[0.14.21-based deathworld modpack LP/FF] Muddy Mountains

[featherwinglove]

Muddy Mountains

OC Introduction: This is a 0.14 death world mod pack including 66 mods, including my own Pollution Damage 0.0.2. Timelapse will be set to take screenshots every 7 minutes, with DayNightExtender set to 8 for a 56 minute day so the screenshots will be at consistent times of day. (EvoGUI doesn't correct for DNE, so game days will respresent screenshots and need to be divided by 8 and rounded up to get the right day number.) Several mods have been tweaked, especially No Hand Crafting; its burner assembler has been nerfed and jacked in pollution to discourage its use long term. Mining Tools requires third level science so Bob's axes have a chance to get made. Warehousing has been bumped up to second level science and nerfed to be about as OP vs. Versepelle's Hard Storage as it is vs. vanilla. The biggest uncertainty of the modpack is how SJT Dirty Ores and Hard Crafting will play together (tests indicate this is going to be pretty awful!) The first map was unacceptable because there was no copper at all in accessible territory. The second map was an island spawn. The third map looks workable. Story notes: KIC-8462852 is a real star. It was acting up as I began this story and was in my particular news circle. Finally, despite deciding to go with username-themed names, these characters are not featherwings.

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Ship's Log Date Unknown CR+49 days; entry issued by Captain Chirp

We weren't expecting a dust ring to be on our approach vector to this star; it's not like its KIC-8462852. But we had one. We've taken multiple meteor hits and have severe damage to all our systems, including cryogenic life support and quarters. Between the loss of quarters and damage to cryosleep systems, we lost just over half of our colonists and suspect the remaining 68231 will be quite upset when they wake up. We lost a lot of propellant as well, although our magbrake was okay (probably has to do with its ability to repel some of this dust), so we barely managed to get ourselves inserted around Dim Kismet, the only planet in the system with a survivable atmosphere. (Note that we're already reckoning our time in its days, so "CR+49 days" really means Clock Restart plus 49 Kismet days, and would be 133 Earth days.) It had a uniform enough albedo that we were astonished to find it covered in rough terrain once we got into orbit and restored enough power to ping it with some radar. It appears to have had some strange anomaly in its past that attracted the sediments and dropstones of some noachian catastrophe to every mineral of significant interest to us. At the starship's first apoapsis, we're in a bit of a hurry to get something established on the surface and maybe repair the ship before it transitions from hulk to derelict. We got twenty of our colonists into the lander that was in the best condition and sent it to land. The entry track we observed seemed to indicate its heatshield had been damaged in the dust collision while it was in the starship's hangar deck. Put less mildly, it broke up, and we have no idea if there are any survivors. That was our best lander and we can't afford to wake up enough colonists to repair any more since our habitat life support systems were all but totally destroyed. We can keep our cryosleep systems operational for at least a few months, possibly years. The small awake crew of forty crew members, including the Captain are now working to stabilize the cryogenic life support system to pair up operational coolers with operational quarters whose previous counterparts have been destroyed or damaged. Once that's done we should have a better idea of how much time we have, and, hopefully, get some lander and/or habitat life support systems up to get more people awake and get more manpower on our problems.

Post-Landing Report: "Landing" is a bit of a misnomer as our craft mostly broke up in the atmosphere when aerodynamic forces built up. Four of us made it. Robin, Vulture, Magpie and myself (my name is Sparrow; I guess that's important since we lost our computer and have nothing before this PLR written down.) Magpie is badly injured but I think she's going to make it. We've managed to assemble a cart from the wreckage, which fortunately included a couple of landing wheels. It has ten cargo slots, ten build slots, one tool slot, and three weapon slots. We're going to stick together pushing this thing around on the surface until we get established, working in shifts (OC: this little team together represents the in-game player character.) Vulture is a genius and managed to get two Stirling cylinders operating, one of which will run a small generator and radio carrier oscillator we should be able to get some sort of contact with the ship up once we have it set up in its assembly machine. That same cylinder also runs the assembly machine, which we have yet to deploy (or even finish), but we expect it to be extremely noisy, kick up much of the local dust and have the sort of energy efficiency that would make our ship's engineer faint in embarrassment. The other runs a rather simple mining drill. The lander's water tanks spilled into the local rilles, forming the planet's only known standing water, which we're rather nervous of due to ground contaminants we detected from orbit, and the rest of the lander decided not to be totally useless and wiped out the local fauna, which is hopefully not too unfriendly. Since these bugs dominate the entire planet, we're expecting them to backfill this area if we don't defend it.

7 hours after "landing"

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Day 1 0h08m22s 0.0515% Change of Shift Sparrow: Our measurements of the sun confirm the 56 hour day on this world. Fortunately, we didn't parachute into one of the local area's mountains and could get Vulture's genius machine up and running within a couple of hours, not quite soon enough to ping the ship before she orbited over the horizon. We'll have to wait until the morning when the planet rotates us under her apoapsis. We're working on transforming some of the softer shred into some hand tools so we can clear the rocks and sediment away from the nearby iron and copper patches. It reads as a tiny, but "rich" copper patch, hopefully enough for us to capture the other primary resources we need. We also have a heavy element patch nearby but there is no trace of fissile isotopes in it (OC: No idea what's going on, but Reactors' uranium produces only stone and gravel. I thought it may have resulted from conflicts with Nucular and Beyond, but it persists after their removal. With Mountains and Hard Crafting installed, there is no shortage of stone, and stone patches have been turned off entirely.) As I finish my shift in charge, I'm handing over to Vulture, who is (mostly) satisfied that I can look after it and Magpie for the balance of the evening before I sleep. Robin has managed to set her femoral fracture and repaired the artery in time so she can probably keep her leg if she can survive at all. Blood loss is a serious problem since Magpie is the only O-type survivor so we can't give her any blood. (OC: I briefly looked into ketsueki-gata and decided to totally ignore it as it is already very inconsistent with my vision for the characters.) The rest of us are working to get some iron exposed for the burner drill.

14 hours

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Day 1 0h16m08s 0.1006% Change of Shift Vulture: Hey, buddie. I wrecked the second axe exposing the wrong patch of copper (the big crummier one to the north), so now I'm getting frowns of disapproval. You know how that is. Fortunately, Robin and I got that enough of that iron patch exposed we could get the Stirling drill in there. I've drafted a couple of designs (OC: Actually Klonan) for using a somewhat better milled Stirling cylinder to turn a crude generator and generate some electricity, as well as some torches for tonight. It never rains or snows, but with a thousand tonnes of water on the lander, that might soon change. Chirp says not enough cosmic rays reach the planet and the atmosphere doesn't have the right electrical characteristics for clouds to ever form (OC: The real science goes by the acronyms INM and CMAS respectively if you want to look it up; there's a book called "The Chilling Stars" written about the former.) It just doesn't seem like common sense, but maybe he's right 'cus there's not a cloud in the sky as the sun sets and it feels awfully wet. Buddie, do you have any idea how hard it is to change a soggy sweater with a full mask respirator on? Once we get the rocks and other junk cleared away from the ores we're looking for, the standard electric mining machine (EMM) should work on it just fine, at least until we start pulling up those nasty lithophores, the effects of which we don't fully understand (OC: SJT Dirty Ore stuff.) I'm handing over to Robin now. Checking Magpie's pulse every now and then as she sleeps. No need to check Sparrow's as he snores like a rusty lawnmower. Robin says gets some sleep because it'll probably get too cold to sleep before we've had our fill. I think she's an M. D. Robin, are you an M. D.? Yes, she's an M. D.. I hope there's a camera recording on the ship's bridge tomorrow. I want to see Chirp's face when he finds out we're still alive down here.

21 hours

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Day 1 0h21m11s 0.1325% Change of Shift Robin: Sparrow's relieving me early, well, not early. He wants to get us on a seven hour rotation. He also wants me looking after my patient. Magpie's blood pressure is holding steady at 75/55 torr, I hope it doesn't get any lower than that. Vulture has figured out how to distill the water so that the contaminants don't get into it, and also has some methods for getting the lithophores out of the groundwater. Too many of them got into the lake water and died, so that stuff is useless. I'm trying to sleep nestled right up to the furnace, but it is getting awfully cold.

28 hours

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Day 2 0h28m40s 0.1803% Change of Shift Sparrow: Our first day on this planet has been pretty rough, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. Magpie is up, Vulture is taking over, and Robin is trying to get to sleep. I finished the burner generator according to Vulture's specification. It also produces enough drinking water for the four of us, so there's that. The kit is still on the cart, though, unusable until we have some copper for the EMM and power lines.

35 hours

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Day 2 0h35m03s 0.2217% Change of Shift Vulture: Hey, buddie. I was trying to get some sleep next to the two wonderful ladies but couldn't get any. Sleep, that is. I spent the night running between Sawmill (what we've named the machine since most of the time it's cutting wood for crates, power poles, and circuit boards) and the copper patch trying not to freeze my smaller appendages off. I moved the Sterling drill over to the copper patch. For smelting, rather than use the iron furnace, I built some new ones. I think Vulture and Magpie crawled inside since it's not running right now. Robin's looking pretty stiff. I'll be staring at the Sawmill trying to get the radio running and building the new electric drill. I don't have anything that can modulate the carrier wave with except the switch to turn it on and off. I know a trick from a few centuries ago that I might be able to use. I hope somebody recognizes it and looks it up, because I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's awake who can actually use it.

Day 3 0h41m51s 0.2667% Change of Shift Robin: Vulture got a bit excited earlier, while he had the snoopy cap on next to that orcish contraption that has mysteriously built everything in sight that looks artificial other than the Sterling drill, first furnace, and itself. No, that doesn't count because it doesn't look artificial, it looks like a bunch of wreckage fell out of the sky and miraculously formed something that approximates a lathe. Not that looks matter, since most of the time I can't see it through the cloud of smoke it makes. I can't wait to find out what they're talking about.

42 hours

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"Captain?" the communications officer calls over to Sparrow.

Chirp floats over to him and asks, "You found them on the surface, Gentoo?"

"Uh," he answers, "I dunno. It sounds artificial. Recorder's in retain already."

Chirp grabs a headset and holds it to his ear.

"...BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEP BEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEP..."

"I can't make out any meaning to it," the Captain says.

"It's possible," Gentoo explains, "that he has an RF carrier generator, but no way to modulate it, maybe no microphone."

"No kidding, there are at least three people on that lander who could build one from scratch along with a dipole antenna and a battery to run it," Chirp grumbles, "It sounds like he's trying to come up with some kind of code."

"BEP BEP BEP BEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP. BEEEP BEEEP BEP BEP BEEEP BEP BEEEP BEP. BEP BEEEP BEP BEP..."

"Hot mike loud and clear, over," Vulture says as he frantically works the switch.

"I can hear every word they're saying on the bridge," Robin says beside him.

"Yeah, I'm trying to let them know that," Vulture responds.

"Can they even hear us?" Robin asks.

"No shit, I can hear the beeps echoing back from their speakers," the engineer grumbles, "They just have no clue."

"Well, what can-?"

"Sssht," Vulture holds up a finger listening.

"Is it them?" Chirp asks, "Is there anything about the signal that can tell us whether it's them or-"

Gentoo hits the microphone switch and transmits down deliberately, "This is the starship Columba. Eagle, if you're transmitting beeps, give us just two if you can hear us, please."

"BEEEEP BEEEEP."

"That's it!" Chirp gasps excitedly.

"BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEP BEEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEP BEEP BEEP."

"No idea," Gentoo grumbles.

"Think, think," Chirp shakes his head frantically, "A long time ago there must have been a time when we could generate a signal but not modulate audio onto it. There should be at least one code from that era. Maybe he's trying to use it?"

"Vulture was a history nut," Gentoo points out, "Maybe he has one memorized already."

"'Bout bluddy time, huh?" Vulture jabs Robin in the shoulder hard enough for her to wince.

"There, I found one," Chirp says, accessing the library computer, "I'm so glad this didn't bust completely in the meteor storm. A, er," he contorts his face in confusion, "Samuel F. B. Morse? Morse Code?"

"BEEP BEEEEP BEEP."

"Sounds like that could be a yes," Gentoo says.

"But you didn't have your finger on the switch," Chirp points out. He starts scanning around the bridge, "Rufus? Hey Rufus, can you check the RF circuits? We might have shorted out our VOX switch." Turning back to Gentoo, he asks, "Do you think you could understand that Morse Code by our next pass over their position?"

"I think I can do one better, Captain," the comms officer answers, "About a hundred years after this stuff was current, this Stephen C. Phillips guy made a Morse Code training website for kicks, we still got the code in some ancient thing called JavaScript just barely advanced enough for our computer to automate. I've started with this translator-dot-pagespeed-dot-jm-dot ...some gobbledegook. That sounds a bit better."

"What was the first thing they said?" Chirp asks.

"Read for yourself," Gentoo points.

"What was it?" Robin asks.

"Columba, this is Eagle, do you copy, over?" Vulture answers.

"Why are they laughing?" Robin then asks.

"The second thing I said was 'Hot mike loud and clear, over.'"

"BEP BEP BEP BEEEP BEP BEP BEEEP BEP BEEEP..."

"Are you getting that?" Chirp asks.

"Oh yes," Gentoo says excitedly, "See?"

"Crap, that is slow!" the Captain groans.

"Vulture speaking, survivors Sparrow, Robin, Magpie. Magpie badly injured. No one else with our group, I doubt they made it. Water tank crashed intact. Find small lakes. That's us, over."

49 hours

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Day 2 0h49m09s 0.3169% Change of Shift Sparrow: I'm glad it worked, what was it, Noyce Code? I'm bad with names. We've reestablished communications, sort of, with starship Columba. I say sort of because we can't transmit voice, and they can't stop transmitting voice. Something on the bridge has shorted a microphone to the transmitters and they can't stop it without killing the whole system and losing their radar and receivers. I've been working on trying to clear out enough of a patch to put an EMM in the copper patch, we're fairly satisfied with the burner drill on the coal for now. Vulture has this crazy idea for turning it into a groundwater pump (OC: That would be the Aquifer Drill mod.) Our next priority will be to try to find some tin and lead for basic electronics.

[featherwinglove]

Day 2 0h56m03s 0.3661% Change of Shift Vulture: Hey, bucko. Managed to get my lab design plugged into the Sawmill just as Robin woke up. It has a proper voice transceiver and directional antenna that should be able to talk to Columba much better than the Sawmill itself. We're hoping to get their help making faster, cleaner, more automated crafting machines. Robin's first job will be to get the new EMM deployed on the rich copper patch. I let the Sterling drill run out of fuel since the EMM capture area includes some coal. Buddy, I'm going to catch my zees earlier this time so I'll be up for the next Columba comm pass this evening. That's two sleeps away with these strange 56 hour solar days and 21 hour working days. I'm starting to sleep on the cart now, something Sparrow started to do a while ago.

56 hours

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Day 2 1h03m00s 0.4133% Change of Shift Robin: Magpie's getting emotional, just repeating the names of the 16 colonists who didn't make it through the entry over and over. Sparrow's having trouble calming her down and thinks I might have more luck. I can see why in his face: he was the lander's skipper and it's eating him up too. I got the new lab deployed and started on the electromagnetic science kits for Automation research (20SL1@5s - Science Cost Tweaker is installed). We have lots of iron so I pulled the iron machine off the line. We can't run the Sawmill continuously or we'll start choking on the fumes. I noticed an interesting quantization pattern in the pollution readings every thirty-two metres. I began marking off the boundaries with gravel from the mining tailings. The cart rolls over it easier as well, so we might want to widen them later.

1 day, 7 hours

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Day 2 1h10m06s 0.4631% Change of Shift Sparrow: I avenged the fallen colonists upon the rocks surrounding the iron mining machine and getting in the way between the Sawmill and copper patch. Now it's mostly a game of waiting for the science kits to come out of the Sawmill while keeping the pollution levels low enough that it doesn't start killing us. Robin moved with Magpie south to the copper furnace row. Vulture and I are staying with the cart all the time now. He's expecting a contact pass with Columba during his shift. I'm kinda tired from beating up on sediment. The sun is just starting to set and I'd rather sleep, but I really want to be there for the first voice contact with Columba.

1 day, 14 hours

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"Hey, Columba, we still got your hot mike, how are you reading us, over?"

"Was that a voice?" Gentoo gasps.

Chirp laughs, "What are you asking me for? You're the comms officer."

"Uh, yeah," Gentoo responds, "Reading you five-by-five. Sorry about the chatter, we haven't been able to open the circuit on this end while still being able to hear you guys. Who is this?"

"Vulture, of course. Who else down here knows how to build a lab with a steerable S-band transmitter using stone knives and bear skins? Say, can you guys give us a bearing on any silicon, tin, or lead we can get to?"

"Sorry, guys. Our radar barely reads the terrain. We could tell you where the mountains are, but not what's under them."

"Well," Vulture pinches his nose, "Can you help us with this automation stuff, then? We're going to need your help running all these machines we're about to build."

"Yeah, about that," Chirp cuts in, "Anomalies are killing our commsats we're trying to get continuous contact with you through. Can you get us some electromagnetic measurements? If you have something that can receive digital telemetry, I can get the part specs to you."

"Go for it."

Day 2 1h17m19s 0.5129% Change of Shift Vulture: Automation complete, going for turrets AT1, buddy (20SL1@5s). Cap'n said he was glad to hear my voice, and rather surprised. I've been trying to stay warm by breaking axes against the rocks on the coal, iron, and copper south of the sawmill. That'll stop for a while now that we have plans for electric AM1s. I have a wind turbine design (OC: Again Klonan; KS Power is the mod, and Torches is its own) but it takes so long to build and can't be made in an AM1. This means we'll be running on Sterling generators for a while. I wish I could say how long, but we need tin and lead for the AM2 electronics, as well as quite a lot of real estate.

1 day, 21 hours

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Day 2 1h24m02s 0.5553% Change of Shift Sparrow: Magpie's BP is up to 110/75, but her counts are down. She couldn't sleep in the cold, so she stayed by the new AM1, clearing jams as it made a bunch of power poles and parts for the three new burner generators. I've asked Robin to deploy those as quickly as possible and get another EMM for the coal patch. By curling up in the cart with the hot intermediates, Vulture actually managed to get to sleep.

1 day, 28 hours

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Day 3 1h31m02s 0.6035% Change of Shift Robin: Handing off to the mighty Vulture now, who has been up and about for a couple of hours. He was helping me push around the cart and thinking rather hard about something. Columba started calling us at the lab as I was finishing up with the coal patch. I placed the EMM right in the middle of the patch, somewhat contrary to my colonist training. This planet didn't have as much of a biosphere during it's noachian catastophe as Earth did, so the coal seams are far thinner than we're used to on Earth, plus the lithophores are not dead in the stuff, we haven't figured out how to kill them, and we're rather nervous of burning them considering what happened to the water. The middle of the coal patch means it'll be a while before they start showing up in our fuel supply. (OC: Everything was set to very low frequency, size normal and richness normal with the exception of water (none), stone (none), and coal (very small, very poor).) We gathered around the lab to listen to the conversation with Columba.

1 day, 35 hours

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"Eagle, this is Columba, how do you read us on normal voice, over?" it's Chirp.

Sparrow answers, "I'd say about three-by. The signal's good, but you sound like you haven't had enough sleep, over."

"*Yawn* Quit reminding me, over."

"Is Gentoo copying? Vulture has a bunch of words for him on trying to locate the primaries we need. We don't have a lot of power down here yet, although Vulture says he can make a radar without solder. I have trouble believing him."

Gentoo comes on, "I thought you were saying something about atmospheric corrosion not agreeing with the wire-wrap method, guys." (OC: That's my attempt at legitimate reasoning as to why Bob's Electronics needs solder in the first tier when we didn't in real life.)

"I don't have time to explain, guys," Vulture says, "I've got a-"

"This pass is just over an hour," Gentoo says.

"I know," Vulture forgives the interruption, "but I've got a massive source I need to manually key up in Seeds teletype for your radar."

"Uh, we haven't got much of a radar up here," Chirp points out.

"I know, I looked at it before I left," Vulture takes a deep breath, "You'll need to do manual tracking on your next pass over our site, which is at your periapsis. We won't have voice because of it, but the short range and synthetic aperture effect will give you reducible data on what we need to start making our own electronics down here."

"Uh, Vulture, this is Gentoo," he sounds rather incredulous at this idea, "We have like zero ground truth for a radar study like that. We have absolutely no idea how to modulate a radar pulse to cut through that sediment and see what's under it."

"Guys, if you set something up there to accept an uplink at Seeds eight characters per second, and let me start typing, you'll have exactly that in about twenty minutes," Vulture assures them, "Once it's up, correct the typos and compile it, that's all you gotta do."

"You tested that code?" Chirp asks.

"Hardly, but I've had plenty of time to desk check it, thanks," Vulture laughs.

"Well, then, start typing," Chirp says. Not closing the channel, he snaps his fingers and says elsewhere on the bridge, "Rufus, you heard him. Get a Seeds uplink to accept at eight characters per second. Vulture, give us SYNs until you get an ACK, we don't want to miss any of this."

Day 3 1h31m09s 0.6043% Start of Shift Sparrow: The rest of the exchange was Vulture's hand typed computer code with the occasional "Break Break" from Columba to tell him they'd lost synchronization and that he needed to type at a more consistent rate. "Typing" isn't quite the right word as he didn't have a keyboard. It was an array of loose wires he was shorting with the dusted tips of the fingers of his gloves.

Day 3 1h38m10s 0.6533% Change of Shift Sparrow: I started working on some more science kits, then changed to another few furnaces and another two burner generators since I screwed up and cut an extra pipe last night. Vulture is going to finish those and return to science kits. I can't wait to get some more automation going on the science kit production, but since we need Columba both to process the science and to keep an eye on the machines while we're doing other things, we need more consistent communications. Then we need more wakers. I'm the one to convince Chirp of that, unfortunately. I'm the ranking RBIIC down here (red blooded idiot in charge; there could well be a blue blooded idiot in charge too, and we probably won't get along if there is.)

1day, 42 hours

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Day 3 1h45m03s 0.7022% Change of Shift Vulture: This landing is starting to look less like a gorram cracked shellshow, buddy. If Columba does her part, we should know where to go for lead, tin, and silicon by tomorrow afternoon. Their radar pass is in the middle of the next night, and should go well if it doesn't frel the poodle. Sparrow tells me to watch my language in the official log, but spud, I haven't seen a potato in two hundred years, so flog that. (OC: The selection of expletives is not for a C-rating, I just want them to evolve. The starship's radar scan consists of opening the MEX in the map editor and having a look around. I'm going to set a timer for 15 minutes when I do that so it isn't too much like cheating.)

1 day, 49 hours

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Day 3 1h51m08s 0.7457% Supplemental by Robin: Columba got a communications satellite running, so we have more consistent communications. They woke up Shrike, their second choice for military muscle on this landing (their first choice was on our lander) They were quite happy with the research communications from our lab and have downlinked a remote-controlled turret design. Our next research project is coming up with a graphite dust lubricant for our cart so it can roll easier and hold more (HSI-1 is 40SL1@5s; HSI stands for Hard Storage Inventory, there is also a series from Bob's Logistics, BLI. This is why I backed off the default player inventory to ten slots.) I've been continuing to clear the sediment off the mineral patches south of where we touched down, returning to make sure the electrical assembler keeps running. I'm going to skip my change of shift entry.

2 days

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Day 3 1h58m38s 0.7991% Supplemental by Sparrow: That cart logistics research just finished, I've ordered up steel processing (100SL1@2.5s). I also deployed our first turret near the generators and will get the AM1 working on more ammunition the moment it finishes. Shrike reports a good downlink to the turret and a good uplink from its camera and motion trackers. With the communications going now, Columba tells us they can support up to six AM1s and six turrets without having to wake anyone else up. Also, I set up the the aquifer drill so we don't die of heatstroke. It isn't safe enough to drink, but it is safe enough to vapour-cool and hose ourselves down with in this awful sun.

2 days, 7 hours

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[featherwinglove]

Day 3 2h06m00s 0.8509% Change of Shift Vulture: Hey buddy, I wasn't about to waste any time fiddling around with just one machine when Columba said we could run six, so I set up a workshop with a bunch of them. Since it's just a random workshop and not a proper factory (which needs some robotic arms and conveyor belts), it's a lot easier for them to look after, i.e. they don't really have to. Also, they can't frobnosticate the machines with no robotic inserters to frobnosticate them with anyway; all they can do at the moment is tell us where and how to kick it when it jams, and they don't need to do that while we're standing right next to them. I added a couple crates to the waste repository, where we're getting an increasingly impressive collection of sludge, slag, mud, and stone. Actually, we're keeping the stone near the copper mine for now. With the bigger cart, it's easier to move things around when we need to. I better hand over to Robin before I run off at the pen too much.

2 days, 14 hours

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Day 3 2h08m17s 0.8673% AUTOMATED WARNING: CART AREA POLLUTION EXCEEDING 1000PPM

Day 3 2h13m01s 0.9005% Change of Shift Robin: I just finished up the factory parts in the "workshop" and packed it up after marking a pollution "chunk" boundary denoting how this planet quantizes its pollution. Since I packed up the lab and made three more, setting off some alarms and wrecking one of my respirator filters by running the Sawmill for too long, we've temporarily lost contact with Columba. Sparrow's going to set up the new "factory" since I'm no good at such things.

2 days, 21 hours

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Day 4 2h20m02s 0.9489% Change of Shift Sparrow: It's the middle of the night now. I looked up and spotted a rather fast looking grey twinkling thing heading east. That might have been Columba zinging by on the radar pass. I have the science and comms factory set up and almost ready to go. It needs some metal and wood to actually start, and I didn't want to turn it on during the radar past, just in case it interferes with Columba's radar somehow. I'm handing over to Vulture now, who knows best about those sorts of things.

2 days, 28 hours

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Day 4 2h27m14s 1.0000% Change of Shift Vulture: Sparrow was worried over nothing, buddy. We can't operate comms on mineral radar frequencies because the minerals interfere with the comms. I got the labs running, well, sort of, right away. We have two machines feeding four labs, buddy, when the balance for the current science project is to have four machines feeding one lab. Science packs don't last very long at 1950K metallurgy experiments I guess (Alloys 1 at 50SL1@12.5s uses them at a fifth the rate because they are much cooler and less straightforward experiements.) Robin's been on the comms chatting with Columba about building smaller, more accurate landing craft for more Earth-like trees and edibles; the ones we brought didn't make it to the ground. I gotta say, buddy, the trees on Dim Kismet put the best hardwoods on Earth to shame. Their corrosion resistance is the secret to solder-free radar and the AM1 machines. We also have only a few days of C-rations, especially the way we're burning calories. (OC: That C stands for Columba and I wouldn't bet they bear any resemblance to the famous historic variety. She is a huge starship comparable to Enterprise from Star Trek TOS in size and tonnage and Homeworld's Mothership in terms of project scope. If the dinky little Apollo spacecraft had its own variety of rations...)

2 days, 35 hours

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Day 4 2h31m00s 1.0287% Supplemental by Magpie: Staring at my own vitals gets boring after a while, so I stole some scrap metal (OC: That's an actual Hard Crafting thing), built myself a wheelchair and went over to the labs. So I was there when the starship called and said they were ready for a new research project. Sparrow's making me fill out the paperwork, yee haw. He's probably in a bad mood after Captain Chirp (yup, he's still the Captain!) overrode his decision to research Alloys and ordered research into a new smaller, faster, more efficient assembling machine only for electronics (EAM1 at 60SL1@7.5s; OC it's Bob's.) The reasoning is remarkably simple: Alloy furnaces require remote babysitting by wakers on the starship and more communications bandwidth than we have available, and Chirp doesn't want to put anyone else on Columba's tattered habitat life support. Electronics Assembly Machines require less human attention from the starship than a standard assembly machine. They also use half as much power, which matters when we have only one coal machine. (OC: The "metal mixing furnace" from Bob's Plates requires a recipe to be set, which puts filters on dumb inserters. It really helps in the early game, but for this story, the intelligence has to come from somewhere, and there are just two basic circuit boards in the set, one for the basic inserter in, and one for the basic inserter out. If you're confused, you've probably never played with Hard Crafting or anything similar, which typically drops two to four things out of your mining machine, only one of which can actually go into the furnace. Basic inserters feeding stone furnaces can get really dumb under these circumstances.)

Ship's Log Date Unknown CR+53 days; message to Eagle from Heron: It took us a while to get the radar data reduced, but here it is. There's a big patch of lead 5.50km directly east of the lake and some iron and aluminum about 1.00km northeast of that. 4.20km west and slightly south is your patch of tin. There is zinc to the south and also 3.30km east of the lead patch. Almost exactly on the southeast ordinal a few hundred metres is rich iron, then nickel and uranium. We picked up a small patch of gold and a larger one of tin on the northeast ordinal about the same distance. Directly north is the best way for tin, zinc and gold, with a huge patch of gold west of the zinc and another massive patch of tin a little west of that gold. We picked up some silver directly west and slightly north of that tin several hundred metres out almost directly on your northwest ordinal. Your quartz is almost 8.00km directly west of the lakes. Nearly as far on your south cardinal is a big patch of rich copper and a little further is nickel and titanium. Sorry, we didn't find any cobalt and the radar can't pick up oil and lithium. (OC: 10m tile assumed.)

2 days, 42 hours

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Day 4 2h34m00s 1.0511% Change of Shift Robin: I spent most of the shift working on tools and stuff. I'm not really into the heavy labour like the guys, especially when I'm trying to be a medical doctor at the same time. I did get some crate wood started in the free machine and steel for some new axes. It's hard to believe they use up nearly three times as much iron (OC: That's because Bob's steel needs only two iron plates. With the vanilla recipe, they use over six times as much iron as an iron axe.) It's pretty obvious we need a second machine on the iron patch. I guess I should be clear: the major consumer of iron is the cores for the science kit electromagnets. The science kits for the steel research used up 200 iron plates. I made a bunch of conveyor belt too.

2 days, 49 hours

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Day 4 2h41m13s 1.1038% Change of Shift Sparrow: I got the second iron patch machine running. It's bloody frustrating that I can't get Columba's help with the metal processing back end, but at least the burner generators are simple enough that I don't need to ask them. I don't mean to be a washtub over it, but of sixty-eight thousand people left, they can't find someone to help us with a couple furnaces? Life support jam, I know, but it's frustrating. I'm still following orders; I just hope I can't get court marshaled for venting in the colony log. I almost got the common fuel box for the burner generators set up. I'm handing over to Vulture, that'll probably be the first thing he does.

Day 4 2h46m53s 1.1471% Supplemental by Vulture: As much as I support Sparrow, I'm not one to rock the boat when it's the Columba. And you know how how bad a shape she's in, buddy. So I didn't bother to answer the research complete call and just configured the labs for iron armor (20SL1@2.5s). Magpie picked it up before I got there anyway. I've been expanding the coal mining system as it is pretty obvious one machine can't keep up with all these burner generators and furnaces. Once we start picking up those contaminants, coccophores or whatever, we're going to be in deep crap for fuel. We need to start thinking about military operations pretty soon. One thing about this planet that is really whacked is the dust tellurobismuthite, which I think is coming from the lead deposits (We already knew Dim Kismet had some strange mineralogy.) With it, I'm pretty sure I could get our torches to generate electricity. (OC: Not a real prerequisite actually: the torches generate electricity whenever they're on the power grid. It's really cheaty and I've been avoiding it this game. By putting a vanilla lamp and Klonan torch next to a small power pole, the light will generate so much more illumination than the torch, the latter is hardly noticable. My IC excuse for doing that, since the uranium patches are broken, will be using the faux uranium as thorium for lantern mantles. There's no point in mod code since the stuff that comes out of the uranium patches is indistinguishable from ordinary stone. It's an "honour system" mod, which is how Pollution Damage started life a couple of weeks before I actually coded it. As for the "coccophores" vs. the "lithophores", the latter is correct, Vulture is bad with such terms. Both terms are based on the "coccolithophore", the algae type that makes limestone in real life. Unlike these lithophores, they die when they're done. The whole lithophore concept is just an IC rationale for SJT Dirty Ores.)

3 days

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Day 4 2h48m28s 1.1599% Supplemental by Robin: The armour just came in. Columba has asked us (well, Captain Chirp just plain ordered us) to help them with some experiments into electrolysis (E1 from Bob's 40SL1@7.5s) in order to get some more habitat life support running on board. As of right now, the tech is totally useless down here and we're really anxious to get going on the research we need for electronics, which includes study of the behaviour of the tin/lead alloy system in this planet's environment. I think I'm starting to make up for Sparrow's marketing fail on the automation idea. I just picked up from Vulture, who set up extraction robots on the iron ore furnaces anyway. It doesn't need much care from Columba as we were looking for a solution to keep the slag from topping the crucible without stopping the furnace, which is nearly always the problem we see when we come by for more iron. I'm not much looking forward to the expeditions we're going on to fetch tin and lead. There are bug hives in the way and we're pretty sure they don't like us.

Day 4 2h52m00s 1.1881% Supplemental by Robin: The electrolysis experiments are done and we finally have the go-ahead to research alloy processing (50SL1@15s). I'm working on the EAM1's for an automated circuit board line Sparrow's about to set up. I deployed the sawmill some distance south so the air around home stays reasonably clear.

3 days, 7 hours

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Day 4 2h55s03s 1.2127% Change of Shift Robin: Sparrow's taking over now. We were up in the north chopping some trees some distance away from our landing site. Our readings show they're good at absorbing our pollution, so we want to keep the ones around home plate until we have a more permanent solution. The fauna haven't been bothering us at all yet.

Day 4 2h56m40s 1.2255% Supplemental by Sparrow: Alloy processing just finished in research, we're working on steel armor (60SL1@15s). I'm nearly done setting up the circuit board factory, hoping to squeeze the basic electronics stuff in north towards the UT patch later. I'll also be building two more workshop AM1s for ammunition, turrets, and anything else we need. We're out of crates again and the sixth machine will soon be needed for the circuit factory's wood.

3 days, 14 hours

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Day 4 3h02m02s 1.2680% Change of Shift Sparrow: Columba's starting to complain about a science kit drop off. We just need the iron for other things at the moment, will for a while, so they'll have to make due. They've gotten quite adept at looking after the science factory from orbit and rarely call us to it except to complain that it's out of iron, like now. The circuit board factory is ready to go online. It has a 400 BCB output capacity, which is overkill. Once we have basic electronics in production, it will also have a 400 BEB output capacity. I'm handing over to Vulture as the sun starts to go down.

Day 4 3h04m23s 1.2858% Supplemental by Vulture: Ah, frel, buddy! We just hit that contaminant layer on the overlapped coal sector between the western coal machine and the copper machine. I moved the latter to the south so we stopped getting it there, but the junk is getting into our western fuel crate and I can't stop it. The contaminated coal literally will not burn! That is so not cool.

3 days, 21 hours

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Day 4 3h09m16s 1.3235% Start of Shift Robin: I had a chance to study the lithophores a bit better now that we have a growing stack of contaminated coal and coal dust in the fuel bins. Upside is that the lithophores don't spread in the mined material once it has been pulled from the ground. The downside is that they transform into nearly indestructible spores which armor themselves with something that resembles glycoproteins except that they use tellurium and bismuth instead of sugar, and yes, they're in the air. And yeah, there's some bloody strange electrical interference which comes off the torches as a result when they're in service range of our electrical grid, which can probably used to derive a small amount of usable electricity (OC: Actually Klonan's bad code; don't panic, he's the PR guy not a core dev and the API apparently doesn't have a more straightforward way to do a burner lamp yet ...although the burner assembler makes some light and doesn't have that wackiness (shrug).) Cracking these spore shells isn't going to be easy and may involve modulating the process with scanning electron micographs in real time. I have no idea how advanced our domestic electronics are going to have to be to pull that off. (OC: SJT Dirty Ore processing machines are so insanely expensive I considered, but decided against, changing the recipes of the first tier machines to something more accessible.)

Day 4 3h10m20s 1.3318% Supplemental by Robin: Steel armour came in, I ordered Logistics 1 mostly for conveyor tunnels (40SL1@7.5s) and started on making the steel armour for all of us and our cart immediately.

META OC: That'll be it for ten picture posts, the rest will be eight picture posts, one per 56 hour Dim Kismet day. Let me know if you like the story, and especially if you'd like the screenshots different (e.g. zoom distance, location, alt-info, etc..) It won't be too long before the factory gets too big to capture in one screen at the current parameters, and my current plan is to capture where it is currently growing, which will cause the location to jump around a lot going forward. I'm really curious in readers' opinions on this approach. In comments, don't be scared to drop into character for the story and let Chirp, Gentoo, Shrike, Rufus, Sparrow, Vulture, Robin, Magpie, and the other 68230 Columba survivors know that Earth still cares. ...that would be despite Columba being a few dozen light years away and several hundred years in the future, but hey.

[featherwinglove]

3 days, 28 hours

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Day 5 3h16m22s 1.3794% Change of Shift Robin: I just watched as Sparrow built two more ammo bins for the cart, along with a few more of the scout rifles we landed with (OC: I'm against Hollywood and comic books taking such license with ordinary handguns which can't hit much, even in professional hands, beyond about fifty metres, or five tiles. There are "handguns" like the Fireball and Center Contender, but those aren't ordinary handguns, more like sawn-off rifles. Recently revealed history trivia: according to James Files, the former was used by the grassy knoll shooter on JFK with the .223 Remington cartridge between when the piece and the cartridge, .222 Remington Fireball were invented.) I have some turrets and ammunition on the way. The tactical briefing was reduced to texting via the Seeds protocol to save signal strength for research and remote operations front end, and because the satellites have limited battery power on the night side of Dim Kismet.

"Sparrow, it's Shrike. Forrgive any typos, I'm still a bit groggy from the cryosleep."

"I hope you're not when we start heading out to secure our solder primaries."

"That's not for another twelve hours, so don't jump the gun."

"What? Would the Captain court marshall me?"

"No, you'd be too dead for that. Another thing you'll need if you want your turrets to work is a comm relay between the high gain science communicators and the turrets; it's a relatively simple tweak of Vulture's radar design. Start by just building one of those."

"Okay. Is there a tactical part to this briefing?"

"Yes, you'll want to set up your aft turrets to cover forward turrets from attack. The forward turrets will lock up on the enemy spawners and be unable to retarget before they're destroyed. The bugs would then be able to attack them with impunity, unless you have other turrets in range of those but not the spawners able to cover them. Got it?"

"Yeah, anything else?"

"Yes. The boresight procedure for sighting in the turret cannons. You start by inserting the optics cartridge..."

It starts getting really boring from there, so I'll end my log now, handing off to Sparrow. The full transcript is available if anyone's that interested.

Day 5 3h19m12s 1.4028% Supplemental by Sparrow: Got the logistics in, ordered up Chemistry 1 on the way to basic electronics (50SL1@7.5s). One turret finished so far; all the finishing work still needs to be done in the Sawmill, which is on the southern edge of camp and has the remote transceiver. I'm looking after the one or two workshop AM1s at the center of camp much more directly, which are building gear packs and ammunition.

3 days, 35 hours

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Day 5 3h23m03s 1.4343% Start of Shift by Vulture: Buddy, it was sure scary waking up in the middle of nowhere in the trees north of camp. I thought they'd gone on campaign with me still asleep, but no, Sparrow just needed more wood for crates and stuff.

Day 5 3h23m24s 1.4370% Supplemental by Magpie: Chemistry research related to basic electronics finished, and there are no other hurdles to researching basic electronics, so here we go. (60SL1@7.5s)

3 days, 42 hours

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Day 5 3h30m02s 1.4899% Change of Shift by Vulture: We got a go from Shrike to proceed east. He said to go that way because there was an inconclusive return signal for tin on the way to the lead, which may either be nothing or a tiny patch that could tide us over until we have more advanced technology to go west with more ease. We're outnumbered some twenty billion to four down here, so I'm all for that, buddy.

Day 5 3h32m50s 1.5132% Supplemental by Robin: While we were trying to get through the trees to go east, the research for basic electronics came in. Going for basic military (20SL1@7.5s). We also got a frantic call from Shrike saying he couldn't detect the radar-derived relay to control the turrets. We're heading back, but I'm going to grab some wood first.

Day 5 3h34m38s 1.5276% Supplemental by Vulture: Robin is still on, I got her permission for this entry, buddy. Basic military research is done already, and Columba beamed down a sub-machine gun design we're reasonably sure we'll never use because we can drop outriggers from the cart and get a turret deployed in less than two minutes. If the bugs can close two hundred metres that fast, it's not likely any handheld weapon will do us much good. I got onto research with basic electronic radars (50SL1@15s) which should enhance the communications fidelity of the existing set, even if it doesn't help it as a radar.

3 days, 49 hours

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Day 5 3h37m17s 1.5480% Change of Shift by Robin: The radar sagged our power grid when we put it online, we're working to get four new generators deployed, which is hopefully enough. It demands a lot of power for the current size of our base.

Day 5 3h40m36s 1.5742% Supplemental by Sparrow: We're finally starting our trip east, the first target, if these bugs are hostile, is a nest we're pretty sure wasn't there after our crash cleared the area. From six hundred metres away through binoculars, the place looks like a crawling horror out of one of those awful movie from centuries ago. Spaceship Groupers or something like that. I think it has Denise Richards, Arnold Swartzenegger, Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana in it. I dunno, I haven't watched it since before cryosleep and it's a blur. Maybe several movies run- Pizdyek, the real ones are hostile. Casso! (OC: These are the real f-bombs in Russian and Italian.)

IIV COLUMBA CR+54DAY DIM KISMET COMM RECORDING 53:51

Eagle FLE Vulture: "Okay, buddy, that's the fourth advance from the tree line, we got something sticking out of the ground. It's sho- (impact) Ow. Yeah, it's shooting at us."

Columba GNY Shrike: "I don't have range on it yet, row them up again, please."

Eagle CDR Sparrow: "Frel, guys! How close do you need to get?"

Columba CDR Chirp: "Camera view's crap; motion sensors help with the smaller ones, but the stationary ones. Uh, yeah, looks like a consistent hundred fifty metres."

Eagle CMO Robin: "That's it? Hell, I could get the lady jane and pee that far!"

Columba COM Gentoo: "Got color. Looks like the computer sorted out the lab stuff on the radar project."

Eagle CDR Sparrow: "Helping with the range?"

Columba GNY Shrike: "Eh, errrr... Nope. Keep moving."

Day 5 3h43m01s 2.1719% 55b/3s/1w Supplemental by Sparrow: I got the wreckage from the hive cleaned up. There were four structures, one of which shot at us and the other three of which were apparently stationary hives or queens that sent out the little biters. Two of those were extremely tough and just soaked up bullets from close range. The worm (thing that was shooting at us) did considerable damage to two of the four turrets we brought. I picked up 26 small orbs, 39 big ones, 4 green ones, 5 blue ones and 4 purple ones. It looks like they might be good for something, so we're going to stash them at home. We're leaving the two undamaged turrets here, going home for some more ammunition and some repair kits.

4 days

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Day 5 3h45m54s 2.1948% 55b/3s/1w Start of Shift by Vulture: Logging a bit late, buddy. We've been back at base for nearly an hour, trying to get some more ammunition, repair kits, and a couple more turrets. Iron is getting difficult. We decided to research color camera enhanced aim, a "BD1" (bullet damage for 100SL1@15s). Shrike figures it'll enhance our accuracy but not our range.

Day 5 3h50m59s 2.2363% 55b/3s/1w Change of Shift Vulture: One thing we need, buddy, is another mining machine and generator, along with some fuel. Should be good for sediment axes. Then we're heading east again, buddy. Looking forward to that lead; hopefully we have enough ammo to reach it.

4 days, 7 hours

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Day 5 3h54m57s 2.2682% 55b/3s/1w Supplemental by Robin: We're about to engage again, looks like a much smaller outpost this time, and much further east than before.

Day 5 3h56m51s 2.2827% 55b/3s/1w Supplemental by Robin: That little outpost turned out to be the 'burbs of a huge hive. We're trying to go north around it now.

Day 5 3h57m56s 2.2908% 55b/3s/1w Change of Shift Robin: Going around that big wall leads to a pretty solid wall of small outposts, and it's getting dark. We're heading back to camp, leaving our four turrets in a quad formation. Columba can operate them, but situational awareness information from them will be pretty vague.

4 days, 14 hours

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Day 5 4h00m46s 2.3127% Supplemental by Sparrow: The accuracy upgrade came in, a similar project has been ordered by Chirp for rate of fire (BS1 for 100SL1@15s).

Day 5 4h05m04s 2.3474% Change of Shift Sparrow: As the last rays of the sun over the western horizon say farewell, I'm handing off to Vulture with no additional poetry. We need more turrets, more ammo, I think one more mining machine; we're probably going to deploy another iron machine. I just finished another batch of crates, too.

4 days, 21 hours

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Day 5 4h08h54s 2.3787% Supplemental by Vulture: It doesn't mean a whole lot, buddy, but I just found that the southern edge of the iron patch, where I just set up our third iron machine and put us just over pollution in that chunk, has a sliver of rich iron ore. This will help us some.

[impetus maximus]

you should really resize your images. holy bandwidth batman

[featherwinglove]

I gotta agree there's a problem there, but it is hard to shrink the images. I can reprocess them for lossy compression and keep the resolution, but then it gets harder to see what's going on if you display them full size. Reducing the resolution makes it pretty much impossible to understand them, but maybe that's not a problem. I don't really know because I'm not a reader. There are two reasons I'm hoping to hear more about how to do the screenshots. The first is to get the best screenshots for readers of the story: are you guys looking for details or context? Do you go directly into the high-res versions as I'm imagining or maybe just a few of those are needed? Do you like alt-info? That last one's a bit of a clincher since the resolution barely allows seeing it. Also, I'm going to have warehouses in the not-too-distant future, which have huge alt-info logos that will be much easier to read at low resolution while the small ones will just obscure things (that's mitigated by the color and shape coding of the machines around the edge, so you'll be able to tell what kind of machines they are and the interior details will be lost by lack of resolution anyway.) I'm also interested in how often you guys like the screenshots, currently 8 per day, and anything else along those lines.

Second reason I like comments on this story is that they'll dilute the massive story posts. I was starting to get like "Oh, crap, I better get some meta comments 'cus this thing is going to be pretty ugly with ten story posts on a page with a total of ~320MB of image files!" I was starting to consider spamming the thread myself with little messages so each page would have fewer story chapters.

[impetus maximus]

there are plenty of free image hosting sites. imgur comes to mind.
you could host a lossy, smaller thumbnail here, and link the image to the outside host site with the full rez image.

[featherwinglove]

there are plenty of free image hosting sites. imgur comes to mind.
you could host a lossy, smaller thumbnail here, and link the image to the outside host site with the full rez image.

My Imgur's already maxed out, and most people use Imgur's own embed functionality, which would not solve the problem in this case. The other issue is that processing thumbnails from the original screenshots takes time away from writing and playing, which is why I'd rather figure a way to get satisfactory ones straight out of the timelapse plugin. It would take a little Lua hacking, but I could make one big screen cap per day with the other seven being much smaller. Individually, they're not that big, only about 5MB each; the real problem is loading like 40 of them at once. If we get enough non-story comments, then I can start spreading the story out along non-story comments via post editing. Is that an idea? I do have another, see my next comment

[featherwinglove]

"Metabolism 2," he hears, "he's decent on electrolytes and metabolites, temperature and BP coming up nicely."

"Signs on VOs are looking good: Kidney and liver function, ECG good," it's another voice, "Should be gaining consciousness any moment."

"A moment ago," he slurs, "Doctor, um, I was expecting Robin?"

"Technician, actually," she says, "Puffin. Do you remember your name?"

"Kea," he opens his eyes, blinks a couple of times, "How long?"

"We're not sure, actually," she says, "It's been a hundred forty-two Earth days since we reset our clock, and the cruise was a bit slow. It's about 2744AD, give or take about three years."

"How can it be that uncertain?" Kea asks, "And why isn't this my recovery room? Where's my family?"

"The last question is the hardest to answer," Puffin sighs, nodding the other technician's dismissal. She floats out of the relatively dim and cluttered room; several of the lamps have no bulbs.

"Oh, shit," Kea closes his eyes and puts his head back on the pillow after that look around.

"Yeah, it's pretty bad. A previously uncharted dust belt moved into our approach vector with the target star. No one's exactly sure how many hits we took, but we'd take one, and then right as we stabilized our situation, we'd take another. Sometimes salvoes, and sometimes we weren't anywhere near stabilized from previous hits when we got into new ones."

"So we don't have gravity because we lost propulsion?" Kea asks. He was expecting to be woken during the latter portion of the mag brake phase. He was clearly expecting to hear that Columba had sailed past Dim Kismet out of control and unable to stop, which would be consistent with the timing of his waking.

"We're pretty much out at this point, yes," Puffin explains, "But-"

"Mind if I take over? You've got plenty of other people to wake up."

"Yes, Captain," Puffin says, turning and monkeying off the handholds and footholds around soft barriers to other recovery areas.

"Captain Chirp," Kea says, "I was expecting to be briefed by my department head."

"Your promotion is the good news," Chirp sighs, "About the only good news I'm afraid." The Captain hands him a cloth.

"Puffin told me about the dust cloud," he nods, "How bad is it?"

"Awful," Chirp sighs, "You're now Fourth Officer, head of department landing systems design and operations." The Captain hands him a cloth.

"Design?" Kea gasps, confused not only about that part, but the cloth he was just handed.

"Yes," Chirp explains, "There's no gravity mostly because we woke you up behind schedule by nearly a year. We're orbiting Dim Kismet, barely, trying to use the mag brake against the particle belts to lower our apoapsis, and against the heliosphere to raise our periapsis; we're more interested in the latter right now, but we'll be more interested in the former once the periapsis is closer to a more ideal radar and thermal emission spectrometry altitude."

"So, the propulsion system is in pretty bad shape?"

"Yes," the Captain affirms, "We have little left besides the mag brake and two of the fusion reactors. We lost our antimatter, so there's no getting the other four started; we're supplementing with some solar collectors to help with passive thermal control of the only habitat sector that's left. You're on the other side of the ship from where you were expecting."

Starting to understand why he was handed the cloth, he asks, "What sort of damage to the cryogenic quarters?"

"That's the worst news," Chirp sighs, "You know we set out with a crew of 144000. There are 68239 left; about 44 are awake, going up to 80 with this batch. Four are on the surface, including Robin, your family doctor."

"My family?" Kea asks.

"You're the only survivor," the Captain whispers, "I'm sorry, but there isn't even much left to bury. Your kids' quarters took a direct hit from a forty gram projectile that got through with about thirteen hundred kilometres per second left on it. The rest lost their cryogen supply and were warm and vacuum for about six months before we could access that section. The Navigation department has a similar story. We lost every one on the chain of command between us. I woke you up early because you're a landing systems expert; among other things, you're the guy who got the official opinion on the Columbia crew's behaviour corrected a hundred years after that Wilson guy tried." (OC: That would be this story's author, who thinks the SCSIIT got just about everything wrong regarding the decision making process of the STS-107 crew members in the 54 seconds between when contact with Columbia was lost and when they lost consciousness. This correction is likely to have made the difference between Eagle having four survivors and none at all, although it probably wouldn't have helped the crew of STS-107 because their entry LOC survival equipment was just plain inadequate.) Chirp grips his shoulder, "We don't have anything to land with right now."

"Captain, I'd like to get started as soon as I can," Kea says.

"I think you need more time to recover," Chirp warns.

"So do I," Kea says, wiping his huge microgravity tears, "But I'm not quite sure how it's all going to hit me. I think I need to get back to work earlier and maybe have a sick day or two to spare when I need them."

"I'm okay with that," the Captain smiles.

"Where's Doctor Robin?" asks Kea about possibly the only person he knew personally who is still alive.

"On the surface."

"What?" Kea gasps, "You said we lost all our landing systems."

"As you know we started with twenty-four master landers," Chirp explains, "We put twenty people and the seed equipment pack into Eagle, the one in the best shape. Four of those made it, including Robin, and they have an in-situ equipment station on the surface."

"So we have some seed equipment?" Kea asks.

"Not much," the Captain sighs, "but the other three survivors are Magpie, Sparrow, and-"

"Vulture?" Kea gasps.

"How did you know?" Chirp asks.

"Because if I had the choice of a team of four to start surface operations, it's those four," Kea cries, "There is a God."

"Do you think you could get more down there soon?" the Captain asks.

"Probably not soon enough," Kea says honestly, "The first thing we need to do is assist their automation. They need to build a factory down there."

"We're waking up as many people as we can for that," Chirp explains, "We have them helping us with a research program on the surface. It's helping us with our habitat life support."

"Even for landing systems, I need an atmospheric research program," Kea says, unfastening his bed restraints, "An atmospheric lab and research pack. Does anyone have a start on that?"

"No," the Captain says as Kea starts floating up having unfastened the last microgravity restraint.

"I need the atmospheric-"

"Wait, where do you think you're going?" the Captain says to the disoriented waker as he starts floating above the bed unable to grasp anything.

"Don't worry about me falling down, Sir," he says, pulling on a pair of cleat boots that materialized seemingly out of nowhere, "I need the details. Oxygen?"

"Er, 18%, partial pressure is 12kPa," Chirp rattles off, "They have partial compression respirators."

"Anything strange?" Kea asks.

"Rock-loving microbes in the ground, apparently related bismuth/tellerium spores that allow them to generate a little power from their torches," Chirp sighs, "Something odd about a noachian disaster that buried every mineral of interest in impassible muddy mountains."

"Goodie," Kea gets his footholds and figures out which way to go, beckoning the Captain to lead him.

"Speaking of which," the Captain inquires, "We have two men and two women down there. If it got that bad up here-"

"Nope," Kea answers instantly.

"I'm not finished," Chirp says, "Do you think they can restart humanity down there, I'm asking?"

"Not a chance." Kea explains, "Sure, we had just three couples after Earth's noachian disaster, but we've got over five thousand years of Sanford-Carter genetic deterioration since then. The concentration of damaged alleles in individuals is the scientific reason why incest is bad."

"Good thing I woke up a landing systems expert," Chirp smiles over his shoulder.

"Har har har."

[featherwinglove]

I just want to put up another lightweight post before my next image-heavy post a couple of hours from now.

[featherwinglove]

(OC Note: I'm posting every other screenshot taken; please let me know in a comment if you'd like to keep getting all of them. Please let me know if someone else has already because the more non-story posts there are, the faster the images will load because the fewer there will be on each comment page.)

Day 6 4h11m21s 2.3995% Change of Shift Vulture: The rate of fire thing just came in; we're going to continue with that for now, as we need all the firepower we can get (200SL1@30s).

4 days, 28 hours

MuddyAtu_04_12_00.png (3.02 MiB) Viewed 13625 times

Day 6 4h19m01s 2.4599% Change of Shift Robin: It's getting easier to stay warm in the night with all these machines around, although with the noise, pollution, and pushing the cart around with hundreds of kilos of various stuff, it's getting hard to sleep. The sun is coming back up. I pulled the dirtier of the coal EMMs off the line as the fuel builds up.

ERR: MAP IMAGE NOT FOUND (Note: Omitted to save communications power - Chirp)

Day 6 4h26m13s 2.5205% Change of Shift Sparrow: I'm hoping to get our war preparations ready for getting that lead out east well enough that we can get it before sunset today. It's hard to say with that much fauna in our way. As impressive as our turrets are, they actually miss with most of their rounds. We're hoping to improve on that. (OC: The idea is that each individual round reckoned in Factorio is a burst in the story.)

4 days, 42 hours

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Day 6 4h30m42s 2.5557% Supplemental by Vulture: Hi buddy, thanks for the BS2. Captain Chirp asked for my in-situ air compression study, hoping it'll help patch up habitat life support aboard Columba (60SL1@10s). Everyone's up now and we're going to keep pushing east. Magpie's going to stay at the radar to help keep the Columba downlink intact for turret and factory control.

Day 6 4h33m04s 123b/4s/1w 2.7633% Change of Shift Vulture: Hey, buddy, you ever hand off base command to a medical doctor in the middle of a firefight? Gotta go, still busy running around with autocannon turret kits, and this "all-iron" ammunition is much heavier than I'm used to. (OC: Vanilla magazines have 10 rounds per magazine while Bob's Warfare magazines have 25.)

ERR: MAP IMAGE NOT FOUND (Note: The imaging satellite was pointed the wrong way - Gentoo)

Day 6 4h35m36s 335b/13s/2w 4.4572% Supplemental by Magpie: Air compressor studies complete, science is off for the duration of today's action. Which won't be much longer the rate they're going through ammunition. The little tin patch has been confirmed, but there is a lot of blyat between them and the lead.

Day 6 4h37m00s 399b/13s/2w 4.4676% Supplemental by Magpie: They've pulled back and are resting. There are about 1400 rounds left per turret for four turrets, of a 10,000 bin capacity for this turret type and ammunition. They're exhausted from running the turrets and ammunition around. Shrike and Harrier aboard Columba sound pretty winded as well from operating them. They are staying put until shift change, not least because Vulture took a hit from one of the worms. It's just a bruise under his armour, but it sounded like hell over the radio when it happened. Also, not least because the generator fuel supply is depleted and we're about to lose control relay power. We're configuring for research into greenhouses (40SL1/7.5s). We can't use it yet on the ground 'cus we have nothing to make glass, but Chirp is hoping it'll help habitat life support up there so we can get more wakers, and the AM2 automation (160SL1@3.8s) is too expensive and unusable until we get the solder elements.

5 days

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Day 6 4h40m01s 4.4845% Change of Shift Robin: Okay, that was weird. Sparrow and Vulture confirmed that strange torch electric effect by wrapping a dusty cable around the head of the torch, connecting it to an inverter, and running an AM1 on it. It ran like molasses, so it took about three hours to build the pair of electric poles, but yeah, that's the dangdest thing I ever saw. We're leaving the torch here with a ramp of coal to keep it going for the night. It won't be "powering" anything, but it should provide the turret cameras plenty of illumination for targets should the bugs come out to play.

ERR: MAP IMAGE NOT FOUND (Note: I dropped it. I'm trying to find the memory chip in the ventilation ducts during my off hours. Not for the image, but we won't be getting any new memory chips for a while! - Kea)

Day 6 4h49m03s 4.5455% Supplemental by Sparrow: Robin forgot to do her change of shift report, but now is the time the greenhouse research came in. I've taken research off the line to concentrate on ammunition.

Day 6 4h54m00s 4.5829% Change of Shift Sparrow: Columba keeps reporting skuttlebutt at the near eastern defense station. I just got the spawner in sight. These bugs are awful setting up that close to our turrets.

ERR: MAP IMAGE NOT FOUND (Note: The satellite wasn't reprogrammed to capture the action, so there are no interesting changes aside unless the romantic subsolar point on Dim Kismet's only few lakes counts. - Shrike (OC: There's a mod for that, but not for Factorio :p))

Day 6 4h54m58s 4.7721% 416b/14s/4w Supplemental by Vulture: The outpost had two worms and an armoured spawner, the former hit us a few times, but this armour's tougher than it looks. Sparrow, with some help from Columba's remote gunnery team, deployed the cart turrets and politely told the bugs what it was and where to shove it, buddy.

Day 6 5h01m08s 4.8200% Change of Shift Vulture: Hey, buddy. A fourth mining machine has been deployed on the iron, giving us the ability to feed four ammo machines (one of which was pilfered from the science factory. We're starting to really pile it up, so we're going to put the science machine back, and go after that next level of assembly machine (160SL1@3.8s).

[featherwinglove]

OC Meta: Gangsir's Supply Drop seems like an appropriate way to allow Columba to help out Eagle base, but is currently not installed. I'm nervous of changing this well-tested modpack as well. It seems most likely that if all the characters die, I'll probably restart the game on a different seed and hack in the researched technologies. Unless, hopefully, it happens after Kea has figured out how to land accurately. Then, depending on how accurate I think he is at it (which may result from flying something in KSP), I'll edit the PC to a new spawn and basic kit. It may involve some scan commands, because Mountains doesn't work in the editor (or I might fix Mountains so that it does.)

I've played well beyond where I've uploaded story (continued writing the story.) Where the game is at right now,

Sparrow

is dead. I lose a character whenever I get killed in the game, however, multiple reverts in the same battle, or period of two shifts (14 minutes), whichever is shorter, will not kill more characters.

To keep the loading times under control, I need to mix up the image-heavy story posts with light ones like these. I haven't been getting enough feedback to do that, and don't want to spam my own story thread with low-effort stuff for just this reason. Please let me know if you're following the story and would like to see more.

[olafthecat]

This is amazing.
How many hours of work have you put into this?

[featherwinglove]

This is amazing.
How many hours of work have you put into this?

Thanks. It takes about double the time clocked in Factorio to write the story and post it here. That's just over four hours to how much story is posted so far, and 59 for the story log I've written past that point, which I'd probably embellish with some more background pieces like ...do I have Kea's wakeup? Yeah, Kea's wakeup is on the thread. There's a shorter one for

Sparrow's

demise. One advantage for the loading times is that fewer of the big screenshots show progress as the game goes on, which means each post will have fewer of them if I can get back to uploading these. That means this first page will be the biggest load. As for why I'd want to embellish it with some more background pieces...

Day 106 3d22h37m01s 74.8663% 48551b/1189s/970w Change of Shift Gallus: Brought power to the ammunition factory. It looks great on the satellite, eh? Well, it might once someone brings it back over here. And once we've got all the primaries filled; someone forgot about the sulfur.

Day 106 3d22h44m08s 74.8793% 48551b/1189s/970w Mid Shift Shrike: Um... forgot to move the satellite. Anyway, I'm at home plate gathering wood for the ammunition plant, which is working on the little bit that we had on us. The greenhouse system at the western outpost is far too busy to supply the ammunition plant, and the ammunition from it will use up very slowly. It's more of an investment than a consumable. I also stuffed the SK3 system with ECBs, like, more than we've ever put in at once before. It should last through tanks I think.

Day 106 3d22h51m09s 74.8793% 48557b/1189s/970w Change of Shift Shrike: Now we have a fully powered and lit ammunition factory running for the night. Check it out. (OC: Actually had Oh The Larceny "Check It Out" stuck in my head, in which there are twice as many lyrics "I'm gonna light it up.") Military 3's just about done, switching to Tanks for 240SL3 as soon as it does.

OC: Get's pretty dry, no? In case anyone's curious, I did learn of "Check It Out" via Dude Perfect's chuck glider trick shot video, like just about everyone else know knows of it. The song made me think of something else entirely.