I want to be honest with you, if you chose a career as a miner, bring a few good books. I was bored out of my skull. I had slept, I had mined, I had surveyed the crap out of everything around me, I had rewritten the automatic mining routine twice trying to get more efficiency out of it. I even read anything that I had downloaded from the bulletin and sysnet connections.

I had been sitting out here in the middle of a bunch of giant spinning rocks for the last 40 hours and I wanted to bang my head against the console. Why was there no way to make this process faster?

The good news was that I was nearly done. I found a 13.5% concentration on one of the rocks that I passed when the autopilot took me to where I had set it to go. That meant that instead of my estimated 240 Endrite per hour, I actually mined roughly 320. That was a significant improvement. In 10 hours the difference already made up 800 units. Which meant sitting here for 40 hours, I had mined a total of 12960 ore.

This had 2 benefits: It meant that the mining time was actually cut down to a little over 46 hours which was really cool because it meant that I would easily make my contract deadline and my ship would not be in any danger. The other was that my mining skill had increased to 19 and for a better lack of anything to do, I was watching the progress bar tick up further and further.

And apparently programming the autopilot counted as piloting because that skill had also gone up 1 point to a grand total of 3.

My survey skill had also gone up to level 8 which in itself was cool but didn’t provide me with any further benefits. The thing was that I had been thinking about the change to mining at level 10. Not only had it unlocked survey, but I had been able to automate the mining process. I was really curious to see if there was a way to do automation on surveying.

Which then led me to immediately plan out how I would start making the big bucks by creating and selling a survey map to all the miners here. Which was then followed my me dropping my head on the console in front of me. How the hell did I not check on station if there were survey maps for this system. I mean, come on. It is a mining system. That’s basically all they do here. There must be survey maps and if I could get one, this whole process would go faster and rely much less on the luck of accidentally surveying a rock with sufficient ore density to make it worthwhile mining.

This in turn could mean that if I get another contract with an early delivery bonus I would possibly be able to make that bonus. Considering my flight time here and the fact that last delivery counted as completion time stamp, if I could have found a 21% density rock, I could have made an extra 2.25k. Yeah, it’s not that much but at same time I felt like I was here working for a pittance anyway considering the whole price structure of things.

I mean I was making 12750 ICU on this contract. Considering that “just” the connector will cost me 15k, I was looking at a long and boring mining / gaming career. And not just that. I highly doubted that many people would want to see me sitting in an asteroid belt without end. #boredOutOfYourSkull. No, they wanted to see action and a new game. Yeah, I could compile my knowledge about mining and all and sell it as a paid guide at release. And while there would be some money in it, it wasn’t sustainable.

Yes, consciously I knew I didn’t need the money. But it wasn’t about that. I wanted to be prepared. Assume the investment goes belly up. Then what? No, I wanted to create a solid income stream.

With that in mind, I looked at the earning potential regarding currency exchange. And that honestly didn’t look too rosy either. Considering that I had just spent 40 ingame hours here mining to near contract fulfilment, that meant 10 hours IRL. Or roughly one work day for a normal person. This in turn meant that after completion of the mission I had made 12.75 yuan creds. Not exactly what I would consider a getting rich quick scheme.

At the same time I was looking at it from the other perspective. If it would be possible right now, I could spend around 200 yuan credits and would have a decently decked out mining frigate. Which would in turn allow me to mine about one third faster, make more money and potentially even earn my investment back.

This brought up a totally different but related thought. If this game went live and became something big, and to be honest I had a feeling it would, how many companies would shift assets here. I had seen it before. Aventuria was one of the examples. Corporations had moved money into the game, recruited players, formed guilds and now they were making their money back in multiples.

The thing with an MMO economy is that there is an inherent inflation. Many game companies try to combat that but it is very difficult. Because whenever you killed a monster and looted something off of it, you would generate money. Which would then lead to a bit of inflation. Now multiply that by millions of players killing and looting hundreds of millions of monsters every day and you had yourself a recipe for disaster.

In Aventuria they combated this by creating extremely expensive repair and equipment upgrade costs. So what did the corporations do? They created guilds specialized on crafting that sold players all the things they needed to last just a bit longer, to be a bit stronger, etc. And because they were backed by serious money, they could afford to push the competition out. They had Player-versus-Player teams that were simultaneously guards and strike force and some even had super high end adventuring teams that were out in the world looking for the best items and new recipes and whatnot. Both of the latter was also used to increase the guild’s and thus the corporation’s popularity on all levels: in the game, in the Hub and IRL.

A message on my interface shook me out of my contemplation.

You have reached basic mining level 20.

You have unlocked a new mineable mineral: Soldrite

New Asteroid Survey result unlocked: Soldrite

Wait, that’s it? No increase in efficiency? No new bonuses? Just a new mineral? I mentally swiped the message closed and looked up this new mineral on my ships computer.

Soldrite: Soldrite, a class one ore, is amongst the most common ore types in the known universe. Mining Soldrite is a good choice for those starting their mining careers. 200 ore units are needed for refining. The base price for Soldrite is 0.8 ICU per unit and the refined base price is 2.4 ICU per unit. Average refinement rate is 10 units unrefined to 6 units refined.

Oh man. For one this description didn’t help much while at the same time I felt like banging my head against the console a second time. How had I not thought to look up this kind of information before? Refining?

Endrite: Endrite, a class one ore, is the most common asteroid ore type. While used in nearly all industry sectors, its abundance in combination with the low mining skill requirement is the reason for a low price. 400 ore units are needed for refining. The base price for Endrite is 0.67 ICU per unit and the refined base price is 2 ICU per unit. Average refinement rate is 10 units unrefined to 6 units refined.

Dang. Refining raised the price quite a bit. Even with the losses of ore to refined ore would allow for a decent chunk of increase in profits. It was a 20% value increase on Endrite and a whooping 44% increase in price for refined Soldrite.

I needed to look into refining and prices and stuff when I was on the station next. Maybe that would actually enable me to turn a profit faster and get myself set up for the next steps faster too.

After sitting here for so long and contemplating my apparently shitty money making capabilities, I now felt totally reinvigorated and could barely wait for my contract to be finished to head back to the station and look into all of this.

My mind was going a mile a minute when I got a com request. I pulled up my HUD. Ralgau?

I opened the channel.

“Malcolm Solo Space Excavation and Mining. How may I help you?”

“Ha, funny.” the big bartender replied. “Didn’t expect you to bounce so quickly from the station.”

“Yeah, I found an ore contract that was time sensitive and I ran off immediately to fill it.”

“Good money?”

“Meh. Okay I guess. And nearly done too. So all in all I will call it a win.”

“That’s good. Hey, I put my ear to the ground and see if there is any work to be had. I found something that might be interesting to you.”

“Oh?” I asked surprised. I really hadn’t expected much to come of it. But I was happy that he had found something. “Do you want to tell me more?”

“Nope, not on coms. When are you going to be back on station?”

I checked my timers. “I am going to be done here in about six hours and it will take me about five to get back to station. Let’s say 12 hours from now?”

“Got it. I’ll set up a meeting. Don’t be late!” And with that he cut the coms.

So for the last six hours my mood vacillated between boredom and excitement. Bored by the mining and excited that mining might actually turn out to be profitable but much more so by the prospect of some other work. Especially the fact that Ralgau was kinda secretive about it had me intrigued. And at the same time I was wondering what kind of trouble he would get me into.