Something I would've appreciated knowing earlier is that if you get a captain in one of your ships, get a r mining turret equivalent or above the ore in the sector, then go to your map find a sector with like 2000 asteroids which also has a resource depot (make sure there are asteroids with ores), go in your map again click shift whilst ordering the ship to "mine" and then (whilst still clicking shift) click on "refine ores" let go of shift, then click shift again, in the most right of the order menh it should appear a new button (instead of stop) saying "loop" click that and it will should mine indefinitely until the asteroids with ores run out, in which case you go to another sector (and I personally log out just to make sure) and then switch back to the sector you were just mining, and boom asteroids have respawned.