Mining and Thalorite

Asteroid fields

About a quarter of the system’s sectors have an asteroid field: a long slab of rocks drifting slowly along its length. Inside it, the rocks sit still relative to each other, each slowly spinning, until something knocks them. Each field orbits a point, so it never leaves its sector, and over a quarter of an hour or more it turns right round. Every station sits in the calm eye of a field orbiting it about a kilometer out.

A field is the same whenever you come back: every rock is where it would have been had you never left, and every rock you broke stays broken.

Outside a field, a cyan ring on the HUD shows the way back to the nearest one.

Breaking rocks

Shoot a rock and it breaks. Big rocks split into two or three smaller, faster-spinning pieces that fly apart, and those can be shot apart again. Small rocks are destroyed outright. A huge rock takes about four shots, following one line of pieces down.

Rocks collide with real momentum and no drag, so anything knocked drifts on for good. A hard enough hit breaks a rock, rock against rock too, so one break can set off a chain reaction through a dense patch. Ramming breaks rocks too, and a Morgon’s bomb breaks every rock in its blast.

Every broken rock makes the field more crowded and more dangerous, for you and anyone chasing you. Weapons are tools: you can clear a path, block a pursuer, or break Thalorite loose.

Thalorite

When a rock breaks, it may leave a bundle of Thalorite: a glowing green crystal, turning inside out as it tumbles. Bigger rocks are likelier to leave one, and leave bigger ones. The richer a bundle, the bigger and brighter it is, and rich ones have smaller crystals turning inside them. Bundles light up the rocks around them, and drift on the way their rock was moving, so a bombed rock’s fly off fast.

Fly within 12 m of a bundle to collect it. It streams into your ship, and its Thalorite goes into your cargo hold, as much as fits. What doesn’t fit stays in the bundle for later. Bundles stay in the field until collected, even if you leave and come back. Shattering a big rock all the way down yields about 40 Thalorite.

Thalorite comes only from the fields: destroyed Morgons and bases leave none.

Morgons collect it too. A Morgon that flies close to a bundle takes it, up to 40, and it’s lost if you destroy the Morgon. Morgon bases send miners to the fields, and a field you’ve broken open draws them. Miners break rocks the way you do, and take full holds home to their base, lost to you for good. A field with miners in it is a race.

The cargo hold

The hold has a capacity, 50 for the standard hold. The fuller the hold, the slower the ship: a full standard hold cuts your top speed by a quarter, and the throttle sets a share of the loaded top speed, so the same setting flies slower with a heavy haul. A bigger haul is worth more, but makes the trip home riskier.

What’s in the hold is lost with the ship, and damage to the hold can spill some. Deliver it to a station to keep it (see Stations).

The Thaloran artifacts

Five artifacts of the vanished Thalorans are hidden in the system, one each run, inside a rock unlike any other. Nothing marks it: no map, no marker and no message point the way, so keep your eyes open as you fly the fields. Break it to free the artifact, and fly to it to collect it. Each one you find is yours for good, on your device, whatever becomes of the run, and the title screen counts them. The next run hides the next one. Finding all five earns THALORAN SCHOLAR.