In-sector roids could follow an orbit and be put in motion producing a more interesting environment for the players. In sector orbits could be either circular or elliptical guided by a few simple equations... or they could also follow a preprogrammed path specified by a look up table....the roids could also be bumped off course but I think would be reset when the sector next slept.

Multi/inter sector roids would be even better. a small cluster of roids slowly drifting from sector to sector would be a lot harder to locate and would provide a good host to the more high value / rarest ores.
the cluster would simply jump in ..say... 100k from center and simply drift until it reached a point 100k away on the other side of the sector. The cluster would then be transferred to the next sector on its path. When the sector is idle either its awakened position could be calculated based on time or the roid cluster could simply be tracked separate of the sector or... the cluster could simply be suspended until the sector was awakened again.

How about doing an experimental roid in an unused area so we can try them out?

+1, this would make mining and combat in asteroid fields more interesting. Yay for things to do.

+1 to more roaming things!

-1

Makes absolutely no sense for objects to orbit around nothingness. They need massive mass bodies like planet, stars, or black holes to orbit around.

They don't have to be that massive when the distances are short, and we do have some sectors with large roids. If we assume VO's rocky asteroids have densities of about 1.8 g*cm^-3, then a 100m radius asteroid in a circular orbit 1km above the surface of a 1km radius asteroid (i.e., center-to-center distance of 2100m) would have an orbital period of about 7.5 hours. Increase the second roid's size to a 3km radius while keeping a 1km gap, and the period becomes 3.9 hour. For ice roids of the same dimensions, those periods would be closer to 10.5 hours and 5.5 hours, respectively (because ice is less dense).

Is there such a thing as a 2km long asteroid in VO? I haven't seen one myself. Have you?

There's already that asteroid with a big ice ring in Dau. Why not make those move?

Which sector? I don't recall such a thing.

It's in Dau I-play the game, why don't you?

The big ice roids in Sedina D-14 are on the 1.0-1.5 km scale, and taken together that cluster is about 2km wide. Dau G-11 also has some pretty big roids in an even bigger cluster surrounding the station. I've seen plenty of other similarly sized roids throughout space, though I don't remember where.

And big roids like that aren't strictly necessary. Small roids will orbit each other too. They certainly wouldn't all stay neatly arranged in never-moving formations like we have now. Our fields should be chaotic messes of roids meandering around their barycenter at very slow speeds, occasionally even colliding with each other and adopting new paths. Maybe they could even drop some ore into space during collisions. (Of course, real asteroid fields are extremely sparse, boring things that are nothing like that at all due to their emptiness, but this is a game.)

+1 this is a really good suggestion!

Are you guys sure it wont become irritating to have the asteroid move away slowly while you're trying to mine it?

+1 to orbiting roids, but not every sector needs them.