January 17-24 – 3305

Myself and the Distant Worlds fleet made anchorage at the Omega Mining Operation, operated by the Omega Mining Corporation and starring, directed and produced by Omega Mining Operation, a base nestled among an asteroid field 5,500 light years from Sol.

Our one-week mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out newer, bigger asteroids. To boldly go where no man or woman has gone before, and drain every goddamn rock within a 2,000 light year radius dry so we can produce enough materials to put together humanity’s first space station at the center of the galaxy.

Indite, Gallite, Praseodymium and Cobalt were placed on the order list for the Distant Worlds Mining Initiative as the ships began to trickle through the letterbox, with the usual addendum that the event would come to an immediate end should the required amount of materials be met before the end of the week-long Community Goal.

With a re-designed methodology and tool-set after the Beyond: Chapter 4 update, many CMDR’s huddled inside the base were itching to crack open a few cold ones, and the anticipation was palpable on fleet and system communications.

However, several challenges befell our would-be miners before the commencement of this great enterprise.

Firstly, a perusal of the base’s outfitting services revealed that Omega did not stock even the basic tools necessary for mining, lasers and refineries being the glaring omissions. CMDR’s faced the prospect of either journeying back to the bubble to collect them or ship them to the base.

Both options proved to be time consuming, with module transportation set to take up to 15 hours and cost CMDR’s millions of credits.

After a classic “he said, she said” back and forth narrative on the forums about whether or not the fleet was adequately notified about the lack of modules, an 11th hour agreement was eventually reached with the base foreman for the hasty delivery of all relevant mining tools including Abrasion Blasters, Seismic Charges, Displacement Missiles and Prospector Limpets, putting many Distant Worlders at ease. It was like Christmas.

Piracy was rife in the area. NPC hostility was reported in-system and the threat of interdiction hung over the heads of the miners.

Which brought us to the second part of the CG. Set Phasers to kill and hand in the bounty vouchers, a method preferred by the CMDR’s baying for blood, who transported their weapon modules from the bubble in anticipation for a scrap.

Combat Ops were dwarfed by the magnitude of the mining operation however and the fact that the primarily exploratory fleet hadn’t come equipped for a fight.

And so, the small contingent of soldiers flew off to the Nav beacon or any Haz Rez they could find, while the miners set off to mine enough material for a tier nine community goal that was meant to last until the 24th, a full weeks worth of mining.

A day later, organizers added a 9th tier. Then a 10th. Then an 11th. Still, the materials came flooding in and staggeringly, in just 24 hours, the CG was nearly half complete.

It was a bad day to be an asteroid.

I couldn’t help but be impressed by the feverish determination of the thousands of pilots in the area hounding the planetary rings in Omega and surrounds despite the modest returns per tonne on the marked imports. Everyone had drastically underestimated the enthusiasm of the pilots.

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“It will be finished in 24hrs at this rate.”

“Tier 3 in just six hours.”

“Conservative estimate for the current rate would be around 1k tonnes every 2 minutes…. EU prime time. If the US can match that, I’m afraid 48 hours will be more than generous.”

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Deep core or point and shoot, it just didn’t matter to these CMDR’s whose sole purpose over the course of seven days was to bust open a rock, shout eureka to any ships within ear-shot and go cash that check back at Omega Mining. It was a glorious collaborative effort. Fat Rocks and Big Bucks.

Everyone knew the true currency though. A star-port in the core region would make the cross-galaxy commute a lot easier and less dangerous.

The production line eventually slowed, and a production line it was. Ships came and went constantly, hauling hundreds upon hundreds of tonnes of materials through the gates of Omega Mining.

Meanwhile, I sipped a stiff lavian from the safety of the base.

I spent the majority of the event flitting through the asteroid field around the base, peeking at CMDR’s mining the rocks in the area.

Unfamiliar with mining and with my weapons back in the bubble, I offered words of encouragement to the hard-working miners of the Distant Worlds fleet, keeping an eye on the CG counter as it crept closer to completion.

FINAL TALLY: 3,000,000 tonnes – Full completion of the Community Goal.

A new record and a job well done by all who contributed.

After a well deserved pat on the back, the fleet prepared to kick on into the next phase of the expedition.

Continuing through to way-point 3; the Inner Orion Spur and the Conflux Settlements.