Do all asteroids respawn after downtime or just in certain systems? There is a cluster of 7 lowsec systems in Genesis where sometimes I visited just 3 hours and 30 minutes (give or take) after downtime. And sometimes, they’re all cleared, like every single belt.
I once thought that some systems just respawned after N downtimes, where N is a number than is usually 1 but can be higher for some systems. So according to them if I see a belt empty 1 hour before downtime, I should see some asteroids 5 minutes after downtime, although I wouldn’t be online to see it. However at least 33 separate times, I checked all of them roughly 3 hours and 30 minutes after downtime to see if any asteroids respawned, and 30 times, the belts remained empty.
The obvious possibility is that someone is actually clearing the belts. I mean, that’s doable, but the closest high-sec system from the 7 systems that keep being cleared is 3 jumps away. There aren’t any upwell structures in the 7, which means any miners are either hauling to their structures after several jumps, or using NPC stations. I don’t see any sell orders for minerals in those NPC stations, so any miners that exist aren’t just dumping the stuff on the local market. There is a control tower, but I suspect no one uses it because I’ve used d-scan a few times to see if anyone every jumps to it, and no one is using it unless it’s within 3 hours after downtime when I’m never online. I mean if asteroids do respawn after every downtime in all systems like everyone tells me, then there is some group of miners who are really efficient. I’m not even seeing people get killed in them on zKillboard.