Welcome to another episode of Casual Citizen. An on-going series about the upcoming first person MMO, Star Citizen by Cloud Imperium Games. I’m your host Alysianah from the Mystic Worlds Gaming Blog. In this week’s episode we’re going to discuss what’s been communicated so far about the mining career. Sit back, relax and enjoy.
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Show Notes:
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Show Transcript is after the break
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I wanted to chat about mining as I suspect it’s going to be a very popular career choice in Star Citizen. Mining was one of the first career design documents published. It’s supposedly representative of their philosophy for all careers. Career associated tasks will require skill, dexterity and intelligence. They will not include mindless repetition or idle monitoring.
Mining isn’t a risk free endeavor. The resources you need might be location in high threat systems or active piracy. Your crew can be injured or your ship damaging while mining. Compressed pockets of gas and other volatile materials can explode in the presence of excessive energy. Some can detonate from seismic activity. In other words, mining in Star Citizen isn’t an auto-pilot profession. Careless players risk serious injury or death.
Setting up Shop as a Miner
The Trade and Development Division is the marketplace for commodities. There you can get a sense of what’s in demand, at what price and where. Once you’ve determined what to mine, you’ll need to decide if you want to do it freelance or contract.
As a freelance operator, you are your own master. You set your mining schedule and pace. And you’re free to capitalize on timely fluctuations in the market demand.
A ship manufacturing receives an urgent order that requires a large sum of materials and they’re willing to pay top dollar to have it now. If you have those materials on hand, you can take advantage of that opportunity.
Just remember that economies can be fluid and what goes up, can go down. You could return from a successful mining excursion to find that market buyout prices have dropped. The cost of your supplies and labor didn’t drop so now what? Do you sell for less? You have crew to pay and fuel to replace. Try traveling to another system and risk encounters on the way where you could lose the cargo and your ship? This is an example of a decision you may face as a freelance miner. Supply vs. demand will impact payouts even in NPC run economies.
Players encountered routinely encountered this scenario in ArcheAge. Players who had the forethought and were lucky to find space, maintained farms where they could store transported goods. That gave them the advantage of delivering to the NPCs only when prices are at their peak. Unlucky or unprepared players had no choice other than to take the price being offered.
If you prefer a set payout, working on contract might be a better option. However, that’s not completely risk free either. Various NPC managed businesses will have contract work available. You’ll be paid a set amount to provide a specific quantity of an item by a certain date. What happens with the market in the interim, isn’t your problem. Sounds good right? Well let’s dig a little deeper.
What happens if your ship is damaged, you have mechanical issues or unreliable crew? An infinite number of circumstances exist which could negatively impact your operation. Suddenly you can’t fulfill the contract you signed. Oops. HOPEFULLY, you can be paid for whatever you’re able to deliver. But now you have an unhappy customer and your reputation as a reliable contractor will suffer.
Net-net is that you can choose how you want to conduct business in Star Citizen, even as a miner. Operating freelance absolves you from schedules and yield requirements but means you have to be proficient at following the market . As a contractor the market isn’t your problem, and as long as you can consistently meet your contractual obligations you’re all set.
Where’s the Beef ?
After deciding between freelance and contract, it’s time to locate asteroids fields that contain the materials you seek. One place to start is by reviewing the Ark Starmap. For systems that have been surveyed, the starmap will note the presence of asteroid fields and belts. If you want to mine with a minimum of combat, you’ll be looking for controlled systems with low threat. This information is readily available using the Ark Starmap.
That might not be enough information when you’re looking for specific resources. To date, the only place I’ve found notations about special commodities are the Galactic Guides. a system’s Galactic Guide will mention if rare or uncommon materials are found there. So to me, that means you need information from the starmap and galactic guides. Hmm - I might be able to help out with that.
Some time ago I started compiling a matrix that combines information from the starmap and the galactic guides. Right now it’s a shareable Google Spreadsheet. I’ll provide a link in the show notes. My intention is for the matrix to provide the big picture overview - high level data need for planning career related excursions.
My starmap matrix links the configuration of the various star systems - celestial bodies, jump points, space stations, landing zones and the number of asteroid belts, etc., with information from the Galactic Guides. For example which systems have thriving black markets? Where can you mine precious metals? Where are the big shipping hubs for smaller cargo haulers? High volume import and export opportunities. Things like that. Eventually, I’ll have it turned into a website that’s searchable and can be updated by the community.
Getting the Job Done
Mining consists of multiple roles and is done using a ship configured for mining, such as the Orion. Higher proficiency in performing roles means better efficiency and higher profits.
What I’m about to cover discussed a full scale mining operation on a ship like the Orion. Doing so requires multiple crew stations be manned. This doesn’t mean that mining won’t be made possible on a smaller scale using a smaller ship. It’s just that we don’t have those details yet.
One of the roles in a mining operation is the pilot. They are responsible for safely navigating the ship to and within targeted asteroid fields. This may not be as simple as it sounds. Rarer materials will be located in dense fields. When that’s the case, it requires nimble navigation skills to avoid costly ship damage. Sounds simple? Think of the number of players you’ve seen who can’t land without damaging their ship. Exactly!
The next role is the ERDA scan operator. This is the person responsible for identifying an asteroid’s composition. They do this by injecting remote material analysis packages, RMAP for short, into nearby asteroids. The telemetry data is sent to the pilot and scan operator.
Once a site is selected, the optimal injection orientation is displayed. The scan operator launches and manually controls RMAP-equipped missiles. The missiles are used to hit the asteroid at the correct location, exposing the materials you want to mine.
Here’s one of the “efficiency is import” scenarios. The more accurate the RMAP activity, the less digging around in an asteroid you’ll do to reach the material you actually want to mine.
Then there’s the beam operator. This station is responsible for wielding the mining beam affixed to the ship’s robotic arms. The Beam Operator directs a laser to dig out materials. Their skills impact the proficiency at which you can extract materials. It’s also critical to safety. An injection of surplus energy into volatile materials can cause explosive chain reactions. I think you can imagine what that can lead to if it happens.
The cargo operator is the sifting and pick-up role. Mined materials are magically placed in your ship. The cargo operator monitors the fragments being excavated by the mining beam and interrogates them using an integrated Fragment Scanner.
Fragments of interest are directed into a ship’s input port. The input port pulverizes the fragments into rubble and stores the contents into cargo modules. The skill of this person also impacts the value of your payload. They can miss important fragments or be so slow that they impact your efficiency, putting you behind schedule for contract deliveries.
Last and optional leg of the operation is refining. If your ship is equipped with one, the refinery operator will process raw ore into its purified forms. Waste is ejected out into space. Purified materials consume considerably less storage space. This allows your operation to continue for extended periods of time before it becomes necessary to dock and unload.
As you can see, mining will require more than locating big rocks. There’s logistical planning and skill necessary to run an efficient operation. I don’t think mining is up my alley but I find all of the Star Citizen careers fascinating and I hope you’ve found this informative.
SHOW NOTES
Short list of show notes this week. I’ll link to the mining design document on CIG, the Orion and my starmap matrix.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. If you have, please considering subscribing to my channel and giving this episode a thumbs up. It would be greatly appreciated and doing so helps the show’s visibility, making it easier for others to find their way here.
Be kind and fly safe. This is Alysianah signing off until next time.
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