Engineer’s Log Day 185

I want to complain about today as I started work on the walls and I have to say, this stuff is obnoxious. In order to reinforce the walls properly, I need rebar, a mold, some rocks, and of course the concrete itself. Fortunately for me, concrete isn’t the hardest thing in the world to get my hands on. We have a lot left over from when we constructed our base initially and should we run out, I’m fairly confident I can bully the xythans until they give me some. This is the easy part unfortunately and from here the annoyingness of each task only increases.

I’ll need to crunch down the rocks into gravel-sized pieces because otherwise, the structural integrity of the wall is going to be at risk due to the inconsistencies. It's a relatively simple task but simple doesn’t mean easy and I have a lot of it to do. The xythans are more than willing to work with me with the basic stuff so that should help prevent this from taking me terribly long but that’s not all. The rebar is obnoxious to print and move and I generally found it laborious due to its unerring ability to get tangled in itself whenever I try to put it into neat piles. Toss in the burnt smell each of them have and you have a recipe for a fantastic time and by fantastic time I mean I’d prefer to get into a fight with an electric fence. The absolutely worst part about this is definitely going to be setting up the molds for the walls. I need to dig down into the stoney earth so I can plant the supports, break aforementioned rocks for the molds, pour it all in, and then remove the cast so I can do it all again. This is going to be a lot of work.

In theory, I could pass the task off to the xythans I really don’t want to. Let me explain. I have pretty extensive training for this and have precise knowledge of what exactly each of the walls requirements. On the other, the xythan base, while built in a defendable location, doesn’t really have all that much in the way of stationary defenses. They have a stone wall that looks like it could handle the wildlife at best and no automated defenses to speak of. I don’t know if the lack of defenses is a cultural thing or if they really just felt like the security wasn’t needed when colonizing the planet. Additionally, a few months ago, I was literally able to drive a remote control car into the center of their town. They got it in the end but if I had any actual hostile intent, I could have caused some real problems. In comparison, I was able to hold a base on my own for over 3 months with just the defenses I set up in a week’s span. My base was breached because I have a bleeding heart. While the xythan miliary’s offensive abilities are nothing to scoff at and their guerilla tactics far outstrip my own, this is literally my specialty, I build shields. I’m almost certainly overstating my abilities here but not by much as this is one of the few things I feel confident on.

Furthermore, Sarlunt asked me to head this project so I want to make sure this place is a tough ass nut to crack. I want the foundations to be nigh unshakable and the only way I can make sure of that is to do this myself. Any good defense needs to be sitting on a firm foundation or else you’re just asking for all sorts of trouble.

Bleh, I got way to serious. I do have some good news though. Darana is finally healed up enough to be walking around the base. She still has a bit of a limp but that should hopefully heal by itself pretty quickly. The one downside is that I’ll have to get used to her returning mobility as I got used to being able to make snide remarks and dashing out of range before she could retaliate. Now, with her increasing mobility, I’ll have to move faster and further to avoid her vengeance. Sooner or later, she’ll catch me and I very much doubt she’ll have forgotten and forgiven the last week. I don’t feel any remorse though! I remember how the woman tormented me when she first arrived here so as far as I’m concerned this is simply a spot of revenge. Turnabout is fair play afterall!

Engineer’s Log Day 187

I got got by Darana today but she caught me off guard ok? Stupid, lanky xythan arms being able to grab you from entirely too far away. I got a squeeze hug and a lick on the back of my head for my pestering. Gwoof, I can still feel my ribs creaking as they shift back into place. Still, it’s a sign of good health in my personal and very professional opinion.

On the work side of things, I spent today printing and moving the rebar. Decided to use the one on the new site to speed transport time up and to double-check that the backup printer is working properly. Figured something simple like rebar would make a decent test. Not today but at some point, I need to make a little storage shed and bring over some of the materials. Lugging them back and forth is going to wear on me.

On a bit more of an interesting note, I was actually joined by a handful of rough-looking xythans today on the worksite today. They were there to help me with some of the rock breaking in addition to getting started on building construction. I suppose now that I have the generator going and the walls planned they can actually start bringing over their tools and getting started. Not that I’m complaining, I’m thrilled to have a few extra hands around to help me actually get things done. These guys even have a fun name for themselves that translates something close to “The Reforgers” which is a killer name by the way!

Engineer’s Log Day 188

Wrapped up my work on the rebar today so unfortunately, I’ll have to move on to getting the walls ready. The terrain itself around here is somewhat flat which is both a blessing and a curse. On the bright side, it means the main section of the base will require very little work to get everything flattened out so the proper foundations can be laid. On the other hand, it means that digging down will take extra work from me to actually get everything set up.

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Ugh…

Well, take things one step at a time. Tomorrow I’ll chalk out all the locations I need to break and then the day after I’ll get started. I believe I should have some tools to do this from back when we were setting up the base originally so I should be able to avoid the indignity of having to snag some the Reforger’s tools. I didn’t actually take part in any of the earth-breaking way back when but it can’t be that hard right?

Oh, one last little fun thing from today. The team to get the water pump set up showed up in the early afternoon and surprise surprise, Pottem was with them. I can honestly say that this has entirely blindsided me. Apparently, when his group started rounding folks up to go and work on this project, he volunteered. Can’t say I’m mad since I get to see one of my buddies at during work. Speaking of my buddies, I don’t actually know much about them other than the small talk we engaged in when playing our games. Like, I didn’t even know what Pottem did for his job before today. I’ll make sure to remedy that next time I see them.

Engineer’s Log Day 190

Today took me a bit longer than I would have liked to get started because as it turns out, machines that are supposed to break rock will only do their job properly when you are very particular about properly using them. Ended up spending entirely more time than I would have liked just trying to get it all started since I had to dig into the database for some tutorials. In the end, I only got a small portion of what I would have liked done today.

Once I did get started though, the work was fairly monotonous and gave me a good amount of time to think and think I did. At this point, I don’t really think the xythans or I have all that much more time left. The message was sent to us a little over 4 months back. If the pirates manage to trace the colony ship’s trail back to us, they could be here in anywhere from a few weeks of time to maybe three months more if we’re lucky. Since, I’m making a much bigger base here, I’m going to need a significantly higher generator count and for a heavy emplacement like this one, the shields will need to be smart in how they are activated otherwise they’ll eat through my power reserves. Setting that up will probably take me the better part of two weeks. Between the walls and this, I’ll be hard-pressed to have and extra defenses like I did back at my original base if timing isn’t particularly kind. Can’t say I’m super comfortable with the idea of being under armed when they come a-knockin’ but them’s the breaks.

Hopefully, the xythans have some bite to my bark.

Engineer’s Log Day 192.1

Wrapped up the last of the earth breaking today and got all the molds set up and ready. Tomorrow, I’ll add the rebar and from there I can get started with actually pouring the concrete. Well, I’m saying I but I rather mean we. The Reshapers helped me put up the molds and have offered to help me pour everything in tomorrow also. That should push the schedules a few days forward in our favor.

A bit of a dangerous thought occurred to me today during work. What if the xythan’s satellites get blown out of the sky? I’ve been making do without one thus far but if we have to deal with hostile invaders and they do the normal hostile invader thing and shoot our eyes, well be blind and quite frankly I’d rather know where they are. I’ve started looking into some scanner designs I’ve got and I have to say I’m not super thrilled. No super fancy tech to trivialize the problem means I’m going to have to figure it out myself. Worst case scenario, I can start putting down cameras around the areas we want to keep an eye on but that’s not particularly efficient among a host of other problems.

Engineer’s Log Day 192.2

I’ve remembered the issue is everyone’s issue and have brought my concerns to Sarlunt. Fortunately for me, he’s actually put some thought into the idea also. Turns out, his transport ships have fairly potent scanners and can give him a pretty good idea of the surrounding terrain. They were designed for mining and being able to identify materials but he seemed pretty confident they could be repurposed. He currently plans to plant a few in various discrete locations and use them to keep track should things come to that. Not a bad plan all things considered but it could be problematic if invaders realize and start trying to track down the vehicles. If they turn the scanner off, they should be able to evade any counter scanners although that will put a few holes in the map.

Engineer’s Log Day 193

Ok, I stumbled onto an idea a little earlier today while watching Bayfur play and reminiscing on my earlier days with the xythans. I was thinking about how I had used the car to harass them then it hit me. What if I do something similar where I slap a few a remote camera on some toys, call ‘em drones, and use it as scouts to check out problematic areas. Not particularly discrete perhaps but In lieu of some sort of any proper military tech, I figure this is probably about as good as we’ll be getting. I should be able to make a few basic designs pretty quickly and, if Darana is willing to help me with this, start making a few variants for testing in the next few days. I even already have a few designs from a while back so my starting point isn’t even that bad.

I don’t think this will be anywhere nearly as effective as Sarlunt’s scanner idea but as I see it they’ll help us in a two-fold manner. Firstly, they’ll be super simple to deploy. They don’t need to be hidden ahead of time and have a minuscule resource requirement so we can just crank them out by the dozen and call it day. With enough, we can use them just about anywhere and if they’re numerous enough it doesn’t really matter if they get blown to pieces. Secondly, their less than discrete nature will actually help us hide the scanners. If the invaders think those are our main methods of spying on them, they may not think to check for anything more powerful.

It also gives me the excuse to make a whole armada of planes but that’s besides the point.