Another of these "is this possible" concepts i came up with.

In Armada II, Dilithium mining has always been done by a freighter that then goes to a station to unload. However, with planets the mining station would just mine the metal and the metal instantly went into the account.

Could the metal mining system somehow be incorperated into a freighter, so dilithium mined by the freighter is instantly added to the resource account (so canonically the freighter would have a processing facility on board and then the material is transported straight to storage)?

I thought it might be a nifty feature for one of the sides (i was thinking Borg or Noxter). You'd have to balance it of course, probably by making the freighter more expensive or slowing its collection rate.

In a way it would be similar to the Atlantean citizens in Age of Mythology: The Titans. Unlike the gatheres from the other three civs they didn't need drop sites... the resource just went straight into your account...

I agree it could be cool... hard to balance... but it could be cool...