Log #70
The mind’s have decided we need to get some baselines for my body if we are going to keep track of any changes to my body, at least changes that I haven't caused myself. So Labyrinthine made a bunch of exercise equipment to test my strength, endurance, reflexes and other mainly physical things. After we get a baseline for that it'll be on to testing my internal storage and crafting abilities and the specific limitations it has, and then some mental tests, mainly on controlling large groups of drones, active control too, not just relying on orders and subroutines.
This is something that probably should have been done before modifications, to see if changing my body messed with my abilities. But I was understandably a bit busy.
The first test was a running speed one, both without the suit as the suit's speed is nearly entirely based on its own mechanical bits. I got up too and held a running speed of 22 mph without any significant strain. Couldn’t actually go faster, most of my design choices were geared towards endurance and reducing muscle strain, not necessarily increasing efficiency. That sounds like a lot until you realize that courier drones can run 45 mph as long as they are fueled and can run 90 mph in short bursts by draining tiny batteries that are solely there to provide a speed boost when needed. And my suit beats out the courier drones at 100 mph, but still loses to every tank variant.
22 mph isn't even enough to outrun the bugs, the slowest variant I have seen still on the field was a living static defense and it could still sprout legs and run at 30 mph. I might actually be the slowest living creature on this planet. Which makes sense when you think about how every other creature probably needs to be able to run away from a fight. (are the bug hives plants or animals?).
The only interesting thing about my speed is that my modifications should have only brought me up to about 20 mph, which means the modifications I didn’t add have increased my speed by 2 mph somehow. I’d guess by further strengthening the synthetic muscle, but to do that it’d need to strengthen my joints. At least I’m hoping it did, that's the thing with modifying your body to get strength rather than building it normally. The normal way doesn't miss a spot. If I lifted every day till I could bench 1000 pounds my entire body could handle it, But if I just give myself muscles capable of that I am liable to snap every bone I have and ruin half my ligaments.
Naturally that's what we tested next, I already had enhanced flexibility. Because I follow my own advice and upgrade the entire system and not just parts. But these new modifications might have messed something up there.
You know how hard it is to design something to test my flexibility for new changes when I’m already more flexible than any human. The only way for my body to become more flexible would be for the bones themselves to become bendy, and that's just against the main point of having bones in the first place. This test isn't to see if I’m more flexible, though it could find that anyway. It's to see if there are any changes to my current flexibility that could cause injury or error if it isn’t repaired.
The tests took around an hour to fully complete, but the results were within the expected range for my body's current flexibility modifications. But more detailed scans of my body during the actual testing should give a better idea of the possible changes. And those will be ready sometime tomorrow. I could get less detailed information now but I’m not in a particular rush to figure anything like that out.
All in all I spent around 3 hours just doing physical exercise today. Normally I still do hours of physical labor, but that's inside of a powered exoskeleton. My proper body doesn’t actually have to do much these days, if it wasn't for the muscle stimulants I take I’d probably have begun losing muscle mass.
Three hours was all I was willing to spend on that though, I have other projects that need my attention and spending all day running or countering myself into odd positions is not what I would call stimulating, even if I could send most of my attention to other things my body is still the thing I feel the most sensations from. Meaning my focus can never fully leave the thing when it's moving.
Not working on something in person lowers my productivity by a full 23 percent. That adds days onto some projects and in this situation days are my most valued resources. Speaking of, I should probably figure out my life span at some point.
Strength, absorption, and sensor tests are scheduled for tomorrow. And those last two are the most interesting ones.
In broader factory news, the underground war with the bitters is going horribly, the tunneling tanks are being destroyed faster than I can make them and the stockpile of combat drones is being drained, partially because we need to outfit the border towers and partially because they keep getting destroyed in the tunnels.
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Turns out the bugs learned from me and started setting traps in the tunnels, collapsing them on the tunnel tanks and drones while also filling the tunnels with a web like substance to catch and then ment through the drones, and with the webs being static defenses there aren’t many bugs near them to hunt down.
We make 30 tunnel tanks a day, and we send them out in fairly large groups to try and find a larger concentration of bugs, so that we can actually bring the fight to them rather than just blundering into traps, but so far there hasn’t been any real luck.
The solution to this problem is more effective underground units, the tanks are actually fine, getting destroyed alot but fine, it's just they have nothing supporting them and can’t really avoid close range combat, to help with that issue they need supporting drones or more tanks as backup.
So current issue, drones are ineffective at underground combat. Why is this issue occurring? bugs have developed a webbing that is difficult for lower quality sensors to spot, and when the drones hit the web they are trapped while it melts through their shell.
Possible solutions -
Upgrade drone sensors- destroyer drones and interceptors have the best sensors, and can spot the webbing when they are within 5 feet of it. I could outfit weaker drones with those sensors so that they can also spot and avoid the webbing.
Pros - prevents the drones from getting stuck in webbing as often and lets them avoid it. Improved sensors should increase accuracy and scouting ability of all the drones upgraded.
Cons- cost is a large factor, the higher quality sensors take more complex parts that might be better used on other projects. Processing power, the drones will need more processing power to actually read the increased information. Actual power, the sensors and processing power increase power requirements, lessening how long the drones can go without recharging or necessitating an upgraded battery. Re making the current drone production centers to produce the newer drones, and upgrading existing drones.
Also it doesn’t really add any new combat capabilities to help add variety to our attacking forces.
Lots of cons, few pros. But it could be done and it would mitigate the problem.
Design a new drone variant - spidertrons do fine in the caves, tiny spidertron drone with good sensors and a laser to cut the webbing along with a host of other weapons for wider combat would help greatly in cave fighting, with the climbing ability similar to the bugs' own. Lessening one of the bugs' greater advantages in underground combat, maneuverability.
Pros - the spidertron base model has already proven effective in underground combat, would be capable of clearing the path for other drones, would add greater variety to the units available for underground combat, and it can be used in other scenarios or battlefields.
Cons - cost, building one of these would be comparable to a courier drone or a destroyer drone based on what kinds of weapons and armor I would want to use on it. It would require a brand new production line to be built to manufacture the parts needed. I would need to design a blueprint for the drone. The minds might decide to make the drone behave like an actual spider like they made the courier drones behave like an actual cat. I do not need metal spiders building webs in my factory because the minds thought I needed socialization.
There are still alot of cons for this one, but there are more pros to back it up, and most of the cons overlap anyway. Mini spider army is looking like the more viable solution to the bug infestation, who could have guessed.
The perimeters production is going at an acceptable rate, slowing because of attacks and the drone deficit but its still going. Started building fake hills and cliffs to funnel the bugs on the surface into the towers range. They can climb but bugs still prefer to take the flat route, especially the bigger ones.
The spillway moat hybrid has actually had its first segment finished, and it worked like a charm. A group of bugs entered the spillway and began climbing up the walls. Got slowed down by some wires and stone outcroppings and then a flood of water and monsters swept them away.
Then you just slowly drain the water and the death monsters leave before they can get stranded on land. And hope none of them spontaneously grow lungs and a taste for metal.
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What do you mean we lost a class B colonization ship! You don’t just lose those! I mean you’d need high grade weaponry to even damage the thing, and they can’t just disappear!
No I don’t care that it was gestating a class b industrial form, I care that we lost a ship that can build hundreds of class b industrial forms! And every single other class b colonization form for that matter!
We only have 36, had actually! Now we have 35! We can’t just make more either, do you understand how the forms work? No one does! Lost knowledge and those ships are irreplaceable.
The war is already going terrible and you walk in telling me we have lost a fair percentage of our future wartime production capabilities? And expect me to be calm!
They’ll have my head for this! All of our heads, you think we aren’t replaceable?
No! Find the damn ship, I don’t care if it takes 20 years. If we can find the wreckage maybe we can repair it enough to make class C life forms and just get fired rather than executed.
You think I’m overreacting? A class b ship can single handedly supply an entire war fleet and accompanying armies. In fact it can build those fleets and armies! Even a class C can at least help build a fleet!
There are only 4 class A gestation ships, and 35 class B, we were tasked with monitoring one of the rarest and most valuable things Humanity has and we lost it! Right in the middle of a war!
A class A colonization form can turn a world into a factory in weeks, a class B can do it in months, and while a class C is basically just a normal human they still come with Knowledge on how to maintain the equipment we get from Class A’s and B’s!
So find that damn ship and hope its communications were just knocked out, and Pray none of our enemies got their hands on it! Or the class b form it was growing.
If we have an unregulated class B on the loose, death would be the least of our worries.