I think it would be neat in mining if the player were to carve up or shrink the rock while mining, possibly based on ship size and cargo hold size vs. asteroid size. Thus a very large mining ship could potentially consume/disappear a whole asteroid! Popular areas would thusly not have very many asteroids, however new asteroids would occasionally emerge from a variety of phenomena, including things such as emitting from stars, moons or planets exploding and creating huge asteroid fields, and stray asteroid fields traveling into the area and getting trapped by a sun or planet's gravity. As the asteroids break apart, either from mining tools or weapons fire, smaller asteroids inside the larger asteroids would be revealed, and each asteroid could potentially contain many elements. It might also be neat to allow the player creator people to create tons of every game item and game object, so that there would be a great variety of asteroids, items, missions, crafting missions, npc bots, map areas, and more. That way there would be a ton of mineable elements present in spawning/traveling asteroid clusters (that might fragment into different sectors, and possibly keep moving and bouncing around and against each other according to physics, making mining a dangerous game of dodge the heavy, metal asteroids. (Note that metal/hard/dense asteroids would be more valuable and contain neater elements inside, but also be harder to break apart into storable pieces, probably dust-sized with mining tools. Mining ships might even be able to carve cubes or other rectangular shapes out of asteroids, if that's easier to program. ;p Then player-made crafting quests would use generic groups of elements, with the specific elements used on that repeatable mission affecting the quality and stats of the produced item, and occasionally unlocking new repeatable crafting missions that also accept a variety of minerals and non-consumed (or partially consumed and damaged) tool items.

+1 for doing something like this eventually.

The biggest problem I see with consumable roids is replenishing them in a believable manner. Making a percentage of roids actually be giant rocky space-amoeba would be sufficient in my mind, but I suppose most would not like that. They could reproduce via mitosis. Every time they split, there would be a chance that they become a normal roid. They would grow slowly over time, but could engulf and consume any items or ships (including hive ships) that stray too close, thus speeding their growth. Energy weapons should not harm them, just feed them. Explosives and mining beams would be the only ways to fight them.

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