Log #31
These logs were originally meant to be a to-do list along with a sort of diary, so for this log I’m gonna return to that with an actual to-do list.
Survive- self explanatory, my most important task is to survive.
Ongoing
Upgrade my body- ideally I will never again be in direct combat, this is not an ideal world, therefore my body needs to be strong enough to survive. The augmentations have been designed, they just need to be implemented, the recovery time for the surgery is the main worry.
Pending
Design and implement new weapons- the bugs keep adapting to my weaponry, the solution is variety, one bug can't be immune or resistant to everything, hopefully, new turrets have been designed.
An acid variant for the flamethrower, it just needs the acid production scaled to meet demands, Byzantine and Labyrinthine have that handled.
Ongoing
Radiation variant of laser turret, it should ignore most armor but it does need active uranium to fuel it, expensive to maintain and only being implemented in high importance zones and the command tank, command tank uses onboard reactors as fuel.
Complete
Molten turret, launches 1 meter rods of molten tungsten at high speeds into bugs, has a slow rate of fire, and is highly effective at eliminating larger variants of bugs, needs maintenance between shots, further development needed for wide scale production
Ongoing
Upgrade walls- self explanatory again, incorporate metal and shield units into walls I really don't want to fall, if you thread the metal write you can even amplify their shield units effectiveness, a minor improvement but having walls that can be invulnerable is invaluable.
Ongoing
Build new personal weapons and power armor- the current armor set and weapons have served me well, but I have better materials and shields now so it's due for an upgrade.
I am planning to have 2 sets of power armor, one for combat, with inbuilt weapons, and one for building, with drone ports rather than weapons, but with be heavily armored and will be shielded with the new mark 3 shield generators I pulled from the ship, cant make them yet, but I can use what I have.
Ongoing
Figure out bugs- a broad to-do but still important, currently I don't know anything about the bugs besides attack patterns and assault variants, if I can figure out their food supply I can cut it off or poison it, If I figure out how they communicate I can disrupt it.
To defeat an enemy you must first know it, currently I don’t know my enemy, rectify this.
Ongoing
Build an air force- currently the bugs dominate the skies, this bothers me immensely. The closets design I have to an airplane or helicopter is a drone, drones do not scale well and the current combat drones are as large as feasible with my current tech base, larger than flying bitters sure, but they cannot travel near the same distance, rectify this
Ongoing
Build the rocket and send the distress beacon- you may be wondering why this is so low on my priority list, that's because if I survive 6 years here in the first place help isn't exactly urgent
Pending
Design a surveillance satellite- once I can launch rockets I will need to build space infrastructure, starting with global surveillance satellites, then a space station and orbital factory, designing this will take a significant chunk of time, sending up the pieces in one use rockets will take longer
Pending
The priority order is subject to change, and I may be forgetting a few things but eh.
Log #32
I might be wrong and it could just be a coincidence but the bugs seem to be growing quicker now that I am pushing the hives back, so danger is being tentatively marked as a growth factor, can't really avoid that one, and I probably should have noticed this, considering the bug hives that don't attack me every day are significantly weaker, but once again I can't actually avoid this.
Artillery barrages followed by Balistraias forces wiping out the remainder of the bugs is still a highly effective strategy though, even if there are more survivors for her to clean up every time. I expect it will still be viable for another week before the assault forces start taking significant losses.
With that on the way and my new little nugget of knowledge acquired I have the wonderful idea of sending a spidertron to build factories in less hostile territory, I will be sending them out blindly because my radar range does not extend that far, but if it's true that fighting the bugs marks them stronger, then bugs farther away should be weaker, so sending out spidertrons paired with large groups of construction drones to take resource patches far out it viable.
I don't actually have a way of getting the resources back yet, but if I can design a cargo helicopter it should work fine, and having places to run to is always a good idea, even if the thought of leaving this main factory behind hurts.
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In less combative news, I have started putting on a little more weight, the minds apparently took up agriculture while I wasn't paying attention and have been adding better foods to my nutrient processor, still significantly underweight, and most of that's from my now heavier than average bones, but the situation is improving.
There are now 7 operational sub factories, each with 3 walls, none of them approach the size of the main factory, the largest of them is half the size, but they are producing a fair portion of our supplies, and I can afford to run the decoders again, but considering the fact that I only have a few more techs before I need to be in space to learn more, the decoders aren't being run.
The supply lines between the sub factories and the main one are being guarded by bulwark with smaller outposts along the routes to guard them, and the bugs have begun destroying those to cut off Bulwarks defense of the supply lines and then destroying train lines.
The amount of trains I am losing to this is not a significant problem though and the stoppages usually don't last more than an hour, the supplies on the trains can usually be recovered as well, and considering the only way I have to stop the attacks would be to make a massive wall around literally everything, I will just have to deal with the attacks.
Log #33
It's been a few days, and I don't really have much new to say, we are up to 9 outposts, It would be 10 but we lost one yesterday, the camo bugs have apparently reached a point where they can avoid being seen long enough to knock out the power lines, and without laser turrets and drones the base soon fell.
Bulwark has begun armoring key components and now an alarm will go off if they are touched, which should allow the drones to find and kill the bugs before they can take out another outpost. Upgrading the radar and the guns sensors is now a higher priority, if my defenses can’t see the bugs they can't kill the bugs.
It's not just the camo bugs that have improved either, a new variant of the bugs is now largely immune to lasers, and boosts a powerful fire resistance, it does this with a coating of reflective slime, which is clever, still bullets work on them and bulwark knows better than to use lasers on something immune to them.
There are a few variants that have only recently been spotted to, a fire breathing variant that hasn't seen much use, considering all my defenses are metal and stone, and a variant of the larger biting bugs with a minor healing factor, it noticeably regrows its shell if the attack doesn't kill it.
Other than that they are still getting larger and tougher overall, with the flying variants growing in size and how high they fly, the flame turrets can no longer hit the flying swarms of bugs, but the other turret variants are still effective at that range.
Log #34
Up to 12 outposts now, and I'm officially producing more at the outposts than at the main factory, the cargo helicopter and new turret variants have begun production, which should help with defense and transportation, I have begun work on my construction armor, currently it is 9 feet tall, has twice the shielding as the previous suit, it can maintain and power 200 robots, even though I can only manually control 50 it does allow me to serve as a charging port for the minds robots. It will also have 4 robotic limbs coming from the back, the human mind is adaptable and I should be able to control them as if they were my own limb.
The combat armor I am still designing, but it should be 10 feet tall, be able to maintain 50 robots for my manual control, have thrice the shielding and significantly more durable metal armor than the previous suit. Its weaponry is the expensive part, with a high powered shoulder mounted laser cannon, arm mounted normal cannons, a back mounted mortar/grenade launcher, more mechanical limbs that can hold various weaponry as needed, a built in medical system, that'll keep my body running as long as it has power, an large shield made directly from the hull of my crashed ship and augmented with a mark 3 shield generator, an improved discharge defense, now 3 times as effective and half the charge time, and an upgraded variant of my sword, now larger (5 ft) and with a longer battery life, up to 20 minutes of continued use, and it can be charged by my suit when not in use, only taking 3 minutes to charge. Ideally the robots I control will deal with the small chaff while I deal with larger bug variants myself.
The cargo helicopter has one train car's worth of storage and is decidedly not fuel efficient, but it does serve its purpose, and the flying bugs don't yet fly that high.
We lost 3 more outposts to bug attacks, but we are still building outposts faster than they are being destroyed, so there aren't any significant problems, besides the largest bugs breaching 80 feet long and 45 feet tall. Currently there are only ever 5 of these behemoths but they do make my suit of armor feel inadequate. And they are the reason 2 of the outposts fell, the third just fell to one massive horde of smaller bugs. It ran out of ammo and fell shortly after.
Still the massive bugs don't stay within range of my artillery for long, as a sustained barrage can and will kill them.
Log #35
It has been a month and a half since I found out I would be stuck her for 6 years at a minimum, my 3 month estimation has been changing to longer and shorter time periods, but currently id say I have 2 months if I don't figure out a way to slow the bugs growth, the artillery barges are no longer utterly destroying bug hives, and the bug forces have begun using the digging variants to avoid artillery fire, making the artillery shells bigger hurts the range but does allow me to hit the bugs hiding underground, still my offensive is slowing down at around 25 outposts, if I concentrate my forces to push and build a new outpost I will suffer an attack on another and lose it.
It is a stalemate I won't exactly win, the bugs apparently don't need anything to build more of themselves while I need metal and Oil to recoup my losses, I have begun building an airfield off my main base to allow me to field a large force of assault helicopters, which should significantly bolster Balistraias forces and allow me to begin taking more territory again. Currently my assault helicopters should be superior than anything the bugs can field in the air
Since I am assuming fielding my own air force will cause the bugs to upgrade their own, I have begun preparing defenses for larger aerial attacks on my bases, the current plan is a metal cage over the top of the factory, resting on the outer walls, reinforced with shields and anti air turrets placed to cover the whole thing, It ruins the aesthetic but better to be ugly than dead, and we can paint it gold to match with the white walls.
It won't last in a sustained attack, once the shields fall it's just metal, but it should but time for the anti air to wipe out the attackers.
The main base is being attack less and less as the front lines are pushed farther and farther back, which means I have begun work on 2 new layers of wall for the main factory,they won't be as large as the 3rd layer but will be more advanced, These walls are basically sacrificial, nothing important will be behind them and it won't really matter if they fall, but they should hold against most attacks, and it's not like the massive bugs can get that close anyway.
I was watching the bugs destroy an outpost on a live feed and I noticed something interesting, the bugs were absorbing the smog from the furnace, it wasn't a noticeable amount but the longer the bugs stayed in the smog the thinner it got, I didnt see if it cleared up entirety before the camera lost power but it does show the bugs somehow absorb nutrients from air, which might be how they know where all my outposts are, if you eat air you can probably smell pollution. I might be able to cloak newer factories by having them produce minimal pollution.
It is just a theory currently but if I can really hide my outposts by having them not produce much pollution I can expand much faster.