Log #21
I'm writing this log a day or so after my medical scan finished processing, my body is in as good of health as can be expected, and the modifications I made to it have integrated and show no signs of malfunction or rejection. This is the good news, the other news, I'm not quite sure whether it's good or bad yet, is that my body shows signs of being at a vat grown one, there are no signs of wear from before I crashed here, not even basic joint wear or a tan from being in the sun. not even any birthmarks or old moles. And further evidence that I am some sort of vat grown clone is that my DNA is "abnormally routine" as in little of it is redundant or unused, further pointing to me being a specialty clone.
I apparently wasn't done growing either, which is why a 16 year old was seemingly alone on the ship, the medical scanner seems to think I was supposed to be grown until I was 18 and then held in stasis till I arrived at my destination. There isn't really anything I can do with this information yet, I can try to learn more by examining the ship and the vat I apparently came out of but besides now wanting to learn more about myself this information isn't really an issue, if I'm lucky I might even find out what my name was supposed to be.
In other less world shifting news, the minds did fine while I was undergoing the medical scan, the logistics mind managed to design a blueprint for the boat port I wanted, the defensive mind held of the many bug attacks, and the construction mind seems to have begun covering everything in gold and blue concrete, I approve of all these things.
So yeah with the factory largely running fine on its own I can turn my attention back to the assault mind, its currently running simulations of battle against different known varieties of bugs and a fair few I just made up, I'm kinda treating it like an RTS, where I play as the bug horde and the assault mind uses varying numbers of its vehicles to fight me off, whenever the assault mind is winning reliably, I either increase the number and strength of my bugs, or I give them fewer or damaged units.
This seems to be helping the mind build a better sense of tactics, and it is a rather fun way to spend my time, I'm even planning of having the defensive and assault mind compete, with the assault mind being given orders to take a factory controlled by the defensive mind, I see no reason my minds should be one trick hiveminds.
The actual fleet for the assault mind is coming along slowly, I'm planning for it to consist of 80 light tanks, 50 tanks, 20 drone tanks, and the command walker (it needs a better name). This force should outnumber the typical amount of bugs stationed at any individual hive by about 20, and significantly outrange them as well, it won't be able to withstand a coordinated attack by multiple hives, but that's why it moves fast.
The army should be able to hit and wipe out a hive within 10 minutes and get back to the base rapidly, the whole operation will ideally never last longer than 40 minutes, which is how long the bugs take to respond en masse to my trips outside.
Since I'm finally upgrading my ability to meet the bugs head to head I've decided I also need to upgrade my defenses, I've made a blueprint for sturdier walls using reinforced concrete, which was stupidly simple, and I've also decided that there is no real reason I shouldn't be able to have missile turrets, I mean they should even work well against aerial targets, just because I don't have a blueprint for a missile turret does not mean that I won't make one.
Log #22
The assault mind has finished its earliest stage of training, and I have begun pitting it against the defensive mind in addition to its training against me and the simulator, so far it seems to be doing poorly at assaulting a fortified position like the factory, but does seem to be learning new tactics, so that's good.
With training the assault mind no longer taking as much of my time I decided to work on getting their army built before they finish training, the light and normal tanks are coming along fine but the drone and command tanks take significantly more resources, like enough resources I'm pretty sure we are violating the whole "energy cannot be created or destroyed" part of physics, but this factory has always had a distant relation to reality anyway so that's not actually surprising.
What is surprising is that even by optimistic estimates we don't actually have enough resources left in our mines to finish the army and build an outpost to claim a new mine, I had a feeling this would be the case though, which is why I had the boat port made, its stealth mission time.
If I don't have enough resources to build an army without securing a new source, I will just have to secure a new force without an army, there are plenty of viable mines throughout my radar range and a fair few of them don't even have hives on them yet, the only problem is that even if the resources don't have hives on them, they do have hives between us and them.
The solution to this problem is a stealth mission via the river, I will be going down the river in my power armor, walking along the bottom where the bugs either can't or don't bother going, a few miles down the river is a relatively small resource patch without many bugs near it, which means its optimal for my needs.
To do this I'll need to retrofit my suit to work well underwater, and while I'm at it I'll upgrade it too. I will need weapons that can work underwater, and I'll need boats to ferry the resources back once the outpost is set up.
None of these are problems that will take more than a day or two to solve and if nothing goes wrong with this trip I should be able to secure a source of resources to build my army with.
There isn't much news on the whole clone front, I've started decrypting the more intact bits of data on the ship, the progress is abysmally slow though and my freaky building and optimizing powers aren't actually helping me with this, while usually I can look at something and see ways to improve it or how to take it apart, the entire ship is just like a blank spot, I get nothing from them so it looks like I'll have to do all of this the hard way, I'm of half a mind to just build a mind to do it for me but this isn't urgent and I don't really want to waste the power on a side project that won't really help me survive here.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Log #23
Just a short log before I begin my stealthy swim, I have made a few weapons for my journey. I have a high powered harpoon gun, a sorta knife/ short sword hybrid, an electrical discharge on my suit, and pure concussion grenades.
I'm most proud of the sword really, it only has 10 minutes of active use before it just becomes a regular sword, but for those 10 minutes it can cut through stone and metal without dulling or breaking, that isn't to say i could cut through metal with this sword without either being augmented or wearing my suit but it does mean i won't accidentally snap the thing by hitting something with it to hard for at least 10 minutes, I mean I tried at least 12 different alloys before I gave up on making a sword either tough enough or sharp enough to work before deciding to reinforce it with a modified shield generator, as the shields don't actually project a force field or anything, they just hold the material they are "shielding" in place, preventing any damage or change. They all either snapped or wouldn't keep an edge for long enough. So the solution was a shield sword.
My armor upgrade was mainly increasing its shield strength and battery life and making it reprocess my breath into breathable air, which shows my dissection of the ship does pay fruit, cause I definitely did not have that air processor in a blueprint, I was just stuck with a basic gasmask. Now I have a sleek silver helmet rather than what was basically just an armored gas mask and hat, I also improved my armours cameras so i can actually see underwater, heat, sonar, and electrical signals are all visible to me now, which should be more than enough to see on the bottom of a river without just shining a bright ass light everywhere.
The boat I designed is rather simple, it can carry about 1 and a half train carts worth of ore and bring it back at 35 mph, not the fastest thing I've built but fast enough for a boat that I'm trying to build for cheap, it has a small shield generator incase it hits something as the hull on the thing is thin enough to get a hole if it were to crash into something at speed.
With everything done I feel ready to begin the trip, not happy mind you but definitely prepared to swim down miles of creek and into hostile territory.
Log #24
Cat shaped logistics robots, that's the new plan, with 12 hours of fuel, the ability to spray said fuel as napalm breath, they can carry 200 pounds and still climb up a sheer slope and have very sharp claws, they have moderately thick armor for a drone and enough shielding to survive grazes and acid splash without immediately breaking, they'll need to survive at least 2 trips to the outpost to even pay themselves off but at least it means I will never have to get in that fucking river again, I hate this planet so much.
The trip started off fine, but then I figured out just why the massive bug monsters never seem to get in the water, it's because there are even larger fish monsters! What the hell kinda ecosystem is there on this damned planet anyway, the only animals are massive bugs, massive sea monsters, and some small fish, how does that make any sort of sense?
Anyway back on the whole river catastrophe, about the only reason I'm still alive is my new discharge defense, my shield sword, and my significantly buffed shields, the armors still damn near ruined though, what with the acid damage and teeth marks.
I didn't even take the river all the way to the outpost, I crawled out about a mile from the base and just followed the shoreline to the resource deposit. If I had stayed in that river I would have been torn to shreds, armour and all.
It was terrifying enough that I'm pretty sure I had a heart attack and needed the backup pump to run long enough for my heart to get its shit back together, so yeah, not currently planning on getting back in that water getting back in the water. Getting eaten by a giant tentacle shark in a river so dark I can't see anything further than 3 inches from my face is something that only needs to happen never, and the fact that it did is a valid reason to never even get near that damned river.
Even with the river being the awful thing it is, I still managed to get the outpost running, it's just that if I try to send boats down the river the giant fish will eat them, and if I don't have resources to finish my land army I certainly don't have the resources to build a navy, not that i want to either, the fish can keep their river.
So yeah cat drones, I figure that if I can't have boats take the resources back to base and i cant run a train line, that what I can do is have some stealthy bots haul the resources back, its less efficient and not very cost effective, but it's the best option I currently got.
The cats will hide in trees or fields when bugs are nearby and if they get caught will spray fire to cover their escape, a fair few will probably get destroyed but as long as more than half can make 2 trips, it should work, its slow and probably stupid but its what I'm doing.
The drones will be controlled by the logistics and assault minds, as a joint effort, with the assault mind handling the hiding and attacking and the logistics running them outside of combat, I'm making about 100 of the things to start with, and hopefully nothing goes wrong.
Log #25
My armour has been repaired and my numerous bruises have healed, so overall the river trip hasn't hurt much but my psyche long term. The cat drones have been running twice a day and roughly 60-90 percent make it back each trip, and I always bring their numbers back up to 100 with what they bring back, so the plan to get more resources is coming along, with the current rate of resource income it'll take a few weeks to finish the army, and that's if I grow the cat drones numbers above 100.
But I am planning to shift focus on finishing the command tank and making more cat drones, I should be able to finish the command tank within a week if I funnel more resources into it and cut down on some of the weapons, the command tank will be missing most of its missiles but it will still have its lasers, shields and cannons, along with the rest of the army that I have already had built, there are roughly 60 scout tanks, 40 shield tanks, and 5 drone tanks.
These forces should allow the assault mind to claim and hold a resource patch long enough for the defensive and construction minds to fortify it. Which will in turn give us the resources we need to finish the army and send it out to take even more resources.
This set back has certainly slowed us down but it definitely has not stopped us yet.
Since there isn't actually much for me to do on the war front currently, I've been spending the bulk of my time working on taking apart the ship, the decoding is frustrating, but I am making some progress on the less secure files, so I'll be able to read those soon, soon probably being after the attack to claim a new source of resources. And the actual components of the ship are enlightening in many ways. I have already designed upgrades for the train and tanks based off of what I learned from the ships engine, and I've been working on recreating its hull for use on tanks and my armor, the work isn't nearly done yet though.
So yeah the assault mind is going to finish its training before its army is completed and then its first mission will be with an incomplete army, not my best work but hopefully the assault mind can pull through, I mean I did train it for this after all.