The folks at Starbase have offered up yet another information-loaded look at gameplay in the galactic sandbox MMO, but this one’s for all of us who like to nibble on rocks for relaxation, fun, and profit. Yes, it’s all about mining. Not just any old mining, but the best kind of mining: space mining.
Mining the asteroids of Starbase’s universe is actually one of the first ways players will earn their own credits. Your robot will be handed a pickaxe and will have rocks called to their Mega Station to manually break down, knocking off large chunks of material with the sharp end and breaking those chunks down to smaller, processable pieces with the blunt end. Each asteroid has a crunchy core full of materials players will need to build pretty much everything in game, so doing some manner of rock harvesting is probably going to be a necessary skill from the jump.
Of course, having rocks summoned to you to break up is fine, but it’s hardly lucrative. If you really want to get in to mining in Starbase, then you can slap on a dedicated mining backpack, head out in to the asteroid fields, and start harvesting those materials yourself. For those who are looking to take mining up to a career level, there are even spaceships dedicated to the task, which can either deploy tractor beams to haul whole asteroids to stations for processing or fit dedicated tools like mining lasers for faster work.
There are a couple of videos embedded below: The first is the official look at mining from the devs themselves, and the second is from YouTuber Captain Jack, who interviewed the devs to ask about planets, early access, and other matters.
