During each turn's Host run, there exists a small chance that any given planet will be struck by either meteor showers or a massive meteor.
A meteor shower is a rain of "small" (up to the size of a house) mineral-rich rocks that originates outside the planetary atmosphere. When this happens, there is a small increase in the mineral content in the planet. A meteor shower has no effect on the population, happiness or planetary structures.
Meteor showers are reported to the owner of the planet.
When a meteor the size of a mountain strikes a planet, it causes massive devastation. Large percentages of the population (both native and colonist) may be killed, many planetary structures may be destroyed, and happiness may be vastly decreased, due to the resulting panic.
Due to the large energy burst of the impact (larger than a warship being destroyed), all players in the sector can notice the impact. The information that is reported to each player contains the planet where the impact occurred and the approximate mineral content of the meteorite. Because there is such a high mineral content is one location, a "gold rush" could be triggered.
A Horwasp Rock Attack is very similar to a Massive Meteor Impact and might be mistaken for one by a player who's not familiar with Horwasp tactics.
A meteor shower will deposit between 10 KT and 199 KT of each of the four minerals on the planet. The distribution within that range is random, and the amounts of the various minerals are independent of each other. Each planet has a 1% chance of receiving a meteor shower each turn (10% for planets in a nebula and 20% for planetoids in a debris disk ).
A massive meteor will deposit large amounts of minerals on the planet. The range of the deposit is as follows:
Mineral Minimum Maximum Neutronium 100 KT 10,000 KT Duranium 100 KT 9,000 KT Tritanium 100 KT 9,000 KT Molybdenum 100 KT 7,000 KT
As above, the distribution within that range is random, and the amounts of the various minerals are independent of each other. Each turn, there is a 1% chance that one of the planets in a game will be hit by a massive meteor.
Even with the large concentration of minerals in one place, the planetary mineral concentrations are not changed by a massive meteor impact.