Log…. you know what, starting again from one. Log 1V2
Haven’t written one of these for a bit, well I technically did when my brain was mush but that doesn’t count. I’m as healed as I’m going to be getting, both physically and mentally, meaning I’m free to get back to work, even if I have been forbidden from combat, and I have decided on my first project actually using the tier four's potential, add in a dash of my new understanding of how my tech works and all the thing's I thought wouldn't work suddenly become viable.
What is something a super advanced city full of androids and machines need? More than anything what resource is it starved for? The obvious answer might be resources to build with, or perhaps space, or you could even say it lacked for nothing given its advanced nature. Androids and machine's don't have very many basic needs regardless, so those thoughts aren't hard to come to.
But you’d be wrong, it needs power, raw electricity. The sheer amount of defense, conveniences, production facilities, and even simply powering the machines themselves. Sure they have ‘infinite’ energy cores. But that had a massive throughput problem, it’s part of the reason they are so stupid (which is a rude but accurate description). They spread a comparatively tiny amount of power over both movement and computation, don’t even get me started on the one’s that use energy weapons. It's about as energy efficient as you can get, but it cost's in effectiveness.
For an army of chaff it was perfect, they were smart enough to work and had strength to be a nuisance if ignored. With larger machines to add actual force to them it was a potent force. Bog em down and then crush them. But the machines weren’t an army anymore, I wanted them to be more, so I was going to make a thing.
Also need power for the portal, and other big things. At this point making four hundred nuclear reactors would be a stop gap. And I have had more than enough of making weapons of war. Rapidly advancing tech mean's rapidly advancing material and energy needs, and that mean's new methods need to be developed and implemented to actually get the needed energy.
Dumbing it down I will be making a pseudo singularity based in a few conceptual planes. A power source that would grow with time, faster the faster you draw on it, sure it had a theoretical maximum energy output but that was a mechanical issue not a theoretical one, there was only so much power the machine I was building could extract before the power transfer systems just overloaded.
It would be a safe, reliable, and most importantly, small, source of power. Currently a full fourth of the city was power generation, mostly underground or in my factory but still. And the best part was this was just a proof of concept, the androids had given me ideas. The command tank was good, but it wasn’t a champion. I needed something insurmountable, as it stood I was lacking an equivalent to something like 2B or a superbug, or even just a machine champion.
One of the droids would take out a command tank with only moderate injuries, and that was with a full complement of drones and tanks. Skill, maneuverability, power, and durability, all qualities I would need to craft into my works.
Even if I didn’t see the tactical benefit I just wanted to see if I could. Not being pressed for survival meant I was finally free to build things just because I wanted to. Even Labyrinthine could do more than make statues out of useless metal and gems or sticking with chip engravings, actually making advanced and expensive tech and not sacrificing time and materials that should have been spent keeping me alive.
Oh yeah I also finished talking to the android the mind’s sent in, A2, basically an equivalent to 2B. Dressed basically in rag’s under her disguise, now she’s in a new set of clothes, not YoRHa issue, and has assigned herself as my permanent guard. Joining the rest of the androids who took up that job, though while they just patrol the ‘habitable’ part of my factory she’s actively sit’s in whatever room I’m in, just staring. An odd one that, but aside from her dislike of machines she’s not really an issue. the added combat experience mean's she might even be a match for 2B now that I've cleaned up her internals and reworked her with some improved components and design principles.
As for the minds, I’m having Labyrinthine and Byzantine construct a global infrastructure network, data transport, power lines, trains, roads, even a way to walk the world on foot with waystations full of supplies and power hubs for courier drones. It’ll be a longer term project but having a way to transport anything anywhere will be integral for my uplifting. My city, which needs a name, might be the largest one by far but I won’t have it be the only one. Ideally a major city on every continent and minor one’s scattered throughout.
Also airports, lots and lots of airports. Ground troops are slow, as is ground transportation, fine for bulk resources but for moving androids or combat materials or robots? Air fleets are the way to go.
Bulwark is doing the same thing but with the defense efforts, fort’s scattered throughout our ‘territory’ for rapid troop deployment and to hold the territory in case the droids try something, I doubt they would but I haven’t lived this long by taking chances. Patrolling this much territory with how few troops I have is an impossibility, but having my troops ready to rapidly respond is much more feasible. It just sacrifices a bit of initiative.
Balistraia however will be negotiating with the scattered machine countries, and a few android ones. But her biggest project will be keeping hostilities from reopening with the droid faction, they might not have numbers but their forces are more elite than YoRHa, and at the end of the day without the portal to Nauvis I just don’t have the number’s to bury them or the firepower to beat them straight out. Emplaced defenses to fend em off? Enough to handle ten time’s their number, but that won’t win a war unless they are stupid enough to attack.
Or I could just nuke Australia into oblivion. That is always an option. But well… its the nuclear option. Diplomacy first.
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Log #2
The mind’s have been proceeding fairly well on their task’s and the androids and machines have been as helpful as they could be expected to be. The current plan is to rebuild smaller villages into cities rather than just building empty one’s and letting the populous filter in. The current bottleneck is actually bringing up android and machine leaders with enough diplomatic and administrative skill to actually run a city. Also you know, having people in charge you can actually trust to be in charge.
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As for governance of my city? Well I finally convinced the machines and androids that I wasn’t going to do it, so now there is a council running things, headed by anemone representing the androids, and Pascal representing the machines. The twins are also on it, as are a few leaders of the other various machine groups. They just handle the day to day running and can make formal requests to the minds for various amenities, supplies and building’s. I am NOT making a legal system for them. (Also the religious head of my cult is not on the council, and I will not be endorsing the cult in any official capacity.)
Most of my android bodyguards are still just body guarding, but 2B and 9S have officially gone back to working with the ‘resistance’ and YoRHa. Not seeing much combat these days but machine lifeforms of the more ‘beastial’ nature still roam about the wilderness, plus the regular giant animals. So they are exploring, hunting, and basically running errands as far as I understand it. Odd, but I’m not an android and can’t really judge.
As for what I’ve been doing, that’s mostly been making a second tier four assembler, as I didn’t have one for this side of the portal. I already had the parts for it, in fact with my new matter conversion tech it’s even better than my old one. It’s already finished actually, but once that was done I used it to start fabricating the piece’s I’ll need for the singularities foundation. A three hundred meter chamber below the city, every inch of it covered in the highest tech I got, with how many shields it has, and the Gravity manipulators I finally decided to build, it should theoretically be capable of containing a star, and also making a singularity.
Perpetual energy is officially possible, if you discount the material cost. I’d have to do the math but with how much matter my tech takes to make and how quickly the parts burn out or break… it might just be breaking even. But breaking even on entropy is still a win, as you have to be producing some energy to do that.
Then I’ll need to gather a bunch of hydrogen, build the power distribution systems, and get to work on the actual singularity containment cell, the intuition of a singularity, and the backup containment, which aren't the actual power harvesting bits, or even my main containment strategy. Leaving that to emitters than can and most likely will eventually fail will just be writing this planet off, even if it’s a few thousand years in the future. No, I need something that can contain a singularity until at a minimum the sun consumes the earth.
What I have right now is an expensive bomb, well the means to make an expensive bomb. Not a power source.
The initial plans for my ‘champion’ units have been drafted, each city will have a Sentinel Paragon, sentinel being a new type of humanoid drone. An armor that isn’t hollow and therefore has stronger shields and weapons. And Paragon is a new class of technology.
Essentially I harvest the essence of dozens or hundreds of sentinels and infuse them into the highest quality sentinel I can make. I am cheating a bit as the sentinels are only about three meters tall and the Paragon’s will be twenty, but that should only result in a twelve percent decrease in Paragon potential. The idea of the sentinel is more important than the size. Even the name was chosen to enhance the concept, a watcher. Basically a police force, though they can and will serve as the city's garrison. I could even have them use tanks, though it’d probably be more efficient just to have them use fast bikes or cars, or even just flight. As the weapons on even a basic sentinel will be… potent.
They are policing a population of super powerful machine forms, not exactly a job you can be fragile for. Also I want even the default sentinel to be capable of fighting a droid for a few seconds, and actually hurting them in those seconds. With the new power systems and overall enhancements I can grant them rudimentary flight, though literally only doing that so the Paragon can have far less rudimentary flight, and with shields the Paragon sentinel can just pick up the default sentinels and fly them at high speeds wherever they need to be. The rudimentary flight systems at least serve to lessen how much the Paragon needs to lift.
In a fight I would say a Paragon sentinel is worth five command tanks, though it has worse capabilities at range. A command tank can kill you from a few dozen miles away, the Paragon has roughly a mile before it becomes ineffective, but it’s fast and meant to close the distance, not direct battles from the rear.
Also cost’s about three battalions, command tanks included. Not a cost effective firepower ratio, but it’s not made to win wars, it’s made to win fights. Once the singularity is finished and running I’ll have the tier four assembler begin work on the more finicky bits of the Paragon’s chassis. Basic sentinels are already being made and harvested, never actually turning them on, as this place seems to make machines sentient the longer they run and I am not taking that chance. I also planned an intelligence for them, trying to guide the growth into productive directions, not starting them with sapience but close enough to be difficult to notice. A machine that’s been running longer has more potent essence, but morals. I’ll just need to make more and refine them down.
Which given the current state of negotiations might just be overkill, the droids are… terrified. I mean they might be pretending but you tend to make it obvious when you do that. If I didn’t have spy satellites watching them I’d have no idea. They don’t actually know what I did to the machine mind, and seem to be under the impression I could just do it again but to them. Like how they sabotaged YoRHa, which isn’t actually out of the question, can't even say I wouldn’t if they actually tried to fight. Any conflict would be a waste of resources, but temporarily driving them insane? Definitely effective, at the very least their fear buy’s me time to open the portal.
Oh yeah, and the androids on the other side of the portal are fine, Kinda forgot to mention that. They do want to come back through though, but apparently they all have fairly advanced power armor or tanks. A full armored battalion of both YoRHa and Resistance androids. They haven’t done much though, just a few defenses and patrols, seem to be doing a good enough job at it regardless.