Crafting

Beausejour agrees the weapon pricing and the crafting breakdown were validated separately with no check across them, and says human validation is no longer enough, so machine validation is needed for everything.

They say the weapon break-down pricing is intentional rather than an exploit, and that they track several exploit types but won't give details, partly so they can learn causes and who is responsible before acting.

Refineries are very high on the priority list, along with player shops, and both tie into base building, while dedicated repair ships are deferred until crafting is finished, though priorities could shift.

The three delayed ships are a crafting-section variant, a ground-vehicle crafting and med-bed base, and a small-to-medium solo crafting ship with a refinery and ground extractors; they slipped because crafting hasn't shipped, and whether crafting arrives in 2026 is left to another team.

The Clipper is designed to craft FPS items and small ship items but not vehicles, and the speakers can't give an exact answer because crafting is still in development and what it can craft will probably change.

The Clipper has only two small shields because it is meant to be a jack of all trades with limited balance, small shields can be crafted aboard, and larger ones wouldn't fit without enlarging the ship.

Most machines hold output in an internal buffer or can fill boxes, and boxes are mag-locked under the base's usual permissions so others can't take them, while some machines can send output directly to storage such as a hangar.

Mining will be split into bespoke rocks per resource and separate FPS, ground vehicle and ship deposits, while salvage will yield ship construction materials that can be separated, though that approach is still being decided.

Mining isn't finished after 3.19: refining and crafting are planned next to close the loop from gathering to recycling, and announced ships like the Orion still need their own mining treatment.

Refining isn't called a minigame, and the current non-final idea is to analyze materials, then choose a predefined method or a manual approach like grinding or melting, depending on desired effort.

Harvestables currently only have a small selling value, but the goal is to make them more valuable by using them in manufacturing and science once those systems are worked on.

Ship refining will be an active process where the player chooses how to process incoming material, working on yield instead of purity, and aiming to let groups refine in the field, with mistakes risking loss or explosions.

Ship refining will have no AFK option, requiring players to watch details like temperature and tailor the refinery's reactor and the ship's tanks to what they want to refine.

No designer was present so gameplay perks can't be confirmed, but the artists say the team is discussing rewards like craftable or valuable shell and possible radiation resistance, all still undecided.

Yes, the initial harvestables release was just a first step, and the goal is to move toward crafting and science uses such as research data, consumable boosts and extracting chemical substances.

There will be different fuel grades, with boost and jump fuel more compact and pricier than regular fuel, though it may not apply to basic manoeuvring fuel and the system is still being sorted out.

Chris Roberts says it is too early to decide on real-money trading; he dislikes gold farming and will try to make it unprofitable, while wanting players to earn in-game through crafting, tuning weapons and trading.

Chris Roberts says most missions should make sense in the world because all goods are produced within the simulated economy, so shortages can occur; he hopes this feels more real.