(The Planet Crafter)
(Chapter 02: Building Houses and Pressure)
After a few minutes of break and a bit of a look around out the hatch of the Drop Pod, Sommen figured he had the housing plan in mind.
So, this area is all right as a start, but it is not stellar by any imagination. Too rocky and craggy, not a lot of room for expansion or large construction, which I will probably have to dabble in some time in the future. So, I'll build myself a basic station here and when I find a site later more suitable to expansion, I'll think about doing a primary base of operations.
Basic building, basic setups, Sommen forced himself to keep his mind on nearby goals. I will start with a two-wide basic habitat block, and a door. Because getting in and out of my habitat might be useful. I don't have access to a teleporter yet, so mark-one legs are how I will have to get in and out. The Planet Crafter activated his construction menu and selected the living compartment listing, and found it to require two units of Iron and one unit of Titanium. The former he could find easily, he knew; his adventure in finding materials for the construction chip required passing by iron. The Titanium he would have to do a little hunting for, he had not come across any so far but from his old chemistry classes in high school he knew that Titanium in a raw form was mostly gray. The door to the habitat would require silicon, titanium, and iron, meaning two modules plus a door would be a grand total of five iron, three titanium, and one silicon. Easy enough for him to accumulate now that he had extended inventory space.
With a last check on his air supply, Sommen was out the door of the pod and on his way to find the needed material. Silicon he came across a bare two minutes out the door of the pod, and the build gun extracted it from its partially sunk spot easily. Farther south from the pod, Sommen stopped to grab another chunk of ice and three chunks of iron. Headed further south (maybe? Sommen wasn't completely sure of direction since he lacked a compass), he came across two more units of iron and up a hill nearby the canyon wall he caught sight of a lumpy gray metallic mass — a pass over it with the build gun identified it as titanium ore. Down the adjacent side of the hill from where he climbed, Sommen easily found another unit of Titanium and several more in easy walking distance — all told, in the space of roughly sixty minutes he had the resources he would need for the build. Rather than gamble on learning the Build Gun's build functionality in a hurry, he decided on a quick jog back to the pod to refill his oxygen and plan out where to build.
From what area he had seen so far around the pod, flat buildable territory was a bit thin, but his best bet so far was nearby the pod, just hang a left out the door and down the landing crater edge was a decent-sized flatland expanse. So, with a sigh and a hope that he could figure out the build process fast enough, Sommen ducked out the door again and made for the flatlands at a decent jog speed. Ten minutes from the drop pod, Sommen switched the build gun to build mode and activated the build menu, then selected the living compartment module. Once selected, the build gun immediately projected the build shape onto the ground in hologram form, and a little waving of his build gun positioned it just over the proper piece of terrain he wanted it at. A click of the trigger and the build gun atomized the necessary iron and titanium, then reconstituted it into a sizable and surprisingly well-made cubic building. Another selection of the Living Compartment option, then he waved the gun over toward the left side of the first compartment and the build gun aligned and locked in the second module (1) to the first unit. A click of the trigger and it was assembled in roughly 90 seconds.
On trying to select the living compartment door, the build gun would not lock in the option — he had the silicon and iron in his inventory, but he did not have Titanium. "Sonofabitch! I only picked up two Titanium, not enough for the door! Where is some?" Sommen quickly looked around the area and spotted a chunk of it only a few minutes jog from the base site. "There!" he turned and made for the material, and once at locale he easily claimed it with the resource collection function of the build gun. A short jog back to the new structure and he was able to select the door for construction this time. He placed the door on the facing aimed roughly toward the Drop Pod on the right-hand living compartment, then clicked the trigger. Sixty seconds later, he had a door and was able to walk into it with a smile.
"I'm home!" Sommen said to nobody in particular after he entered the living quarters. Immediately his oxygen gauge on the suit HUD refilled to full, meaning the living compartments had enough internal power to maintain their own atmosphere but he knew they could not generate enough power to do anything more meaningful than that. And, most critically of all, Living Compartments like this were standardized, sealed units: they would not contribute to the necessary atmosphere generation that he would need to terraform this rock.
"So, now that I am home, what do I want to do next?" Sommen started scrolling through the build menu, and decided that while setting up a bed, a table, and a chair would make the place comfortable, his first goal would have to be setting up shop here so he did not need to rely on the Drop Pod as a build station. And that meant a Craft Station Tier 2 (Silicon and Iron) and some permanent storage for materials (one iron per storage container). So, after a moment to enjoy the new and much more spacious accommodations, Sommens stepped out through the door and into the wasteland again looking for three iron and one silicon.
Silicon was easily found a handful of meters outside the new base. Iron he had to go around behind the Drop Pod to find two of the three chunks needed, and on looping around the front of the pod he came across a third Iron, putting him in business and ready to go, so he jogged back to the base and inside to do the setups. In the same fashion as placing the habitat modules, he selected the storage container option and his build gun immediately snapped the container to the ground of the compartment — and the container was locked into a micro-scale grid that he could see the placement hologram moving in 'clicks' around the compartment as he tried a few locations. He settled on two containers on the front wall of the second room, the same wall facing as the door but in the second compartment, as the two containers consumed most of the floor space for that wall facing.
"If I'm going to expand, I'll expand off the back wall for more rooms," Sommen thought aloud about the placement of the next rooms and the crafting terminal. He looked closely at the door and realized that the hologram for the crafting terminal was not snapped to a grid, it free-placed but would not violate a wall or the door. The new crafting terminal was sized perfectly that it could fit in the corner next to the door, so Sommen aligned it and placed it. The terminal was created after 60 seconds of the build gun chewing on it, though the terminal never activated. A look at the information panel for the terminal told him enough: "Device unpowered. Figures."
Back in the build menu for his build gun, Sommen found his answer quickly enough: wind turbines. The power output on each was pithy, only 1.20 power units per wind turbine, but construction cost was also pithy at 1 unit of iron per turbine. Think I'll start with four, I'll need the power and more before this is done, Sommen thought. Curiously, his next recommendation was not a power source, it was for a T1 drill unit that would require as much power as the Crafting Terminal was trying to draw. Outside, the Planet Crafter had no trouble finding four units of Iron within easy walking distance of his new home base and he placed the four Turbines adjacent to a craggy rock outside his door, close enough that the microwave power transmitters on the turbines could see his structure and provide power to it (2).
"Whoever assembled this priority list didn't think through having the power before assembling things that use power, I guess," Sommen complained to the Crafting Terminal, which he realized would not answer him after the fact. "Fuck. I've been on-planet for less than four full hours and I'm already starting to go crazy. This is going to be an adventure for the ages." Sommen sighed and popped the lid on his first self-manufactured water bottle, then connected his suit inventory to the Crafting Terminal and converted the spare ice chunk within to a new water bottle. This new water bottle went into the locking loop that he had just emptied of a water bottle. "Break time for me. I want to figure out next steps for terraforming before I put boots back outside the door."
-x-x-x-
(2 hours later)
The plan had solidified over the break time. All that remained was the footwork, material collection, and assembly. Four pressure drills, assembled fairly close to the building but far enough away for sound / vibration abatement (3), and in a small area so that when it was time to tear down the outpost and move it, Sommen would not have to do a lot of running around to do so.
The running phase was where it got tricky. Sommen had to range out over 30 minutes away from the new base to track down the necessary four titanium and four iron units, though the build gun made quick work of collecting them. It made equally quick work of depositing the four assembled drills on the way back in a two-by-two cluster that was about fifteen seconds out from the base. It was a guess on his part as to how close or far he had to be for sound abatement, but he figured erring on the side of caution was the best bet. The jog back to the outpost was the riskiest part, as by the time he arrived at the door and keyed his way in, the oxygen reserve warning was in the 'critical' phase on his suit air supply.
"Well shit, that worked out about as I expected," Sommen grumped. "So, next recommendations is monitor screens for unlocks and terraformation. Materials, materials," the Planet Crafter sighed and checked his build menu for the material requirements involved. "So, Iron, Cobalt, Silicon for the Terraformation wall-hanger, Iron and Silicon for the Blueprints screen, and I'll do the power screen at the same time, so Iron, Silicon, Magnesium. Assuming I can count at this juncture in time, three Iron, three Silicon, one Cobalt, one Magnesium," he said the last as a needle against his own ineptitude on counting out necessary units of Titanium on a prior build. "Time to do some jogging in the wastes."
Outside the shelter and to the right, finding the necessary iron and silicon took less than a full hour. Finding the Cobalt was even simpler, Sommen picked up the necessary unit of blue material only a few paces out the door. Magnesium he had to go a bit farther, to the mouth of the valley headed up a hill and into the distance, opposite the derelict spacecraft across the caldera he was now a resident of. He went up the valley collecting Silicon and Iron to round out what he needed, until he came across a cargo container that had been dropped in the valley, probably by another ship crash that he had not yet encountered down the valley. "Wonder why this planet is so lousy with crashes and scattered containers?" Sommen wondered aloud as he popped the seal on the container. Within, it had a smattering of common materials, a Lirma Seed, several packets of sealed plant seeds, a bottle of purified and hermetically sealed water, a capsule of oxygen that looked like it had held integrity, several busted capsules of oxygen, and most critically of all, two more units of space food in good condition. Also, most curious, he found a material unit of Iridium — a necessary energy and heat-induction element, which he immediately snatched up. If Iridium was being shipped in here, chances were good it would be needed by him at some point in the future. He also snatched up the food, the water and air, and a couple units of iron to round out his inventory space, just because.
By the time Sommen jogged back to his outpost, he was running low on oxygen but was otherwise in good material shape for the time being. He dropped the food, water and air in the survival material chest for starters, and vowed he would go back for the rest of the goodies in that crate, to eventually dismantle the crate itself when it was empty. "Now, where do I put these monitors?" Sommen asked aloud, then realized the perfect real-estate was to the left of the fabricator: blank wall, not scheduled for use, and there will not be a module coming off that wall, so…
A flick of modes on the Build Gun, then Sommen selected the Terraformation screen. He mounted it as high as possible on the wall and as far left as reasonable, then tripped the build mode. Immediately the Build Gun consumed the Silicon, Iron and Cobalt from his inventory and reconstituted it on the wall where the hologram had identified it would be build. After a few moments, the screen flickered to life and showed that he was on his way with pressure slowly raising. "Progress, baby," Sommen said with a slightly crooked smile. "If 1 nanopascal is 1 Terraformation Index, I'm a fuck-ton away from even a blue atmosphere, much less any real progress. If I'm remembering my science classes properly, normal human-usable atmospheric pressure is over 100,000 pascals — or I need to generate 100 trillion nanopascals to make just the atmospheric pressure on this planet match Earth. Hot damn that's a lot of pressure," Sommen said contemplatively.
The Planet Crater started giggling maniacally after a few moments of silence and the enormity of the task finally set in. "No wonder this is usually considered a death sentence, the scale of the shit we need to do to terraform a planet is well outside normal human interaction with a world," Sommen found himself thinking aloud to the new Progress screen. "And this new screen of mine gives no fucks, it is just here to report my progress. Such is life, and such is my rapidly sliding descent into madness."
Sommen had another chuckle for his rapidly-fraying sanity, then shook it off and flipped his build gun into build mode again. This time he selected the power screen and aimed it at the wall opposite the door, but the hologram gave him an immediate red / invalid build coloration. A few seconds contemplating why, then: "Oh, this is a table-top screen? Need to do a table, then." He found a desk in the build menu, though it would require two units of Iron to build — eating into the iron he needed for the power monitor. "Well, have to run for iron again, no big." The desktop he dropped on the ground immediately under the Progress menu, then selected the build menu and the Blueprints screen within. This he put on the table to the left side, leaving plenty of room for the power monitor when he had the last iota of resources for it.
A quick run out of his outpost and he picked up the iron, then back to the shelter with the iron and two ice chunks, which he immediately converted to water bottles since his jogging was making him more thirsty over the long run (4). Back in the shelter, he fired up the build gun, selected the power monitor, and deployed it to the far right of the desktop so he could still (mostly) see the progress screen above and behind it. "That's done. Now, what does the blueprints show?" Sommen tapped on the screen to wake it up, and immediately saw that the Terraformation Index (TI) was married to three indices: Oxygen generation, Heat generation, and Pressure increase in the atmosphere. And he would have to increase all of the above to achieve a livable planet.
He did notice, much to his surprise, that the pressure he had already built with 4 Drills (so far 195 nPa) had already resulted in Sentinel sending him blueprints for an improved Oxygen tank. "What do we have here?" He asked, then went over to the fabricator and brought up the interface. "So, Oxygen Tank T2 requires… Silicon, Cobalt, Titanium, and two Magnesium, as well as my existing tank. Easy upgrade. Time to go jogging!"
Sommen swept right for the resources and found them all within 200 meters of his outpost, and deliberately harvested them from nearest outward. By clearing the ground, he was setting himself up to build up more production and terraformation without having to worry about ground clutter at a later time. Back in the base, he removed the existing oxygen tank from his suit's modular framework, and submitted all of the material to the fabricator to upgrade the existing one to a T2. Once reattached, he was now showing over 100 minutes of oxygen at his nominal burn rate.
"Eight hours on duty and I'm starting to make decent progress. Next up: Oxygen and Heat generation," Sommen said as he sat down on one of his storage containers for a break. He knew he would have to plan his next steps forward before he stepped foot out the door, as this job was only becoming more complex, not less so.
Author's Chapter Afterword:
Second chapter, starting to move up the Terraformation Scale!
I'm trying to avoid crossing over the fourth wall on this story, mainly to keep the story inline with the game and my playthrough for this writing, but we shall see what we shall see. It helps that I've maxed out my advancement through other plays, so I have a modicum of knowledge on what is to come, but I have to portray that Sommen would not know the specifics. I did throw a sop to the poor sod, though, in that he has some decent survival training to lean on and a healthy understand of the science involved.
The big deal in this playthrough, though, will be the thoroughly methodical and almost brutalistic method by which Sommen goes about his objectives. As a Software Engineer, Sommen is going to have an incredibly regimented mindset. You don't go into the Software Programming field with a scatterbrain, programming code and apps does not work that way. That procedural mindset is going to reflect in everything he works on, and especially in his inner monologues and occasional talking to the progress screen.
One thing I am going to add to the game is the necessity of sleep. There are beds in the game, but they are 100 percent nonfunctional and serve no purpose except decoration. Sommen will suffer from fatigue in game, physical fatigue, necessitating breaks, distractions, mistakes, and a very healthy requirement for sleep. I'm not sure if Miju has this in their roadmap, but I think it is kind of a necessity for games of this nature. I mean, when you look at Subnautica, it is entirely possible to do the entire game span (40+ days on planet 4546B) without once going to sleep. That is so wildly impossible that games of this nature should compel sleep as a game mechanic. I mean, some dude once tried to see how long he could go without sleep, and caused permanent psychological and physiological damage to himself after a week. 40 days is WELL outside the realm of even considerable, much less doable. And Planet Crafter is presently geared to go in the same unrealistic direction, soo…
The other thing that I will be adding to this ongoing degeneracy is an author's sliding scale of sanity. You won't see the numbers in this going forward, but you will notice that Sommen's sanity will bounce around and depending on how the dice shake out, this may even break him mentally before the job is done. I have several things in mind for how this could shake out, and even Miju put in a clear-cut case of going apeshit in their in-game lore that I will definitely have to explore during the writing, so be prepared for more and more varied shenanigans on that note.
So, this being the second chapter, what are your thoughts?
That's it for my writing notes for this section. On the personal front, this month (July '23) has been an ongoing shit-show in personal terms, so I've been hit-and-miss on writing. Still, I write when I can focus enough to do so, and I still love it, so here we are. Other than that, I am working on the next chapter of MMC2, it should be out sometime next month.
That's it for today. NEXT UP: The Planet Crafter starts in on heat and oxygen generation, to very critical aspects of the coming Terraformation requirements. More production, more building, more unlocks, more madness!
Review Replies: First released chapters, so no reviews yet. I want to hear your thoughts, and I will answer questions as they come in!
The Gripe Sheet:
No complaints so far. Much thanks to Takeshi Yamato for reading this and providing corrections, even if this is not my normal faire and he is under no obligation to do so.
Footnotes:
(1): game mechanic: the build gun will auto-align construction for some module components. Very handy.
(2): This is not a game mechanic. You can place power generators anywhere in the world and it will feed all devices and structures in your network. This is me providing a possible explanation to the mechanic.
(3): Drills can get real loud, especially in quantity. You want to station them close enough to be convenient to the facility you are working, but far enough away you don't have to constantly listen to them.
(4): This is NOT a game mechanic at this time (Early Access version 0.8). Using the run key routinely does not expend Oxygen, water or food any faster than normal. And thank the Gods / Programmers for that, in Standard mode you are already pretty well strapped for adventure time without it.