The von Neumann Thread

[Zengief]

Story
John von Neumann is a son of a bitch. I can say that now.

I am sure that back in his day, it all seemed pretty simple. Sure one robot builds the next and they exponentially conquer the galaxy/universe/whatever. What he didn't realize was that anything able to build the infrastructure for interstellar travel while simultaneously dealing with hostile natives was going to have a conscious mind. Consciousness ain't so easy to build. That's where I come in.

The ads back at home made it seem so easy. "Make money, have robots do all of your work, all professions and types wanted." They didn't say that my ass would be out here all alone for the rest of my days. I mean... I know that my body isn't here, it is just my brain downloaded into a robot or whatever, but you think they could have given me a little company. The worst part is that I don't know if this is the first planet I have done, or if I do every planet. There must be others, but more on that later. It sure feels like the first one. I had to learn how to do everything, but for all I know, I could be the only one who answered the ad.

And let's not forget the bugs. Apparently they conquered the galaxy before us. The promotional video made them seem like they would be a good source of food. They didn't mention that they were the size of a fucking horse and extremely ill tempered. Strangely enough, the sea bass are good food.

This planet wasn't so bad. Lots of rich deposits. Sure you had to walk a little sometimes, but there was plenty where I landed to get started. I think some guy named cube sent me here. If nothing else, it gives me small comfort to know that I am not alone. He had mentioned that trains would be good. Well I ain't no god damn engineer. I am patient. I managed to cobble together one little loop to go get iron. It was looking like I would need to do copper also, but fortunately I was able to suck the nearby fields dry and have just enough.

Next planet is going to be better. I am going to set the next person up (since it could be me again). I scanned through a number of planets. I found one that is very rich in resources. Except coal. Apparently the biter cities (yes you heard that right) had a bit of an industrial revolution at some point and used up a fair amount of the coal. There is still a lot of oil intact, so I recommend that the next person making a beeline for solid fuel production. Whatever happens, don't fuck with the biter cities. I found a small opening, (probably and old waste site) but they are all around. Fortunately, I think the latent effects of their civilization has made them flabby and docile. And I am including this message to make sure the next person is slightly more prepared than I was.

Zengief Out.


Instructions

1. Use the map string given by any previous person in this thread. HAHA, you are all stuck with mine initially.
2. Start the world
3. Advance to interstellar travel (Rocket Defense)
4. Link to/quote the original comment with the map string so we know where you started from.
5. Snap a pic or two to let us know you actually finished.
6. Post a new map string for the next person. To find it, generate a world you like, save it, and on the load save screen it has the option to generate the string for you.

Optional

• Add story. It shouldn't be optional, but whatever. I will likely cross post links to stories to "Show Your Creations" since this is kind of a combo thread.
• Dictate what mods must be used.
• Be nice. Start them next to a huge iron patch and lots of open ground.
• ...or be a dick. Start them in an endless forest surrounded by biters. If anyone completes it, it will make for a good story.
• Add more pics (mid progress, action shots, the next planet's landing site, whatever)
• Post midway through your build. Just remember that the only time you can post a new map string is when you complete Rocket Defense.

Link to Original from cube
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 955#p44955

Pics

Complete

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Complete

Final Base Layout

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NEW WORLD

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Starting Area

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[Dutts]

I awoke with a fuzzy head, couldn't focus at first. That's not unusual though.
I just needed to work out if I landed or just another night on the Bitter Rum....
Looking around, my eyes finally come into focus. Nah.. another mission. Oh well.

After a minute or so I walked around. Quickly coming to my senses. Bitters. And a lot of them.
Bloody Zengief. Puts me down right in the thick of it. Sure, there's a great abundance of raw materials here but next time he might as well scope a bit further out.. oh well. I've been on worse.
This is going to take some time. Damn, I'm gonna need a chainsaw for this lot. Wont run out of wood too soon.

Next report, if I survive the night in 24 hrs
Dutts

[Dutts]

Mission Status Report:

Howver Zengeif got promoted to mission breifing and location posting after his last effort is beyond me.
This landing zone is frantic. Breifing report says "Abudant raw mats, well located and established" Yeah... located next to the highest concentration of biters in this sector!.

And he must be a greenie too. Tree hugging, leaf loving hippie greenie. I've gone through three steel picks already. The last one broke on a biters head as i ran outa ammo. Luckily I made it the the northen boundary wall for the turrents to take him out. Can believe the first twenty red labs I had went on getting steel pick tech to chop down these bloody tree. Big, blocking, biter nesting trees... everywhere.

Progress has been good albeit I've established red lab but no green lab and all red-only tech is researched. Too much time having been spent on defending and building the northern boundary. Perhaps not the best location for research but its the closest clearing I've got. Plus, I should be able to lob some rockets and poison into the nests from the wall

Wall creation plant established, totally undefended in south but no biter activity there.
Whilst mission breif said passive local fauna, certainly not the case. Attack waves are constant but managable. Just cant walk around at night lest a stray picks up my scent and invites his mates for dinner... with me being the main course!

Mission Progress Update Summary:
ETA - unknown
Survivability - one recall used so far
Completion rate - slow
Tech - lagging and disjointed
Moral - motivated by fear of death

Signing off
Dutts

[Zengief]

Dutts, I am loving the story so far. Amazing. Keep it up. Do you have any pics of your base as it stands currently?

Regarding the biters attacking, I set it to peaceful. When I load from the exchange string, it loads as peaceful. Did that not work on your version?

[GewaltSam]

Fabulous thread, please continue!
*grabs popcorn*

P.S. Sometimes, especially with your storytelling, Factorio reminds me a bit of The Night's Dawn Trilogy, don't know why that is

[Dutts]

STATUS REPORT: Biters Control

The sheer amount of biters is having an issue on providing a regular report an update. (Please direct all mission compliance breaches to Von Neumann, he dropped me in the middle of the this s*^t).
Northern side of base suffered numerous proximity attacks and breaches. 'Hostiles status' still maintains passive readout in manifest however perhaps these bugs have caused there own bug to our reporting system.
Nonetheless, I've secured the base and pushed back minor nest to safe distance and can protect passively with defense systems.

INJURY REPORT: Medical readout supplied suggested a grade 2 MCL tear in left knee, No doubt incurred from excess sprinting from biters. Prognosis: Delay in regular reports.

TECH Report: All lab up and running, Tech level reached sufficient to complete mission.
Factory layout: not my best design but functional, power issues resolved.

Mission Progress Update Summary:
ETA - largely unpredictable but too bad
Survivability - two recalls used so far
Completion rate - medium
Tech - completed
Moral - bloody knee hurts like a bitch... and of course no med robot. I mean why would we need to incur the expense of a med robot if they are passive biters.

Signing off

[Dutts]

Satellite Online - I had to hotwire the upload. This may not work.

[Dutts]

MISSION COMPLETED: .... too tired to talk
Biters swarmed ... lasers kicked in....

Full report pending.
Base extraction requested.
Large axe for von Neumann requested.

Signing out...
Dutts

/sigh

[Dutts]

I don't believe it!
I haven't even been extracted back to the home world for some R&R and Von Neumann bashing and this bloody company want me to upload a forward post to a new sector already. Apparently they've released a new patch and want some monkey to launch themself into uncharted territory.
I guess I can't complain, I did bitch n moan about the poor drop location.

Location Report Summary:
Well there won't be too many biters, in fact, I hope you can drive the silly car or tank as you'll need it
There's a single nest not too far directly west of Water, I suggest an early assault before it expands.

Resources are there, albeit not perfectly located.

Stone is a real concern. There is a small pocket to south and anotehr buried in the trees. Next deposit is NE and a bit of a walk.

Coal is central to medium drop zone but huge deposits to north.
Multiple start parameters available. Water based start area has copper and iron literally next to each other. Oils further out but grouped.
Large copper and iron also located well to north. Pump in some water and you could just start there.

And yes there are some trees, but not like our tree loving groupy VN.

Good Luck:
Dutts signing out


LAUNCH PARAMETERS LOADED....
DESTINATION MAPPED....

Objectives: repeat VNT

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[thegreyman]

Mission status report:

Looks like I've been activated to start colonization of another world. It's good to know they need my expertise, but bad to think many of the other seeders haven't been getting their quota in.

Initial landing points are promising. Resources are plentiful, although coal may be an issue. Apparently, Upstairs has sent down a decree that some landing sites have become too crowded and they would like to see some specialization so new areas can be added in easily. Therefore, I'll be building separate Foundry and Assembly plants. Luckily the biters appear quiet here. I'll need the room to expand.

More reports soon to follow.

(I'm going to build a distributed base that creates the plates in one location with ore dropped off from trains, and ships the plates to an assembly area. Resources to make science packs have to be shipped elsewhere for research as well. It always makes nice huge bases that are harder to defend if the biters get mad. I'll try to stay away from logistic robots if I can... but that's what I say everytime. )

[GewaltSam]

*makes more popcorn*

Thought about some multiplayer protocols at some point?

[thegreyman]

Mission Update:
End of the first day:

Base building is progressing well. The minerals deposits near the start are quite rich and promise to allow extreme growth. The Foundry and Assembly plant have their initial sections created and the Research Outpost is almost done. Several trains are deployed to move materials between zones but many others still need to be constructed and programmed. An extensive Power Plant is slated for the morning as is developing the Oil Industries.

Biter contacts are still low/non-existent. There was one radar anomaly earlier as a train sub-routine reported damage but no damage was found when investigated. Perhaps a Biter wandered too close to the tracks and was squished? No matter, alien life here is abundant and one creature will not be missed.

If possible, I will try to use the recording portion of my transmitter.

Big day tomorrow, time to sign off.

[thegreyman]

Mission Update:

Snapshots incoming....................100% downloaded.

Overview

Basically, it's the Foundry in the south, Assembly Plant is in the north which delivers the resources by train to the western Research Facility. I've started construction of the full Power Plant in the east, along with a refueling station for any trains that don't go to the Foundry. Trains all go clockwise.

Foundry

A small setup right now for the Foundry. It'll expand more to the east as demands go up, although I might just start a new Iron line instead.

Assembly

Beginnings of the Assembly Plant. Most complicated thing created right now are the blue inserters, although that will change quickly as oil gets developed.

Research

The Research Facility set up for all 4 packs. I'll likely add another 10 research stations as I need them. I have the green inserters on the input of the train red-wired to the chests on the output of the research train wired so they will only fire if I have less than 50 of that resource waiting to be processed over here.

Extra Note: Another random damage note on a train near the power station while taking these images. I'm hoping that the train is somehow clipping a tree, otherwise there are biters wandering around away from nests.

[thegreyman]

Mission Update:

Systems Critical. Rerouting power. Subsystems inoperable. Realigning backups.....

Wow. The biters must have been irritated by the deaths of their friends. There was no warning, there was no small wave to precede the horde. I didn't approach any of the hives too close to set off this attack, but they came for me.

As near as I can pierce together the records from the beginning of the attack, it started with that one miscellaneous blip. Several hours later, a massive wave of biters swept down on the base hellbent on revenge. They tried to track down one of the trains and if it left them too far behind, they started attacking anything they could reach. So, I suddenly had damage indicators screaming for attention across the entire south eastern area of tracks and another swarm that was attacking the train near the Foundry. While I cleaned the few from the south east, the big cluster of them finished off the train and went berserk wrecking the Foundry.

It was then I realized I made my greatest mistake. I was so lulled by the biters passivity that I hadn't built any defenses or even stocked up on advanced ammunition. It took me several minutes of frantic building of ammunition and turrets before I was able to finish the swarm off and by then they had almost completely gutted my ability to produce any plates.

I guess I should have done everything according to the company procedures and placed defenses strategically throughout the area even though the biters were docile.

I won't be making that mistake again.

[thegreyman]

Mission Update Incoming:
Looks like that one swarm of Biters was an aberration. I spent quite a lot of time setting up defenses, only they were never tested again. Ah well, I'm sure when the colonists begin landing, the biters will begin attacking in more force.

I was forced to expand the Power Plant much larger than expected. Apparently, the advanced Generators that I'm used to were discarded from the Companies files and I was unable to reach the efficiency levels I'm used to. It seemed to work out fine however, as the armaments industry I normally produce wasn't needed.

Nevertheless, another planet has been seeded.

Done

Initializing Scanning Procedures............ 109,267,012 planets found.
Habitability Scanning Commencing............ 520,589 planets found.

Optimum Landing Sites Discovered.

Well, I've done some discovery for the next seeding flight. It looks to be an outpost set on the edge of a desert. The initial landing point has good resources immediately around it with massive amounts of oil pooling on the surface. A small but strong nest of biters is just to the south, and they are confirmed as hostile.

Good luck, I'll be on the beach...

Next Mission

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[Phillip_Lynx]

Picking up the flag .... landing with new gear .... awaiting communication link to report progress ....

[edit]
Uploading Videolog ......
More to come in some hours
[/edit]

[edit2 ... Out of character]
If you do not want to watch an german lets player talking bad english, I will also post here my pics and story without need to watch me struggling with spoken english
[/edit2]

[Phillip_Lynx]

Hello Command Center,

I have started the colonization but the danger did not come from the south. Attached is the first picture with my defenceline and some gruesome layouts.
Also I hope you have recived my first couple of videologs.

[db48x]

Picking up the flag .... landing with new gear .... awaiting communication link to report progress ....

[edit]
Uploading Videolog ......
More to come in some hours
[/edit]

The video log is great!

[Phillip_Lynx]

Thx,

and I promise to continue it soon. Unfortunatly the RL kicked in and distracted me from recording more (or even playing games).

[db48x]

Thx,

and I promise to continue it soon. Unfortunatly the RL kicked in and distracted me from recording more (or even playing games).

That's not so uncommon!