Log #66

The aerial battle has died down a bit and we won but most of the planes are at least lightly damaged or inoperable, so it's a bit of a race to get them all prepared and ready before the bugs replenish their numbers.

Right now it takes twice as long to build a plane than repair it, and that's the average, sometimes it's longer. Between reclaiming downed planes and shipping them back to where they can be repaired the time adds up. Though that's for major repairs that prevent the plane from flying.

As a stop gap I am turning the battle train into a mobile anti air platform, as well as a few tank frames being grafted with anti air turrets, which you know if I refine that design a bit would probably make a good addition to Balistraias forces.

More variety in my units can only be a good thing.

With the tanks and train acting in support the current stock of planes should more than manage the next wave of flying bugs.

That then leaves me dealing with the source of the issue, and I have apparently decided trains can solve literally every problem I currently have, and I have oddly enough not yet been proven wrong.

So yeah I made a mobile repair bay that moves around VIA the train tracks, it's large enough that it takes up two lanes but that's less of a problem then it could be considering it only really needs to go up and down the main train lines and those are 6 wide at the thinnest.

The train has some larger construction bots that can better fly out and pick up downed planes, enough storage for all the spare parts it might need and the tools and layout to rapidly disassemble and fix any broken planes.

Or it will, it's currently in construction. I had already been toying with the idea of a repair tank with similar features but it just wasn’t practical for its size, so mounting the working bits on a train didn’t take much designing.

That should be operational in a day or so, even if it will be a bit ramshackle.

The bug attacks on the construction site have continued but that's to be expected, static defenses like trenches, or really canyons, filled with spikes have been dug around everything to at least slow the attacks, and when I say everything I mean it is going to be a trench around the entire perimeter, I even have plans to hook it up to a damn so I can flood it once a bug horde starts crossing it.

All the dirt from it is being packed up onto a hill just inside the circle the trenches are making, so that the bugs have to climb up it, without any turrets or active defenses this is still mainly a delaying tactic but it does give Balistraia an ideal spot to engage hordes with her army.

But right now the thing is only about a mile long and 40 feet deep, and it will be less of a priority as the defensive perimeter gets bigger. Mainly because building things that actually kill or stop the bugs will take more priority, also things that don't involve water.

Stolen story; please report.

The current rate of the perimeter is 5 towers a day and half a construction outpost a day, which means that it'll take 270 days to build all the towers and 248 days to build all the outposts, but that's under ideal circumstances adding in robot availability for the construction effort, subtracting how many towers are broken or need repairs, and the occasionally lack of resources to build the towers it'll take roughly a year, and that's just the foundation for the further development of the perimeter, which would finish 2 years after the basic perimeter is done.

Though that estimate is still without taking into consideration my expanding production and resource base, as I can’t exactly predict what I’ll discover or need to do in the future, which could and hopefully will, improve that time frame.

The towers might need a bit more explanation though, the average outpost should have 50 construction bots, a variable number of logistics or courier bots, and as many combat bots as we are able to send based on its worth. But reality isn't always that kind so outposts can have 25 construction bots instead of 50 if a relatively urgent project shows up, and only 1 in a true emergency (while most everything can be done VIA the network, sometimes you just need to pull a lever).

The towers on the other hand have 10 construction bots max, 5 logistics bots and 5 courier bots, and 100 combat bots. At 1346 towers that's 161,520 robots manning the perimeter, and that's just the towers, not the outposts which will have significantly more logistics and combative bots. At 25 construction bots minimum, 50 courier bots, and 25 logistics bots, with a garrison of 300+ combat bots, which adds up to 49,600 bots at the perimeter outposts (minimum). Giving the perimeter an ideal total of 211,120 bots.

That is a lot of robots to build, and while I’m not going into the exact details on what combat bots are being sent, it isn't the cheap defender drone.

Actually why not? Let's list what combat bots the average tower will have, 20 distracter drones, 20 destroyer drones, 50 interceptor drones, and 10 upgraded destroyer drones, the ones with shields.

I might even throw in some defender drones as chaff if I am expecting a larger attack on that front.

So even discounting building the actual towers, supplying them with enough drones to actually do their job of making a wide patrolling net will not be cheap, the total number of my constructed drones now isn’t even at 200,000 yet, when this is done I will have more than doubled my drone count.

The towers themselves aren’t just weak stone buildings either, they are armed with shield generators and enough turrets to fend off small to medium probing attacks without even factoring in the bots.

To get all of the supplies to actually build all this I started the rapidly expanding factories that build factories, and I’m expanding my main base, but there is still a lot of stuff to build.

Speaking of, the basement's first few levels have been finished and they are producing, you guessed it, drones and turrets. The defenses haven’t been tested yet, so no word on if they are even effective, though with that command bug still out and about I doubt it will be long before a larger coordinated assault begins.

The command bug has even started leaving traps for Balistraia, popping up in a bug hive and letting itself be seen before fleeing when she attacks the hive, and the hives always have more bugs than normal. I had to give Balistraia an order to stop doing that, as apparently “destroy the command bug as soon as possible” meant taking the chance she would catch the command bug before it could flee.

An important reminder that as intelligent as the minds are they will still attempt to carry out my orders even if they aren’t optimal, I do find it odd that the she didn’t change it though, considering she also has a directive to carry out orders in the way she thinks best, unless directly told otherwise by me. And the “as soon as possible” should have been vague enough for her to figure it out on her own.