If we\'re talking AFK mining, how about mining drones like Elite/Frontier?

Mining stations carry drones in three flavours -

Small - 30cu capacity, requires mining licence level 5

Medium - 50cu capacity, requires licence level 8

Large - 80cu capacity, requires licince level 12

Drones should be expensive and require a large weapon slot. Once within range of a roid, drones are \'fired\' towards the roid where they land and begin processing. Extraction rate should be slow (possibly with an increase for the better drones), and the player must return to collect any ore.

While not visible on radar, drones will be obvious to anyone exploring a roid cluster, and can be destroyed by aggressors who can then salvage any ore the drone was carrying. This would mean that it would be foolish to deploy a drone in a heavily visited area, and would make searching for unexplored roid clusters worthwhile.

What do you think?

Awesome, Quake, but that is thread hijacking.
Make your own thread?

Most mining is concerned with the heat of the asteroid, but Laz0r Drills might be about keeping the bit cool.

There could be some "twitch" to that bit cooling...