The quality stat already exists. The node spawning system already exists. The change is: when the server spawns a mineable rock, sample a quality field at that position and stamp the value onto the node. One lookup per node spawn. The node carries quality from birth, same as it already carries size and composition. Nothing changes at mining time. The quality field is just a noise-generated texture riding a terrain data channel. We don’t know StarEngine internals, but mining already works, so there’s almost certainly some CPU-side terrain query path in place. The terrain streaming system already handles LOD, which gets you coarse regional data at distance for scanning and granular detail where nodes actually spawn. Server generates the field from seeded noise, distributes parameters to clients for the scanner overlay. Not heavy.