The ion cannon control center allowed GDI commanders to call down an ion cannon strike from one of GDI's orbital battle stations, which could vaporize virtually everything within a large radius. Empyrion is a survival based game with catering to story aspect. I didn't see it written anywhere that it wouldn't work on the surface. Fixed: Neutral State with Zirax lead to base does not defend vs. Things rip through asteroids like butter.
Maybe it will work in space where there's no gravity and the ore won't fall? Any ideas? One thought I had was I read something about HVs not picking up ore if it hits the ground first. Plenty of space left, plus I'm not playing with volumes. Sometimes it will pick up like 6 rocks when I was testing it on nearby small rocks. The problem I have is that it only picks up ores about 10% of the time. It took me awhile to figure it out but I got that working. First of all, I couldn't find out how to use it because when you put it on the SV, it's icon on the SV is blank. I got the T2 drill mounted onto my SV and placed a brand new container controller (ore and wood), with a bunch of extensions just so i could try it out around my base before venturing off into orbit to continue mining asteroids. I'm in the process of beginning asteroid mining to stock enough materials to start on my first CV. So I finally managed to gather enough materials to produce a T2 Drill Module that I can place on my SV.