Log #1
My ship crashed today, I don't really know what happened. I actually can't remember much of anything, I think the crash rattled my everything and then layered on a bruise for good measure. I woke up outside my ship, laying naked in a crater with a splitting headache and spots in my vision, so a concussion is basically a certainty.
It took me a while to hobble my way out of the crater to check on the ship and the news isn't good, the thing is totaled. There's absolutely no power, meaning no life support, heating, or communications, the thrusters are just gone, and the reactor is leaking toxic gas into the air. It's nothing that'll kill me quick but it does mean I can't sleep in the ship. Or really stay around it for that long.
There is a bit of good news though, the ship has a basic furnace in it, which I can run on anything burnable. And with the ship utterly totaled I have a lot of scrap metal I can turn into tools, nothing advanced without better components and those all burnt but it should be enough to get a shelter up. Even just a metal or wooden lean to to keep the wind off.
You'll note that I was A. outside the ship without a suit, and B. that the ship's life support is off, that's the second bit of good news, the planet I crashed on has a breathable atmosphere, a forest, and hopefully food to eat, considering the ship didn’t have anything.
Log #2
I got the furnace running using a bunch of sticks and worked a few of the smaller pieces of scrap into a few basic tools. I am now the proud owner of an ax, crowbar, and a shovel. Using these most advanced tools I chopped down a few of the smaller trees and dug a hole to sleep in. Thankfully the furnace keeps the area somewhat warm while its running but the thing eats fuel like no tomorrow, I can keep enough fuel in the thing to keep it running all the time, so a nice warm hole in the ground, truly I am a master of engineering.
That “master of engineering” brings me to something I noticed while making my tools and building my hut, they are actually well built, you'd think an ax made with a piece of scrap metal, a tiny furnace, and my bare hands would be shoddy, but it isn't, I mean I wouldn’t call it amazing but I genuinely don't think I could build a better one with more practice, at least not without better tools, and it was so easy and intuitive, it didn’t take me more than an hour to make all my tools and I just kind of flew through the motions as if I'd done it a hundred times before.
My heads still throbbing and my memory is still worryingly blank but It doesn’t feel like these are things I used to be able to do, it's more like the knowledge was downloaded directly into my brain, and once I noticed the knowledge on the tools I could see more, It isn't just tools it's everything I need to build a functional factory. I basically have a step by step guide for how to build each and every machine, and while its concerning that so much of this “downloaded” information is so clear while nothing else is it isn't unaffected by my head trauma either, right now the only parts of it that are clear are some basic mining equipment, a few larger smelters to replace my furnace, and a machine that can apparently put these “blueprints” back together if I feed it resources. Which just raises so many more questions.
So that's a plan of action, get a source of food and water, then get a basic factory running to get more blueprints so I can get to some of the more advanced stuff.
I need to send out a distress beacon and I'll need to get the transmitter into orbit for the signal to be clear, definitely not building all of this because I want power and air conditioning, those are just side benefits. Sadly the rocket and satellite blueprints are some of the most fragmented ones, so I will be here for awhile. I'll have most of everything else done by the time I have enough info to get the rocket blueprint, much less what I will need to actually build the thing, so I need to get power and a base of operations to start mining and running the decoders, shouldn't be too hard with all this info bouncing around my skull.
In a more ominous mood I went out to look for food, didn't even find animal tracks and while I was looking for those I realized that I hadn't seen any bugs either, there are plants everywhere I look though, trees, shrubs, vines, and thorns. I couldn't find any berries but the leaves and bark are something to eat at least, once I get power I can make a machine that will turn the plant matter and dirt into a nutrient sludge, it's not meant to last you long term but until I find some better food it will have to do.
The silence of this forest is starting to get to me though, there has to be something to pollinate here right? Maybe they only come out when the trees flower or something.
Log #3
Found an ore patch and got the mining equipment set up, and I found a stream so I could get some steam power going. I'm using it to run some lights I took from the ship and an assembler making some gears so I can finally stop building them by hand. I was watching the assembler work and it is just weird, it molds the metal like its clay, and I don't know how that works, which is odd because I built the thing and I remember moving the metal to make some of the more fiddle bits, didn't even need tools, it just kind of flowed into place.
I'm also going to see about automating the mining and smelting, moving all of this ore by hand is annoying as hell. Running conveyor belts to move the ore around is making this place hard to walk through though, but if there is a belt going in my direction I can just ride the thing. Is it odd that I find the inserter arms adorable? Probably.
I finally got the food machine working but it tastes awful. It's like you covered a tree leaf with mud and then ate it, and it's not even easy to run the thing, so I have decided that I am going to go look for some more food.
The blueprints in my head are shockingly easy to follow. I just go into a sort of trance and when it ends I am holding the finished product, which is why I don't know how I made bullets without gunpowder. I did end up finding a pistol in the ship, beaten up but it should be enough to hunt with if I get lucky, or find any animals in the first place.
I've decided to file this with the metal shaping thing, I'm calling it the weird shit I don't want to think about folder, long name but I won't be thinking about it so it's good enough.
Log #4
It's been a while and I've gotten most of everything automated, conveyor belts running absolutely everywhere but I've gotten good at walking on them so it's not really a problem, I even got the first decrypting machine up and running, it takes this weird red liquid and glows a lot then after it processes enough of the red liquid I walk up to it and it injects me with a fixed blueprint, gives me a killer headache. Most of this stuff seems to be defensive or working toward making more stuff, so maybe it wasn't a colony ship? Don't know why I would need a man sized sentry gun on a civilian colony, or why I would know how to make an assault rifle by hand for that matter, maybe to guard all the valuable resources I would mine with all this gear? So moving my guess to a mining ship.
Once I had everything set up so that it wouldn't fall apart without me for a day I decided to go out and explore, I walked for about a mile before I hit the edge of the forest, and I still didn't find any animals, no bird, bugs or mammals not even any tracks, this planet might actually just be made of plants.
outside of the forest was a large field of tall grass, it came up to about my chest height and I could see large boulders sticking out of the field. I'm kinda curious as to how they got there. If I'm lucky I could find some geodes or fossils. I can use crystals in a fair bit of the stuff I make, and fossils would mean coal and oil, which I'll need if I want to send anything into orbit.
Log #5
Remember how I said I couldn't find any bugs in the woods, well the bugs found me, I woke up last night to 3 giant beetle things eating my furnaces, I'm talking 3 and half feet long and 2 feet tall, and from the way they ripped apart those furnaces they were strong too, naturally I screamed and shot them, it took 5 bullets to the head for the first one to go down, which is a lot considering I was not using a dinky little pistol, I had a newly made assault rifle, and when the other 2 rushed me I ran and blind fired at them, while screaming. It took 2 clips but they died.
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I spent the rest of the morning rebuilding everything which was annoying, a few of the conveyors were broken which caused a bunch of raw ore to pile up everywhere. I had to turn everything off for a bit to actually clean it all up. The silence was deafening, it just felt wrong for everything to be so quiet after all that.
I have decided that I am done exploring until I have a tank and more means to defend myself, and that I'm not sleeping until I have at least one turret set up and an armored bunker to sleep in, which means that I'm still going to get too sleep tonight as that's only like 5 hours of work to build a tiny bunker and some big guns, maybe 2 turrets? One on top of my bunker and one on the side of the camp the bugs came from? That sounds better, it's always better to have too much rather than too little in my admittedly short book.
Log #6
Finished my bunker, which is probably to grand of a word for a concrete tube that I can't even stand up in but it makes me feel safer to have a foot of concrete and steel between me and the outside world, the turrets were a great idea too, I woke up from the sound of gunfire and found 5 dead bugs just as large as the first 3, I’m building walls and am going to decode some better armor, it didn't feel necessary before but that has definitely changed, those bugs have huge mandibles, especially if the bugs keep coming.
I cut up one of the bugs to see if it was edible but its blood turned my skin red and itchy, so I am going to stick with my plant sludge. I think I hate this planet.
In better news I have expanded production of everything and automated turrets and wall segments, they are kinda like the giant brick version of lego, they just slot into each other, the walls are only like 4 feet tall but if they were much taller than that then the turrets couldn't shoot over them, I might make the wall higher and just put the turrets on stands though, don't know yet.
I've been cutting back the trees so that I have a larger killing field and I have gotten turrets set up all around my base. I don't have it all walled in yet but that should be finished soonish, once that's done I'm planning to set up a conveyor belt to feed all the turrets ammo and to build a mini factory to make said ammo, probably overkill considering there haven't been that many bugs but there is no kill like overkill and I'm not going to die because I was lazy.
If anything is going to kill me it's going to be workplace hazards, not some damned insects.
The decoder has decided that it wants green liquid now and I've made it a friend to decode with, I don't know what's different about the green liquid or why its made of melted down inserter arms and conveyor belts but its going into the I don't want to know folder along with the fact that that I can melt them into a glowy green liquid in the first place.
Log #7
So the bugs have been attacking more often and there are more of them, this is a problem, I'm running out of room to build within my cozy walls, this is another problem. I'm going to have to go out and find another ore patch because this one is just too small to feed all my machines and the decoders are hungry bastards, this is a third problem. The solution to the third is surprisingly simple though, I'm going to make a car, strap a turret to the back of it and find a bigger ore patch.
The other problems will take more work though, I will need to expand the wall to make room which means more turrets, which need more power and more ammo, well less the latter because it's still just that one side being attacked but I am worried that is starting to change, the bugs are just sitting out of the range of the turrets right now and only occasionally will one charge in to get gunned down, so I made grenades (once again without gunpowder or any explosives) and blew them all up. I am going to get to work building a bigger wall before they come back.
The fun life of needing more resources so that I can get more resources and not die to giant bug attacks. Definitely hate this planet
Log #8
I have made a massive concrete square lined with turrets. It's about 500 feet per side and I shall call it The Cube, it makes me feel warm inside. In other maybe good news, the bugs are once again just throwing themselves at my walls, though they are charging at the corners now, and never the same one twice in a row, this is concerning because I kill all of the bugs each time yet the next ones know which corner they attacked last, pheromones? Please be pheromones and not creepy bug hivemind. It's definitely going to be a creepy bug hivemind.
Finished the car and went out, there was an ore patch not 2000 feet out and twice the size of the one at my home base which is kind of embarrassing as I could have built here but more other ore patch is closer to the river anyway, I'm going to build up some supplies so that I can get a perimeter and a conveyor belt running all the way back to my base, it should pay off as long as the biters don't destroy it. And fitting in more conveyor belts and furnaces to actually process this ore is going to be fun.
This ore patch has way more copper than iron which is great as that's what was slowing me down in the first place. Though I am going to have to expand copper smelting and the conveyor that moves the copper plates. I'll just file that under 'good problem to have' and get it done.
I've made a blue assembler. It's blue because it can do liquids and water is definitely blue, it makes things faster but takes way more power so I'm not using many now, they're just making the science liquids. which the original could also make even though they are liquid's? Have I mentioned that I have no idea what's going on or how anything works?
I have also remembered that I can make radars, which can apparently find ore patches, somehow, they can also find where the bugs are coming from, it just looks like a big red square that has smaller red squares come out of it, but I now have a location to avoid like the plague. it's not like I wanted to leave my nice safe walls anyway.
Log #9
The bugs are becoming a bigger problem, each attack is 20 or more bugs and I saw some spitting acid at my wall yesterday. It melted part of the concrete and I had to replace that part of the wall.
I also think they are getting bigger, and they are definitely taking more bullets to put down, so I'm making the wall thicker and adding more turrets, this is a short term solution but I am beginning to think I will actually need to put together the stuff I'll need to make a tank, I'm nowhere near ready for that though, I'll need to find oil first so that I can make explosives for the cannon shells, which is odd considering I don't need it for normal bullets but more boom is always good, I can't wait till I have a minefield and a bazooka, it'll make me feel better to watch big chunks of bug go flying everywhere.
In good news the radars found an oil well relatively nearby. In bad news bug nests are in all directions and they seem to be making more bugs, so I'm expecting the attacks to increase, if one cluster was this bad I don't want to think about how 5 will be, good thing I'm making the walls thicker! I am also going to begin to tunnel into the ground. My bunker is feeling inadequate even if the bugs haven't gotten past my wall yet. Why have 1 foot of concrete when I can have 5 feet and another 6 inches of steel behind that.
In best news! There are fish in the river! I finally have real food! There weren't very many and I just threw a grenade and grabbed them, but real meat! I was going to go insane from the sludge and I was losing a bunch of weight so this should help with that. I'll have to check the river more often for fish to supplement my diet.
log #10
Fuck the bugs and fuck getting oil. my car is gone, melted into a puddle and I would have been too if I didn’t have my armor and a veritable ton of grenades. I had waited until after a bug attack to leave and secure the oil, but somehow the bugs knew that I left and once I was at the oil field they attacked in mass, they went between me and the Factory and hit the car with acid, I had to drive around them to get back and by the time I was halfway back the acid had melted through to the engine, I threw grenades behind me every few feet and ran like hell, and they still managed to hit me with acid and one of the melee ones almost got my leg before I shot it off. When I finally managed to get back to my base my armor was in tatters and I could feel the acid burning at some of my skin. The turret wall managed to gun down the rest of the biters behind me while I ran through the gate and started to strip all the armor off.
I don't know when I last took it off or when I got so pale, but as I watched the small pockmarks the acid dug in my skin just vanished, which is going straight to the file of not thinking about it.
I decided to make a new car with heavier armor and a bigger turret, needed to make the ammo special for it but this isn't happening again, it drives slower now but it's still faster than those damned bugs and it made me feel somewhat safer. I also made heavier armor, my old set was good but the acid got through the gaps in the metal plate and burnt the cloth and skin under it, I've decided to have the assemblers make a fine mesh to cover the cloth between the plates, it adds 15 ish pounds but the acid should take longer to eat through it than the old one. This will have to do until I can make some of the more advanced armors.
I grabbed more turrets and went back out the next day, made a quick defensive line and secured the oil after surviving the attack. There weren't as many this time. The bugs were definitely bigger too, some were 4 and a half feet, I'm running the oil underground now along with a power cable to actually run the damned pumps.
In less interesting news I'm adding onto the main base, I'll need the room to actually use the oil so that means more walls! While I'm at it I am going to make the walls taller, that double height with the turrets resting on platforms, it'll need steel supports to stay sturdy but I don't want a wall the bugs will be taller than, and it will also give my turrets more range.
They need to outrange those spitting bugs more, they keep melting parts of the wall and it's annoying as to fix it, though I've started making a concrete paste to apply rather than just replacing the wall outright, and I can make it different colors! I've started decorating the bunker with colorful concrete when I'm taking a break. I'd decorate the wall but when I did that the bugs aimed for it and melted it off, it just feels weird to only paint the inside of the walls like I'm admitting the bugs can make me do something. Those damned bugs already have me trapped here.
And if I am making this base look nicer I want to build a moat, I can't really build a castle yet but a moat would be useful and look nice, I can probably just divert the river or something. It will be a lot of work though so I'm not doing that for a fair bit, but it will be done eventually.