Assembly Hall

I feel that current rats in asteroid belts are immaterial and serve no purpose. Fighting for your right to mine is a fun idea, so let's make it fun and part of the game. I propose scrapping the current system of spawning belt rats and replacing it with one that is reactionary and scales with the number of players.

My method for doing this uses asteroids like spawn triggers in missions. When an asteroid is mined, it has a chance of spawning a rat; Higher quality (+5% and +10%) asteroids should have higher spawn rates. The trigger must be when mined initially, not on destruction. This should be obvious, but I want no misunderstanding.

In this scenario, the lone miner will find himself under fire more often, but to no greater effect than current rats. An occasional pest, which can be avoided by mining the normal yield asteroids.

When you have a mining fleet, spawns will scale up because more asteroids are being mined at once. This could be expanded for mission runners and miners to play together, while applying their individual crafts.

Or maybe I'm a fool. What says the internet?