I've been meaning to build the Space Casino (a mission in the Tourism Plus contract pack), which asks for 4 asteroids to be a part of the final construction. I thought, how cool would it be to use only glimmeroids? I further decided that I only wanted to use really big ones, so I tested and built an appropriately capable ship and set out for E-class asteroids, hoping to find one that glowed. I had poked around and found a thread that discussed these asteroids and the conclusion of the discussion is that they appear in about 1 of 20 encounters, and can be a variety of colors. What It had not been determined/discussed as to when the asteroid becomes "magic."
After much hunting I finally found one, and decided to put a question in my mind to the test: is the "magic" determination made when the asteroid comes into physics range and spawns, or is that decided when the asteroid appears in the tracking station? The answer is: physics range! Therefore, if you quicksave when you are en route and before you match velocities, then you can reload over and over again until the asteroid becomes a magic one. In doing that I agree that they show up somewhere between 1 in 15 to 1 in 20 times.
Also, in that old thread many people reported that their glimmeroids tended to be on the low end of the mass range. I have not found that to be the case, at least with the E-class ones. I came across a true behemoth, a gold one that was over 3000t!
In color I have come across red, cyan, orange, yellow, gold, and several shades of purples, greens and pinks. I am guessing that any value on the color wheel is possible, and there does seem to be at least a little variation on the color saturation.
Hope this answers some questions for anyone curious about these asteroids!
