The Omega Mining Corporation has requested deliveries of raw materials for a new Orbis starport, to be built In the heart of the galaxy.The construction of the starport constitutes part of the ambitious Distant Worlds II expedition.
Project leader Erimus Kamzel told the media: “The Distant Worlds fleet is privileged to be at the forefront of this ambitious industrial and scientific initiative – humanity’s first starport in the Galactic Centre region.”
Independent miners are invited to deliver shipments of Indite, Gallite, Praseodymium and Cobalt to Omega Mining Operation in the Omega Sector VE-Q b5-15 system.
One of the “Big Deal” things about Elite: Dangerous is the way that the devs do tend to be pretty supportive of the player base.[1] In this case, although the expedition itself was a purely player driven initiative, they agreed to have a pair of community events, which would culminate in the building of a brand new starport right in the centre of the galaxy. 
Having arrived at Omega Mining station, the first stage of this was to take place. We were sent to mine vast quantities of ore. This presented a minor problem, as all our ships were outfitted for exploration, but luckily the foreman at Omega Mining had ordered in plenty of mining modules so the fleet could refit and set off with collector limpets (the little blue things flying around the ships) and mining lasers to collect the required materials.
It was during this time that I learned how to do core mining. There is little more satisfying a thing than to see carefully laid charges detonate and explode an asteroid into smithereens. Especially as the more valuable minerals often lie inside such rocks. I’m not entirely sure it was, in fact, worth the trouble as finding the right kind of asteroid is a real pain in the arse and once you’ve found it, it’s quite easy to mess up the placing of the charges, either not enough or too much explosive and you end up with a pretty poor result. Still, those explosions are pretty.
Of course FDev entirely underestimated the amount the fleet would mine and had to extend the scope of the event in double quick short order to prevent the entire thing being completed in just a couple of hours. In the end, this event became pretty much the largest one in Elite history with so many dedicated Commanders funnelling goods into the mining station.
During this week, we also went on a little side trip to observe some of the life forms in the area. I could overuse the word strange in this paragraph, so shall limit myself to the one use here – strange anemones on planets and in the Lagrange Clouds clusters of microbes forming into huge (and I mean bigger than my ship) geometric shapes. Of them all, perhaps the most bizarre was this free flying jellyfish creature. It was hard to get a decent picture of it as it moved so fast across the screen, but pleasing as it’s really the only life form I’ve seen which moves apparently under its own power, rather than being planted stationary onto the surface of a planet or just floating in space.
I hope you’ll enjoy this gallery of highlights from the week.
