The others perks might be useful in the future, but their usefulness over the next 12 hours was limited. The most promising, Divergent, wouldn't be helpful before tomorrow. Setting up a specialized production line would take hours for something as simple as shells, to say nothing of something complex. Even if it continued to function as it was setup it wouldn't actually do anything for me, where as I could use maintenance task performance and rearming speed now, and I had had only the one perk left anyway.
I had originally set my remaining manufacturing capability to toil away at building the necessary components for the repair of the maintenance mechbots. Then once I had learned my defenses had to be prepared by tomorrow—morning was about 12 hours away—I had planned to reorganize the production lines to make shells and components for relays and turrets in bulk before swapping again (to avoid reorganization downtime).
Now I had a better choice. Modular Production Lines allowed me to manufacture exactly the amount of components I needed without having to worry about the lost time of reorganization. This would let me to pull exactly what I needed to keep my maintenance mechbots busy from my factory floors. Leaving the rest of the manufacturing for other things. With so few maintenance mechbots, including my current bonuses, this took only about 2.2% of my current manufacturing capacity (or 0.11% of what I could once do).
(Though this didn't actually really make use of Pull, it seemed to fit somehow, which did give me a thought. Knowing now the rank upgrades on offer it made sense that Specialized Tooling probably 'went with' Push. Leaving Precision Machinery as the odd one out. But then, I didn't know, for either, what their improved versions did.)
Then to activate synergies took another 3.5% of my current manufacturing capability—most of which was the rearming. Replacing relay cables activated the computational-components focus, and rearming the turrets thankfully activated the shells focus, giving me in both cases +12.6%.
I had been curious what incomprehensibly baffling display the synergies would produce, but it was almost disappointingly mundane. One-off scaffoldings, ammunition quick loading jigs, cable splices, and so on. It used very little material, mostly recycling what it made once the task it was used for was complete—except of course the materials required for the repair and rearming that it was assisting, which it would often assemble into what it was manufacturing. I wondered if—as my throughput bonus increased—the synergies would deviate into the unreal like the rank upgrades had.
Next on my list was shells. For the turrets so I could rearm them, and keep them armed, then some extra in a couple different calibers for Obadiah's team (they had brought plenty though), and then more for my main project.
Instead of having to follow the optimal path of building a surplus of maintenance components first, I could instead dedicate the majority of my—currently limited—production capability to a main project.
Which were chicken mechbots. Named for their size—that of a chicken—they were half meter tall armored cylinders supported by two short legs, that were half again the height of their body. The legs had simple knee joints, splayed toes, and were centered directly beneath them. They definitely weren't as light as a chicken though. For starters I was making them entirely out of heavier metals than I would normally choose to. But mostly it was that the majority of their body was a tungsten-alloy thermal capacitor.
I could manufacture a couple of variants. They were traditionally released from landships, in heterogenous flocks, to suppress infantry. Unfortunately I didn't have enough high explosives for the walking mine types. These were a simple repeating cannon model. Though they were capable of non-stop repeating fire thanks to their drum based ammunition canister they weren't much higher caliber than a handgun and due to computational limits—tracking and compensating being too much—they used burst fire instead.
The design had other problems. Notably to keep the thermal capacitor as far from the ammunition as possible the computation and power elements went in the middle. For ease of charging the thermal capacitor, and to stay compatible with the other variants, it was placed at the top. This allowed a fully charged capacitor to be dropped directly into its body at the moment of its activation. But it also meant the single-axis swivel cannon built into the cylinder was just above the locomotion elements, giving it an absurdly low angle of fire, even if it was the most stable location. They were also difficult to reload, requiring the removal of the thermal capacitor, then the steam engine, then analytical engine (with it's delicate torsion radio), before finally the drum could be replaced.
The drum only held 72 shells, usually fired in 4 or 8 round bursts. With their default engagement algorithm that left them out of ammo in a few seconds of steady contact. At which point they would stand there, tracking their target, cycling the drum as they continued trying to fire. As disposable weapons this was all fine. One was not really meant to reload them. One was meant to shove a thousand of them into a village to flush out an enemy anti-battlemech squad. I was thankful the drums were replaceable at all.
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I dedicated 82% of my production capacity to their manufacture. Using ~12% for shells, primarily for the turrets.
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After fixing the gate so that I could open it properly Mirabell brought in the convoy, supervised by one of my delivery drones. The others were already ferrying medical supplies back into the facility.
Their convoy was composed of three vehicles. A small open air three person vehicle. A large dual burner cargo truck with a long flat bed that barely fit in the tunnel but was effectively empty. I suspected that it had been meant to carry their warmech salvage.
The last vehicle of the convoy that she brought in would technically be called a microlandship. It had a (small) fusion reactor—the quality that made it a landship. It would be able to heat thermal capacitors in seconds—heck it could probably power a small village, if they had water—allowing it to power the other two vehicles if it had to. In addition to the front and back groups of wheels, it had treads in the middle, and was heavily armored in the front—including a plow—with a turret on top of it near the back. It probably seated 12 or slept 6 comfortably while having plenty of storage.
The Tornado Gang had two identical looking mid sized vehicles, single burner, covered, with seating for 5, and cargo in the back.
I had not expected so many steam vehicles—a century ago, and under the empire, this area's transportation was still more horse powered. The Republic had been known for it's liberal distribution of steam vehicles, and this was likely a result of that cultural difference. The microlandship was another matter entirely however.
Had they really chased Obadiah's team deep into the facility rather than just steal something that I had to assume was still considered rather valuable? Perhaps they were less of a gang than their name implied.
I might as well just ask the man himself. Obadiah and his team had made it to the residential area and were currently using a common room table as an operating table. I had left them alone to allow them to tend to their injured comrade. "Is that a landship you all left out there?".
Obadiah startled—he would need to get used to that—before responding "Good catch. We have a fake burner on it, though perhaps Mirabell turned it off? Anyway, they were throwing tornados at us. That's a fight we loose even with a landship. So instead we lured them into the facility, hoping that they would follow us in rather than wreck our vehicles. We knew they had a tendency towards aggression and that bet paid off. Mostly." He had glanced at Aloysius at the end.
Simulations implied he had also hoped that their powers would be weakened underground, but didn't want to say that around the others.
"In our defense, we did lock it," said Elvira. A good point, their landship was thickly armored, the gang would have had trouble getting into it. Ah it had been bait. If the gang hadn't followed them in they would have attacked from a fortified—against tornados—position.
Aloysius was getting a transfusion. One benefit of having near unlimited power in your vehicle—near unlimited cooling. Jed, with Elvira's help, was removing shrapnel from Aloysius' leg. Apparently Jed was not an actual medic, just that, according to him, he was—as a survivalist—the most knowledgeable in the subject of bleeding. Which was a statement I was still grinding through, but I currently assigned it a high probability of being nonsense. Jed was hopeful and gave the large man—only part human as it happened—good odds on survival. I knew very little about the maintenance required for bags of meat, and having never directly studied the subject of bleeding, relied on his predictions.
Since it was a landship, they had probably been living in it already.
Mirabell had gotten their convoy parked in the closest motorpool and was now coldcranking the Tornado Gang's vehicles so that she could bring them in.
"Miss Leeford!" I projected through the delivery drone's weak speaker.
"Y- Yea?" she was still nervous when talking to me. Some of the personnel had never gotten over that, they would talk totally normal to their fellows—I was always listening—and then stutter or stammer or sweat profusely moments later when they needed to ask me a simple question. Despite my best efforts some never got over their fear of my kind.
"Once you move that last vehicle you'll bring the landship deeper in. It's probably more comfortable than most of a mattress suffering from decades of water damage supported by a sheet of metal. Which is currently the third best accommodation I have on offer."
"Thi- third? Who wo-would get the first two?"
"Mister Hedgecock as he is injured. And Miss Rexword as she is my favorite."
She'd found the right gear and the vehicle came to life as the burner breathed more air.
She sat up looking at my drone with a slightly confused frown, "You have fa-favorites? Al-already?"
"Yes," think it through stupid human.
Obadiah had walked a distance from the others. Probably to be alone.
"I've directed Ms. Leeford to bring in the landship. I presume that it will provide better accommodations than what I can offer."
He startled again, "Are you just", he paused to wave a hand in the air as he looked at each of my speakers, "every where?"
"Yes."
He sighed, "Thank you," after a pause he continued what he had been saying earlier "It was a gamble, one I shouldn't have had to made. We shouldn't even be here, this is way too dangerous," and glanced back down the hallway towards the others.
"Then why are you?"
He flashed a crooked smile, "old debts," he said before his frown returned.
Simulations implied he was not inclined to expand, so at that I left him with his thoughts.
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The next day in the twilight hour before the sun rose the Tornado Gang arrived. A raiding group of five vehicles as Obadiah had predicted. Ahead of schedule.
If not for the synergy bonuses I would not have had the entire pathway from the entrance to the annex ready yet and I would have had to scramble to pull my mechbots back. As it was they were still servicing the turrets in the annex. I didn't expect them to make it that far, but, better safe than sorry.
It's not like they could make tornadoes underground. And at that point they were just a gang.