War book series had those. Granted, they called them mines, but they went out of their way to define them as basically a drone missile with a targetter that could be programmed head of time (if you wanted to hit specific ship types)

[@khanch.6807]

​​@@Ensign_Cthulhu Everything eventually becomes a guided missile. Pointy and Spicy thing that knows where it is by knowing where it isn't.

[@Groza_Dallocort]

Even Thunderbirds 2015 had something similiar that they had to disarm

[@DrakeAurum]

An aspect worth exploring (but rather grim and gruesome) is the way that real-world mines are designed to do more than just immediately detonate and take out a single target. More modern minefields are designed to not even go active until people / vehicles penetrate well past their perimeter, so that once their targets do become aware of them tjhey're already pinned down. And in some cases, mines are deliberately designed to be more likely to cause crippling injuries rather than kill outright, because killing a soldier leaves their squadmates free to continue their mission, but injuring a soldier results in other soldiers needing to tend their wounds and try to carry them back to base. Likewise, a minefield designed to disable a ship will leave it stranded and in need of rescue by others, creating a high-tension situation that can easily span an episode.

[@littlekong7685]

It is a bit of a myth that mines are designed to main not kill. Some mine,s like the Russian leaf mines are main mines, designed specifically to main civilians in urban and rural settings to demoralize a nation. But most infantry mines are built small simply because it makes them cheaper, lighter, and harder to detect. Kill is the secondary goal, maim is a nice consolation, but most minefields are about area denial and locking an assault force down to be swept by the defenders. Many nations have placed signs with zero mines in the supposed "field" simply to deny an assault force a fast avenue of approach.

[@EcardEcardian]

Mines are there to stop advances. They are a denial tool. This thing that mines maim / kill, that is just a bi product of the denial part.

[@jkl9984]

@@littlekong7685 Have you been at a National guard training or in the military? Maiming is very much a valid way to take out 5 soldiers out of the fight at the cost of one heavily injured. There was an excellent 23 minute drone video on Telegram showing excellent Ukrainian medic training. A group of Ukrainian soldiers were trapped in a petal minefield, most heavily injured. The medics tried to stabilize the survivors but also stepped on those mines, resulting in removal of limbs. 2 Bradley IFV's were used as medevac one of which was, sadly, later taken out by an ATGM. In the end the total number of casualties (WIA/KIA) i counted was 12 soldiers and 5 medics on video, probably more, as the FOV of the drone was rather small. For a small-ish field of green petal mines. This was during their failed counter offensive on Russian lines. Also, it wasn't the Russians who used petal mines on civilians, but Ukrainian forces.

[@littlekong7685]

@@jkl9984 Area denial is the design goal of a minefield. Training manuals (publicly available) state the goal of a minefield is to control an area and blunt assaults against a defended position. Majority of casualties should come from fire support of the minefield not the mines themselves. And no US minefield should be created outside of a fire control area as this achieves no operational support and without cover minefields can be (relatively) easily removed or avoided. Yes, under fire, inside a minefield casualties can easily stack up, and it is always good to take advantage of an enemies paralysis and reduce equipment counts to deplete enemies fighting abilities, minefield or not. Why would the Ukrainian military launch petal mines onto Ukrainian civilian areas inside their area of control, civilian transport hubs, and into Ukrainian military supply routes and depots? that seems pretty self defeating...

[@jkl9984]

@@littlekong7685 Quite a few videos of Ukrainian mines being scattered on Russian held territory and civilian areas in there well after the civilians returned and front line advanced into Ukraine. I'm guessing we are thinking of different video footage. That said, You just explained to me one of the many ways how minefields are used. Nothing in there contradicts what i said. Unless i am missing something.

[@WackoMcGoose]

5:44 "And what you don't realize is, my ship... is *_dragging mines!"_* Truly the best moment of the movie, when the actors truly _became_ the space heroes the Thermians thought they were.

[@buffalowt]

Ive always loved Galaxy Quest and was dying all video waiting for it to come up It is my favorite use of mines in video media because the movie doesn’t try to explain why the mines are located where they are. Whatever strategic purpose they served stopped being relevant long ago when the Great War ended and the remnants of the field is so expansive and dense it appears to be a dust cloud. A folly so many shows and movies fall into is trying to justify the reason for somethings existence when explaining what something is when narratively it does not matter and only raises more questions

[@templarw20]

Don't forget the Honor Harrington and Starfire books by David Weber, where mines were largely just missiles that were designed for sitting in space for weeks or months before firing.

[@benlyon4739]

was going to mention First Hancock, but you beat me to it

[@Roukle]

Later on they were missile pods, at the start they were missile warheads.

[@templarw20]

@@Roukle The pods are mostly just disposable mass drivers for the extra velocity.

[@templarw20]

Also... grazer torpedoes.

[@solace001]

He did mention bomb pumped lasers and I'm sure he was referencing the Honorverse when he said that. I do think Weber did it best with the laser-head mines in his stories. It gives mines the range of something like a half a million kilometers of range instead of some contact stuff you see in sci-fi.

[@Woodclaw]

The Traveller TTRPG bypass a lot of issues about space mines with of CAPTOR (Captive Torpedo) Mines. In summary, a mine is just an bunch super-cheap of antiship torpedo lauchers linked to a cluster of IFF transponders and a manuver engine. If a ship comes close without proper traspoder codes, the mine fires a salvo of torpedoes, eventually repeating until it runs dry. The genius of the system is that the empty mine can be either rearmed or discarded, since it's very, very simple tech.

[@VigilanteAgumon]

CAPTOR was an actual design that was used by the U.S. Navy

[@blockmasterscott]

I loved Traveller! Totally awesome game!

[@Woodclaw]

@@VigilanteAgumon I didn't know, thank you.

[@garageofpower2891]

I use a variation of that system in Spacemaster as well, it's very effective and has kept my players on their toes a few times.

[@rottenmeat5934]

Yeah, I remember talk of an automated mortar tied to proximity sensors as a replacement minefield. Functionally the same.

[@thosewhocando]

I recall two SF mine fields that worked. 1) DS9 where the mouth of the Worm Hole was minded (strategic location). 2) In Star Trek Fleet command, ships could toss out mins out as the ships went by. So any one following has to dodge or eat the mine. 2a) Honour Harrington (book 3, "Short Victorious War" by David Weber) took the above to the max by having two battlecruiser sized fast minelayers that laid a minefield on same vector as the pursuing fleet. Both vertically and horizontally. The pursuing went face first into the field, with half a dozen dreadnoughts coming out burning wrecks.

[@Roukle]

And depending on how you define mines, the system defense missile pods deployed later on might count

[@HappilyHomicidalHooligan]

@@Roukle Not really, the System Defense Pods can't fire unless Fleet Command tells them to, they were a Dispersed Missile Swarm...to be a Mine Field, they would have to be able to autonomously detect, target and fire on an Enemy Ship. They had no on-board Sensors or Targeting Computers. Without Targeting Data sent to them by System Defense Command, they did not know which direction to fire in or who to aim for in fact, they didn't even know they needed to aim and fire unless told to, thus they're not Mines... On the other hand, with their INSANE Range, they would make a NASTY Mine Field if the pods were either equipped with the needed Sensors or an Automated Command & Control Satellite was located near each Pod Cluster that could Detect Enemy Ships and send the Targeting Data to the Pods along with a Firing Command... Prey your IFF never fails... 😄😁😆😅😂🤣

[@robertdrexel2043]

There a few more I am sure including the mentioned minefield in Stargate, and another Star Trek one during Enterprise. There are also the minefields used in Steve White's Starfire series, which uses a similar concept to the DS9 version as FTL in that series was through the use of some form of wormholes therefore saw the need of Minefields to protect such places.

[@PaulCashman]

Came here to mention that Honorverse minefield. And technically any missile pods left inert and waiting along strategic paths for a PRN (or Mesan) force to show up would qualify as "mines with range."

[@Tom-ug7kt]

I hate DS9 brought up as an argument. These mines are lore breaking perpetuum mobile devices, quasi-infinite energy. Why do they stop with mines? why not replicating whole ships with minimum AI and let machines fight? What about an minefield, which replicates BEFORE exploding? which ends up in an ever growing minefield, which engulfes whole systems?

[@mitwhitgaming7722]

My favorite version of this was when Thrawn 'mined' Coruscant with cloaked asteroids in the Heir of the Empire trilogy. Not only did it pose a threat to ships coming and going, but also forced the planet to constantly have their shields raised to prevent a ground impact as the asteroids' orbits degenerated.

[@patbracken]

The real genius was having his tractor beams 'dry fire' so defenders thought there were far more than he really used, causing them to keep the shield up while searching blindly for a non-existent threat.

[@mitwhitgaming7722]

@@patbracken Yes!

[@Adelina-293]

Thrawn, you magnificent bastard!!!! I read your trilogy!!!!

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

@@patbracken And forcing them to sooner or later to attack one of two targets that held the gadget to make sure they found all the mines, seeing through their attempts to trick him into thinking they were going for one, while in truth going for the other, more heavily defended one. Which allowed him to set a trap that only failed because a second group was there for the same reason and he got assassinated. Thrawn could have dealt with the surprising double attack, his second in command, Captain Pellaeon, knew he could not and to avoid unnecessary losses, retreated.

[@templarw20]

@@Dreamfox-df6bg Exactly. Thrawn made 2 mistakes over the course of the trilogy. Just two. First was not understanding the Noghri's honor code and who was Vader's heir. The second was allowing Niles Ferrier to continue making trouble with the various smugglers, eventually pissing them off enough that they were that rogue group.

[@raptor1672]

That Stargate episode was wild! Also the extra coolness of the concept of zero playing a part was awesome!

[@andrewhoughton8606]

That is gd version have seen

[@battlesheep2552]

Yeah it's funny how most people don't realize that the concept of zero isn't that obvious and a lot of ancient cultures didn't have it.

[@raptor1672]

@@battlesheep2552 Indeed!

[@Captain_Reaper]

Hi! Actual pilot here. Hooj is right, wires and cables are REALLY hard to see from the air. They're marked on VFR charts for safety for that reason. Excellent detail.

[@Starwar111ITA]

Something I've not seen explored is the fact that, in a more realistic sci-fi setting, one could use mines by focusing on certain orbits and basically locking down certain approaches or departures to and from spaceports. We're assuming that the ships can't just start or complete their journey by travelling through the atmosphere for longer periods of time (but they could be stopped by lack of fuel, or risk interception en route). Also, since things like interplanetary transfers need specific orbits and dates to achieve transfers (and if fuel is a concern ideally one wants to reach a particular station/ship/base for refueling in one motion), one could use space mines to pre-emptively lock down these routes, potentially stopping trade or a big enemy fleet from reaching a planet.

[@DanielLCarrier]

The problem with that is you couldn't have a permanent minefield, since you can't make them orbit in such a way that they'll be along the orbit at the right time every time they can do a Hohmann transfer. You have to put them in an orbit where you know they'll intersect with that transfer. And then they can avoid it by using a slightly less efficient route at random.

[@thebravegallade731]

This actually works even better in more unrealistic ones too. Specifically any setting where there are things resembling hyperspace lanes. Have mines on key chokepoints in the lanes...

[@battleoid2411]

​@@DanielLCarrierYou could potentially seed the most efficient transfer routes with loitering missiles in such a way that the mines all converge when ships are most likely to be there, then an approaching enemy knowing that's likely the case will be forced to either take losses or use up precious delta v, of course executing that would require some extremely accurate Intel on when, where, and how enemy ships are approaching you. Honestly though it'd be easier to just park some ships out there loaded for bear and call it a day, especially when a realistic space missile could be programmed to launch and wait anyway

[@hyperx72]

​@@DanielLCarrier I think we do something similar already with satellites

[@Lucky-sm3yu]

YEA I was thinking about that while watching the video, another really good place for space mines would be at Lagrange points, which are very likely to be used for weapons or other important things since they represent fixed points relative to certain celestial bodies

[@oldeskul]

Orbital mines could also be used to trap an enemy on a planet. EDIT: Also, not all orbital mines have to be explosive. Tens of billions on ball bearings dumped in orbit around a planet would be just as devastating to any ships trying to get on or off world, they just wouldn't be as dramatic as something explosive. Plus they would be much cheaper to manufacture.

[@littlekong7685]

The only issue would be field maintenance, in a couple decades, a century a most, there would be clear areas in the orbit. Maybe that is the goal though? Lock a planet down for a decade while your fleet assembles or rebuilds. Or as a judiciary decision by an intergalactic government as a form of temporary sanction. Or you just keep sending a new ship out every decade for another pass (until one time, the ship doesn't make its run...)

[@ez_theta_z9317]

ah, the instant kessler syndrome tactic

[@nardgames]

​@@littlekong7685 arguably the short lifespan of such a minefield would be an advantage. Wars usually don't last that long, though, depending on the needs of the science fiction setting they may. But one of the big disadvantages to minefields is the difficulty in cleaning them up after a conflict, and such a minefield would be self-clearing.

[@echomande4395]

I doubt that any launch provider would be willing to launch a payload consisting of gravel for just this reason, it would be like creating a Kessler syndrome. A handful of gravel hitting at orbital speed would be extremely nasty.

[@815TypeSirius]

One iron astroid ground up and dispersed on a orbital path could easily create a mmm shield.

[@wesleythomas7125]

"What you fail to realize is that without your ship's neutron armor, my weapons will tear through your hull like tissue paper!" "And what YOU fail to realize is that my ship is dragging mines!"

[@Inglonias]

One trick I haven't seen in any science fiction, but have seen in another channel discussing ideas like this, is just filling the orbital space of a target planet with a ton of ball bearings or something similar. Instant Kessler syndrome. It's also self sustaining as anything the ball bearings destroy becomes more debris you need to avoid or clean up. You've successfully denied access to the orbital space of that planet and it's a huge hassle to clean up (though not technologically challenging - if an alien prankster pulled that on Earth, we could probably escape with a few decades of effort at most)

[@Andy_Pengwin]

The sequel to The Mote in God’s Eye (The Gripping Hand) did something like this, but in reverse. As the human ship was fleeing toward the fixed jump point in the system, the Moties essentially “flung” all sorts of debris at the jump point on a trajectory to intercept the human ship and either force a collision, or confuse the ship’s computer enough to force it to miscalculate.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

This was done on a smaller scale (to take out a specific space station) in one of the later books in the Dorsai series. - My sci-fi TTRPG players used the idea once. They had sensor-confirmed spy data on the real-space arrival point of a fleet of bad guys and set a whole lot of asteroids and space junk on three converging orbits timed to pass through that space just as the enemy arrived. I skipped doing a lot of math and just had the tactic take out about half of the arriving fleet and make the planet dangerous to approach or leave until they (and whatever space transport from the planet survived the battle) spent weeks working to scoop up their mess. - They were psyched to have their trick work, but they hated the downtime of clean-up so much they never did it again.

[@Kurell171]

Extremely renowned, intelligent, and handsome rocket scientist here. From my highly qualified considerations, I can definitively say it would be very hard to get the amount of material needed for that in the first place, But more importantly, deploying it is an issue, because the ball bearings will always pass through the same point they were launched from, so they could end up destroying the craft that's deploying them, especially since you have to launch them in different directions so ships can't just match the velocity of the bearings. In addition, if a society is advanced enough to lead interstellar wars, they'd probably have a fleet in a higher orbit, and cargo could be launched via a magnetic accelerator, which would allow it to be armored. It would be an incredibly effective weapo, tho: let's say our ball bearings have a radius of 10mm, so a volume of about 0.5cm^3. The material of choice would probably be iron since it's the most abundant metal, which has a density of 7.8 g/cm^3. So our mass is about 4 grams. In low earth orbit, an object has a velocity of about 28000 km/h or about 7.7km/sec. So each of our ball bearings has a kinetic energy of 1/2*0.004kg*(7700m/sec)^2 = 132kJ. For comparison a 50cal bullet typically carries around 25kJ of kinetic energy. I think it's sort of like a Dyson sphere. In concept brilliantly simple, but pretty complicated to actually achieve in practice

[@ianglenn2821]

@@Kurell171 what a coincidence, I am also an extremely renowned, intelligent, and handsome scientist. I would just like to remind you of the importance of relative velocity for calculating the impact energy. If a ball bearing is at orbital velocity and it hits something at a slight angle that is also moving at orbital velocity, their relative speed might only be a few m/s. Of course, even 100 m/s could be pretty damaging. The closer the orbits, the less dangerous the impact. So, if you got something going in orbit the other way, then you can double your speed, the relative impact velocity would be 2 x 7.7 km/s, almost 475kJ of impact energy.

[@Phil-D83]

Cloaked self replicating mines used outside the opening of the worm hole in ds9 was brilliant

[@MonkeyJedi99]

Sadly, they forgot to add the word 'quantum' to the mines.

[@deadlypandaghost]

I mean absolutely terrifying as well. Honestly you just set them to endlessly create more and you could flood space with bombs. Imagine if your enemy just had an unstopable wave of invisible bombs approaching you.

[@DanielLCarrier]

If they can make them self replicate, why stop at mines? Just make some self-replicating warships to fight for them.

[@anonymouspersonthefake]

@@DanielLCarrier warships are probably a lot harder to replicate than mines

[@DanielLCarrier]

@@anonymouspersonthefake Then replicate robots that build whatever part is hard to replicate.

[@MrNicoJac]

Mines used to be called torpedoes. And no doubt modern "mines" are sometimes homing torpedoes, just lying in wait on the sea bed (probably waiting for a transmission that indicates peace has ceased). So self propelled mines are not that out-there

[@MonkeyJedi99]

Fun thing I learned this week on Drachinfel's channel is not only were mines once called torpedoes, as you say, but they were named after a particular fish, a species of electric ray, that was extremely unpleasant to accidentally step on. They can give a jolt of up to 200 volts! - (From Wikipedia) The common torpedo (Torpedo torpedo), also known as ocellate torpedo or eyed electric ray, is a species of electric ray in the family Torpedinidae.

[@RLKmedic0315]

"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" that quote was about mines, not "torpedos". And instead of "Full speed ahead", he probably said "4 Bells", which means the same thing. But "Damn the mines, 4 bells!" Just doesn't have the same ring to it, lol

[@MrNicoJac]

@@RLKmedic0315 Yeah, Drach said that, right? Drachisms are sooo funny, absolutely love em xD

[@CosmicCorviknight]

Galaxy Quest: "Could you possibly try not to hit every single one?!" 😂

[@ChristopherShields-xx3ns]

Towing an entire minefield behind the Protector was a really cool (and never before seen) move.

[@thaelindarkfyre4112]

Blockading a planet would be another use of mines, with the sub effect that they could cause kessler syndrome if not swept correctly

[@igncom1]

I always figured the best mine field is deliberately causing kessler syndrome. Just shatter some rocks in orbit of whatever you are protecting for cheap and deadly 'mines'.

[@DanielLCarrier]

The problem is that makes it harder to properly hide the mines. The planet can see the ship coming to drop them off. If the mines suddenly change orbit, it will cause tons of waste heat, and make them very visible. And given the people are on the planet right next to the mines and know approximately where they are, it can't be that hard to track them.

[@moonraven8394]

@@DanielLCarrier if i remember correctly, the kessler syndrome is when many small objects (debris, micro-asteroids) create a (deadly) shrapnel-layer around a planet, which makes it impossible or near impossible for spacecrafts to land on or start from saif planet. It doesn't matter IF you can see each tiny shrapnel, you simply can't get past without getting shredded to pieces.

[@robertalaverdov8147]

Maybe not as a saturated network but perhaps as cloaked/stealthy autonomous seekers. Plus depending on how crazy the setting you want to be you can make things like blackhole mines that can swallow an entire fleet. Or maybe cause the nearby star to go super nova when a hostile fleet enters a system. Sort of like a super mega IED.

[@2011dyrose]

One of the last Expanse books did something similar. A vessel enters a region that's been adjusted to the tipping point of firming a black-hole. The act of opening the gate triggers the star's collapse & subsequently irradiates the solar system & anything via the gate.

[@achillesa5894]

Nebulous Fleet Command has really cool mines. They're the self propelled type, so they run at you when gou get close. You can clear a minefield by slowly advancing and triggering them one by one, letting your PD clean them up, but there's also cooperative mines that trigger the entire minefield when you get close to just one. The best part though is that the mines use an IFF system to avoid triggering on friendly vessels, which means if you're sitting in your own minefield and a stray shell knocks out your antenna, your own mines will suddenly see you as a target.

[@ham_the_spam4423]

I'm surprised no-one else mentioned it. Nebulous being a pvp game, their psychological effects are prevalent as seeing any mines alerts players into flying slowly and cautiously, especially around objective points which would be obvious spots for minefields. a player could deploy a single minefield to make the entire enemy team becomes paranoid, forcing them to fly slowly or keep their active sensors online and giving away their position.

[@yendis101]

There was an attempt at laying aerial minefields by the British in WW2. They were call LAM or long aerial mines. A bomb on the end of a long cable suspended under a parachute. Dropped from obsolete Harrow transport planes it was basically a failure. Trying to get the curtain of falling mines into the exact right position was almost impossible.

[@craig.a.glesner]

“This character didn’t make it.” Killed me, that was hilarious.

[@vallettapetracyneran8587]

The best use of Mines I have encountered is from the David Webber Honor Harrington novels. Mines are considered assets to deny hyper or wormhole transit or to be sneakily deployed on a route you want your enemy to take. They are bombpumped lasers and designed to be such small sensor targets. Thus when it gets around to the first Havinite War. Most planners consider the Mine a defensive tool to protect wormhole junction and tactically obsolete.

[@achillesa5894]

They did something similar in The Lost Fleet, where minefields would often be placed in a jump point so anyone arriving on the system from a specific other system instantly hits them. Pretty cool.

[@addisonchow9798]

In LOGH a ship used widespread particles to trigger the mines of the FPA annihilating the minefield.

[@simon2493]

I love how they did it in Die Neue These. That big particle beam being fired from Brunhild, and they all of the space gets ignited.

[@zeux5583]

in the book series star carrier there is a technique of countering relativistic missiles using canisters of sand that spread their content in the path of the near-lightspeed projectiles. it is used in one of the books offensively as well, when a near-c fighter-jet fires a few 'cans of sand on an incoming hostile attack group and essentially sandblasting the facing 100m their ship hulls away.

[@sumukhvmrsat6347]

​@@zeux5583yeah , the sand destroying the battle moons was the point at which I stopped reading the book 😂🎉

[@zeux5583]

@@sumukhvmrsat6347 it got rather insane in terms of scale in the later books, in the end they had to deal with some multiversal invader AI so powerfull the xeelee would reconsider fighting it. And as long as one doesnt mind the autors vocal political views and character self-inserts which are rather weird for someone who was raised in a social democratic workers household in germany like me, its a cool story

[@sumukhvmrsat6347]

@@zeux5583 I'm glad I didn't continue reading that while I was in half depression 🤣, but maybe I'll give a try again , it has a different than normal story

[@zhangjoey9224]

Fascinating! I've been wondering about these since mines were mentioned in the Sojourn lore - lots of good food for thought

[@Jazz-i4h]

once again referencing the Lost Fleet book series, stationary space mines are a somewhat common weapon given the existence of 'jump points' that are fixed locations within a system, and the only way of getting to other systems without spending decades at sunlight speeds. These mines do still face some of the issues mentioned, such as the facts that they can be avoided once detected and do eventually drift out of position, but they still remain effective given their stealth characteristics and the fact that ships travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light within the universe, making detection and avoidance much more difficult if the enemy predicts your movements

[@CDVermilion]

I'm reminded of the minefield in Strike Suit Zero, which was essentially just a massive zone with loitering torpedoes that would one-shot any capital ships that got too close. They used this partially to even the odds for the player, and partially to really set the tone for the desperation of the situation - the invading force starts breaching the minefield by just throwing so many ships at one spot that they effectively carve a corridor through the minefield with the corpses of their own ships. It brilliantly shows how the invading forces will stop at nothing to annihilate you and those you're defending.

[@ShiftyMcGoggles]

Reminds me of the missile mines from Traveller. Basically a rack of guided missiles that, when they pick up anything 100 tones or more, point at it and fire. The nastier ones use the initial kick of the missile launch to reposition themselves.

[@hopefulmonster]

One use I didn’t see mentioned was used in the Vatta’s war novel series, laying them as an anti pursuit deterrent. The heroes were using a planetary slingshot manoeuvre to get enough distance from the planet to escape into FTL to deter the enemy from copying them they dumped mines out back during the manoeuvre so the enemy would either have to go the around ( and lose them) or into the mine field and risk exploding.

[@cp1cupcake]

One of the Honorverse books did something similar, they figured what route the enemy fleet would take to chase them and filled the area with mines. To make it more funny, this was after everyone had been talking about how mines in space are pretty hard to use (ie a lot of the stuff from this video).

[@ApsalusSigma]

My favorite version of a 'Mine', or really what this video taught me was an Antimatter Rocket powered Missile-Drone, are the 'Mobile Mines' from the obscure Light Novel + Anime 'Crest of the Stars' (an its sequel 'Banner of the Stars'). And one crazy thought I had when learning from yet another amazing Spacedock video is 'Hmm... Getting into Space requires really powerful computers'.

[@BCosby423]

I've actually built "space mines" in space engineers. Disposable drones that can be replicated quickly. As other comments have pointed out, the actual term is loitering munition, but it's basically the same thing. It's literally a cube of explosives with engines on them. I've used them to create mobile minefields around starships and shipyard platforms. It doesn't make sense to have them always deployed, but it acts as a good deterrent for ships trying to get close when they are. Also, they don't follow in a neat minefield, rather just circling the mothership and focusing on any ship that gets nearby. It accomplishes a similar goal to a static minefield, while also being a lot more practical, and, of course, mobile. I've also found they're good at dealing with enemy fire, because they're another, usually closer, target to hit that wasn't my ship. And, the debris from it, if they blow it up while it's on an intercept course, can still be a hazard.

[@gorzonthechampion6784]

The Honorverse has great use of mines, and mine laying ships. Please make a Honorverse video.

[@sumukhvmrsat6347]

Literally the novels are huge vaults of potential sci fi matterial

[@cp1cupcake]

He won't do anything that isn't on screen, so no chance of Honorverse, or any other sci fi. But yeah, the mines in "A Short Victorious War" were great. If only the game was a real one and not a mobile gotcha and the film wasn't canceled.

[@sumukhvmrsat6347]

@@cp1cupcake yeah , okay , that's understandable, but Space Battleship Yamato , is On screen Anime , like , Battleships ,practical Dimensional space submarines , battle carriers , more variety of ships , fighters , and those epic grand battles 🌸💦

[@WolfeSaber]

For air mines, the British did try to use a launcher for ship defense. The mines are carried by parachutes.

[@Betrix5060]

The “unrotated projectile launcher” concept. It… didn’t work.

[@WolfeSaber]

@@Betrix5060 I said "did try"

[@constantinebratanata]

Crest/Banner of the Stars was a good example of mines as missiles idea that was pretty central to how combat played out in the series.

[@fatcoyote2]

I think that the "best" way to utilize the concept of space mines is when the universe utilizing them has factors that predetermine the paths that space vessels will use, like jump gates or star lanes. Also, the mines must either have an exceptionally large area or effect or way to propel themselves towards a ship once activated. I can't remember which series I watched had them, but one version effectively turned the whole thing into a claymore that would explode themselves outwards after maneuvering into better positions, launching dozens of spears in a directed cloud like a massive shotgun. Other mines would do likewise, filling space with near undetectable rods of metal hurtling at near-railgun speed in multi directional clouds of projectiles which only needed to land once or twice to seriously damage any ship.

[@thethan302]

There’s a mission in the original X-wing, where you have to destroy a minefield in an A-wing. These mines are basically nothing more than automated turrets. Flying into its range causes it to target and fire at you. And there’s like 35 of them. Really mines work on a small scale. Protect a location like a buoy, a TFL entrance point. A wormhole; things like that. Trying to mine the space between us and mars is rather out of the scope of reasonable use.

[@Roukle]

Star wars is actually a perfect setting for mines because of the way hyperspace lanes funnel traffic in and out of systems

[@kevinfogle7929]

The Centauri in Babylon 5 use something very similar.

[@BlenderGeek]

Teliporting a mine into a ship, then moving the ship around the mines thusters is a genius idea.

[@alasiadarthe001actual9]

Depending on technology level you can do area denial with lots of micro asteroids or even debris in a planets atmosphere. Shards of broken ships asteroids or anything can damage a ship even more so if the objects can be propelled at the ship.

[@martytheanimator6426]

The mines in Star Conflict vary from a cloud-like swarm of defensive mines that looks more like a bunch of hard to spot dots clustered around a frigate to singular mines placed by light scouting craft. Then theres cloaking mines deployed via gun turret by destroyers, which cloaks and arms after a short delay, but also homes in on enemy vessels passively. All these mines can be used offensively to varying degrees, but are more defensive in nature. And then theres a task specific mine attached to a warp gate but the quest dialog also sometimes refers to this device as a bomb instead, so its not exactly clear if it is a sort of proxy mine or just a bomb with a timer. Also the "alien" faction ships the player can pilot can deploy mines which seek out enemy units within a given detection distance.

[@aceofspadesguy4913]

I think Nebulous has a great example of mines. Mines are deployed via self propelled rocket containers into strategic locations. Some are typical magnetic mines whereas others are sprinter mines that will initiate a boost phase when a ship is detected, so basically the same concept as stationary missiles from earlier in the video.

[@dragonblaster-vu8wz]

Personally, the only sci-fi mines I like are the seismic charges used in Star Wars (because who doesn't love that moment of silence before they go off). Otherwise, chaff and flak missiles work just as well and can be designed much simpler than mines. The missiles can be designed with mechanical fuses, meaning electronic warfare equipment can't interfere with them. Plus, by physics, flak can just remain in a single spot and wreck havoc on any ship that passes through it. And chaff works best if one is being pursued, as the enemy likely won't have time to dodge the debris depending on how close they're chasing

[@guyman1570]

Seismic charges makes sense only in an environment with gravity, aka a surface planet's ocean. 🤦‍♂️

[@dragonblaster-vu8wz]

@@guyman1570 or asteroid fields like when we first saw them used

[@dereksherwood3794]

To avoid the monstrous logistics problem of needing infinite numbers of the things, you could mine lagrange points between celestial bodies that you're trying to control access to. There's only something like 4 or 5 points for each pair of objects, so the area you'd have to cover is much smaller and easier to monitor. Key locations on common transfer orbits between locations you're trying to control would be another sort of 'choke point' relatively speaking. Combine that with mines that project intense radiation blasts, or "mines" that are more like railgun platforms, and you've got some reasonable military options.

[@HrothgarHeavenlight]

Minefields works if there are things like in Battletech- specific jump points which are used by basically everyone.

[@TheAchilles26]

Same thing in the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. Mines are pretty much exclusively used at system jump points and occasionally at their artificial "Hypergates" and are also combined with tactics such as fleeing along a specific vector to goad pursuing ships into the minefield. But FTL location restrictions like jump points, various flavors of "gates," and wormholes are all major solid justifications for mines in sci-fi settings.

[@ashtonmiller-z1n]

nah if they did that any FTL KF drive ship in battltech exiting ftl inside the minefield would acoring to the lore would only just blow up the mines with no damage to any jumpship or warship coeming out of ftl makeing suce thing useless agest any jumpships or warships. bacly it would only work for drop ships untill a jumpship or warship bacly would come out of ftl and just clear the whole minefeld wihout even knowing they where any there at all. heres the thing aobut battltech ftl drives any minefelds that try to stop a jumpship or warship would just be DELETED the monment someobdy comes out of ftl inside the mine feld would bacly dispty the minefeld while the ship would not even be scrached. read the battltech seira offcal wikipeada page aobut space mine eqpement rules for aeroforce 2 rule set. space mines don't work for battltech lanrange ponts. like any battletech lore deapdiver would tell you that space mines don't work on k-f drive eqpent ftl ships. they try3ed that and the mine exploded but the enemy ship took no damage from the mines just being deleted by the exiting enemy ships KF- drive feld bacly diong the DBS beruis disturcion move bacly on the minefeld. yes this is offcal battltech canon sci fi lore aobut battltech sapce mines and enemy ship KF- drive felds in lanrage ponts simply don't work as a area of denal tactic.

[@RorikH]

Something like an interdiction system could work as well. Just force an enemy to exit the local flavor of hyperspace inside of your minefield.

[@TheAchilles26]

@@RorikH that requires a similar justification like hyper lanes to make it logical that you can even predict their position well enough to interdict in the first place

[@RorikH]

@@TheAchilles26 Ah, good catch, very true.

[@WolfeSaber]

In a Sci-fi series I'm working on, a key battle used stealth mines, where they are coated to reduce their signature and are nukes. How they work is that a vessel would normally get caught on one of its wires, which will cause the mine to swing around, hit the ships, then explode to launch jets of plasma and melt metal into the target and nearby ships.

[@heraadrian7764]

Casaba-howitzers with gyroscope angle control and only passive sensors?

[@WolfeSaber]

@@heraadrian7764 By passive sensors, you mean like inertia?

[@heraadrian7764]

@@WolfeSaber Optic sensors and passive radar.

[@WolfeSaber]

@@heraadrian7764 When the mine stops moving, after the ship gets caught on the wire, that's when the bomb goes off. The mine could reel in the wire to shorten it so it matches the length of the vessel, since they could be kilometers long, and spinning.

[@isaacgraff8288]

an idea for space mines. repurposed missiles. Give them functional sensors and you're practically done. "any ship enters X range, chase down and blow up." Gets rid of old missiles that are just taking up space somewhere. Continuing that thought, if a faction needs to put a bunch of missiles somewhere and don't have the room in their normal warehouse, modified mine field. Have a code that you can go and acquire a few of your missiles that are just chilling in space. If someone doesn't have the code the missiles you made go and do their job. There is plenty of space in outer space.

[@W4kT3k]

In the original Battlestar Galactica series, they had to navigate through a Nova that was mined. Two Vipers were specially armored to protect them from the heat, but the protection blinded them from locating the mines, so they needed computer assistance and basically fired blind.

[@getnohappy]

The Thrawn prequel books had interdictor mines (so a very large range) to disrupt hyper lane routes

[@MrQuantumInc]

Weaponized defensive Kessler syndrome. The mines don't need to have explosives or station keep or have any moving parts or really parts, just tiny bits of metal moving at orbital velocity. Shrapnel stays in space indefinitely, thus shrapnel from any explosion is a space mine. Unless they happen to be in a similar orbit, the enemy will hit the fragments at incredible velocity. Activate countermeasures would struggle to even detect a relativistic kill missile, but fragments don't need to detect anything, and the extreme velocity would just make a metal fragment hit that much harder. The world ending RKM would just turn to a gas cloud in the middle of your "minefield".

[@beor2193]

Just wanted to say the same thing. A possibility for space mines would be the Kessler syndrome, just blowing up junk, asteorides or the surface of a moon or planet to shower the expected path of a spacecraft with debris for area denial, perhaps even accounting for its potential turn rate. Like up to area of effect dust guns or macrons on the higher end of the technology scale. Even the potential Kessler syndrome, rigging up stuff to kick of the cascade on demand would be pretty bad, and potentially able to go out of control, but for long lived races or those with sufficient technology it could be used to lock planets in or lock visitors out or, as @MrQuantumInc says, even potentially soak incoming fire. Perhaps even set it up in a way that the junk eventually achieves escape velocity, fall back or form a ring to deal with the aftereffect.

[@static-san]

The web comic Schlock Mercenary had a VDA - Very Dangerous Array. It was essentially a minefield full of intelligent missiles told to station keep. But because they also all had sensors, the owners of them realized they could be used as a monitoring platform, too.

[@forlogic53]

I think just spreading random debris around space just forces any form of spacecraft to go around it or have to slow down to avoid colliding into them. Then you can set up overwatching turrets on key areas and have them watch over the debris field. Just slowing down spacecraft is deadly enough, assuming humanity have highly developed their space travel capabilities then their weapons would be far more advanced than what we have now too.

[@cliffcorson4000]

In the original episode of Battlestar Galactica (the original series) a nebula was mined and thought to be impassable due to the nebula high brightness and acting as a sensor jammer to small ships

[@The_Fat_Controller.]

Right. The _Galactica_ could have bypassed the mined starfield/nebula, but that would have taken a lot of time. Food supplies were critically low, so Apollo came up with a time- and possibly life-saving solution of using Viper fighters to clear a path through the minefield.

[@cliffcorson4000]

@@The_Fat_Controller. exactly The minefield was placed there by the Cylons as their fighter craft would have had the same issues the Galactica's craft had

[@therealshadow99]

I thought a lot about mines for my Guardian of the Stars setting. While a mine more on terms we think of them is really only useful around a planet at most or some very fixed location, true mines in space are most likely a specialized stealth missile with a relatively small range that sits 'in place' until it detects a hostile target. A sudden launch from 'close range' (for space) is fairly hard to deal with, which let's them act as a area denial tool. You still need quite a lot of them to make it work, but it can work. Advanced sensors in turn are the answer to mines, letting any vessel with good sensors act as a 'mine sweeper'. It also makes recon vessels useful.

[@PavelPastushkha]

In a science-fantasy setting of my own, the space mine warfare takes form of mine-rockets. Essentially: a launch container (or sometimes four launch containers) with space-to-space missiles, usually medium range (hundreds of km), equipped with a 360 deg FOV passive infrared target acquisition set programmed to ignore the sun, an RCS unit for orientation control, IFF apparatus, and a radio rangefinder to verify if the target is within range of the missile. That, plus a solar panel to power all of above perpetually. Mass of entire unit is between two and ten metric tons as laid, and the process of "laying" said units is done by tossing them into desired orbit and position out of a ship. Such ordnance is especially popular among triads, warlords and some pirates, who lay mine-rockets "ahead" of their target, on an intercept trajectory. Mine-rockets have been used in major interstate conflicts, but are widely disliked by military, both due to being considered a coward's weapon and the fact that once they are set, they are out there for decades to come, waiting for a target, which they won't be picky about - much like anti-personnel mines in real world.

[@Mike5Brown]

Personally I like the missile turret style of mines, that are stealthy and just sit there and wait for the command to become active and start attacking whatever signature they are programmed to hit. I hope someone at CIG sees this video and takes this into consideration for star citizen

[@RorikH]

You fool, you've triggered even more feature creep!

[@BlakeWaymire-r4e]

I didn't know I needed this video. I now have an ending for my own scifi story. Thanks, Spacedock.

[@samuelkral414]

My idea for space mines is that they would mostly be used for denying certain orbits around a planet and complimenting other kinds of orbital defense weapons I would have them be kamikaze drones that accelerate to intercept a target that they detected and then explode into a shrapnel field to increase the chances of hitting the target

[@cybernomad5971]

I think the largest part of it has to do with the setting it's in. For example, in a game called Rebel Galaxy, there are mines that I think are drawn magnetically to the hulls of ships and have an EM charge when exploded so it messes with the engines so you can't warp away for a period of time. As for application in a theoretical real world, it is largely situational, but I believe space stations would need regular resuplies from external sources leading to regular routes. Depending on the timing, the first handful could be passed off as accidents. It can also be used defenseivly if a station under attack can churn out as much as possible like interstellar chaff to slow down opposing forces, and if successful employ minesweepers after for cleanup

[@Edge-wx7hv]

in my Mass Effect-C&C crossover, a common orbital-specific area denial weapon is what I call a Kessler Barrage, basically, a bunch of cheap fragmenting warheads launched at crucial satellite and station infrastructure, meant to saturate kinetic barriers, thus opening a normally shielded target to impact from more shrapnel, and even the stuff that gets deflected still poses a threat. it's pretty pyrric as area denial goes because the resulting debris swarm threatens everyone equally, and takes months or years to clean up, but if you're using a Kessler Barrage, preventing collateral damage is pretty low on your priority list

[@MihzvolWuriar]

I love this idea of mines in space, it can't be used everywhere but it can make a nice story if it's well made, Trek and Gate made good uses of it. I'd say though, there's another layer of it, "mine drones," seen on Stargate Universe, drones that are totally inert around a area, they activate when they're on range, and wreak havoc, since "missile mines" were a thing, I think this should also be.

[@heyyo3737]

In my world building project, we've developed Kesslerizing weapons or weapons that create a debris field which acts as area denial and or siege weaponry

[@deezn8tes]

One of my favorite examples of a Sci-FI-ish space mine is in a game called Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon…where the empire and the Procyon both have minelayer ships. They are HARD to see and can “swim” towards nearby ships. Some ships have point defense systems which alert you to their presence…but strangely enough, fast ships tend to be more vulnerable to the mines in that game. They can do serious damage and completely swing a battle when used correctly.

[@verilyveronica8430]

Star Frontiers you have Seeker Missiles fields. They float in space like a mine hide themselves and activate when a target is in range that evasion is nearly impossible and the Field waits until you are imbedded in it to activate. Count of 5 is all the crew has before impact.

[@elchjol2777]

I remember the seeker mines from Freelancer. Rear facing launcher and it would fly towards the first target that entered its range, making it great for getting a hostile off your tail. But it lacked an IFF system so if the hostiles avoided it friendly fire could insue if allies are involved and fly too close. Said seekers could also lock on to the craft that launched it if you missed and doubled back. Great to usle when caught alone but a liability if there are any allies in the area.

[@draconisthewyvern3664]

@Spacedock 1:20 barrage balloons also worked by the balloons themselves acting as obstacles. an in theory they could “catch” some of the bombs and shells being shot at a position

[@SuwinTzi]

I like the way mines were implemented in the first Homeworld game. They could be laid in a grid, and would activate and drift towards ships within their vicinity. But given the size of the battle space, you'd need to lay them near asteroid resources to have any use out of them.

[@UniversalCipher]

Latter's not a problem in the singleplayer campaign, since the enemy A.I. can't avoid them.

[@Syruzak]

Watching this video after I've just been playing X4, fighting waves and waves of Xenon with this exact music playing was really stressful enough... To then see the mine destroy mission around the gate from X2, which used to give me actual nightmares when I was a kid due to how many times I exploded there, only made it worse... xD But I really am glad seeing some good content using this amazing franchise :D

[@DreadX10]

Nice to see the Tālivaldis (M-06) Latvian mine-hunter in action. She was once one of the ships in my care when she still was HNLMS Dordrecht (A852), Netherlands mine-hunter.

[@williambrasky3891]

There are already anti armor mines that work directionally. They are called off route mines. That makes more sense as an analogue.

[@screenname8267]

It's a book series, not game or movie, but The Lost Fleet uses mines in space. They will be stationary and used to destroy ships entering a jump point at a defended system, or a ship will move to lure attackers intothen, or they will even be launched into the predicted path of enemy ships, as they are built to be hard to detect.

[@R4V3-0N]

Yes! You have no idea how long I've been waiting to see an episode on this. I do find it funny that Frontier mishandled weapons such as mines so poorly that they didn't even show up in this video for background footage like the other videos often do. I think you hit everything on the nail on this one. Even great comparisons to reality with both naval and aerial mines/ barrage balloons as well as going into the use cases. Something I wonder though is would you consider a form of kinetic mine that is effectively a bunch of ball bearings in orbit as mines? It is most certainly a form of aerial denial especially in the more hard sci-fi settings.

[@michaelbelonio3342]

In Arpeggio, the 401 also uses sea bed layed modules with torpedoes and missiles to distract, confuse and attack enemy combatants.

[@Acirno]

This really gives me some good ideas for a mine field in Space Engineers. Thank You

[@KarlfMjolnir]

The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell addresses some of these as well. Usually just having them dropped by a fleet where they know another fleet has to go to catch them or travel to a target usually minutes (or hours) before or happens as the fleets clash.

[@DanBen07]

On memory alpha there's concept art for Star Trek TMP Enterprise that shows Mine launches on either side of Torpedo launchers.

[@scottfw7169]

The old classic board and miniatures game Starfire has several types of mines, and they are useful for defense around the warp points.

[@Reoh0z]

I'm glad you brought up the DS9 wormhole mining. One of the smartest "space minefield" in fiction.

[@samwisegamgee6532]

This video really made me think about the subject… it was a mine blowing experience.

[@KingOfMadCows]

Transporter technology would be great for mines. You can have some hidden minelayer hubs that beam mines next to ships or on to them if their shields are down.

[@HunterDrone]

if i was the author, my explanation would be "you cant turn while at ftl speeds" because that would mean that any journey from one star to another would be along a straight line that's relatively predictable unless you want to drop out of ftl in the wrong place and make part of the journey by sublight. at that point, minefields become a delaying tactic; if the enemy doesn't know they're there, boom. the the enemy does, they have to make part of the journey the slow way, delaying their forces by days/months/years depending on how far out the obstruction is.

[@robaitken4592]

Topic Mines - Legend of the Galactic Heroes within the first 60 seconds, the team is on point!!

[@marvelboy74]

I love this type of subject matter that speaks to how sci-fi should be written.

[@sebsunda]

One of the best use of "mines" I've seen was shown in the Anime Series "Crest Of The Stars" where "mines" are basically low velocity, dropped "missiles". They behave similarly to the missiles from "The Expense" but with an emphasis on maneuverability & station keeping rather than speed to target. They also have their own spacetime bubble generator in order to engage target in Flat Space which is the FTL Tech in the story.

[@infinitytec]

+1 for the DS9 wormhole minefield. Super clever and effective use of cloaking and replication without breaking what is allowed for in-canon.

[@Cipher_Codex]

My favorite idea of space mines is from an audio book series I listened to "Backyard Starship". "Stealth" Tethered mines connected via steel cables. Turning a section of space into a cobweb of explosives, with a more chain reaction kinda explosion once its set off.

[@teehasheestower]

For the sake of writing using the term "mine" is still a great way to convey alot of information about how a weapon works in a single word without really getting into the weeds.

[@MazokuJun]

If you want less mines you can do tethered mines. The tethers are harder to detect but as long as they are designed to be strong enough to withstand the average or estimated top velocity of the crafts flying over them, the tether can get hook on to crafts and the mines pull themselves towards the craft by retracting the tether. Have something like 10km long tethers and you are good to go for large areas of denial. In higher velocity locations the tethers can act as wire cutting the crafts directly as well.(hyper velocity impacts)

[@sigmastars8003]

In The Last Angel, mines are less contact explosives and more specially made weapon emplacements, with them being slow firing energy weapons or short ranged missile pods, coordinated over an area with command platforms and protected by pickets. The Last Angel also has dedicated minelayer ships and a large majority of warships have aft mine tubes that they can use to wound pursuing ships.

[@cmedtheuniverseofcmed8775]

In a realistic setting where the mines never move, no. However, the concept of homing mines does work. They can be set in space to float and when a ship gets into range, the engines can activate and head straight to them. Even in naval warfare now, mines consist of many things. The favorite is one is a Soviet mine that lies at the bottom. When the ship crosses underneath it, it launches a torpedo straight underneath it. Mines in space warfare is about giving range. So, yes, I agree with Spacedock. :)

[@pylonialwaffles6944]

I was very happy the magnetic mines in Galaxy Quest made an appearance. Also how dare you cut off the bit where Teal'c forcefully gives O'Neill ice cream at 5:20? That scene is hilarious.

[@yungo1rst]

I liked the method from schlock mercenary where the very dangerous array can make sensor bubbles. they combine their sensors to actively detect unauthorized ships in their space. they can be deployed with their ftl tech, so to not take up space in the ship itself, and redeployed so to not be a hazard when the area is of no interest to them anymore. these sorta mines are also expensive, so it is also a cost saving measure.

[@eoin1699]

Something that's occurred to me that fills the *role* of a minefield, and is extremely cheap (and destructive); Kessler Weapons. Explosives? Pfah, who needs those? Just fill an orbit with [stupidly large number] of grains of sand, orbiting in opposing directions. Too small to detect, too fast to dodge, too numerous to avoid, so cheap to use that it's hardly worth worrying about. Until, of course, you need to pass through that orbit without being hammered by thousands of hypersonic projectiles.

[@Kalebfenoir]

The Worlds at War series had an interesting take on 'space mines'. They weren't like ocean mines, which required ships to pass close enough (hard to do in space where the distances could be thousands of kilometers), but were basically a kind of self-deployed anti-ship missile. They'd put out all these 'mines' in weblike layers over the system warp points (which were the only places ships could arrive or leave a system, because it was the ONLY way in that universe). Thousands and thousands of these sleeping missiles, just waiting for ships to come through. The inner most layers might actually be proximity-set, but most of the outer layers could be set off command ships or forts that were also on site, just outside the envelope. Each one of those mines, when activated, would become what they actually were; missiles. And would streak in to pound a ship while its shields and sensors were still in flux from transit. Keep in mind that as addled as they were, those ships still had point defense and anti-fighter/anti-missile systems that could be active, so to really make sure you got them you had to saturate their defensive envelope. Beat their AMS, beat their shields, beat their armor.... you NEEDED to dump all that firepower on them as fast as possible. There were also laser mines that were basically space turrets, X-ray laser mines which fired a focused X-ray beam (the process of creating the beam fries the mine's electronics, so it's only good once), and a few other slow-fire type mines that were only good for basically one shot per engagement cuz they fired something REALLY strong, but took ages to recharge because their power plants couldn't be made bigger. There was also a constant back and forth evolution of tech in that series; your enemy has minefields around their warp point, making it hard to send ships through? Well, how about firing a skud the size of a small ship, that upon transit would target as many mines as it could sense, mines that weren't targetting a target as small as it, since they're waiting for big ships, and fire its OWN missiles at them! Clearing the inner layers of the mine sphere with each anime-style wall of explosions. Enemy has gunboats or mines that are targetting those anti-mine skuds? Build a bunch to not have missiles, but look identical to the missile ones... but fill them full of a shit ton of AM. Then when the gunboats try to pop them as they transit, they find out they're very much in range of the MASSIVE detonation the trap pods produce. And the list goes on. LoL.

[@AxBoSch222]

I really like the idea in the Book "Deep Black", I recently read. Because of the FTL-Travel-Logic you roughly know where a spaceship will appear in a system (more or less). So you can put EMP-Mines there with a very large detection area for the mine. Be able to take off at least some of the technology of a spaceship at the start of the battle can give you a headstart for an upcoming ambush or battle.

[@pota4144]

I liked the idea Colony Wars 1 had, the mines were managed via a drone systems call a Siren, it had a cloaking system and lay in wait for a ship to try and navigate around the mines. Once detected, the Siren would decloak and grapple the ship and pull it into the mines. It also kept all the mines around it from drifting to far away. The Second game used limpet mines that were towed by torpedo bombers and fling at the target and they would attached once close enough to the target to be pulled in by the targets mass.

[@wraith1771]

I wrote a story using mines with tractor beams. Once they locked onto a target, they would either drag it towards the mind, or more often, drag themselves to the target and detonate.

[@ZeZwede]

i recall them using a lot of self-moving mines in the anime Banner of the stars (i think it was called), too. mining a wormhole i think, sending them through the hole. also spreading them around asteroids and similar things.

[@Dana-fy8bg]

Variations on each of these types of mines have been used by author David Weber. An additional complication is added though. Because these space mines require sensors and power plants, they require maintenance. Therefore they cannot be operational indefinitely. Low power modes can extend the power plants. And active/inactive modes permit not only maintenance, but also for the mines to be placed for longer periods and activated as needed. Essentially adding a Command and Control feature. Such features allow for placement before a threat appears and still making things safe for both civilian and military passage through the field.

[@sumukhvmrsat6347]

In the "Lost Fleet " book series , Captain Jane Geary uses mines in a very clever way , Her group of 3 battleships was being chased by a larger enemy force , she deploys Mines on their path and the enemy focused on the Group keeps on charging straight into the mines 😂🎉 , boom many of the enemy destroyed or damaged enough , and the surviving enemy ships disengaged from the pursuit

[@chrisjohnson1146]

I remember in the old game TIE Fighter the mines were just tiny turrets that shot at you. One even had a missile launcher that fired a concussion missile when it was destroyed. And another strategic use of minefields was seen in the lore of Wing Commander. The first major battle of the Terran-Kilrathi War was the McAuliffe Ambush. Confed actually mined a region of space, which the Kilrathi easily avoided, only to realize that the minfield corresponded with one of the McAuliffe System's jump points. Mines detonated, and a Confed Fleet came through and ambushed the Kilrathi.

[@craigsurette3438]

The Traveler TTRPG created "Sand-casters" as another sort of wide scale area denial weapon. The idea is that magnetic pumps throw out iron filing"sand" to paint a "Cloud" covering a particular quadrant in gazillions of tiny particles which will block lasers and be functionally impassible by ships and missiles because of relative velocities until they disperse. They were designed to be low tech area denial weapons, and to steer enemies towards killzones etc