Spaceship simulators seem to be all the rage now. First we had Elite Dangerous, of which you can read our review of here, and recently there has been talk of Rebel Galaxy. Of course no discussion of spaceship simulators will be complete without talking about the elephant in the room. The really big elephant with millions of dollars in the war chest: Star Citizen.
Of course, there are the games and then there are the similarities in these games and something you will just always find in a spaceship simulator game is some way to perform mining. Star Citizen is no different and recently, they posted a detailed article on how mining will most likely work when it is finally implemented into the game. You can read that article right here, but it’s very verbose so we will try to summarize it without losing too much content below.
Mining will be one of the many “occupations” that you will be able to partake in Star Citizen. How good you are at any profession will be purely dictated by your own actual skill at it and the equipment you bring, so basically no magical stats and numbers that proclaim you as a level 100 fisherman, for example.
That being said, mining won’t be mundane, or at least that’s Robert Space Industries’ hope. Danger lurks in every corner, be it accidentally blowing up volatile materials in an asteroid, navigating dense asteroid fields or pirates, you will have your hands full. Similar to its competitor Elite Dangerous, a miner will be able to go freelance and get whatever they want, or sign a contract to guarantee a certain amount of money as long as the goods are delivered in a timely fashion.
There’s even a mining ship, that you can now buy the concept of if you are so inclined, called the Orion! It’s a hulking big thing at 170m long with plenty of cargo space and even a defensive turret!
Mining itself won’t be a one man operation, however with there being 3 distinct jobs one can perform when mining which are pilot, scanner operator, beam operator, cargo operator and refinery operator. All these jobs can be performed by people or NPCs, with the drawback of using NPCs being their high monthly cost and the loneliness one will have to suffer in the depths of space.
The pilot is the boss and also pilots the ship. The scanner operator sends out special missiles and penetrates the asteroids in very precise ways to gather data on them. The beam operator operates the high-powered mining laser to cut chunks out whilst having to adjust wattage to prevent explosions within the asteroid using various different tools and displays. The cargo operator has views of fragments of asteroid coming at the ship that were blasted by the beam operator and determines which fragments are worth keeping and directs them into the input port through usage of repulsor and attractor beams. The refinery operator is only available on ships with a refinery on them and their primary role is to direct ore to the correct processors to be refined.
Star Citizen is currently planned for full release some time in 2016, but will release in modules until then with the current playable module being the Arena Commander module.
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
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