Consider that each 'unit' in game is roughly 1 tonne perhaps.
That means they took out 200 5k transports, or to put it into smuggler terms, 1539 Dromedary's.
The likelyhood of cardi barrels floating in space in that abundance, or any kind of mining abundance, is just silly.
The sheer amount of credits that would be worth would entice the Outcasts to send a bloody dreadnaught there to hoover it all up.
You are thinking in game sizes where a system is 70-200 km large a planet is like 5km, and transports can carry max 5000 tonns. In Vanila transports carried millions of quantity in their hold (but having those cargoships in discovery would be silly). In that case those 3 tiny little niobium fields wich have like 6-7k radious size would have been exhausted long time ago. But an orefield in the space is enormous. This scrapfield would be enormous aswell. Cardimine transports are being destroyed in daily routine, means more and more cardimine barrels (or call them what you want) are getting into space. Yes, lolcasts would send forces to collect it, but lolonial forces are there to encounter them. Not exactly mining, rather collecting the remaining Cardi, what other greedy pirates would also try to collect . This could mean another reason for the lolcasts to enter tau23, to recover the lost shipment.