Matrix Games Forums

Hi all,
just a quick question: Is there any downside on asteroid mining in comparison to planet mining?
Like lower output of the materials or finite ressource amounts?

I got this question because in the expansion planner you can hide all asteroids so they SEEM to be not as worthy.

No downside.

Expansion planner hides because there are so many.

The asteroids have just as good resource output as planets - sometimes better. If you're lucky you can find some great ones with over 90 percent density of rare resources such as dilithium crystals. Of course you won't find gasses on asteroids.

I think the filter is available because there can be a lot of asteroids in a system and they could overwhelm your searches.

Don't underestimate asteroids - they can be a great resource.

The AI is notorious for spamming mines on every single asteroid in a belt. It looks pretty absurd when you see it.

The occasional size 50 gold asteroid also has a huge tourism bonus, fwiw.

The other nice thing about asteroid mining is that there is zero chance of the AI ever landing a colony ship on your dilithium crystal planet (20% habitability and they still colonize it, WTF?).

.. "WTF".. ?????

You can colonize any colony prospect even if very low quality, you just have to find it/remove the filter to hide the lousy ones.

If you have a nice mine in non-controlled areas, you have the risk of someone colonizing the very planet that you mine. The colony is theirs, the mine is gone.

As it is impossible to colonize asteroids, a mine there is completely safe from this particular issue. If you ever happen across an ultra rare being mined by others "in the back", it is just to get a colony ship there as fast as possible (as they are never on asteroids).