But taking the science vessel out will give you back a slot to churn with.

does anything help it at all cause im lvl 118 and been through 31 npcs without finding one yet this is #&$#

get 8 cannons, and buff your ship with as much attack and scan as possible. the scan wont help you find em, theyll just help u do criticals, so its not necessary. i found 18 today with 2 energy charges (3400 energy), so theyre rare, about half as common as a normal common, but not impossible to find.

Did the rate go up? I got as many rocks in two sets of energy today as I'd gotten in all my attempts thus far.

i have killed in the last 3 days around 350 npcs to get the first 40 deposits, if you think that you will just find a #&$# load of them straight away i think you are deluding yourselves

this has a long time limit on it and only 2 completions i thought it would be obviuos that they are not going to be ten a penny lol

Actually it seems the rate when WAY down for me. Of course that may be due to a pair of Command Nexus, a Hypergrid, and a Stalar clogging my tab...

i like the challenge and its good and all but i just want to throw in there that there should be a better way for thoes of lower ranked to aquire these types of things.. a higher rank could hvae this done in a matter of 3-4 days. where me or others take a week or two just to get one done. so maybe something that changes appearance rates depending on rank/decks or something. a bigger ship=more guns=faster killing=more asteroids. a smaller ship little guns slower killing rate. or a lower rank will obviously have problems finding them compared to thoes who are 200++

You don't need to complete it during these two weeks, it will come back again. It should take lower ranks longer than higher ranks to complete the same mission.

None the less, I find it hard to complete it within this time frame. I'm hoping to at least complete 1 pass before the time ends but at this rate I will not.

i been killing npc's non stop and have only found 18

I got my 80 in the first three days. At some point they started flowing more frequently. I did have to kill zany numbers of npcs though - I didn't count, but I spent somewhere like 9000 energy. I found a dozen or more rares or elites along the way.

OK, a question for those of us who will not be able to complete even one round in the time frame.

When the mission rolls back around, will my progress be saved?

Cause at this rate it looks like I'll have about 30 of 40 segments completed when it expires. It would suck x 10 if I had to start all over again.

yes, your progress will be saved.

i think it sucks too..i went ALL Day yesterday to not find a single roid. till 2 last night i found 2 then i woke up this morning and found 3 more..my luck now i probally wont find anymore for today. and i have maxed guns first then defense then hull..there is no way im gonna be able to get my 2nd hull. ive found a total of 41 since it started. i think appearance rates or specific NPCs (like timed missions) needs to be scaled with a players rank/size (like dmg is scaled) to help the noobies out.

I don't know why, but since 2 days now, I didn't find any asteroids.

Okay I found why, I finish the mission

The thing so many people are missing about this mission is the fact that the Kalvium plating is BETTER than the first 3 tiers of researched plating. This, combined with the fact that low rank players normally do not have the technology necessary to clear enough NPCs leads me to fully believe this mission is geared toward the higher ranks. I finished the mission in 4 days by churning through about 800 NPCs. The plating is intended to be a BONUS hull mod, not a replacement for the crappy hulls that low level players are forced to use.

I can't complain. In the process of hunting those damn things I got two terraforming devices.