In regards to mining, will we be able to refine raw materials ourselves in order to cut out a middleman or will we have to bring them to some planet and pay for someone to refine them for us?asked by Greenman
TL;DRPlayers will refine raw materials themselves, and at some point players or organisations will likely be able to own later nodes in the chain, as part of wanting players to be able to focus on economic play.
I would say in the mining stuff, you're going to refine the raw materials, at some point we'll likely enable players or organisations to own nodes down the chain, so maybe there'll be a specialist refinery ship, or a node in a factory on a planet. So if you owned that node you'd be able to refine and sell it on as a more finished resource or whatever that'll be. We definitely want to allow players to focus on engaging in the economic aspect of the PU if they want to, and not have to focus so much on the combat side of it. That's really one of the big things of SC, is being able to take multiple roles, and encourages people to play co-operatively together so yes, there'll definitely be head to head/pvp stuff, but one of the coolest things is that you've got a lot of opportunities for co-op play, like multicrewed ships, or a few different ships involved in a mining operation or something. It's all about who you want to be, mercenaries, explorers, traders, search and rescue, bounty hunters, pirates, all these things make the strength of SC, either by yourself or with your friends.