Stephen Cameron, creator of our favourite spaceship bridge simulator, has just added mining to Space Nerds in Space.

In the video below you can see how Stephen selects an asteroid to mine, makes an approach, dispatches a mining drone, and finally pulls ore into his ship’s hold.

Space Nerds in Space is a free (as in beer and freedom) and open collaborative spaceship bridge simulator in which you get several friends in the same room, set up a server that projects the main view port onto a large screen everyone can see at the same time.

You then pop a live DVDs/USBs with the SNiS program into your friends’ computers and have them connect to the server. Each player gets assigned to a station (weapons, communications, engines, etc.) and they must all work together as a team under the captain’s command to keep the ship alive and in business.

The game allows for multiple teams to compete against one another, and can also accomodate a game master that can inject non-player parties into the universe.

With mining, Stephen has added yet another level of depth to the enthralling SNiS, moving it one step closer to becoming a full-fledged multiplayer space strategy simulation game.

For more information on SNiS read our article about the game and our interview with it’s creators, Stephen Cameron and Jeremy Van Grinsven.

Cover Image: The mining drone approaches an asteroid… Not really: that’s Rosetta’s Philae touching down on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.