Log #9

Year one Day 16

I finished the warship at a good time given that humanities just gotten themselves into a space war. I have to give the humans some credit though, the war isn’t really their fault. Aliens be dicks apparently, that or the reports and videos were doctored so well an AI can’t tell. I’m more inclined to believe the former option, not that the latter something the androids would believe.

They are … odd about aliens attacking humans, which makes sense. And given I have a warship now, along with a dozen mining ships. I can actually send a group of androids to go, well I’d say ‘fight’ but given humans are doing okay against the aliens its more ‘slaughter’ some of the aliens.

The warship only has room for twenty androids, but the fighting is decidedly small scale currently, and it's not all out war. Just some skirmishes, if you're not dropping nukes on population centers the conflict aint that serious yet. Honestly sending one of my warships would be a bit unsubtle, even if Balistraia made a ‘weapons development firm’ that ‘produced experimental warships’ just in case. That won’t hold up to scrutiny though, not well. People will ask ‘well if this company has a warship that's so great why haven’t we contacted them before? Or hell even heard about it?’ then find out that all the ‘people’ working there don’t even exist.

But well, the ruse only needs to hold up for a few days, and with bureaucratic slowness, ‘file corruption’ and a few other coincidences we will have that time. And then the ship will just vanish into the void, the company will be dissolved, and no one will know who the ship belonged to or where it went. It does mean I need to change the shape of the next warships, and probably make a company making shitty ships for cheap to sell, and then ‘develop’ better models.

I can blame my ships working so well on ‘ground breaking new slime science’ with the new ship building thing too, the slime tech and material market is booming right now and one new company won’t be a real blip on the radar. Though if the war drags on the government and military might start forcing civilian ship building places to make warships, and that’ll be annoying.

Not overly worried about that, or the war in the first place. As Balistraia has already hacked her way into the “Turian hierarchy’s” systems, at least the public ones. And even if this evolves beyond a skirmish, which is doubtful given the alliance the Turian’s are in being unlikely to allow this war to go on, the Turians only have combat ships roughly comparable to what they’ve already used. And well, the ships kinda suck.

If I need to take them out I can, just make a few hundred thousand self propelled bomber ships and a few FTL capable transports to drop them off throughout Turian space. A war like this would stretch on for a few years, and I’d only need a month or two to make the necessary chaff to cripple their empire. Just make it very unsafe or costly to travel through space, and you’ve won.

That or I can go for the nuclear option and send stealth ships to teleport a constant stream of biters onto Turian worlds.

But really this whole situation is upsetting to me. Not because it’s leading to needless fighting, and it is needless, but because of the sheer arrogance its showing.

The Turians are only attacking because humanity ‘broke the law’ which is absurd for literally all the reasons. A. a foreign government has no right to dictate laws to the humans, B. the humans couldn’t have and didn’t know the laws, and C. The law in particular is stupid. Can’t open the relays you say?

Anyway I don’t like the aliens that much, I mean I don’t like the humans either but really, these guys need to be taken down a few dozen pegs. Which means I might have been slightly biased in my decision to send my own combat focused space ship to go fuck with the lizard people. It might only have room for twenty androids, but those are twenty YoRHa androids. That's more of a threat than a high yield nuclear bomb, even discounting the fact that I’ve sent 2B and 9S to serve as my eyes on the ground. That and to keep a firm leash on the other YoRHa androids.

Also I’m opening every relay now, entirely out of spite. Fucken tells me what I can’t do, even indirectly.

I have a few minor things working on for that war as well, mostly using the minds to plant info in places to speed up the resolution of the war, and to keep causalities low. That and stealing more info from everywhere, I know that there are three 'council races’ and a fair few others. But that's fairly little, as the Turians only really had info on themselves on the servers I got into.

The minds have a few dozen companies shipping out factory products by now, nothing impossible by the current tech levels even if my products use that same tech far better. I’m basically just making improved things they already have, and my customer base is growing. Nothing I make can be called shoddy in any way, and if I made a steel beam it’d be better than an identical one from a different place. And we are now employing some human accountants and lawyers to work for us, just to have something in the office buildings we own.

The moon base is done, and will be making ships at its full rate, which at 1 ship a week per bay, and with ten bays, roughly one and a half ships a day. Though bigger ships will naturally take liner but that doesn’t matter yet as the war and mining ships are roughly equal in build time if not resource cost. Nauvis is progressing apace though we have hit the ‘hive fields’ and entered the fight proper. The last traces of biters on Earth and the Far Far Range have been wiped out. Earth has gotten its third batch of sentinels and what little crime there was has dropped even further. Slime tech continues to be developed.

Actually that is one thing of note that happened there, Balistraia made an engineering game that lets people design their own ships, vehicles, and weapons. They then fight them against other designs, both my own and other creators. Mine are still trouncing, but the gap is closing and if any of the designs are viable they can order them built. Or if the designs are really good we can steal them for mass production. One already is, a skyscraper sized laser turret, …. I never thought about building one, or about the size limitations of my laser before. It can core through miles of stone and metal, and I want eighty pointed at the sky.

That was the one good thing so far though, and the amount of multi-story tanks and mechs getting made makes me somewhat unhopeful for many more. But well, my robo-minions can waste time developing inefficient or stupid things that I simply couldn’t. If I’d wasted a day designing and testing that sky-scraper turret I’d lose real ground against the bugs, I need to design things I need or things I know will work. Even if I really want to design a giant mech.

Not much done with slime tech itself though, I mean alot was done but nothing as dramatic as the quantum tech. A few dozen ways to cook plorts, a few dozen more to use them as explosives, a couple to reinforce various metals or armors, and around five new ways to generate electricity.

Right now I’m imagining the next big breakthrough will be turning plorts into conceptual fluids. Just imagine what a fluid with the sole purpose of ‘reinforcing metal’ will do with our production processes, or one that ‘explodes’ or ‘hides’. It's going to get crazy.

Log #10

Year one Day 17

So we only actually have four proper space ships. The moon bays not having been operating at full capacity until recently. So we have three mining ships, currently feeding said bays and building a network of satellites around the sol system, and one warship.

Said warship is a good ship admittedly, but not something that can survive against a whole fleet. Its fast and durable though, and my weapons pack far more of a punch than anything else I’ve seen. Given these Turians don’t even have laser weapons or proper rail guns. Just using mass effect to pretend at it. Which means hit and run tactics where we just take out enemy ships engines or propulsion systems are the ideal. Stay long enough to fire one volley from outside their range and then run away.

This has the added benefit of keeping my interference from escalating the war, as my four ships aren’t going to be enough to fight off the behemoth that is the Turain Navy. honestly one ship a day is pathetically slow, only viable given just how little space I actually need to patrol.

At my current rate of escalation it’ll take … awhile before I match that one species navy, much less the entire alliance. Sure I only need a tenth their number to fight on an equal footing, but those are human ships. The Turians it’s nearly six to one, and they aren’t even the technologically focused species. The ‘Salariens’ might even be able to match my ships, though I don’t really know yet.

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That means until a year has passed, and I have forty thousand ships. I need to keep a low profile and use what ships I do have (one) well.

But well that’s academic at this point, the ship has already been sent out. Twenty YoRHa androids and five pirate cosplayers in tow, sabers included. And at this point I’m just waiting to see if my simulations are accurate, and to see if the androids do something stupid and break my new ship.

On my current to-do list is expanding the moon base to thirty bays to triple production, netting me a while 4.5 ships a day. With an ideal ratio of one mining ship to five warships, with a surplus of mining ships so that surplus can actually do something aside from maintaining the warships. That and building either a dedicated ‘tending’ class ship or a much larger dock yard. Maybe in the sol asteroid belt? I do have the automated bases turning it into a mass of metal. Not urgent for a while though, as I still have room for 96 other ships in my current dockyards.

My territory has nearly quadrupled since I started my new offensive, and my ground troop production has scaled accordingly, slightly exceeding the biters own expanded troop production. Though the biters have grown stronger faster than I have, so that roughly evens out. Also find it odd that I’m considering tanks and drones ‘troops’ now, but it isn’t exactly wrong. No true intelligence but given how everythings improved in quality, and the increased amount of destroyer drones and spidertrons, which play at being sentient, my average ground unit is fairly smart.

Which has been integral to Balistraia actually being able to handle the increased scale of battle. She no longer needs to aim every weapon, just the big ones. When she does there is a marked increase in performance sure but there are millions of tanks, and I don’t even want to know how many drones, and my brain just gave me the number, fighting right now. Balistraias instances are still limited to command class vehicles and the extra processing power in their ancillary units. Meaning there are only so many units one command tank can directly control without losing control of its allotted portion of lesser units.

One might ask why I don’t make more command tanks, I am, the bugs just like breaking them more than any other vehicle and well they are now strong enough to manage that rather than just flailing ineffectually. A command tank is a juggernaut, but no longer unbeatable in a normal battle. Add in increased repair times, as it’s still hard to total one, and the fact my other vehicles are far quicker to make and you get this issue.

So I’m making a super command tank series. Or a super heavy command tank? SH command tank? One of these will be the ‘general’ of a battle front, while normal command tanks will stick to directly controlling a smaller amount of higher quality units. Big command tank controls the whole battle, little command tanks manage strike teams. Which says alot about how large these battles are going to get. Millions of tanks in a single conflict by the end is a lower estimate. The command tanks just weren’t made with that in mind, at best they can be expected to manage one thousand really well and fifty thousand poorly. Adding more command tanks only mitigates that problem without an ‘alpha’ Balistraia instance and this is basically just giving that instance a body with enough processing power to fulfill the role she’s already trying to manage.

I’ve already mentioned doing something like this before, but I have the designs finished and a working prototype made. Now it’s entering mass production, and the new slime materials I used mean it’s something to be feared. Even without shields it can take more of a beating than a command tank, and with them it’ll fill that niche of ‘unstoppable bastard’ the command tank used too.

I imagine that’ll rapidly improve once I get slime essence down and can work that into it as well. Not adding mass effect to it though, while I could make the thing lighter using that, I don’t really want to. I like the rapid thundering booms as its legs move. Like rolling thunder. Is it the optimal way to do this? No, do I care? Also no. I want my tiny walking mountain to sound like a tiny walking mountain.

The things big enough to shoot shells into orbit, and I love it. Definitely didn’t finish this design as I got jealous looking at all the giant mechs the androids were designing, this is a practical thing that we need to wage war good.

Its main cannon just shoots car sized nukes! Those are the second biggest nukes in mass production! Nukes shot out of a railgun like it's an assault rifle!

I like slime tech, making storing all that ammunition viable and giving me easier access to high quality radioactive material. My mini mountain’s can level larger mountains in seconds. Best things. And given the bugs have already completely adapted to radiation these are basically just explosive shells! No need to conserve ammo as the bugs have already become as adapted to things going boom as it’s feasible without breaking physics more than either of us know how.

I mean exploding shells that aren’t nukes just don’t work on bugs anymore, but that just means faster armor piercing ones that then explode inside the bugs are what we do instead. Even if internal explosions are also less effective.

Also the bugs have developed their own command class flying bugs. Which, kinda ineffective given you have no cover that high up and they are a priority target, but they just kinda bring enough other bugs that they effectively have a wall between themselves and anything else. It’s like a swarm of house size locusts, with one multi story mansion locust sitting in the middle. Which is worrying on its own, and that these bugs can and have gotten out of orbit. Vacuum conditions are not exactly worse than anything else I throw at them. I mean the bugs haven’t gotten high enough up to reach my satellites, or even my Nauvis bound shuttles. But the fact they can just fly that high and only start falling because they are dive bombing something else? Well at least my warships are going to be getting some practice, once I have a few more.

Have I mentioned that I hate bugs?

Anyway I’ve already touched on the earth front, but with most of the seed factories done they are spreading their roots (building the larger underground factories over the exposed surface seed factories) and while none aside from my original earth factory have hit the mantle yet it’s only a matter of days before they do, then things are going to get absurd. Meaning I’ll actually have the millions of tanks I’ll need.

Honestly I should probably assign levels to my factories, or stages. Because while there are alot more factories on earth they aren’t as deep, large, or productive as the Nauvis factories. The main earth factory has roughly the size and production of the average Nauvis factory. All of my Nauvis factories are miles deep and at least half a mile wide, (expecting ones younger than a week and a half). I’d say my main base is level six, the factories around it are level four, and all the others on Nauvis are level three. The main earth one is level three but pushing four and all the others are just pushing level two. The Far Far range one isn’t on the scale, given it mostly holds slimes, but size wise it’s level two.

I’ll need all of the earth ones to be ‘three’ and all the Nauvis ones to be ‘four’ by the end of this month if I want to keep pace with the bugs. Each level is twice the size of the previous.

Mining outposts don’t count, as they are temporary and sized based on how large the resource patch is. Nor does the moon base but if I had to assign it one it’d be level four, and level five once I triple it’s production. Ships are large and the scale is biased.

I’d meant to look into the human’s government, but honestly it's so generic I didn’t care to mention it before it became relevant. The ‘systems alliance’ is ruled by a parliament, does not condone slavery or overly unjust working conditions, and seems to care at least somewhat about it’s populations wellbeing. So I haven’t and still don’t see a need to interfere with that. And given they are making a fairly good account of themselves in the fighting I can safely stick to my less drastic methods.

Honestly looking to take a back seat on this one, rather than doing what I did with the androids. Both because humans are somewhat less likely to give in just because I’m me and because I’m already sick of what little governing I did with the androids. No, I am just going to ignore them and do what I want. Much easier.