"With Liberty's primary ore resources exhausted following her initial expansion the nation became a consumption and manufacturing state, providing only boron from the flats of Pittsburgh as a material export.
However, a survey of the Pennsylvania system following its absorption revealed dense pockets of platinum ore within the orbit of the remote gas giant Tremont. While it remains a matter of scholarly speculation as to how such a heavy element found its way into stable orbit around the world, DSE wasted little time in re-establishing a space mining fleet to lay claim to and exploit the resources.
Platinum is current in high demand by both Ageira for the manufacture of technology and by Bretonia for use in their war efforts, usually purchased in shipping stations in New London for later dispersal."
What?
I will keep this simple and straight-forward until it merits becoming complicated and bent.
If you would like to participate in mining Platinum in Pennsylvania and keeping your profits high while you do so, sign up here. Mining is a group exercise, you need to work with others in order to keep it truly profitable. This continuous event will work in that capacity, allowing miners to get together with other miners and transports to make some credits.
However, we are taking it a step further. With the arrival of a DSE Barge on the scene, we will focus the mining operation and largely eliminate the miner/transport ratio balancing. Miners will fill up the barge, transports will empty the barge, in no particularly necessary order. Everyone gets paid.
You will not have to join DSE to participate, even though it might make your life easier if you plan on spending time mining Platinum. You may come in whatever ships you like with whatever affiliation you like -- within reason, naturally.
We welcome pirates and terrorists too.
However, make sure you are aware that as this will be a continuous event run by the official DSE faction, we will moderate all participation to keep it enjoyable to as many people as we possibly can. If you completely choke operations with a pirating group, you would not be welcome and will be asked -- or forced, if necessary -- to leave. If, on the other hand, you pirate reasonably, milking the operation perhaps by pirating leaving transports or isolated miners, we will not have a problem. For terrorists, be a little more creative than physically terrorizing participants to death. If that's not possible for you, you will likely not be welcome either.
If you would like a shot at destroying the Barge, I would like to request that you contact me so we can arrange a special event for it. The game harshly limits in-universe realistic possibilities, and I feel that the best way to ensure that results are reasonable and satisfactory to all parties is to plan it as players before letting our character loose. It's not an excuse to give DSE a chance to mount an indomitable defence, it's to give both you and us an opportunity to make the encounter as fun as possible. If all you are after is a blue message, a screenshot or five, and a thread in Flood, we will use the rights and powers bestowed upon us to make it clear that such sentiment is absolutely unwanted.
The financial details are yet to be hammered out, they will be developed as this event progresses. We will test circumstances and costs and times and ships and so on. There is a basic idea and we will use it for the time being. Remember that the goal is to have everyone profit, so whatever the system works out as you will make money. If you don't, please complain in a calm voice and we'll rethink.
Tips, Suggestions, Guides, and Advice!
Let me start out with the most obvious piece of help -- obvious enough that I forgot to include it when I first wrote this -- and most likely exactly what you're after! Here is the Hegemon-endorsed Mining Ship set-up:
DU57-Y "Hegemon" Class Mining Ship
Deep Space Engineering ID
Deep Space Engineering IFF/affiliation
2 M4-TT Transport Mining Turrets in the first two turret slots
Rest optional, ice-cream obligatory
Set up your first weapon group with all guns activated, your second weapon group with your combat turrets activated, and your third weapon group with your mining turrets activated.
When you mine: activate your mining turrets, go into cockpit view, and engage mouse movement. Peel your eyes as you turn your stationary mining ship around, blasting whatever rocks you see.
Mineral targeting systems can be calibrating by adjusting Performance settings in your Options menu. Experiment with that yourself as you wish.
If you have suggestions for more suggestions, let me know!
Give your ship's name, type, ID, and IFF to sign up. Optionally, include your Skype username.
Stay tuned for individually planned events, they will be announced here.
P.S. The only requirement is that you prefer Synth Paste, and no, we don't can mine fish.
MoonbladeMining'nMurder
Xeno guard mining ship.
Expect attacks on transports/miners or otherwise stealing your platnium. Or maybe just throwing rocks at you.
Moonblade.Demolishion
Same as above, but in bomber form.
Georgia.Deepwood
Independent miner with zoner IFF and Spatial
She is an anarchist and may or may not help.
Cryer|Patient#1313
Cryer Armored Transport.
Might show up and just observe and comment
The event is going well, despite frequent server crashes. We have accumulated over 30,000 units of Platinum with the help of dozens of various miners -- drop-ins, so to speak.
Those who have participated will be paid as soon as we've made sense of the math.
The event will just keep going.
(From the Kudos thread:)
Eyvind Wrote:Kudos to all the people hanging around Tremont these days:
The mining is good and soon enough everyone who has deposited their ore will be paid in full (still need to figure out the rates), kudos to all of you for participating.
It is fun to have people come for the role-play and nothing else. Especially the Xeno today, who challenged the Church man to a boxing match (which they resolved with dice). That was some innovative fun, great fun for the spectators, too. Kudos to that Xeno and Junker.
It is nice to have someone fly around and document what happens. Kudos to Eye.of.the.Stars for that. I hope we'll get to see some of the visuals you have collected.
Finally, none of this would be possible without the grunts of DSE. Kudos to:
ed_philips on his DSE)Silverheels and our shared miner the DSE)Foraker, doing prospecting and testing
Sprolf on his new DSE)Nibelung and a little bit on his cruiser, the DSE)Blackburn
F.Zamboni on his new Mafic miner the DSE)Beartooth
Hades Durin on his new Shire (courtesy of Bowex), the DSE)Sanford
It's barely been a few days and participation in this new initiative is intimidating. We have more people professing interest and planning on attending later one, and a few more DSE miners coming online. Unfortunaely, the Barge is almost full, so we'll need to start thinking about long-range logistics now...
Even though most of you may not read this, kudos to all of those independents, newbies, and various rabble that have attended. Some of you were very determined in your mining, sticking around longer than anyone else. I'm glad you asked me questions about things you were unsure about or simply didn't know, it's much better than not asking in my opinion. I hope I gave you answers that made sense.
Many of you will likely be positively shocked at the amounts of credits that will be transfered to your ships soon. I hope it won't be too much for those of you just starting out, and hopefully not too little for those of you who are more experienced.
We're doing what we can to keep it fair and balanced and worth your while.
Payments to those who have participated -- and decided to make use of the Barge, not everyone did -- so far have been sent out.
Congratulations to IMG|Derrick.Broll[M], Georgia.Deepwood, Jeff.Gray, and James_Aquitas to be the first recognized champions of the Tremont Mining Fleet. They each demonstrated a varying mix of determination, persistence, proficiency, and other positive traits; they have each been paid an equal sum far above what they would have earned otherwise.
You can all now afford proper, DSE-manufactured hardware that will greatly improve your profits.
The rankings of most units mined by DSE captains:
DSE)Silverheels
DSE)Nibelung
DSE)Beartooth
DSE)Sanford
The rankings of most units mined by DSE partners:
IMG|Derrick.Broll[M]
Jeff.Gray
Georgia.Deepwood
James_Aquitas
This marks the beginning of the Tremont Mining Fleet proper!
Keep signing-up if you want to participate!
Carter Mineral Resources might be interested in working with you on this one (maybe I can finally start using these damn miners). Just gotta get the ships ready.
I'll try to drop in as either CMR|Silver.Dawn (Mining Ship) or CMR|Gerrard.Carter (Basalt). Miner ID, Freelancer IFF.