I've never been killed "randomly" by any of these, sometimes I get hit by invisible mines ( but curiously, never invisible gas pockets ) on Elite, which I have a ping of about 80 to. I can always see my shield going down however and I hear "Shield failed" before the mines starting hitting my hull, so I have time to stop. Maybe you just need to slow down a bit.

Blacksilver's right, Mines and gas pockets are extremely buggy in Freelancer.

The bug can redily be duplicated in Dublin, Just go west from graves station (the dock) exactly 3k and sit. you can barely see the mines about 1 k ahead. Now wait.... Wait.... in about 10 minutes you'll be dead. No sheild drop, no warning, your perfectly OK and then Boom!!!! It's like the entire field just reached out and touched you. Not got o the derelict in the same field, pull right up to any mines nearby and stare nose to nose for a half an hour..... Nothing so long as you don't actually touch it, How can some mines from a field have a 1 k blast zone and others aren't tripped unless you touch them? My only answer is buggy mines.

Also, you cannot clear a path through the mines. Not a bug, but so much for any grasp of realism here.

Ever noticed that player launced mines can bounce off ships without detonating?
Bug or feature?

Something I noticed for mines/gas pockets and even heavy gun fire. The damage seems to cause lag in the system, and then all the damage for a period of time is put on you all at once. Two examples that I have seen of this.

- I was going thru a mine field hunting for a ship wreck that was hinted to be in the area. I saw 5 mines and waht looked to be a ship in the middle of them. I moved in carefully and had one explosion as I entered. I fired at the wreck andno effect??? As i went to fire again my ship explodes! I was like WTF!

- I had the Titan Very Heavy Fighter with 2 sets of the Lvl 10 "salvaged" guns on it. They do 1000 damage each, so I fire them all it is 4000 damage!!! I shot a low level ship with like 1000 points it will fly for like 20 meters and then explode after I shot it. It is freaky cause some are still shooting at you after you have supposedly 'killed" them.

What I figure is that like in the Mech Warrior 3 game that Microsoft made they have screwed up the damage system in multiplayer. MW3 had a horrid thing called lag shot where you could load a ton of heavy damage weapons on a mech and run around fragging people before they could react. This seems to be happening in Freelancer also. The system can not apply the damage fast enough so instead of evenly applied damage the system just applies it all at once when it catches up.

Also if you have noticed the mines do not get destroyed when they blow up. I think a better idea for mine fields would have been a mine lauching device that spits out the mines that we can carry on player ships. These would make more sense and make mine fields more intersting places. Just imagine you are flying by and this thing starts pumping out mines that start tracking you =)