X is the number of tiles from the top-left side of the map, as seen on the mini-map. Y is the number of tiles from the top-right side (confusing since the sectors in the game number from the left corner rather than the top corner!). This positioning system is the same as with any object in a custom map.

NumAsteroids detremines the number of asteroids in tens of thousands that will be in the asteroid (when you select an asteroid in-game, it says in the context area "Number of asteroids: n0,000". I believe this determines the base amount of bonus you get from a base there, but don't know the specifics.

I don't know what the Random Seed does. My guess would be that it determines how the asteroid field looks, so you should give each field in a group a different seed so they aren't all identical-looking.

Name and CustomName go together. As with everything else on the map, if CustomName is 1, the game will use the name you specify in game. If it is 0, then the name will be ignored and generated by the game. In the specific case of asteroids, this may be ignored altogether as last I saw the name settings in CustomPlanets.xml for asteroids were ignored as well.

Star is obviously the name of the star the asteroids will be 'attatched' to in the game.


Note in the future, you can post the XML directly in the forum by simply replacing every instance of < with &lt; . This will cause it to ignore it rather than treating it as HTML.