1. Is there much point to putting an engine on the mine stage? I wasn't planning on having it move far but it would allow for making up a minefield essentially.
No. do NOT put any engine or fuel on the mine stage. those will give an obviously unwanted very short lifetime for your mines.
2. The assault stage needs to have active sensors?
You need a sensor - any sensor- as the mine stage only gives a "general direction" to the submunitions.
3. How do you launch a mine and avoid it automatically deploying the assault stage when it arrives at its target? This is the critical question as I recall there is some trick to this.
Usually, I set a ring of waypoints near the mining target, then order one of my destroyer to "shoot at WP" for each of those
So to mine the jump point Sol-Wolf 359 I could:
1. set a way point on or near the jump point.
2. at a reasonable distance (50k km from the way point direction 90°) have my TF "launch missiles at WPx" which will leave 4 mines at that point.
3. move to 50k km from way point direction 180°, have my TF "launch missiles at WPx" leaving a further 4 mines at that point.
4. move to 50k km from way point direction 270°, have my TF "launch missiles at WPx" leaving a further 4 mines at that point.
5. move to 50k km from way point direction 0°, have my TF "launch missiles at WPx" leaveing a further 4 mines at that point.
If you know of a way to simply tell a ship to "move to 50k km from way point direction 180°", i'll be glad to know. The only way I've found to perform a similar action is :
- Sending another fleet on the target warp point.
- Ordering this fleet to move at 1km/s toward a waypoint roughly set toward the 0° heading
- Ordering the minelayer to escort this fleet (at full speed!), setting the distance and angle accordingly
- wait for the minelayer to be in position, selecting it and creating a new WP at its position.
- Changing the escort orders, rinse and repeat until all my references WP are set.
- at last using those WP as target for minelaying.
yeah, it's quite unwieldy, but as long as it works...