Asteroids

**Asteroids** are objects found drifting across Star Systems in Starfighter: Infinity, and are primarily used to mine for Minerals for Crafting. Asteroids can also be spawned moving across sectors at random at various speeds. The number of asteroids in a sector can be seen via a counter near the top of the HUD.

## Asteroid Fields

Asteroids are found in abundance in Asteroid Field Special Sectors, typically anywhere from 25-50 asteroids on average.

## Random Events

Asteroids also appear during certain Random Events, such as:

* Asteroid Storm
* Targeted Asteroids
* Asteroid Wave

## Instance Events

Asteroids also appear during certain Instance Events, such as:

* Dense Asteroid Field

## Mining

* Asteroids can be Locked with certain weapons, such as the Mining Laser, in order to interact with them or deal damage to them and add their Minerals to the player's Cargo.
	+ Some items use the Asteroid Break Damage type to deal special damage to asteroids.
* Asteroids in the normal playing plane can be destroyed by projectiles, dropping the corresponding mineral amount of the asteroid equal to the damage of the weapon.

## Interactions

* Asteroids are generated at sector boundaries, and despawn at sector boundaries as well
* Asteroids will knock players and NPCs back, dealing damage and applying the Stabilizer Fail Status Effect
* Asteroids deal more damage the faster they are moving
* Asteroids composed of rarer minerals are typically smaller and contain lower mass
* Asteroids will despawn when completely depleted of all ore via Mining
* Asteroids are capable of hitting targets even when certain Status Effects would prevent hits, such as Dephase
* Asteroids can be destroyed by falling into a Black Hole. Asteroids can also be pushed via White Holes and Anti-Vortex Bombs.
* Asteroids do not change momentum under any circumstances, save interactions with gravity-well objects like Black Holes or White Holes.
* The Prospector Augmentation can be used to view Mineral densities and see the mineral compositions of asteroids via radar.

## Variants

### Special Asteroids

* Special Asteroids are rarely-generating asteroids that have special properties.

#### Comet

* **Comets** are a variant of asteroid that have a visual ice trail and crackling sound effect.

#### Pure Asteroid

* **Pure Asteroids** are variants of asteroids that contain 10x the normal amount of minerals, and do not have any rock on their models.

#### Dark Asteroid

* **Dark Asteroids** are variants of asteroids that have a saturated black/navy blue hue, and will apply Absorbing Stealth to ships that touch or attempt to mine it.

#### Flaming Asteroid

* **Flaming Asteroids** are variants of asteroids that have a molten-rock appearance, and will apply Hellfire to ships that touch or attempt to mine it.

#### Crystal Asteroid

* **Crystal Asteroids** are variants of asteroids that have a crystalline appearance, and will apply Blinded to ships that touch it or attempt to mine it.

#### Carved Asteroid

* **Carved Asteroids** are variants of asteroids that have an etched appearance resembling the Igni, and will apply Harden to ships that touch it or attempt to mine it.

#### Charged Asteroid

* **Charged Asteroids** are variants of asteroids that have a passive Thunderbolt effect that shock nearby ships.

#### Bright Asteroid

* **Bright Asteroids** are variants of asteroids that have a white, semi-opaque appearance and will apply Inverse Gravity Field to ships that touch it or attempt to mine it.

## Trivia

* The random nature of high-speed asteroids, combined with their possible high damage and potentially debilitating status effect to interrupt combat as an environmental hazard gave birth to the phrase *"Rocc win everytime"* - this also references the old inability to destroy asteroids
* Vortex Bombs and Ghostly Vortex Bombs can be used to shield players from asteroid storms in a pinch