Incentivizing Roleplay on Part of the Player: Mining

This is a broad topic, however I'd like to point out a few places where the player could be incentivized to behave in more realistic ways. Role-playing as a space engineer/miner/trader/soldier is the allure of the game after all.

Mining

In reality, mines can become exhausted after years of harvesting, which justifies infrastructure for harvesting and transport. Ore also typically does not form in solid round shapes underground, but rather is stratified in layers of rock or formed into tall columns, depending on the geology. The shape and distribution of the ore determines the extraction method, which in the game can be shaft mining (vertical or horizontal), open-pit (like a quarry), underground, or dredging (once water is added).

I understand the current system is an abstraction of all the complexity of real life mining, but I think a lot of role-playing opportunities are lost as a result. I have a few solutions to this.

First, the shape of underground deposits should be less spherical and vary based on their geological locations. A volcanic planet would have very differently shaped ore deposits for example. For the sake of keeping voxel changes contiguous, they should stay as 'one-piece' and would also benefit from being larger and less scattered.

Next, rather than the player searching and finding nearby deposits of all kinds, they should be informed that deposits of each ore type can be reliably found in certain areas, such as iron in mountains or silicon around oceans (this is likely already planned).

Lastly the character and cargo container capacities should be reduced or the mass of ore should be increased to encourage many trips to and from the ore deposit, rather than one big harvest.