I'd like to see mining beams require (more) energy, and the amount of energy be linked to the temperature of the rock being mined. The hotter the rock, the more energy required to mine it.

As an example, the workhorse MkII beam might drain the battery between .3 to .5 units/s for every 1K degrees. With a fastcharge, at .5 units/s/K, you wouldn't notice the drain at all until the temp reached 50K. Then, the mining beam would begin draining the battery faster than the battery's recharge rate. For a 120K 'roid, the beam would drain the battery at 60 units/s. Once the battery depleted, the beam would shut off as it does when the cargo hold is full. The pilot would need to allow the battery to recharge, then refire the beam.

this is the kill button for AFK mining and mining in general

While I agree that mining could do with a bit of involvement from the player, and making it a bit more skill-based, I think this only will be in the way.
We need to add something to mining, not subtract something.

Also, a lot of people AFK-mine. While I'm generally not a great fan of hands-off gaming, I think mining, manufacturing and other long-term industrial activities are good exceptions.
I'd even like to see mining beams that only extract one type of ore, but takes longer time in doing it.

Bottom line is, unless there's an upside to it, like vastly increased extraction rates, I'm whole-heartedly against requiring energy to mine.

AFK mining is eeeevil.

This would no more kill AFK mining than full cargo holds do. People could work around it.
It might damper is 'roid broiling', though.

No, the scripts will just adapt to deal with the battery recharge and beam refiring steps. Your drain numbers suck, though.

OK, how about this one: an alternative view that uses a high frequency hypermagnetic field to visualise the ore within a roid, allowing the miner to aim the beams for good efficiency? i.e. storm wireframe with blobs you need to aim for, which get red when hot, so you move around the roids aiming your beams at the green blobs... just an idea.

That's not too bad of an idea. But I still don't think that energy drain is a necessity.

Heh, I knew a few of you wouldn't like this..

Doc, those numbers are just for arguments sake. Even better would be a non-linear progression or curve.

AFK mining isn't bad (unbalanced)... it overheats the asteroid and leaves you vulnerable to pirates and bots.

Think about the dynamic hive: the good ore sectors would be taken over and have to be cleared out before any AFK mining could be done.

why make something so tedious even more annoying?

Because it should not be tedious, it should be fun enough for people to pay money to do it. If it is not, it needs fixing, and devs need to know if they need to fix an aspect of the game. My previous post with high frequency hypermagnetic field implied no energy expenditure on mining beams, sorry if it was ambiguous, but I think it is one way of making mining more exciting. Perhaps filling in some rare spots of rare ores for extra profit (have them come up as purple?) could make it extra-fun, as then it would be similar to a lottery system, and we all know people are happy to pay for lottery!

Antz, you should post it as a suggestion.

Afk miners are like roids in VO.
They are there but they are not really playing.

I say kill ze afk minerz!!!

I'd much rather have the actual mining be an interactive experience, Antz. Love the suggestion.

I don't see how energy drain would make it any less tedious.