The Engineer-droid held the metal bug in his hands, restraining the urge to cackle madly. The thing was barely three inches long and shimmered a metallic blue, two sharp sickle like appendages on the front of its body, six fairly stubby legs behind that, and a large (to its size) gem-like growth on its head.
This small unassuming thing was the answer to a number of problems the factory was facing, but its original purpose had been to solve the issue of the metallic growth not being capable of making complex machinery.
If he couldn't get it to grow machines like fruit he just needed to make something that could make machines from the substance. Which still really needed a name, perhaps The Bailey? It'd fit the naming theme. Regardless, the issue with making smaller drones had always been a power concern, they just couldn't run the necessary systems to actually be useful.
But the Bailey was a conduit and capable of keeping the drones charged while they worked. And what work they did, in a fit of brilliance he'd figured out how to make the drones function as an assembler when they worked together. Two of the drones could use the Bailey to make another one of themselves, and enough of them could functionally build anything. So long as most of it was crafted from the Bailey. They would also be capable of maintaining all of the machines they built, obviously.
There were limitations, for one they couldn't build 'factory' tech, all of it would be fairly mundane machinery without any of the inherent bonuses normally imparted. They also needed to be in contact with the Bailey restricting where they could be used. And the power they drew meant the area around them would be under an active current, which was only a problem for people who shouldn't be out on the Bailey regardless.
It wasn't harmless either, being made from the same material as the Bailey it was harder than diamond and each one would have razor sharp talons, largely used to carve through said crystals but more than capable of carving through chitin and flesh just the same. And at their small size they were practically impervious to physical harm, you'd just press it into the ground like a nail trying to smash it. And the gem could channel an admittedly weak laser, used for melting and welding metals as needed, but a few thousand of the beams lined up? Not as good as a specialized weapon but more than capable of putting the hurt on something and giving the …Murmurs? A much needed ranged option.
Not that they were impossible to kill, not in the least. Excessive heat and potent acids would kill them by the score, and while they were as frighteningly fast as all insect like things are they weren't particularly agile above ground, nor were they flight capable.
Still they would serve as a potent active defense and symbiote to the Bailey, which as of now could only really enclose subterranean intruders to suffocate them or try and electrocute and crush them. Now however the murmurs would enter the closed off pocket or just outright intercept the intruders and carve them to shreds, or melt them. And given how capable of tunneling through the Bailey they were they'd have a significant home field advantage.
And if he had his way they'd also serve as the basis for an entire ecosystem based on the Bailey, making subterranean thermal generators, hydroelectric dams and extensive solar arrays to increase the spread of the Bailey, while fending off outside threats and expanding the factory as they went. Larger machine creatures, more specialized for defense or other roles would feed on the Murmurs as a sort of replenishable battery, letting them range out further the more Murmurs they'd eaten in their lives. Not quite efficient, but fascinating regardless. Perhaps the larger creatures could serve as Bailey seeds, and when they died serve as the start of a new Bailey ecosystem with the previously eaten Murmurs using the larger creatures 'corpse' to set up initial power generation, likely simply burning combustibles or solar arrays if no combustibles were available.
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Most people focused on the larger inventions, the super weapons or new vehicles, which was fair. They were visible and relatively important, and they were partially made to draw attention regardless. But they weren't really the most important inventions, better armor wasn't flashy, more powerful batteries wouldn't draw many eyes, a conveyor belt with reduced power consumption didn't seem like much. But they made an overall larger impact than the bigger, flashier, inventions.
Which was the main reason the engineer-droid didn't complain, much, when he'd been told to make a more efficient battery. The drones' newer systems drained the batteries faster, and handheld laser weapons needed more power to actually harm bugs. Not even mentioning that more power meant the lasers could be fired for longer at said higher powers.
That and the factory didn't have very much in the way of purely mechanical tools, equipment, or weapons. Batteries served an important role in most of the factory's functions.
But the work wasn't glamorous, nor was it very rewarding mentally. Technically speaking Android Earth's batteries were on par with or better than the factory's armor batteries, just based on magical principles. That meant that even making a better factory battery wouldn't mean he'd made the best battery, given that if he decided to incorporate magic, or even concepts, it'd magnify the base product's capacity.
Just at the cost of rapidly increasing cost and production time, magic items were slow to make and didn't mesh well with fabrication, and conceptual fluids were resource and logistically intensive. No, it needed to be cheap, effective, and easy to produce.
Which was a decidedly annoying combination of things to balance. It also ideally needed to be durable and non-vital so as to not add any notable weaknesses to equipment. Couldn't have it overheat, or break if it charged too long, or have too short of a service life.
The various requirements meant he couldn't use plasma, yet. Though his attempts had resulted in some fascinating ideas for Plasma grenades. Honestly the progress he had made had been significant, but it was so boring he had to find other projects just to not go insane.
Which is why he was currently holding a completed plasma vambrace, well a vambrace that projected a torso sized sheet of plasma. Which had many uses, and had actually been fun to use and make. He'd even ended up using his battery designs to power the thing, so it wasn't absurdly expensive and could be rolled out in mass. Though given it was basically a sword without a hilt there'd probably need to be some mandatory training for it…. And that meant he needed to make training simulations….. Balistraia could probably just copy one of his weapon tests and use that.
It served as an adequate light source, a very potent weapon in both close quarters and short ranged combat. Though it only served in the latter role if you discharged the plasma and there were decent odds your arm would melt if you did that, but well, wear your damn armor and you'll be fine. It's main role however was a defensive one, mostly against liquid projectiles and melee weapons admittedly, but if you were fast enough you could burn off most of a solid projectile if it wasn't overly large or fast.
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Really it was a tool with a very high skill requirement before it became anything other than a safety hazard, given the static/dumb plasma shield that couldn't move itself or turn itself off before you touched it. But well if an android did lose a limb training they could just get a new one, even if it'd hurt in the meantime.
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One issue the factory had been having for most of its life was the fragile nature of its materials compared to the enemies it fought. Attempts had been made to rectify this, but each attempt had flaws, mostly relating to cost and weight. You could make a suit of power armor with two thousand pounds of armor and be as durable as a bug half that size, at least before taking shields into consideration but even that only gave you a slight edge without prohibitive energy and production costs.
The Bailey had been yet another attempt, but well it was still absurdly heavy, and it wasn't that much more durable than what armor platings they already had. It was just cheaper to make, which was a massive boon and plates of it were already being added to ships and vehicles instead of more mundane armors. Add in the ability for it to heal itself with enough electricity and it was only more useful.
But it wasn't really applicable to light and medium armor, which admittedly wasn't much of a concern for the factory. Only drones really used light armor, though some androids wore light armor outside of combat. But if a light enough material was made it would drastically increase drone speed, and perhaps allow the things to actually withstand a single hit without turning into a cloud of metallic dust.
Not likely, but one can dream.
Almost all armor derivatives were carbon based, it was both a common material and a material that liked forming rigid and durable bonds, with other less relative but still useful properties. And this plate was no different.
It had taken an hour for the assembly machine to make the prototype armor, barely the size of a dinner plate and only half a centimeter thick. Relatively flexible and a dark brown color that failed to shine in the harsh lighting.
A drone would never withstand a proper hit from a bug, tanks struggled to do that if anything but the smallest most common bugs hit them, but that wasn't really what killed most drones and even androids. It was the wider attacks, acid sprays and bursts of flames, self destructing bugs or bursts of laser fire and light. The bugs did not lack in unique methods of death dealing, and taking the time to list every ranged attack would last days even with enhanced cognition, so the engine-droid moved on.
The armor didn't need to withstand blunt force, it'd be fine if it just bent and allowed the internals of a drone to be crushed, as long as the armor remained intact rebuilding the drone from its scrap would be easy.
It did however need to withstand flame, acid, and allow numerous exotic and harmful attacks to just wash over it without melting outright, and without sticking to the armor and draining the shields, if the drone had shields.
That had actually been disturbingly easy once he'd accepted that making it resist physical damage was pointless, sure it left a significant weakness to solid projectiles but well no armor was perfect, yet.
And since he had time he'd used its thermally insulating properties to allow it to draw power from excessive heat, shifting that to include absorbing electric attacks and adding in an inefficient ability to convert light into power was just the icing on the cake. Though too much electricity too fast had a chance to short out the power drawing system.
Then he came to the rather important conclusion that the androids would hate this type of armor, given they fought each other with swords and this would be about as good as wearing cotton padding against a blade. Which meant he needed to design a lightweight armor plate that held up to physical trauma from both blunt and piercing force.
Maybe he could just throw that on under the thermal armor? It went against the philosophy to have the hardest armor on the outside to increase shield effectiveness but well…. Shields weren't helping much anymore.
That and increasing production speed, likely just with more machines. Byzantine could figure out if the production process needed to be reworked and tell him.
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There was only so much energy you could throw into a crystal before it shattered or melted, which was a pretty significant problem. Though one that had been getting mitigated with shield technology to prevent the crystals from overheating and shattering, and on large vehicles or weapon platforms that solution worked perfectly. But handheld weaponry, and drones, didn't have the shields to spare, or often shields in the first place.
That and it wasn't efficient on the largest laser weapons, taking an inordinate amount of energy to shield the things and drastically limiting firing time.
So solutions needed to be made, crystals or mediums better suited for focusing lasers. Which was boring, and really that was the main reason the original hadn't bothered to do anything there aside from letting the labs sort out more efficient conceptual patterns. But now that we had spare bodies there was no reason to not, and I'd drawn the short straw.
Really why couldn't I have been in the group working on interdimensional travel? Sure two of them had been sucked into what was probably an alternate reality, and likely not in one piece at that. But it was better than this, I was literally just watching crystals grow in tubes and then pointing light into them.
This could have been automated, sure it'd have taken longer to get good results without an intelligence, but still! At least watching how concepts changed with the state of the crystals formation was some good information, but it was on the timescale of days for any appreciable results. I wasn't made for these time scales!
I only ever needed to do a few hours of work a day, and if Balistraia knew that I was off duty she'd hunt me down for 'mental recuperation' which was somehow worse than watching salt crystals form. That was supposed to be the organic's problem! He actually had hormonal systems that'd react to her body to produce a calming effect. My brain was metal! It didn't get half the same benefits and those could be gotten just as easily via a mental simulation of the contact. Which was knowledge I'd take to my grave, if Balistraia learned that she'd hijack our sleep cycles to implement it, rather than letting us form a nightly think tank.
Really I was going to sign up for interdimensional testing the first opportunity I got. Maybe find a nice reality full of eldritch horrors and get back into familiar territory. Being this domestic was almost painful.
New crystal to serve as laser focus, harder to overheat and therefore capable of firing a stronger laser.