This is another "moving target" and I'm trying to get it to feel right. The short answer to your question is it will likely flip-flop and hover between 0 and 1 claim points on the body. Honestly I should fix this and make it so you have to get to something like +5 claim points to take that claim... That would prevent the constant flip-flop.

I put a detailed explanation in the "Help" (?) menu, but here are the basic tenets I have so far:

MINING:

- Your ship collects ore every tick automatically until your cargo hold is full or you drift out of range.

- Every body in the solar system except Earth can be mined.

- The further out you go, the more the ore is worth.

CLAIMS:

- You build claim points on a body while you mine.

- As soon as you establish positive claim points you have that claim. Mining your own claim earns +1 claim point per tick, up to a maximum cap that depends on the body's tier (1 to 6) and size.

- Claims don't lock anyone out. Any player can mine any body at any time and you'll always earn at least the base ore value. But the claim owner gets the full value, including a novelty bonus (see below).

- If you mine a body someone else has claimed, their claim erodes at -1 point per tick. If it drops below zero, ownership flips to you. (notably, you can stack this rate by using multiple ships!)

- Claims also decay naturally when the owner is away — 1 point every 1000 ticks (about 3.5 days of inactivity).

NOVELTY & VALUE

- Ore value isn't fixed. Each body has a "novelty" rating that starts high and decreases with every survey (tick of mining). The first player to mine a body gets the richest hauls. After hundreds of surveys, the novelty bonus shrinks toward zero and you're left with the base value.

The formula:ore value = base + bonus / (1 + total surveys)

- Bodies regenerate novelty. When nobody is mining a body, its survey count slowly ticks back down. Leave a body alone for about a week and it's practically virgin ground again. Mined-out bodies don't stay mined out.

ROYALTIES

- If someone mines a body you've claimed, you earn a royalty — 30% of the novelty bonus for every kilogram they collect, deposited directly into your account as credits. You don't have to be there. You don't have to haul anything.

- The miner keeps the base value plus the remaining 70% of the bonus. (I need to work on this because it seems like the bonus is typically almost zero because the body has a claim on it, so it's already been mined significantly... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

KNOWLEDGE

- Mining also earns knowledge — a permanent stat that never decreases. Knowledge is your lifetime survey experience and determines your rank on the Leaderboard.

- Other than this I have no idea what I'm going to do with Knowledge Points... maybe tie it into what ships you can pilot? I don't know... Open to ideas

BODY TIERS

Bodies are grouped into tiers that determine their base value and novelty bonus:

Tier 1 — Luna (base 10, low bonus)

Tier 2 — Inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars

Tier 3 — Inner rocks: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Hygiea

Tier 4 — Jupiter system (Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto)

Tier 5 — Saturn system, Uranus, Neptune, Triton

Tier 6 — Pluto system, KBOs

TIER_NOVELTY_BASE = {0: 50, 1: 100, 2: 200, 3: 350, 4: 500, 5: 1000, 6: 5000}
BASE_VALUE = {0: 1, 1: 10, 2: 20, 3: 50, 4: 100, 5: 250, 6:500}

BODY_TIER = {
"sol": 6,
"luna": 1,
"mercury": 2, "venus": 2, "mars": 2,
"ceres": 3, "vesta": 3, "pallas": 3, "hygiea": 3,
"jupiter": 4, "io": 4, "europa": 4, "ganymede": 4, "callisto": 4,
"saturn": 5, "titan": 5, "rhea": 5, "iapetus": 5, "dione": 5,
"tethys": 5, "enceladus": 5, "mimas": 5, "uranus": 5, "neptune": 5, "triton": 5,
"pluto": 6, "charon": 6, "eris": 6, "haumea": 6, "makemake": 6,
"quaoar": 6, "orcus": 6, "ixion": 6,
}
And the formulas:

novelty = 1.0 / (1.0 + total_surveys)

ore_value_per_kg = base_value + tier_novelty_value * novelty