Could also use them as a buffer from enemy fleets who'd otherwise siege your valuable colonies.

As of Entrenchment, they're a nice place to grab for the purposes of a TEC mine trap.  Seed the phase lanes with prox mines, cover the mines with Guass Platforms to kill mine clearing scouts, and cover the Gauss with Hangers to slow down bombers and give YOU some strike craft to hurt 'em as well. 

And if, after all that, they fight through the trap...so what?  They kill a dead roid or get to move through to a real system that you've had extra time to get your fleet to, build mines, build a SB, or whatever else you want to do to defend it.

And against the AI, its a death trap, 'cause they usually aren't smart enough to get through without massive casualties.

They are a good place to buffer you empire from enemy incursions, and they can be a useful forward culture base.

If Vassari, you can build a phase stabaliser there, giving you another location to jump to...

TEC's upgrade Development mandate gives all planets extra logistic slots including dead roids so you can build tradeports there.

Defensive structures do not take up logistical slots. They take up tactical slots. Dead roids have tactical slots.

They never have resource asteroids, and they don't have logistics slots, either.  Unless you're TEC (development mandate, as already stated) they have zero economic value.  They're only useful as military installations and buffers against enemy invasions. 

> They might have artifacts.  Don't underestimate this one; unless you're playing on a huge map, you need every chance you can get.

> With Entrenchment, you can now put a starbase around them.  That can mean trade ports and colony pods, in addition to the tactical bonuses.  Very expensive to do this, though.

> It's nice to have a front-line system where you know that if the planet gets bombarded half to death by raiders, it won't cost you much to rebuild.  Watching a 300-pop planet repopulate from near-zero, with the resulting loss of income, is painful.

> With 25 tactical points, back-line dead asteroids make great places for placing more superweapons.

> For a Vasari, it's another phase gate location.  The starbase phase stabilizer just isn't nearly as useful.  And asteroids (dead or not) make GREAT Vasari fleet bases, as their gravity wells are small; it's far easier to get across them if you need to quickly jump to another planet to respond to an invasion.  TEC and Advent want to defend the high-value planets first, but for a Vasari, those big wells are just too easy to get bogged down in.

> If you don't take them, the enemy will.  Giving a Vasari enemy a forward base for a stabilizer is just asking for trouble.

> There are no AI defenses on them at the start of the game, so why NOT take them if your colony ship has a spare minute?  It'll only cost you a 450-credit upgrade to keep them from costing you money.

Now, given the choice I'd take a regular asteroid over a dead one any day, so I rarely bother adding these on a custom map.  Personally, I think they (and pirate bases) should have been bumped up to 35 tactical slots to compensate for the loss of the twelve logistic slots.

Then you obviously do not understand how trade ports work. Being able to put just one trade port on a dead roid can cause a MAJOR increase in income due to lengthening the longest route....

I'm kind of an Intel nut, but they're a nice early warning sign for an invading force. That extra minute is a really nice buffer.

There is nothing wrong with my tone. And there IS something in there making it obvious - you do not acknowledge the advantage of increasing your credit income per second. If you cannot acknowledge or understand that, then you don't understand the need to credits in this game, or how the trade port system works.

alright big guy, you win the internet. clearly you are a the next step in human evolution and i'm way out of line to have a different opinion than you. 

Ahhh...internet forums