Why 3.01 is ***** , or 'if you want mining, first you must create the universe'.
Allow me to describe a simple scenario from a decidedly non-fidelitous and inferior space game, Elite, which is naturally a pale shadow of what the best space game ever is going to be in terms of complexity and realsim. Please bear in mind therefore that the following represents below an acceptable level of fidelity: In order to meet the expectations of backers, Chris needs to deliver a gameplay experience that is somehow deeper than this.
I want to mine some space rocks.
Part 1: I outfit my ship.
Mining at its very basic level requires a few key things: the ability to break off materials from the rocks surrounding them, the ability to process them into something useful, and the ability to store and transport them. I equip my ship with mining lasers, a refinery, and a cargo bay. But I like quality of life improvements as well: it would be nice if I could improve the yield of everything I'm mining, so I buy a controller for prospector limpets (drones that burrow into the asteroids I'm mining and tell me about their composition, and increases the amount of minable material I'm able to get off of a single asteroid), as well as one for collector limpets (drones that fly out and pick up individual hunks of rock so that I don't need to fly my ship over to every single one in order to scoop them into my cargo bay). I also think that I might need protection from people trying to pirate my goods: because I don't want to be a sitting duck, I equip my ship with a hanger bay so that my buddy can patrol a fighter around while I'm busy with rocks and keep hostiles off my tail.
Things required for the mining loop so far: Mining equipment. Refining equipment. Materials storage. Equipment for scanning minable bodies. Equipment for retrieving ore. Woking multicrew. Hostile enemy ships dedicated to pirating miners. Mechanics by which ships can liberate enemy cargo while in combat with them so as to avoid just blowing the cargo up while fighting.
Part 2: I work out where to go mining.
I open up my galaxy map and figure out where to go in order to start making some sweet, sweet spacebux. I notice that a nearby star system has a bunch of worlds with metallic ring systems, which usually has better prospects for mining. I travel there. Around one gas giant there's a pristine ring system that has one of each resource zone: a low-traffic zone which has smaller yields but less people zooming around in it and which would be generally safer, a high-traffic zone that has lots of people in it because the mining's good, and a hazardous zone which may have the best prospects, but which has no police presence due to the fact that it's in a black spot for distress calls - a real Wild West scenario. I decide to go to the high-traffic zone: I'm equipped enough to deal with a few pirates that might try to harass me and can last long enough for the cops to get there if I start to get overwhelmed.
Things required for the mining loop so far: Mining equipment. Refining equipment. Materials storage. Equipment for scanning minable bodies. Equipment for retrieving ore. Woking multicrew. Hostile enemy ships dedicated to pirating miners. Mechanics by which ships can liberate enemy cargo while in combat with them so as to avoid just blowing the cargo up while fighting. Multiple star systems. Multiple worlds with varying types of resources, richness in resources, and types of mining zones. Multiple minable material types. AI miners to populate zones. Police presence, and the notion of high and low-security zones.
Part 3: I go mining.
I launch and engage my frameshift drive to travel to my targeted star system, and fly there. I boost towards the planet's ring and drop in to the metallic asteroid zone. Finding a likely asteroid that doesn't have anyone else mining it, I blast it with my mining laser, and target the chunk of rock that comes off of it. Cobalt. . I find another asteroid, and repeat. This one has a fair amount of gold content, so I launch a prospector limpet at it, and start mining, launching collector limpets as I go. I pirate jumps in and scans my hold: finding gold there he attacks. My buddy in the fighter and I fight back, and kill him with an assist from a police cruiser: safeguarding my days' work, and getting a small bounty reward into the bargain as it's not that guys' first rodeo. Finally when my hold is full I boost out and head back to my space station. But I realise that the station I'm heading to is an agricultural one, and has little use for gold. I locate a station with more of a bent towards precious commodities and go there instead. Finally I sell my mined materials, repair my ship from the damage it took in the battle, and plan my next move. My buddy gets a chunk of the profits.
Things required for the mining loop so far, hyper turbo extended edition:
Mining equipment.
Refining equipment.
Materials storage.
Equipment for scanning minable bodies.
Equipment for retrieving ore.
Woking multicrew.
Hostile enemy ships dedicated to pirating miners.
Mechanics by which ships can liberate enemy cargo while in combat with them so as to avoid just blowing the cargo up while fighting.
Multiple star systems.
Multiple worlds with varying types of resources, richness in resources, and types of mining zones.
Multiple minable material types.
AI miners to populate zones.
Police presence, and the notion of high and low-security zones.
Planets with ring systems.
AI miners.
Minable bodies with differing materials and levels of richness.
Scanning minable materials to determine their composition.
The ability to scan other ships to determine if they are worth pirating.
A fully-formed bounty system.
A fully-formed universal economy that provides incentives to sell different commodities to different buyers.
Repair and re-arming systems.
A profit-sharing system for multicrew.
I could go on, and frankly there's a bunch of stuff that I've likely missed because this is something that I'm typing up in my free time as I post on the internet. But look at how many dependencies the mining loop that a comparable game has. And look at all of the dependencies I've listed and think about how many of them would have multiple dependencies of their own.
At that game's current state, assuming that all of the game-breaking bugs in the current build were solved overnight, that whatever they're doing with mining it planned to a tee, and a competent dev team with unlimited funding took over, Star Citizen could have a mining gameplay loop that rivals the inferior nonfidelitous space madness simulator Elite: Dangerous by 2019 at best.
