StarFrame Update — July 28, 2026

⛏️ Mining — Full Rework

• Mining is now an active minigame. Engage a laser on a locked rock and an oscilloscope appears: your extraction wave rides the centre line, and a green channel drifts and jumps across it. Keep the wave's peaks inside the green and the cycle finishes faster.
• The throttle is two held keys — Left Shift raises power, Left Ctrl lowers it. Hold one to move the wave, release both and it stays where you left it. This replaces the scroll wheel, which moved in fixed steps that were too coarse for a narrow channel.
• Those two keys belong to the throttle while a laser is cycling. For that time they do nothing else — thrust-down and balanced-power stand down until the laser stops. Both are rebindable under Settings ▸ Controls ▸ MINING, and whatever you bind them to takes over the same way.
• Holding the channel builds an extraction multiplier worth roughly 3× base mining speed. It climbs while you're in the green and decays when you slip out, and it caps higher the more power you're running — so a high channel is the fastest mine and the most dangerous one.
• Above the green is the red, and sitting in it fills an OVERCHARGE bar. Fill it and that cycle is voided outright — no ore, no bonus roll, nothing. The next cycle opens back at the safe resting level so you aren't dropped straight back into the red.
• Ignoring the throttle entirely still mines at full base speed. The channel is upside, never a tax — an untouched throttle rests below every possible channel, so it can never overcharge and the cycle still completes in its normal time.
• Richer ore is harder to ride. A Ferrite Chondrite gives you a wide channel that drifts slowly; an Iridosmine Seam gives you a channel barely half as tall that jumps three times as often, and punishes the red far faster.
• The throttle moves more gently than it did at launch. Power takes about 2.5s to travel its full range (was 1.8s) and 1.7s to fall (was 1.25s). Placing the wave precisely inside a tight channel is much easier; chasing a channel that just jumped takes a beat longer.
• Opening a menu mid-cycle can no longer cost you the rock. If you're in the red when a panel takes your input — or the channel jumps onto you while it's open — the throttle backs itself down to resting instead of quietly overcharging behind the window.

🖥️ UI & Quality of Life

• Settings ▸ Controls opens with a new GENERAL section. The context Action key lives there now instead of being buried under Travel & Navigation.
• The tutorial teaches the channel. Chapter 3 walks you through the wave, the green band and the overcharge bar the first time a laser actually cycles, rather than after the fact.

Restart Steam to pick up the update. Until you do, the old client can draw the mining wave slightly ahead of where the server actually has your power.