Everyone, please gather for a round of applause for Elan, our amazing coder!! He has just introduced a system that solves a request players have been making almost since launch: "Let us mine space rock together!"

Fleet Mining officially introduces a multi-ship cooperative mining activity. When piloting an unarmed "mothership" equipped with ore-crusher / gas-compressor modules, you can now open a mining operation. Small "harvester" ships can then join your operation, gather and contribute raw materials to you, and get immediate XP and marks rewards for the work.

Fleet Mining Commands (all under the SHIP verb)
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SHIP MINING OPEN <xp%> <price> - open an operation on an unarmed mothership that has a crusher or compressor; sets the harvester XP share and per-unit marks price.
SHIP MINING JOIN / LEAVE / CLOSE - manage membership in an active fleet mining session; CLOSE is blocked while the mothership still holds delivered, unprocessed material.
SHIP MINING STATUS - show operation terms, per-ship contributions, and the location of each ship in the operation.
SHIP DELIVER - hand tethered asteroids and primary-scoop gas to an adjacent mothership if you're in their session.

Fleet Mining Rewards
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- Harvesters are paid marks per delivered unit of raw materials instantly at delivery, deducted from the mothership owner's account.
- When the mothership processes the raw material, the Captaincy-XP / CrushedRaws / Daily Credit rewards are split between the delivering harvester and the owner per the operation's configurable percentage.
- The reward pool is fixed by the material, never inflated by grouping.

Solo mining is unchanged by this update: the owner receives the full reward exactly as before.

Note: For now, any ship can be a "mothership" as long as you remove any weapons, including tractor beams, before opening a session. When we finish part 2 of this update, we'll also release a formal ship that will be exclusively used as the mothership for the system.

We hope everyone will enthusiastically take part in trying out and testing this system! If you notice any BUGs you're at it, please report them asap- Elan will be monitoring reports.

Go get them rocks, spacers!
- Your Admin Team <3