Beltlife: Prospector

Hey you! Yeah, you. With the blown out shoes and the empty eyes. Are you tired of being broke and hungry, stuck on a rock with no prospects and even less hope? Do you want to do more with your life?

Boy do we have an opportunity for you! More money than you could spend in two lifetimes and a future paved in gold is awaiting you in the Belt! Ceres Omnitech wants you for the Prospector program. Drove a truck across the ash flats? We want you! Flew drones in the quarantine zones? We want you! Heck, if you can swing a pickaxe... We want you!

Sign up today and say "I* deserve* this!" We'll be waiting.

The Premise

In the not too distant future, the asteroid belt is home to a new gold rush, a corporate race to establish mining claims. You have been accepted into Ceres Omnitech's "Prospector" program. You've traveled at their expense to the belt and been provided a ship with which to stake claims. You will need to make payments on the ship and keep it in running order, buy supplies, locate and catalog asteroids, stake and auction claims, all while operating within the terms and bureaucratic restrictions of the Belt Authority. As an ambitious nobody, your goal is to make your fortune and move on from your tin can before the void of the black can destroy your body or take your sanity.

No soft sci-fi nonsense here

Beltlife: Prospector is reality-based "hard" sci-fi. Some liberties were taken in the positioning and distance between the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta, but there are no mysterious "long range scanners", no warp drive, no space wizards, and no alien menace. Your foes are solar radiation, osteopenia, micrometeorites, and the unfathomably vast and empty vacuum of space. Your fusion reactor is scaled based on current technology, fuel consumption rates and drive output are realistic for the mass of your ship. You'll use radar for asteroid detection and actual real-life modern prospecting technologies taken to their far (but not theoretical) limits for determining asteroid compositions prior to staking claims. But don't worry, there are no Newtonian physics or delta-V calculations to figure out, that stuff is all abstracted. Just plot a course, hit the go button, and try not to run out of fuel or oxygen before you make your fortune.

Market simulation

The value of your claims will vary based on their size, composition, and each material's current value. There are two simulated materials markets based on the two stations in the game and individual materials may boom or bust over time. You don't have to closely monitor the markets, but you can if you want to. Generally C-class (carbonaceous) asteroid claims will sell for more money at Ceres and X-class (metallic) asteroid claims will sell for more at Vesta, with S-class asteroids somewhere between.

Your ship

The factory VestaCorp PS-01 Prospector is a barebones ship, just enough to keep you alive and accomplish the mission. It features 9 major systems with 4 major subcomponents each. Components will wear over use and time and are subject to the effects of solar storms and micrometeorite strikes. You will need to conduct maintenance and repairs regularly to keep your ship running. It has minimal shielding and your body will take a toll over time and exposure. You'll need to keep up your stock of oxygen, water, and rations. Your waste tanks can be emptied and the contents sold as fertilizer. Your ship can be upgraded at the shipyard on Vesta.

Your Captain

Beltlife: Prospector features RPG-lite style character creation and improvement. You'll advance in status, unlocking perks, and the emptiness of space will wear on your body and psychological health. Your skills will improve with use and make your life a bit easier, saving you the most valuable resource, time. The Belt Authority has mandated a work/rest cycle of 30 days out, 30 days recovering. This is the mission cycle. Violating the mission cycle will result in fines and/or imprisonment. Time saved is cash earned.

The Belt

Fun fact: The asteroid belt is actually really, really empty. Asteroids aren't as easy to find as one might guess. Head sunward to denser sectors where they're more plentiful but probably smaller, head outward where they're rarer but typically larger, or stick to the relatively safer travel route between the stations where you're more likely to encounter a fellow prospector Captain to chat with, a resupply ship with fuel pellets (at astronomical prices), or an abandoned ship with valuable supplies on board free for the taking. It's up to you.

Final notes

This is not an action game. It's a GUI-based game. It's not particularly stressful and there's no pause button because you don't need it, you can safely step away at any point and check on the kids or take a phone call or go nuke a hot dog. Nothing in the game happens unprompted. This is a game you can play after a long day of work or before bed and just wind down. The sounds are largely a