Originally by: Silverace

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Originally by: Montaire

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Here's my idea.

Note obligatory Paint image @ Linkage



You take all the asteroids and put them into one, superdense belt that occupies an entire orbital on the same system. No belts, just this field. Its composition is determined by sec status, but even in 0.0 its VERY highly set with basic lows - Veld, Scord etc. 90%+

Now sprinkled in there are mediums and high ends. You seed rats in there at random points.

Now "Scanning the Belts" means something totally new, your quite literally on patrol along this giant belt, warping 500km at a time searching for Rats or Roids. Invaders don't have clickable belts to go to anymore, but probes = still great and Intel = awesome.

The new asteroid types can be found via scanning manually (warping around looking on your Asteroid Scanner) OR via an exploration beacon, both would work. Exploration would be faster, but making small hops with say a Rorqual you could scan a huge chunk of stuff.

You now have pre-planning for mining ops, which is fantastic. "I've got 5 spots bookmarked for tonight" and you can totally ditch that incredibly lame "perma-tank never worry about rats mine while AFK" schtik - rats could spawn, stay on your toes.

Pepper the belt with NPC stuff. Heck, put a Guristas Dreadnought + Escort in there. Have a Serpentis Small Tower complete with guns and guards mixed in there somewhere as an "officer" class spawn.

New types of asteroids have Gravitic beacons, so they can be found via exploration within the belt, or just found via fantastic recon. Some of the better ones are actually INSIDE a NPC pos shield, you have to take out the pos (No reinforced) to get at them.

Moons inside asteroid belts = fleet fights in asteroid belts = AWESOME.

Interceptors hunting barges within a huge asteroid field = AWESOME.

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This is indeed an awesome idea - imagine mining quietly and suddenly a capital fleet engagement starts a few km away!

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