Meteors

Meteors are, just like in our own galaxy, large chunks of rock that wander through space. Most of the time they just shoot through space, but every now and then a meteor impacts on a planet. In the Echo Cluster, there are large and small meteors.

Small meteors
Depending on the host settings there is a chance that a shower of small meteors lands on one or more planets in the Echo cluster. These meteors put new minerals in the planet's core for you to mine. Other than that, there are no consequences attached to small meteors impacting on a planet. If the host has not disabled meteor messages you will be notified of meteor showers on your own planets by messages like this:

Large meteors
Planets can also be hit by large meteors. They contain significantly more minerals than small meteor showers, but bring along some nasty side-effects. When a meteor strikes a planet, massive amounts of new minerals and fuel ore will be buried deep in to planet's core. That planet will then become a mineral rich world and a very good place to build mineral mines. Many bad things happen to a planet that is hit by a meteor. A great number of the population will be killed. Many mines, factories and defense outposts will be destroyed and both native and colonist happiness go down. An eventual starbase and all ships in orbit will be safe from the effects of the meteor.

The effects of a large meteor impacting seem rather random. Happiness for both colonists and natives can go down by as much as 90 points, but sometimes only goes down by 5. The death-toll in the colonist population seem to vary between 7 and 95 percent, roughly the same applies to native populations. There are examples where 99% of a native population got killed in the mayhem of a large meteor impact, and on other planets only 2% dies. The number of structures destroyed shows a similar pattern, although the majority of the planets suffer from over 33% of destruction of their mines, factories and defenseposts. Overall it seems to be a case of a random values and percentages between 0 and 100 when deducting happiness, killing populations and destroying structures. Out of 100 large meteor impacts, only one caused the planet's mineral density ratings to change.

Whenever a large meteor impacts a message is sent to all races informing them where the meteor has impacted and the amount of minerals now present at that planet. These messages can be disabled by the host.