Remote mining isn't an uber strategy by any means, but it does have some nice points and can be useful even in stock games. Assuming you take a low maintenance. And by low I mean LOW.
115% maint and merchant culture is as low as you can go. That will cost you 1500 racial points. Of course low maint has other more obvious military advantages, but for the purposes of this argument it makes early remote mining much more of an option. Even a simnlge mining comp on a frigate with that low of maintenance can have a decent return on investment. About the same as a single mining facility will produce. Enough to make it worth the effort. But you should replace them at your first opportunity with larger ships or even bases.
Advantages:
Planets can be totally dedicated to research and construction.
Don't have to wait for space ports to be built before to expolit a new system.
J.I.T. resource production. Running a surplus? move the ships off their asteroids, resources stop and you don't deplete the asteroids unneccesarily. Move them back when your construction queses catch up to your production. (of course this only applies to ships, not bases.
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Resource production is not hampered by rioting populations if a few battles go the wrong way.
While it's true that long term efficency is greater leaving the asteroids alone until you can make planets out of them, how many games go that long? And if it does, you can still make a planet and put some value improvement facs on it for a few years. As long as you don't deplete them to zero. But doing that makes no sense as before it gets to zero your ship will be costing you more then it is getting you back.
Geoschmo