I have been working on this construction drone for an hour now, trying to work a laser cutter to run of its power supply, these things have enough power to run some power tools and move about but not nearly enough to run any kind of laser, so I needed to add a higher powered battery.
But adding that battery increased the drones weight, slowing it down, and since this thing needed to move around on the outside of a moving aircraft without being blown away or left behind, being even slower than before was not ideal, which meant I needed to reduce the weight or increase the thrust.
I was doing both, this would be a specialty drone made to do one task, it didn't need to be cheap like the vast majority of my drones, so I could take more liberties with the designs, so a more powerful propeller and a lighter but equal durable frame, those alone already increased this things build cost by 20 percent, and the redesign to make the hull more aerodynamic added onto the build time, but I wouldn't need more than 2 of these per aircraft, and lonely a small group of them per each ground force.
Though now that I thought about it a little more, the ground drones didn't need the hull redesign or lighter frames, they didn’t need to keep up with any absurd speeds, so I guess there would be 2 new drone designs.
After another 30 minutes to ensure the first prototype drone could fly around and that all its tools were functional I started walking towards the aircraft bay. We could clear the gunk out pretty easily once the planes were landed, just apply sufficient heat or use water or lasers to cut it off. So all the gummed up planes either landed at the main base or were dragged to the nearest outposts for repair.
Coming out of a hatch in the floor I entered the airfields maintenance bay and walked towards the plane I had set aside for the drones test, The drone immediately set to cutting away the gunk, and I immediately noted a problem I should have thought of before, if the plane was moving the gunk removed by the lasers would fly back and could get stuck in either the repairing drones propeller or in one of the interceptors.
The drone also didn’t need to move around nearly as much as I thought it would, those laser cutters had range, so I could probably get away with a magnetic clamp to hold the drone to the ship and increase its battery life, still the majority of gunk was removed within a minute, falling to the floor under the drone, so the first test could be considered a success.
Beginning my trek back to the workshop I started thinking of ways to fix the problem, keeping the repair drone free of gunk was simple, just a change in programming to have the drone in front of the propeller when it started cutting, so that it couldn't get gunk on it. And with a bit more thought the same would work for the interceptors, just have them not be behind the ship when the repairs started.
With that sorted I just needed to install the magnetic clamp and finalize the blueprints.
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With the only real task I had planned for the day done ahead of schedule I had some free time, which meant inspecting Labyrinthines artwork or Byzantines gardens, I thought about going to the courier drones but last time they had all tackled me and it was all around unpleasant, I don't care how often Bulwark and Balistraia say they fixed it, we needed to repair several machines I had crushed after I had been pushed to the ground, not to mention how many broke from the missile I shot on reflex.
Byzantine had been using med-bay equipment to modify some of the plants, and has reported great progress in enhancing certain plants traits, making leaves larger or seeds more nutritious, there wasn't much luck getting the modifications to carry over to the next generation but it wasn't like we needed to mass produce food, and apparently Labyrinthine had gotten Byzantine to make several plants for aesthetic purposes, there were actually plants with flowers on Nauvis now, well colored leaves shaped like flowers, Nauvis had no pollinators so must plants were kinda leafy mushrooms.
Which does explain why I couldn't find any seeds or berries, without anything to eat them plants wouldn’t grow berries or large seeds. The closest thing Nauvis had to fruits were large floating seeds that would be carried off on the wind, and by the time those came into season I already had food basically sorted, and they were poisonous anyway, I checked.
The camera feeds showed a lot of the garden but I couldn't exactly touch or smell anything through a camera, yet.
And if Byzantine was making progress in the gardens then Labyrinthine was making strides in the new walls, having a bunch of new canvas to work on seemed to light a fire under Labyrinthine, and they had taken to using the less useful metals I had stored away to decorate everything, gemstones were everywhere, it was honestly becoming a problem, there was a small portion of assemblers that were just dedicated to turning rough gems into shapes and designs for Labyrinthines art.
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Somewhere in storage there was a 10 foot statue of me made with interlocking gemstones, gold and platinum, it was impressive how all the pieces fit seamlessly together, you don't need large gems if you just turn smaller gems into puzzle pieces that fit seamlessly, it genuinely looked like one solid piece, but I may have had it melted down, I can't quite remember.
Still I can't say that I disapprove of it, the factory would look drab and boring without their work, and I wouldn’t have installed any lights, I still haven't actually, Labyrinthine did, the minds got twitchy when I was to high up, apparently the fall from the wall left a lasting impact.
Both choices were good for different reasons, though admittedly I could see the artwork fine through the cameras and it wasn't like I would be able to feel the art through my suit, and removing it within an unfiltered area was a bad idea even if my lungs could handle it, you don't install safety features to be less safe.
I guess that kinda made my choice for me, And I could always look at the artwork when I checked on the installation of the air scrubbers.
The path to actually get to the hydroponics bay was a twisting one, it was one of the few parts of the base entirely underground, and you could only really get there through some cramped passages, but the joint modifications made me very bendy, my shoulders could pop out of my sockets to narrow themselves, making all but the smallest sections easy to crawl through, and while the pipes lining the walls dragged against my armor I couldn't feel it and I had to take extra care not to break anything with my suit.
Still it was only took around 10 minutes to crawl into the bay, or at least the airlock into the bay, the minds were particular about decontaminating anything that entered into any “clean” rooms, which was any sealed and filtered room, which they were programed to be so that's fair.
It doesn't take long to decontaminate power armor though, and after a few minutes I was free to enter the bay, the minds had set a bench up in the time it had taken me to crawl through the tunnels but I wasn't really in the mood to sit down, so I disengaged the air filters on my suit so the scents could come through and started walking around the bay.
It wasn't anything fancy, just a series of metal racks lined with plants of various types but the scent of fresh leaves filled my helmet and I started towards the experimental section, it was where the really interesting things were.
There were attempts to recreate lettuce and potatoes on display, or really any leafy vegetable or any form of legume, trying to get non flowering plants to produce fruit was an exercise in futility, the only good news was that nothing on this planet ate the plants so there were plenty of nutrients in the leaves and roots and any poison was just conflicting evolutions, Without concurrent evolution you wouldn't have the right gut bacteria to digest food, or you did but it would turn into something toxic.
Though there was a plant that had lead filled leaves… so some are just actually poisonous, still most of them weren't and the food processor was designed for this so it turned everything somewhat organic into something edible. If disgusting, but gross food is a small price to pay for living and there was work being done to rectify this anyway, so soon my complaints would be answered.
Still Byzantine was making excellent progress and I was happy with how the hydroponics bay was going, the only thing I hadn't seen was the was the fish farm that was used for meat and to fertilize the bay, but it smelled awful in there and looking at fish filled me with dread, so I wasn't going to go there.
I had spent around 20 minutes in the bay before I decided my break had been long enough and I started my trek out, and it wasn't long before I had started towards the newer sections of the factory.
Everything in the factory look brand new, so the only way to tell how old something was, was to see how detailed the artwork was, the oldest assembler had etching so detailed I couldn't see the smallest fractals or shapes while newer ones only had the beginnings of art work, stuff that had been added before it was even installed, the style and content of the drawing also changed the farther out you got, but that wasn't an age thing, a replaced machine in the center factory would have the same lacking detail as a replaced outer machine, just different styles.
It wasn't like I needed the visual que though, a simple glance would give me the statistics of how long a machine had been running and how much it had made, it was just interesting to note as I walked.
When I got to the air scrubbers I saw a few construction bots doing final checks or adding etchings of leaves to the machines, Labyrinthine had decided to decorate the scrubbers with tree themed etchings, and I saw a few of the scrubbers were using gems as fruit, with emeralds for pears and apples as rubies, spinal as oranges, and a fair few fruits I didn't recognize on site.
At this point I’m vaguely scared to build a new suit of armor, as it would be way too gaudy, and I have seen designs Labyrinthine has to add gems to my current suit, they would be used as laser focuses but it still feels like too much.
The machines were already running, and I could see the clouds of smog getting pulled into the machines before clean air was pumped out, but how effective they would be has yet to be seen, it should be cutting around seventy percent of my pollution when the full array was installed. And with a reduction like that the remaining trees might even make a comeback, which would help the situation farther.
Actually that was an idea, modified trees that can withstand the pollution, if we couldn't solve the lack of carry over it would be impractical, but if we did then that would be worthwhile, even if just as an organic wall for the larger bugs, a message to the minds got that idea running and I started my trek back into the inner factory.
It was time to work on more drone variants, or adapting the vehicles, I’d see where my mood took me