Greetings Pioneers, Two weeks ago, we kicked off the First Steps series, where we give you a sneak peek at the core gameplay, features, and systems that are present in the work-in-progress tutorial. We covered space stations and character creation, as well as piloting a spacecraft and the basic elements of the User Interface, illustrated with new in-game footage! Today, we are continuing the series by diving into resources and mining.
Picking up from where we left off, our contract updates as we enter the atmosphere of Solar Alpha 1. Our objective: gather 8 iron ore and 8 copper ore.
First, we need to locate the resources before we can gather them. Luckily, we can rely on Scrappy’s radar skill to detect any nearby resources on the planet’s surface.
Radar
Some new information has appeared on our HUD. The first two indicators, altitude and planetary temperature, are fairly standard and don’t need much explanation. The third is a “compass” tied to your radar skill. It points you toward the general location of resource nodes, represented by question mark icons. The specific resource is only revealed once you get close enough to the node.
A resource node is a minable point that provides materials in limited quantities, with each extraction yielding components based on the resource specific composition of minerals or other materials. Some nodes are simple, offering basic resources, while others contain a mix of common and rare materials.
Iron Stone
Nodes spawn in clusters rather than appearing in isolation, and each planet has a unique set of resource nodes, affecting the availability and gathering conditions of materials. Certain landmarks also feature rarer, more concentrated resource nodes, this will come later on in the tutorial.
We head to the nearest node, which turns out to be iron. By pressing and holding the key our spacecraft’s mining skill is assigned to, currently set to 1, a progress bar appears, showing the time it takes to complete the mining action based on our current mining speed.
Mining Copper Stone
Mining speed and access depend on tool tiers: lower-tier tools can’t mine higher-tier nodes and higher-tier tools mine faster and can break through tougher nodes.
At first, resources are gathered using a mining laser, but as we progress, we will unlock new tools for different resource types. Some materials, like Shells, must be broken open with missiles. Liquid and gas resources require specialized harvesting tools and storage modules. Volatile resources heat up when mined and can explode, sometimes requiring cooling tools.
Basic Mining Laser
Later in the game, some resources will be harvested automatically in player-built bases using extractors. Others will require you to land and collect them manually on foot, adding variety and challenge to how resources are gathered.
Raw components usually need to be refined before they can be used, but different raw forms of the same material have distinct properties. For example, Iron Nuggets and Iron Ore both contain iron, but mining nuggets yields less total iron while being more space-efficient by taking up less Storage Units in our inventory (e.g., 2 Iron Ore take up 10 SU for 1 Iron Ingot, while 4 Iron Nuggets take up only 4 SU).
Iron Ore
The tutorial focuses on basic materials like Iron and Copper, later introducing Quartz, but many more resources become available as we progress beyond the tutorial.
While you were reading through my explanations, I was busy gathering the resources. We now have both the iron and copper, which means the contract has been updated, it's time to head back to Babylon 7 and unlock our first permit!
That wraps up this First Steps blog! We’ve taken a closer look at how resource gathering begins, from scanning the planet’s surface to mining our first materials. While the process starts simply, it quickly expands into a much deeper system with new tools, rare resources, and even base extraction further down the line. In the next post, we’ll return to Babylon 7 and see what unlocking our first permit opens up. Until then, safe travels, Pioneers.
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