Log #67
New lab defenses based on hardening the air around dangers and explosions. Bug attacks and perimeter expansion talk about using new resource patches.
I keep noticing things that I really should have picked up on sooner, I decided to take a closer look at the mining stations, to see if I could upgrade them. Either to mine faster or to mine better. And I realized that they use the projectors to mine and dig, I had known this but I hadn’t ever thought of upgrading the projectors that they use.
Mining stations essentially work like a vacuum, they soften the ore and then use conveyor belts to pull it up and out, they rotate in a corkscrew not because they are drilling but because that pulls the ore up quicker.
Simply upgrading the mining stations projectors and then beefing up the programing caused the ore to come out 56 percent more pure, as it can more precisely pull out actual ore and not the stone and rock it's embedded in.
Mining stations causing sinkholes has always been a minor problem, it's why we don't just process the ore at mining outposts, the ground there is unstable and shifting from all the missing material. Building industrial equipment over an unstable foundation is a poor investment, especially when you can just ship the ore off somewhere to smelt it.
Upgrading the projectors on the miners both gives more pure ore and leaves more stone behind, lessening the amount of stone I pull from the soil which makes the soil more stable. On some of the more mined out areas I’d have to remodel the whole operation to allow for mining to continue.
Sent Byzantine an order to upgrade the miners, both at the production bay and those at any active mining site.
I started looking into more mining stuff because we are finally processing the ore faster than I can mine it, so the next stage of expansion, upgrade and expand the current bottleneck until something else becomes the bottleneck, then expand that.
The resource processing plants and the new transportation systems are current;y capable of handling more raw resources than the mines can put out, so Labyrinthine needs to build more mines. The newly expanded territory has put quite a lot of potential mining locations into my area of control so it's not like I am hurting for opportunities to expand.
Ideally I will expand mining production enough that my processing facilities need expanded, then mining again, then transportation and back to processing, this will repeat indefinitely.
That's just raw resources though, converting the raw resources into actual products is mainly done at the main base, with some lower complexity but high demand products produced at subsidiary outposts.
With the expansion in resources I can build more products, those products will be used to research new products, refine current ones, expand the territory I can draw resources from, build infrastructure and larger projects and most importantly, they will be used in the war effort.
Everything in the factory is used to feed and improve the factory, and with the bugs steadily becoming less of a threat more and more resources can be sent towards getting more resources. I’m already seeing the snowballing effect this is having with the rapidly increasing rate at which I can build the perimeter.
While the minds have been doing this I have been doing more inventing. Well besides messing with the new miners, shield units can harden liquid, but it's less efficient. This can change based on what exactly is in the liquid, saltwater hardens easier than regular water for instance.
I've been working on making a new type of liquid that can be used as a shock absorbing layer, as well as preventing limbs from being wrenched out of position. If I can use a liquid to harden the spidertrons limbs so bugs can’t pull them out of position I can somewhat negate their main weakness, this is important as I have a similar one.
There are probably mechanical ways to do that but I imagine this will have a few more uses, and it'll further my understanding of how exactly the shield projectors work.
My efforts to design more weapons haven’t slowed either, just because the bugs are less of a threat doesn't mean I can ignore them now. There were a few simple ideas I just hadn’t thought of yet, the main one was a grenade launcher.
I already had explosive cannon shells, which are kinda similar but the shells are only explosive, no shrapnel that isn't just from the missile exploding, no exotic effects. Just a large explosion. A grenade launcher with a wide variety of available grenades will simply and cheaply allow for a large amount of different methods of damage without needing multiple turrets.
Acid grenades, a small explosive in a vial of highly effective acid. A timed fuse will allow it to detonate over a large group of bugs maximizing its spread.
Cluster grenade, a grenade that detonates launching smaller grenades. Mainly planned for use against weak swarming bugs.
Napalm grenade, same as the acid grenade but instead coats the bugs in a highly sticky flaming substance. It can burn for upwards of 30 minutes and at heats high enough to melt iron. Some bugs can withstand that kind of heat but definitely not all of them.
Science grenade, an acid grenade instead filled with a Liquid, Liquids can be changed out based on the desired effect. Probably only going to be used on internal main base defense until I develop some way to produce this cheaper.
Projector grenade, emits a short burst of softening energy in a small radius around it, should help weaken carapace on larger bugs while liquefying the smaller ones.
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Fragmentation grenade, launches extraordinary sharp shrapnel in a cloud, probably not too effective as hard shells tend to deflect shrapnel but its a simple enough design.
Standard grenade, a metal canister filled with explosives. I had been wondering how exactly I was making explosives without gunpowder, building these things showed how exactly that worked. I somehow turn the metal into an explosive, presumably similar to how pure metals sometimes react to oxygen. I don’t really know though, still not a chemist and honestly half of what I do violates the few laws of physics I was implanted with.
Why make me knowing things that are wrong?
Log #68
The tunnel's tanks are out patrolling and digging in earnest now, over 30 of them just around the main base with another 10 out digging tunnels for the drones. Along with laying mines in the stone just in case some bugs come by and try to dig through that area, a small grenade sized explosive can collapse a tunnel right on the bugs, and even if the bugs and tunnel dont show up on radar the explosive going off will.
Speaking of, the tunnel tanks have already found a bunch of tunnels around the main base, abandoned but the tracks are recent. I have had hundreds of bugs within 600 feet of my base without being the slightest bit aware. Upgrading the radars range and power hasn't helped much, it just shows a few anomalies that might be tunnels.
Balistraia is checking those out with the tanks and planning a clearing operation for if there are inhabited tunnels.
Expansion on the surface is continuing apace, mining operations have already been increased and are now exceeding what we can process, so expanding processing next.
The perimeter is continuing at a steady pace with no true complications, more mines and static defenses are being planted around already completed sections and the towers are just in general becoming more and more fortified.A few landmines wont stop the larger bugs but they will at least hurt them. And explosions are fairly noticeable.
The modifications on my body are also showing a few more benefits. My caloric intake needs had already been going down as my gut’s microbiome developed but it has taken a sharp decline. Enough that I can survive on a nutrient slurry injected directly into my stomach rather than needing solid foods. The slurry should digest even faster and more efficiently than ordinary solid foods too. A more efficient and time saving method, and if I am not eating it I have no need to complain about taste.
In the same general area my cells' anaerobic capabilities have expanded along with a general increase in my body's efficient use of oxygen, normally you exhale some oxygen that your lungs fail to take in, mine now absorb a far larger percentage of the oxygen, reducing how often I need to breathe. With the increased anaerobic capabilities I can go without air for an estimated 34 minutes, and I can stay in a low oxygen environment indefinitely.
That's just without my suit, with the suit I have both an internal air supply that can last for days at the new rate of consumption and the suit should be capable of oxygenating my blood even if I don’t breathe, just pump out blood, add oxygen and filter it then pump it back in. a standard life support feature, just slightly modified.
And to top all of this off, I found a bunch of chemical stimulants in the medbays options, or at least the minds did and what they know I know, with these I can reduce my sleep needs to 12 hours a week, ideally all at once but it can be done in two 6 hour periods if the need arises.
That's the healthy amount of sleep though, I can theoretically go a full month without sleep with no lasting damage if the need arises. At least that's what the med bay is saying.
Adding the stimulants and nutrient slurry to the same system that administers my steroids took relatively little time and my suit now holds enough food for 2 weeks of continued operation, I have a few months worth of the slurry in storage.
The minds still want me to eat though, for the stress relieving factor so I will still eat solid foods on occasion, just with taste and enjoyability in mind rather than simply fulfilling a nutritional need.
Mental health is as important to maintain as physical health, even if it's a bit more esoteric.
Log #69
Talk about a meal Labyrinthine made from a fish Balistraia hunted down, a massive battle in tunnels that wiped out most of the tunnel tanks.
Turns out the range advantage in a battle plays a bit of a larger role than I had originally imagined. In the close quarters of the bitters tunnels the tunneling tanks got demolished, that's a bit of an exaggeration but of the 30 in the battle only 3 were left by the time the bugs had been driven off.
A combination of the bugs being prepared for the attack and Balistriaia inexperience with underground battles meant that when the bugs closed to close quarters the tanks couldn’t support each other and we didn’t have an effective formation for the cave network.
The battle would have been the first true defeat if she hadn’t called in a few thousand reserve drones to turn the tide.
The only real solution to this is to build more tunnel tanks and to have balistraria run simulations of underground battles. She took her first loss rather harshly though, and immediately began training. With a human you might be worried about overwork, with a Mind she's already caused some minor damage to her hardware by using more processing power than she should be. There is only so much available in a command tank or networked across her units.
Upgrading her with a new processing unit should go a long way towards mitigating the issue, and explaining that damaging her own hardware by running it too hard does not actually help in the long term, slowly finding solutions is better. If the issue persists I may have to install a limit only allowing her to use a certain percentage of her available power. Not ideal but better than letting a Mind burn out a bunch of expensive hardware.
I had a few similar incidents with Bulwark earlier on when we first started losing outposts, that one wasn’t a true issue as the Mind just told Labyrinthine to expand their processing power and cooling systems to cope with the increased demand. Not something easily done on a battle tank.
Being mobile has nearly as many weaknesses as it does positives.
In lighter news Labyrinthine recently grew a new crop of plants, we have leafy greens, tubers, some mushroom like growths and a few nuts. Labyrinthine apparently figured out that cooking is culinary “arts” and therefore falls under their domain. And as I am the only being with a working set of taste buds I was requisitioned to try the meal.
A few of the fish chemical analysis identified as being more “tasty” were pulled from the aquarium and prepared baked with mushrooms, tubers, and a few of the more flavorful leaves, once the meal was thoroughly cooked the nuts were added as a side dish. A table was added to my room along with a few utensils and a drone served me the meal on a dish.
It was admittedly the best meal I have ever had, that isn’t the highest bar considering but for a first attempt it was far better than I expected. I don’t usually manage to clear my plate but I ate everything bare a few of the less edible parts of the fish.
It's still Nauvis cuisine, even the most well prepared fish still has a few inedible parts if you want to get any significant cuts of meat. If you want a paste that's fine, but an actual filet? Considerably more difficult.