Force mining's a rule that I've always liked for being there, and have even considered to be quite useful in hypothetical situations but I've never gotten around to using it in a game. So far I can see 3 reasons for Force mining:
- Getting extra resources in order to accelerate builds or tech runs.
- Depriving an enemy of an area
- Using it to gain resources from a safer area card in order to not risk workers in more contested ares.
1 seems useful, but quite risky seeing as how many Refinary bombardment cards there are in the event tech, what seems like an early lead might just end up as crippling your economy. 2 is an interesting option, but requires you to not only have a base in that planet but to also control the areas that you want to drain. Also there's the possibility that you might take the planet back later only to find it useless.
All in all I can't really see it being overly useful that often. Any thoughts or stories about using Force Mining in game would be appreciated, as it's a fun little rule that I would really like to use in game effectively.