Stone Mill,

Excellent piece, lots of interesting stuff.

The only thing I was surprised by was your (and others) negative view of Remote Mining.

While I'd never remote mine a planet - unless future colonisation was completely impossible - I find asteroids very useful, especially because of their very high resource percentages.

One can build, relatively early in the game, a Light Cruiser with three mineral RM components that will cost around 1500 minerals in maintenance, and mine around 6000 minerals on a 200%+ asteroid. Something that takes 4-5 turns to build and returns an income of 4500 a turn is as good an investment as a mineral mine (unless you're thinking very long term when the degradation of the asteroid mineral percentage becomes an issue).

And a key benefit, which no one has yet mentioned, is that asteroid mining is (obviously) not prone to rioting. So it's a guarranteed source of income even during a major war when you're suffering damage.

This saved my neck in a very recent game, when a large number of my planets had been glassed, and two thirds or more of the rest were rioting. My asteroid mining income kept my fleet alive and the empire operating.