it would be a large port weapon that can only be fired once or twice. once fired it releases a stream of fog/gas that quickly expands into a large cloud behind the ship and if any ship too close to the ship is in the cloud for a time after the weapon i fired then their ship becomes blinded for a short time allowing quick escape from pirates.

Make it more like those decoys described for drops in Starship Troopers: in addition to the expanding smoke cloud, have them throw a lot of metallic flak that renders radar unusable. Ingame, the pirate loses lock and a lot of contacts appear in radar, making targeting confusing, at least for the purposes of pressing 'b'; no idea how hard it would be for the cloud to affect the 'u' screen as well, but if it didn't affect, allowing a pirate to target you through there, it wouldn't matter, he still had to take his eyes off flying his ship for a few precious moments. And he could simply turbo through the cloud and the benefits would be lost.

To make it balanced, make the launcher really heavy and have very limited ammo, maybe two shots at the most.

A "flashbang" mine would probably be easier to implement and achieve the same effect.

They would be just like normal mines, but when detonated would knock out the visual and radar sensors of anyone within blast range.

I am not 100% certain such a thing is wanted/needed though. If it is, this is a good way (IMO) to do so.

hmm this is going to be nice with a proximine on a moth woth the large cloud of gas the mine makes you spin and you lose your orientation and you cant see where that ship is going cause of the mettalic strips sounds a bit too good of a combo to me

Ion Bomb. Bad vision, no radar, and no jumping.

oh dude

[stamp of approval] (tm)

If the pirate is flying a raptor you are not helping yourself: you can't run, you can't hide, and you have also blinded yourself.

dunno, I think localized smoke is harder to do than it sounds. Prox mines already serve as decent flak.

How about a mine that does concussion damage in stead of hull damage, and throws the pirate off course?

..oh, wait..

Anyway, a sensor disruption mine would be great, but make it JUST disrupt sensors, nothing else. Loss of lock and unable to re-lock for about half a second.
In it self, it would be useless, but when combined with a concussion mine, it'd be awesome.

Localized fog, or a smoke screen if you will, requires a major change in the engine or a complex particle cloud, causing lag like you would not believe.... Smoke screen, no thanks. Effects of a smokescreen (confusion), yes please.

Yes, Demonen's hit it on the nose. Currently there is absolutely no way to render a bluish, foggy kind of vision that prevents recognizing anything past a certain distance, while disabling radar, and locking on to a target. I've got a better idea though... how about an ion storm mine? That'd be kind of like a smoke screen, eh?

Edit: And if the pirate is flying a Raptor, then what are you scared of anyways?

Sounds like a cool idea. But I think that I agree with the fact that some sort of mine that just disrupts sensors would be better that actually visually blocking you from view.

But, to each his own. Now only if we could send a virus to the bots in asteroid fields to make mining easier...

How about if the bots sent viruses to you?

Cylon CNP virus! :D