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Part 1 Hostile Fulgora Start

Introduction :

The journal of the ship was damaged during the crash of the emergency shuttle , the following story therefore contain some of my best approximations to fill-in the gaps to try and recall how things ended up so bad. It is generally admited that the amnesia about previous life is due to a an abrupt stop of the cryogenic process. It is unclear what caused it, but it must have been pretty massive because there is no sign of the intergalactic ship that was carrying everyone from Earth to Centauri 3.14 anymore, the famous Winged-guitar. That's all i can recall , but that seem a weird name for a spaceship so i may still be under the influence of the impact, I will make sure to correct the details as soon as i can remember them more clearly.

This is a modded playthru, with custom settings, if you want to have a look at the modlist, i made a save of the initial state, syncing mods and settings with it and launching it allow to get the seed and all the details similar :

1) The landing :

Roughly speaking i landed in area that looked like this :

There is strong smell of ozone ( O3), and lots of dust, it doesn't look like Centauri 3.14 at all, everything is in ruin, even far from the crashsite. I could read some old signboard on the tower we almost crashed into with some robotic translator, and that's how I learned the planet was called Fulgora by what seem to be its "previous" inhabitants and that the tower was a lightning attractor. It also quite rapidly appeared that i had luck in my bad luck, regarding landing next to one of those, because this planet has very short day and night cycle, too short for a proper night of sleep, and they are very noisy, thunderstorm are raging continuously. And this little tower protected me from those after i realized that the lightning storm were deadly. The respawning machine function pretty well, but it's still painful to get zapped as you can imagine so i tried to avoid it as much as possible for when exploring the surrounding to see if there was someone else that survived the crash. Allowing myself to venture in the unknown until around mid day, and then running back to safety to be there at night.

Despite this slow process, i managed to find another of those "landmasses". Not that you can't walk elsewhere but it's slow and sticky. Those landmasses seem to be the only places really fit for constructions. And the previous occupants left tons of junks, iron, copper, circuits, some shiny rocks i haven't been able to identify yet, stuff that burn quite well, and even some ice. Which with the food reserve from the ship will probably allow me to survive there indefinitly. ( There's probably enough food in the ship for several lifetime, if you like dehydrated powder, so i'm not going to mention those anymore, just consider that everyday i get a good snack ).

2) first operations

Located just south of the previous island, as you can see in this updated aerial view found in the shuttle archives, it was probably taken seconds before impact and may help locate the location in case a rescue team is sent to help me, i attempted to join the other islands surrounding the crash site and updated the image to fit the current island developements, but only the one immediate south seem to have a "Vault" and significantly more "scrap" than the other islands i could walk to during the limited day time. Some of them have more lightning collector, allowing me to stay the night there, but everything around me seem to be in the same state of ruin so i didn't pursue the exploration any further and instead tried to see what i could make from the scraps available to try and help my situation.

Here is the initial setup : It doesn't produce much science like 10 to 15 per minutes, but it is still enough for me to remember how to do things like modules or engines. I do not drink the science packs by the way, it's just the best shape to keep knowledge for know. I don't know what that says about my previous life before the crash and i prefer not to think about it. It took me a bit more than an hour to get there by manually making everything ! I think i was always lazy, i don't think that's new but sometimes when i get something going, i forget about my lazyness. I try to make it better, and better, and it doesn't feel like an effort anymore. I guess it also helps when there is little need for manual intervention, because then my factory works when i "think" and importantly, the result of the factory's production doesn't depend on the effort put into the "thinking" process.

With more handfeeding and handcrafting, i went ahead on this very tiny space, to try and get to blue science. Scaling up to this size when reaching it : Around 40 science per minutes, with some manual intervention required to tansfer some material in the module-making assembly. Getting the first few quality and speed module forced me to increase accumulator numbers. Around 11MW of average electrical consumption. ( a bit less than 3 hours ingame). I am recycling the excess material like blue or red circuit that would otherwise jam my system that only require copper and iron plate and a little green circuit.

3) blue science

This planet being covered with oil makes it quite easy to get the blue science going. I am craving for logistic bots at this point. This is almost 4 hours into the game and it is my next research. Walking on the island is getting difficult, it is necessary to "remember" the places in which a player can squeak thru, and i had to change some module to make sure i have enough electricity or ressources for everything. At this point the science per minute is closer to 15 than to the previous 40 although it is not very stable.
Now maybe you don't care, but if you are following closely the story, you may start to wonder now, why "hostile fulgora start?". That would be a very appropriate timing to introduce the radar outposts. Yeah because the hostility doesn't come from the thunder. It comes from what they discovered on the map. Here is a radar outpost :
They do not work all the time, mostly at night and during the morning, but with 15 science per minutes, i don't really need a fast uncharting. I only occupy a single island. And luckily enough it also seem to be the only place where radars didn't find any "alerting presence". You can have a look for yourself :

4) first troubles

Funny eh ? so many little red dots all around the pollution cloud. Well it's not all that bad though, because the exploration also allowed me to find another survivor. I did not understand well its native langage though and the communication was difficult but we could easily agree one thing, the red dots were to be avoided as much as possible. Don't get me wrong, we're not coward, we tried to see what was there and if you are really curious, or just scrolling fast, you can also get to view what we saw there :
Death, death and more death, depending on how many attempts you make to recover your original body you may end up with a fierce collection of pistols too if you attempt the same thing !

With that in mind it appeared necessary to try and leave this planet as soon as possible. This is because there is no way to make military science from scrap. This planet has no coal. Any more time spent on this planet would increase the strengh of the hostile forces, while we can't increase our military power. This lead to the rehabilitaition of the crash island :
Now connected with robotport to the scrap island, the pair is allowed to launch the first few rockets in orbit to create its first platform. With the aim of not only making the space science, but also sending back to Fulgora some carbon to make the military science, thru coal synthesis to make grenades and explosives.

The next part will be about the first steps into space

5) The first platform

After 7 hour of game a week being stranded on this planet, i'm proud to present you Adventure, hopefully, my ticket out of this planet.
Copy blueprint

It's very slow and tiny, just fitting for my current 17 research per minute when using "space science", it has a turret, but it's not necessary, there seem to be no dangerous asteroids in the orbit of Fulgora, probably they were all removed during the crash of the shuttle, like a reverse Kessler effect or maybe it was the previous inhabitants of the planets who only left little chunks of ressources whoo knows x). It doesn't even need repair packs and was enough to unlock the heavily missed logistic robots !

It can be used to get carbon on fulgora and thus military science. But plans also include making purple science, and the space is the number 1 constraint at this point.

Part 2 Space beginnings

6) Military science from Space carbon

Thinking the first platform in orbit as synonym of space travel was a rookie mistake. I got over-excited. First because a platform, to move , need thrusters. Then because with thrusters the platform moves, toward things that hurts the platforms. Which means it needs defenses. But without any coal in Fulgora, my defenses are quite weak, or rather very weak. No military research could be done, and it may have caused the death of the remaining crew members from the original Winged-Guitar, or maybe it's the respawning machine that's broken, i never knew how this one worked so i couldn't tell but i noticed i had to do the work all alone when it comes setting it up :
Not everything is documented in my notes on the journal's entry for this date, but it mention something about holmium, related to this picture. I think it was taken when it was first put to use instead of being a shiny rock in a chest. It turns out that it has good electromagnetic properties. It's not helping my military for now, and it doesn't appear it could serve in Fulgora for this purpose even in the future. This because local droïds and replicators seem immunes to electricity that keeps falling on them. Probably rockets could help, but the coal supply is so low, it has to be used in grenades for science, to research rocketry first.

Defender capsules were used at this stage to recover the many bodies left during early imprudent exploration and get a some breathing room around the "safe island" while trying to think of a strategy to continue.

7) Logistic & construction bots

Taking advantage of the robots as much as possible, those do not slow down for the muddy ocean, therea are some occasionnal casualties from lightning storm, but as the saying goes " this is a sacrifice i'm willing to make". Maybe you spotted modules were relocated on the crash island before EM plant were available ,that was to make room for more recyclers and accumulators and also the lubricated engine, rocket fuel and bot assemblies :
Yes those are not fast, there is just 1 machine of each. But i'm not fast either, i needed time to set up a contraption that would use any quality of ice to make water, and setup recycling logic for solid fuel overflowing, concrete too at this point, and a little logic to make sure logistic bots would be added overtime when needed, but not too fast to not drain the slow trickle of ressources.

Science is around 17/ minutes, researching "Vulcanus". Someone told me it was a shit hole even worse than current droïd-infested, lightning storm-covered, sandpitty planet. And that i couldn't even reach it from my current location. It sounded convincing,i didn't paid too much attention to astrology when i was younger, and i don't have a star map just yet, but i wanted to be sure. Legend has it that Vulcanus is a military planet, and i need military in this hostile world. It gave plenty of time for :

8) Purple science & Elevated Rails

No i'm kidding, i didn't do that part, i was busy doing the military alone without any help. It was done by the astronomer in the team before getting zapped by a droïd during a failure of the respawn machine. Long story short, there is no more astronomer in the team. It was put back into cryogenic stasis, what was left of it anyway. We need a doctor that's also a puzzle expert now.
This was built on the north east island with "some" ressources, the early science was manually transported to the lab island, once there was enough to research elevated rails, and then first thing was to then transport the purple science using those. You want more details ? like was it annoying ? yes, did i got hit by lightning and died doing so ? yes, more than one time ? yes, could have this been avoided ? yes , do i have a good explanation ? yes one last rethorical question ? no, the explanation is quite simple, i was distracted by what's located in the top right part of this picture :
It's my first :

9) First auto crafter

Not "first first" as i never attempted this before. First on this planet. I think before the crash my job was related to this. I mean there must be a reason i was in a spaceship flying to Centauri 3.14. Maybe i was a circuit board engineer ? It felt natural to me that the first locomotive could be made during the time i would be laying tracks. So again i naturaly started to make an auto-crafter, it would do wagons too. It didn't work at first, i realized when i was laying tracks for the purple science, remember i said i died a lot ? That's the explanation right there, if you don't know how to get a new pistol : lay some tracks, stop in the middle of the muddy ocean with your attention caught by a bot ballet , look at the auto-crafter from map view to locate the source of the ballet, DO NOT MOVE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE MUDDY OCEAN, this is important, otherwise you may end up in a safe area for the night and you wouldn't get zapped and wouldn't get a free pistol.

Anyway this is the result :
Copy blueprint

It's difficult to estimate how much time it took to make the first locomotive, due to the different ways of counting time, and jetlags, but in standard Fulgora time, this correspond to around 12 days since the crash, although in Earth time that would be 12 hours. This is around 10 times the legendary "1hour30minutes" from the famous kid song "getting on track like a pro in 1:30". I guess i'm not a pro, or i'm not on track. But the auto-crafter "worked" well enough for the locomotives considering the "little amount of time" i could put into it with the pressure from ennemies and beelining space coal.

The blueprint shows a pair of pairs, where the left machine makes the "more advanced" good, and the right machine its ingredients. The upper pair is configured to try and make 10 locos and 10 wagons, while the bottom pair, some assembly machines bulk inserters refineries and other things that will be needed later i suppose. This is because knowing my system is not super efficient "yet" when changing recipe i give lots of time to prepare in advance. Further improvement would require not making things like "green circuits" in the right machine, because they could/should be made in foundries. And maybe not making any intermediate that is already in the network. Those are things to get distracted by when laying tracks

10) Space map update :

All of this happening while researching at the pace of 17 science per minutes eventually allowed for the discovery of a planet possible to reach from Fulgora. Astrolomers would probably want to confirm their predictions, so here is a map of our space quadrant, according to the data from the probe Tserup
Now i can confirm that if you research Vulcanus before Nauvis or Gleba when starting on Fulgora you feel like an idiot.

11) First "ship"

Obviously this space map is meant to be explored, there must be some other remains elsewhere. And obviously "Adventure" needed an upgrade for this purpose, with thrusters. But without any military upgrade this was risky, and coal was slow to come from orbit , so at first some attempts were made to have the ship leave Fulgora, and fly a little away, and go back before the bigger asteroid shows up. Just to gather more chunks from "moving" while hoping to not have to face too much damage. Slow process.

And there was this annoyance that the ship was going "full speed" at the beginning of the trip. So i made this little logic so that "only when the ship is moving somewhere" => start a clock that count up to 60 and restart. when the clock is above 59, some fuel is pumped into thrusters. This means only 1 tick per second. The aim here is to reduce the speed to what is deemed "safe". The clock would be counting up to 120 and fuel sent when above 119 if the speed was too fast. And when the military upgrade increase. I would just start fueling when the clock is above 58 or 57, to double or triple the quantity of fuel.

This is how it looks :
Copy blueprint


I feel ready for space, but i'm not, i could leave, but i couldn't return if was to. You got the riddle ? I can make a hint, it's called droïds. I don't know why everyone keep saying "biters", they are "zappers" to me, on Fulgora they don't need to get close to you to kill. And yet they are coming close to me see :
I feel like something need to be settled before i leave for potentially long time. Like some sort of defense perimeter. Plans for the future !

Part 3 Agitation in Fulgora

12) Landing pad Island

The relief, one may even say excitation, of finally getting access to rockets lead to grand ambitions of reclaiming land in Fulgora. Using defender capsule when possible to save on the coal, it was possible to extend the safe perimeter a little further than it used to be, in what would turn out to be a MUCH LENGTHIER THAN ANTICIPATED process deemed necessary to establish a reliable autonomously defended Fulgora BEFORE leaving it, just in case the first exploration end up a disaster, one need a back-up plan !

This is what it ended up looking like after few hours of fighting :
The arrow point at this train area with the landing pad :

13) First train interrupt experiments

This is supplied in electricity potentially by the very large island south of it, connected with big power poles, making it a viable island for a lot of robot traffic. It would serve as a testing ground for what could be done with those trains "interrupts". The goal being to have a single unload station on the spawing island, for a single train, to save on space. And it would fetch either "space science" or "carbon" or "iron plate" ( cuz why not ) coming from space, and delivered from the landing pad on the other island.

As seen on the previous picture, there are 3 different load stations, one for each dedicated ressource ( because the landing pad island is big ). The unload area is represented by a heart in the schedule, because that's where the train love to be But when the quantity of any of the aforementioned ressources drops below a certain threshold, then the train is "interrupted", and tasked to go to one of the unique station for loading the needed ressource that interrupted it.

This can be done by reading the quantities in logistic network from a roboport, filtering the signals, and sending to the train from the train stop, those quantities. The priority given to space science and then to carbon and then to iron plate in the list of interrupts is also the train's priority when coming back from the landing pad island.

this was done using a schedule like this :
Here is a blueprint of a train having such schedule/interrupt configured already :

Copy blueprint

14) Unload station and more Autocrafters

It is impossible to share the blueprint of the unload station without sharing also part of another little new thingy :
It may be not obvious what you are looking at, it's a bit messy, there's not much room in there, a single robotport is used to read the logistic content but without negative values ! as this would mess up the further logic a decider combinator was added to it. And such "only positive values" signal feed is used to determine where the train should go to pick up space science, carbon or iron plate, but it is also used to tell the newly built Electromagnetic plants which modules to build, or other products, accumulators, beacons, substations and more EM plants ...

This shows the settings of the train station (not its name) , roboport , and 3 Electromagnetic plants configured to make differents modules and different quality of infrastructure building as i used them in game, with some hardcoded value and others dynamic. Not a perfect system, a WIP one from a real game.

Copy blueprint

15) Electromagnetic Science Packs

Electromagnetic plant required Fulgora's science, but at this point it feels like the research is unstoppable, and i can't build fast enough what i'm unlocking even though it's around 15 science per minute x). This part is called 15) but it's a lie, it was done in remote view, during the previous steps of reclaiming land, and testing the logic for the train interrupts which took a bit of time. It has a small footprint and felt easy. Here is what it look like considering accumulators received an uprade in quality, when i didn't know what to do with all those extra quality materials that keeps sprawling ? overflowing ? just being everywhere at this point.

15) Yellow Science and Quality Red

The next logical step i felt was to "upgrade" the robot frame production to divert part of it for robots production and most of it for yellow science. Given the current bottleneck for coal, preventing getting the most desired techs faster, which by i'm refering to more military uprade for the ship, and possibly for establishing the much needed defense perimeter.

It also appear that in light of the amount of quality materials present in the logistic network, creating red science from uncommon material would be possible for quite a while, or even sustained and would allow to use the regular iron for steel, more needed for red ammunition and train rails in "normal quality", here's how it fitted :

16) The loss of the Spaceship

The plan was to transform all red science production into higher quality, and also the the green, but unfortunatly this was interrupted by some more attacks from angry droids. Relentlessly exploiting the gaps in the island they managed to destroy a few chests, prompting me to focus turrets buildings in those areas, or attempting to do so with gun turrets of various quality, to see what could kill the intruders before they could commit any offense. The first attempts were unsuccesful, physical damage at 80 % was not enough to repell them without loosing a few turrets, so it was decided to use "uncommon ones". It was decided too late to do so in retrospect.
See because now it's well defended, but there is no nore spaceship to defend. Believe it or not, it's one of the reason for the interruption of the journal, some of the archives needed to be transfered from what could be recovered after the raid of the droids. Not everything was destroyed though and the remaining parts of the spaceship could find some use i figured maybe a second platform could help to gather carbon more effectively.

This is further made necessary because if "Adventure" is to travel away from Fulgora, the carbon would stop dropping from space and no military science could be researched.

17) The second platform and improvement on the first

So this was made :
It is only looking for carbon, and ignore ice and metallic asteroid chunk, plans are to make it a nice platform attached to Fulgora later.

While adventure got an upgrade for more cargo, to make it easier to settle on Nauvis, "eventually" some day x):

18) Science pace update => Last 10 hours, 17 per minute average

It's not much but what do you expect from tiny bases on island, attacked by droids while having to deal with scrap and quality things ! I'm happy it's almost steady Despite the variation in demand of raw material changing and the different quality levels available for science. As you can see i'm researching mech armor, which drains stone for wall, for military science, and wouldn't be possible to research if i was also consuming purple science, which require stone for rails and stone for stone brick of electrical furnaces. It's quite the strategy to make sure there's always something to research, not overbuilding/underbuilding labs. And looking at the stats and buffers to understand what's going on before it is a problem, but rather when the trend of "increasing" or "decreasing" changes.
Journal says : 26 hours days in Fulgora already !