While mining last night, I had a boredom-fueled inspiration on how to make Asteroids more interesting. Give 'em something in the description!

Right now if you select an asteroid and hit "k" (or, "info"), you get:

"Asteroid."

Which is nice and all, but let's use our imagination!
How about things like:
"This asteroid property of TPG corp. Unauthorized miners will be fined up to 200 cr. per incident. Scram."
"This is Not an Asteroid."
"This asteroid has an impact crater that looks suspiciously like a Centaur."
"For a good time, ask for Candy on channel 8364894."
"The Eo Memorial Asteroid. This asteroid contains a fancy monument to Eo made out of solid Heliocene. No mining."
"Someone was scrawled their initials in this asteroid with high-density mining beams."
"This asteroid sucks. Nuthin' but silicates."
"If you lived in this asteroid, you'd be home already."
"Kilroy was here."

And fun stuff like that. Now, if we took things a bit further...

We could have a "scribe" mining beam, S port, which would allow miners to have a bit of fun "tagging" asteroids. Perhaps not all asteroids would be able to be written on, but miners could leave little notes and such on the rocks and ice, and you could see who last left the inscription. Limited characters, perhaps 256 letters? Kinda neat. Maybe it fades over time. It would be subject to the profanity filter.

I'm assuming that there's a database of every asteroid in every sector anyway, since the percentages of ore never change, the temperature is kept track of, and the asteroids are persistent. I'm also guessing that there's already a "description" field for every asteroid, which at this point for simplicity's sake just reads "Asteroid." How dreadfully boring.

I can see things cropping up like the old "Burma-Shave" roadside billboards. They could also be used for mildly fun RP events, I guess.

Hey, at least it'll spice up mining. The frequently-visited asteroids would be almost like a messageboard.

there could be a whole mission that revolves around it too...

you have 2:30 to stop the miners from taking the ore...

if you fail.. ther will be a voice over... "Miners win."

but yeah, i like the hidden comical things... not so much on the obvious graphical changes, but yes on the descriptions.

Yeah, Leber, I can see it now in the UIT capitol sectors...

"Have you got a govbus?"... "If yes, we don't need a reason..."... "You might wanna start running..."... "Because it's n00blet season!"

(reworked version of one of the ones from a Looney Tunes short)

I like this idea.

Yes this will come in handy when I heat roids to 4000K. I can then write on it, "good luck mining this plasma ball... :P"

Awesome suggestion!

"The Heliocene in this roid is fake. Move along."

Fool's Helio

Teapot Roid - 99.7% Van Azek

Tagged for licensed Union use only. Do not mine under penalty of law. Punishment is 10000 cr fine and/or ship impoundment and license suspension.

Below is scrawled: "And don't think that idiot Harding made breaking the law ok"

I'd love the ability to inscribe something on a roid, leave a digital message attached to a probe etc.

Besides scanning an asteroid, pilots should be able to leave "messages" somewhere. Even if just at stations, if they had some kind of billboard that would be great.

hey, I got an idea... s-port mining beam, always fires straight ahead, and leaves a dark scar on the roid where it hits, that lasts for 72 hours or 10 minutes of continuous mining of the same roid, whichever comes first....

"These are not the roids you're looking for..."

They made me say this!

if we could do this i'd go to f1 and put on allllll the roids
"an asteroid in this sector contains heliocene, bet you cant find it"

i would love to add personal tags to roids ingame.

but not visually on the roid, cause by droping your resolution, you'll never see it, and it's wasted on some players.

the nav-point/probe thing will never fly...

but to add to the description of a roid... maybe 50 chars or less maximum. it could only be seen in the "K" screen not on the HUD itself. and a neat little way to leave limericks/notes/funny little annecdotes for others to see.

two gold stars for leber.

Wow. 2 gold stars. That's great. Can I trade them in for tequila?

Yeah, this should be "EASY". Just
1) Add interesting descriptions to the thousands of asteroids in the game, randomly. Probably an average of 100 asteroids a sector, figure 50% of sectors are "non-empty", that's 768,000 asteroids. Obviously they'll generate like 250 pithy sayings, and randomly distribute them throughout the database. Maybe some of the asteroids still say "Asteroid." Maybe take some time on the frequently-visited roids, the interesting high-value ones that the devs placed carefully, and add funnier/more appropriate stuff.

and

2) Sometime once the economy is working, allow players to modify the description if they have a "scribe" mining beam equipped. S-port. Dunno how hard THAT would be.

Atleast one of the plithy sayings should just be "Astriod".

All the ice crystals would say "ice yo".

Ecka sat and mined this roid, he mined it far too hot ,
That's what you get for smoking xith , your profits gone to pot ......

Aye it would be nice to add something pithy to the description.

"Do not overheat! Unstable center!"
"Rock and roll!" (on spinning roid)
"Glows in the dark when wet"
"Contains no preservatives"

I could come up with a hundred of these.

My concern would be that I would have to load any deviation from the standard 'roid texture whenever I enter a sector.

As a compromise I like the earlier idea of a digital tag that would appear only as text in your HUD (or under K) when you target a 'roid.

This would be fun. Guild wouldn't have to pre-load all the asteroids with sayings, they could just be left blank until players add something. You should be able to do this without a device also; encourage people to contribute easily.