Realistic Asteroid belts

I think they could do it, but they first should add a condition or a trigger to detect if a player is in the asteroid belt zone if so start the procedural generation with the configured ore type and density, server owners or in your save game you should create asteroid belts configurations like begin and end radious from center and ore types and density of asteroids, and even density of ore type.

I'm pretty sure that in SE1 most of these variable were in code, just they were not configurable. And there is a plugin in SE1 to do this so it would be nice having this in SE2 vanilla.

Interesting idea about resource-specific asteroid belts! Makes the solar system feel less empty. Imagine Papa's Freezeria in orbit around a rare-metal rich asteroid – the ultimate zero-g sundae destination! Factions could definitely control these resource hotspots. Perhaps a game mechanic for claiming/defending these belts?

It is unlikely that an asteroid belt or cluster of asteroids would have formed that contained the raw material/ore, and that this raw material/ore would not be found anywhere else in the star system.

On the contrary, however, it is quite possible that an asteroid belt forms that is exceptionally rich in a particular raw material/ore. To do this, it is enough for the "asteroid generator" to change the probability of the deposit of the given raw material.

For example, the "normal" probability of an ore deposit is 1% (and the probability of an "empty ore deposit" is 50%). Simply increase this probability to 5% (on account to "empty ore deposits", for example) and suddenly there is an asteroid region where the probability of that ore being found is 5 times higher than elsewhere. That's quite a lot. The size of the ore deposit can be manipulated in a similar way.

Similarly, by fairly simple manipulation of occurrence probabilities, one can create clusters /areas rich in raw materials and ores - and conversely, clusters of asteroids poor in useful materials. Or rich in ice and poor in other raw materials and ores.

One of the problems that would arise if there was a dynamical universe, with real planetary and asteroid motions around a central star - such a cluster would break up very quickly because of the different orbital periods. Similarly, a cluster would break up if, for example, it orbited a planet.

By the way - most asteroids in the solar system are not "primordial", but formed only during the evolution of the system by the breakup of 3-4 large asteroids or dwarf planets, in which the primordial material was partially melted and separated to "iron core" and "stone mantle/crust". The bodies were smashed by collisions with each other.

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If memory serves, realistic asteroids would mean most of them are further apart than the moon is from the earth, and most of them would be tiny... the rocks in rings would be much closer together, but also very tiny.

That said, having asteroids spawn in tighter "string of pearls" style groups instead of the current infinite procedural cloud would be cool.

There could be gravitationally bound asteroid clusters containing several to several dozen asteroids in a planet-sized space. And around the huge empty space...

You don't want -actual- realistic asteroid belts, as you'd spend weeks or months transiting from one to the next. Asteroid belts aren't as depicted in sci-fi - the one in our solar system is the size of a solar orbit expanded into a massive doughnut (torus) shape, and the average distance between them is estimated to be about a million kilometers.

For a sense of scale, estimated volumes:

The sun

1,409,272,569,059,860,000 cubic kilometers (1.4 quintillion and change)

The asteroid belt

4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic kilometers (about four septillion)

I'll take the fun, playable, wildly unrealistic SE asteroids