Boom indeed! For years people have asked me to add asteroid mining, and for years I’ve thought yes, that would be great, as soon as I finish the critical features of the game. First I wanted to finish alpha 0.6, wherein players can explore a vast network of sectors rather than the one or two I’ve been releasing with each update so far.
While planning 0.6 I read a book on quest narratives, and realized the value of part of the archetypal hero’s journey – the return home. The way I see it, the point is to show the hero’s metamorphosis by contrasting how they interact with their original environment before their quest with how they interact with it afterward. It also bookends the story nicely, much like a melody returning to the root note or a sitcom episode ending with a reference to the first joke. So, now 0.6 will end with a return to the origin station. Seems good.
The trouble is, by the time the player returns to the origin station their ship is substantially larger, and probably won’t fit back through the cracks and crevices of the first asteroid belt (*cough* threshold *cough*).
So I added mining.
<3
Farbs