I think the mining squadrons should have a second ability: Replace Mine
Its very time consuming to lay mines exactly how you want them. auto cast saves you the time, but is often wasteful. with this ability and the original, an acceptable amount of time can be spent micro-managing the mine fields. Also, the current autocast seems to be counter-productive; everytime a mine explodes, it places a new one somewhere else (usually). if it exploded there, it was a good spot. after awhile, there is this channel thats un-mined and easy to get through.
but if there was a Replace Mine ability, you could set the mining squadrons to auto-lay mines for awhile, once a good amount is built up, shut off that autocast and turn on autocast for Replace Mine. now, the effective spots will stay effective. You could also carefully place everything manually, turn on autocast for Replace Mine and your field would stay as you built it. or a combination; you let the AI lay a bunch of mines, scrap the ones you dont like, add some where you want to touch it up, then put up the Replace Mine.
This could also help for those situations when the autocast goes a little crazy and makes too many mines in the earlier part of games. you either have to live with bankrupcy and a full mine field or a field that gets whittled down currently.
On the other hand, my fleets seem to go out of their way to go into mine fields, even when im ordering them to go around it, so...
