Cloud Imperium Games has detailed mining in Star Citizen. Instead of the simplified stereotype of grunt mining work you may have expected, Christ Roberts and co. have recreated to some degree the complexity, and danger, of mining as a real life profession.
In their own words:
Mining presents players with a variety of challenges requiring skill and intelligence, whereas mindless repetition of a task and idle drudgery are explicitly avoided. There are no aspects of mining that allow a player to simply press a button and wait without concern for a result, or that require players to perform an action repeatedly without some element of thought and/or dexterity coming into play.Central to the mining profession is the Trade and Development Division, which serves as the open marketplace for the resources you mine. You can choose to mine freelance or under contract, with the latter potentially being a safer bet, assuming you meet quotas and are willing to give up most of your haul.
One very dangerous and vital aspect of the profession is scouting asteroid fields. Much like in real life, Star Citizen’s mining economy revolves around finding newer fields to mine for rare resources. When these resources become plentiful from finding new ground, of course, prices drop as well. You can take on a job as a Pioneer, and actually go out looking for these unexplored fields yourself.
Other specialized mining jobs include being a pilot, scan operator (the one who scans for most plentiful areas), beam operator (controls beam generator, as well as other equipment), cargo operator, and refinery operator. For ships that have refineries, the refinery operator is in charge of purification and distillation of resources.
Each of these jobs aren’t ‘automatically’ done correctly like in other games. You have to make careful decisions to optimize the amount that your ship will eventually be able to gather, while keeping safety and budget in mind.
As you can imagine, this barely even scratches the surface of what mining is like in Star Citizen. You can get full details, including information on the mining specialist ship, the Orion, here.
Star Citizen is exclusive to PC, via Windows and Linux, with the 1st modules releasing this year.
