Asteroid mining station idea.

[Mysterious Mr. M]

I am well aware this is too much effort to bother developing, especially when there already is perfectly functional mining system in place, but i am going to share the idea anyway.

The idea is to have drones that attach themselves onto nearby asteroids and tow them towards the mining station where they are placed in the middle of a ring/torus shaped module which extracts the minerals.

Image ... made in ms paint. you have been warned.

Show

Cons:
Redundant, there already is a mining system in place.
Only mining ships can transport ore, might as well use them to mine directly.
Wastes a lot of dev time that could go to more important features.
Plenty of potential for AI navigation issues, OOS issues and bugs in general.

Pros:
Looks cool. (not my image, that one is horrible)
Maybe a little less performance heavy than a swarm of mining ships?

[Jean Pagette]

Or bring back the tractor beam from x3 and have the drones move the asteroids to a secure area the player sets up and use either existing haulers or maybe a new ship specifically designed for moving substantially larger materials loads for sale across your known sectors.