I used “- console 1” as a startup parameter. Once your in the game press the tilde key ( ~ ).
You can also still get into the debug menus, to do that once your in game press Left Ctrl & D at the same time then you'll have access to 5 different menus by pressing F2, F3, F4, F5 and F12.
I found it! The console does work as a cheating, uhm debugging device. It use LUA script command. Through it you can add (super) seedlings to your asteroid or any asteroid in fact.
In the console, you can enter: a=GetAsteroid(x) a:AddSuperSeedlings(y)
where x is the designated # of a particular asteroid, and y is the number of seedlings you want to add to that asteroid.
Finding the number x is little bit tricky: You can find it by pausing the game first, and then a=GetAsteroid(x)
then check if you are the owner of that asteroid: a.owner
if a.owner=1, then you are the owner of asteroid x, otherwisem it belongs to the AI or no one, and you just go try x+1 until you find your asteroid.
This can be tedious work if there are dozens of asteroids. In the story mode you can save the work by looking up the number in game's script files: Uncompress Levels.zip in the folder Resources\Maps under game's directory. Find the corresponding .LUA file and open it with a text editor. Then find the asteroid with owner=1.
Also, Ctrl+D and then F4 allows you reveal all factions' asteroids, saves you the time to explore. Click limit camera to unlock camera.