Log #41
I got the designs for the new construction drones finished, so the anti air bugs are less likely to take out my aircraft, and I’ve started working on more aircraft. It's the main advantage I have over the bugs, well that and range, do nukes count as an advantage? Probably, well it's one of the three things I have over the bugs. So I am going to be pressing that advantage for as long as possible.
I have been making a design for a massive high altitude bomber to keep that advantage, but to actually build the thing I’ll need to set aside a fair bit of space and I don't even know if I want to build the thing yet, it'll be more expensive than a command tank just to fo what the other bombers do now, other than that I’m trying to make better fighter models for when larger airborne bugs become a thing, but most of my larger aircraft are slow or lack enough fuel to be useful, and designing a fighter jet from scratch is difficult without any aeronautics training, or any training but the knowledge that was only half implanted in your head before birth, a wonder that.
The outpost construction and destruction is going roughly the same, I build an outpost, the bugs break another, I detonate the broken outpost reactor, the bugs die, I build a new outpost and hope the bugs don't break another before I can start on the next one. And if enough outposts fall before I can build new ones the hordes of bugs can have a straight shot right to my main base, rather than the few they can sneak through the perimeter.
I just have to keep doing this, indefinitely, I hate this planet.
Some of my drones are now using bug shells as armor, only the inner drones, but it's cathartic to dress your robots in the flesh of your enemies, especially if that flesh is really a highly durable somewhat lightweight bug shell that has been thoroughly sanitized, I do have standards.
I can't actually remember if I wrote this down or not and I am far too busy to go and check, but the first flying bugs were launched by larger bugs, or they leapt from trees but that's not important, the important thing is that large bugs throwing little bugs was a thing, and it's a thing again, though now its because the little bugs are grenades of that same sticky substance.
They hit a tank and then crawl along it, and if nothing gets them off they’ll explode somewhere delicate, the drones are sufficient to deal with that already, it's just a very clever thing and I hate it. It feels like everytime I start to come up with a solution another thing has to go wrong.
Anyways we had to up the yields on all the explosives to maintain effectiveness, further increasing cost and production time, at least the decoders are still good for designing higher yield chemicals, even if they take ages to do it.
Log #42
We have root vegetables! Kinda, if you squint a little. Turns out applying random chemicals and hormones from the med bays can make plants start growing thicker roots, sure it's technically induced plant cancer but that still counts!
Actually eating something that isnt plant sludge or fish improves my mood greatly, even if it's just some tough and chewy roots, the work on actually making viable plants is still ongoing though, besides a few outliers or exceptional variants none of the traits carry over.
The new drone model has finished beginning distributed, and already there is a marked decrease in planes going down, it's not a perfect solution, planes can and do still get taken down before the propellers are fixed, but perfect solutions aren’t real anyway, with the casualties lowered I am now fielding more aircraft than before and I have once again increased production on the bombers and interceptors, I’ll need to build a second layer of the factory to increase my space soon, probably just over the inner and second walls, rather than doing the whole thing at once. I have Labyrinthine planning it all. It's more of an engineering feat than a logistics one, though the other minds are helping, I mean there is literally nothing they minds are uninvolved with in the factory, and if one mind is doing something they all know about it.
The artillery array is being expanded again, weight of fire can compensate for quite a lot, and while doubling our artillery shell use will be expensive, it isn't really a problem with all the raw resources I have in production. I just need to dedicate a few more of the inner outposts to ammunition production.
The nuclear artillery plan is coming along fine and the artillery cannon has already been designed, a larger and higher powered version of the standard one, but the shells are still in the planning stage, making nuclear bombs is delicate work, well actually it's kind of easy, mass producing nuclear bombs is delicate work, a one in a million chance it will detonate in the artillery cannon will happen here in like a week, not even because of poor luck, it's just how many shells we go through, and bad luck.
Anything with enough boom to do more than break its assembler is taken very carefully, I will not die because a bomb got whacked with a misaligned inserter arm. So not only does the bomb itself need to be carefully designed with numerous safety features, the production area itself needs prepped, ideally the shells will be produced in the same fashion as the nuclear missiles, an airtight sealed bunker with the shields facing inward and outward.
There is no prepared like over prepared, unless there is an urgent problem, then safety can go die in a hole till the crisis is over, so yeah, not making nukes by hand, or just by me at all.
There is a time for skipping on your safety precautions, that time is not when handling weapons that would leave me as a smear, though It definitely wouldn’t get through any of the walls, or the roof, or my armor, but the armor is a maybe. Still the point stands, be careful with the dangerous stuff, or the expensive stuff, and nukes happen to be both.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Log #43
So this planet has weird seasons, or it might not have seasons, I don't know, but it had snowed like a month ago and now it's seemingly monsoon season. It has been raining for days, it's not windy enough to warrant grounding aircraft but it severely hampers my turret range, and any of my wheeled ground vehicles are having trouble, robots to pull em out keeps it from being crippling though.
Still installing roads though, I hadn't before now because it wasn't a real problem, but now the more major patrol routes are being paved.
Also I have lost a surprising amount of drones to lightning strikes, the aerial ones are shielded but the ground drones are not, It's only like 20 and not really a problem, but still interesting.
I am still losing more outposts to the bugs due to the rain, but less than I thought I would, if the rain keeps up I will need to come up with solutions but it's not really a problem yet.
Construction on the nuclear shells production facility has started, and the plans for the second layer of the factory have started, Apparently the minds hadn't thought of building up before and have started running more and more conveyor belts and pipes on top of the assemblers, I have started something terrifying, though the inner factory has been like that for awhile, so I’m just being dramatic.
I’m installing pumps in the base to deal with excess water, it's not much but it does pool in certain spots and having the drones drain the water is slow, so little drainage lines and pumps to take the water out or to machines, depending on demand.
Log #44
So yeah the rivers flooding, this isn't a problem in itself, no it's the things in the river, any flooded area is uncrossable by any ground units, though the same can be said for the bugs, a few hives even went under, and then died.
Thankfully walls work equally well for water as they do for bugs, It just means the courier drones and trains are taking a beating, Labyrinthine is already at work upgrading my railway, or just rerouting around flooded sections entirely.
The unloading bay needed redone to, a fair bit of that's actually outside the main wall and a portion of it got flooded over, so the construction drones added a flood wall and we raised the whole thing onto a concrete pedestal, and the fish things kept trying to eat the courier drones, so the whole thing is lined with turrets now.
The flooding has seemed to send the bugs into a frenzy, massive hordes of bugs are running about, not even to attack my factories, just to run around and wreak havoc in general, breaking trees and attacking the river monsters.
But if they aren’t bothering me I don't care what they are doing, which is a lie, I am watching them very closely, the bugs acting differently is a terrifying thought.
Though honestly if I can capitalize on this it will be great for me, with the bugs distracted I can grow much faster, and the river creatures aren’t really a threat to my bases, you can’t eat stone, well you can’t digest stone, actually I refuse to make any assumptions about the fish.
The second layer of the factory has begun construction, the support pillars are being installed and the floor plan has been roughly made, it'll double the production at the main factory, though more processed resources will need to be shipped in, but my current outposts aren’t even running at max capacity yet, so they can supply it just fine.
The Base floor of the factory does need a bit of a redesign to make room for the support pillars and ramps though, and moving everything without overly slowing production is a significant challenge but It'll just take a bit more time, Though I do tend to have to redesign the factory layouts whenever a major addition happens, it's hard to leave enough room to seamlessly expand when you want to use every inch of space you can.
The flooding has been a boon with Byzantines fish farm too, a few less exotic fish were captured and are being raised now, and we only had a few breach the tanks before we installed internal shields on the things, so all in all a success on that front, even if it makes me even less likely to go into the fish farm.
The fighter planes have a finalized blueprint now, taking inspiration from the interceptor they are smaller and faster than before, but with significantly fewer power problems, though it does make them expensive and fragile, so more changes are planned, but it's good enough to be functional so its going into production on the second layer whenever its ready.
Log #45
The new artillery shells are in production and once a nice enough stockpile is built up it should be good to start using nuclear shells, that coupled with the rain cutting off a fair few hives will allow me to expand to a bunch of new resource nodes, the rain will make actually using them difficult, can't really ship by drone or train through a river, and my helicopters don't have the throughput, still if I can take and hold the outposts I’ll have a significant head start whenever the rain stops.
Also It's really creepy to watch a bug taller than some buildings get pulled into a flooded area not even 10 feet deep and somehow disappear, where does it go? 20 feet tall bugs should not be able to disappear into water that is less than 20 feet deep. And a creature that can tank hundreds of armor piercing rounds should be flayed apart in seconds. Still aside from the occasional courier drone the river monsters leave me alone, which is great because I draw the line at aquatic horrors, keep it terrestrial please and thank you.
Also most of my weapons don't work in water, which reminds me, make weapons that work in water. All my stuff is waterproof already, but bullets slow, lasers fade, electricity doesn't actually conduct as well as you’d think, still works though, missiles move via fire, flamethrowers shoot fire, the tungsten launchers work fine, the radiation gun is stupid, nukes kill everything, and drones don't swim good.
Also note to self, make drones swim good.
I’ll be starting the artillery barrage tomorrow, and most of today will be spent making sure I can actually build the outposts, every outpost takes a significant amount of weaponry and equipment to build, so actually building a stockpile is the main challenge, or at least building an organized one, it doesn't matter if I have 20 outposts building everything I need if it takes me a day just to gather it all, But Byzantine should have that handled, I'm planning to build 10 outposts tomorrow, the single biggest gain I’ve had yet if everything goes well.
Not a few months have passed since I struggled to build a single additional outpost, or even just to expand my main base, and now it's a matter of hours to build one if I rush. The feeling of progress is amazing, also I have nukes now which inherently make any situation where they aren’t being fired at me better.
The big operation is going to be run by supply helicopters and airlifted spidertrons once the bugs are cleared out, they are really the smallest mobile robot carriers I have, and they have enough weaponry to make them unappetizing, probably.