(The Planet Crafter)
(Chapter 4: The First Wreck, A Compass, and Meteors)
(Terraformation Index: 1490)
Outside the on-site Habitat, Sommen looked to the cargo bay and started toward it at a jog. Much as he had identified earlier, the crew hatch inside the bay was open, so he made for the interior at a good jogging pace and flipped his flashlight on a few paces before he entered the hatch. Inside, he went right then immediately left due to the geometry of the corridor, then down the first hallway until a branch split left to a corridor of bunks. A quick wave of the flashlight demonstrated that there were some containers in the area, so Sommen broke left to begin investigating.
"Man, an abandoned spaceship like this is creepy as hell," he grumped as he took the ten paces down the corridor to the first of the containers. "So, what's in the box?" he asked nobody in particular, never realizing he was quoting an ancient Terran horror film. "Two bolts of fabric, that might be useful. A pack of eggplant seeds, and…" Frankly, he wasn't sure what he was looking at; it was definitely metallic but this had more of the chromatic luster than iron and titanium did. A quick pass with his multi-tool identified it as Aluminum. "Aww yeah, just what the Doctor ordered," he said before he quickly stowed it in inventory. To finish up and prevent future confusion, he disassembled the container for the iron used in its manufacture.
At the end of the bunks corridor, Sommen had to deconstruct a fallen structural member so he could get past the debris, and was very much pleased that he got a unit of iron out of it for his troubles. A few meters past that structural beam was an old Type 1 Heater, which he cheerfully disassembled for the necessary materials he would need to take home to his base to put another one up. "Oh great generator of Kelvins, how I shall put thee to proper use…" Sommen said with some cheer before he started to turn away, though his flashlight crossed across a small container on a wall shelf — "What do we have here?" On opening the container, Sommen found only a Blueprint Chip within, and he readily took it into his last available inventory space.
"Huh, out of room. Need to head back to the waypoint and drop some material." So, after retracing his steps, Sommen found himself back out in his outpost building and started by using the iron from the structural beam to build a second container inside — he figured that if he had this much of a haul on the first run into the ship, he would need a lot of storage before all was said and done. In the first container he offloaded everything except two packs of space food, his two oxygen capsules, and a bottle of water. And, once again, he was out the door and headed into the ship to explore and salvage.
This time, at the first junction he did not go left into the crew compartment but went forward toward a large utility room. He had to clear another dislodged structural member to allow access, but as soon as the beam was out of the way he laid eyes on another storage container. "Well now, what do we have here…" Sommen opened the lid and knew he had hit a jackpot. "One pack food, one canister with a Seed Pestera, and two boules of Iridium. Nice, absolutely nice." To wrap up the salvaging, he disassembled the container and received another unit of iron for it.
After a quick look around, he grunted. "Go left, go right, go home? What shall I choose?" Sommen grumped after a moment, then snorted. "Right first. I think I'll make that my policy, always go right." The corridor was short and hooked left to a cargo closet with two containers. The first container held only a bolt of fabric and a hermetically-sealed water bottle, both of which he grabbed. The second container held a pile of common resources and another chunk of aluminum, the lone aluminum unit he grabbed and added to his inventory but left the remainder. Only the first container he disassembled, the other container he left alone since it still (technically) had material in it.
A quick gauge of his oxygen dial elicited another grunt. "Must be using my oxygen too fast, these environments give me the willies." Sommen turned back to the route he came from and jogged his way out of the facility.
-x-
(Terraformation Index: 1810)
After Sommen had dropped his salvage and rested for a few moments, he sucked down a pouch of the space food and a bottle of water before he made a run back into the derelict ship. Inside, he followed the same route until he reached the second junction, then went left into an engineering space and where he found another container nearby a communication dish. Inside, he found a Seed Lirma in a canister, a bolt of fabric, a pack of space food, a bottle of water, and some common materials. Again, the Planet Crafter left the common material and took the remainder.
Farther into the ship, headed toward the bridge area, he had to disassemble three more structural members on his way inward, though after he disassembled the third he found a Type 2 Heater unit. "Well now, this is interesting…" Sommen checked his inventory and realized he had the necessary space to disassemble it, so he flicked the selector on his Build Gun and disposed of the derelict heater unit. Once it was broke down, his inventory came very close to full, so he decided to take a run out to the outpost and offload.
Back at his 'oxygen box', the convict had to drop down a third container to store collected materials, since his first two were nice and full and clearing his inventory partially filled the third. "Man, getting all this back to base is going to be a big bitch, I think I'll have to make three or four runs for it at this rate. Well, nothing for it, let's see what else I can find in the ship." With a deep breath and a moment to refresh his mindset, Sommen was back out the door and headed into the ship.
Back to the room where Sommen found the Tier 2 Heater, he continued onward and came to the junction just before the engineering and reactor spaces. He had to jump over a fuel cylinder to get to the intersection, and once he cleared that cylinder he found two more containers. Within the first, he found another unit of Iridium, a bolt of cloth, a pack of eggplant seeds, an upgrade chip, some Titanium and Magnesium, and a curious lump of multicolored material that he did not recognize. "Hell is this?" he asked before he flicked the Build Gun over to identification and his Suit HUD highlighted it as 'Super Alloy'. "Well that's interesting. I think I'll keep it, might be useful," he said to his faceplate. He also snatched up the remainder of the non-common material and closed the container, then stepped to the side to check the next. The second container held a unit of Iridium, a Seed Shanga in a storage cylinder, and two units of Space Food, all of which he grabbed and left the common material he could easily find on the ground around his base. And still he did not have a full inventory, so he entered the engineering space.
Inside the room, he put eyes on the ship's nuclear reactor, powered down with no power cell or housing inside, and sighed. "No good, could use the power but here we are. Probably burnt out a decade ago." On the wall opposite the reactor, a third container held two aluminum chunks, one super alloy, a fabric bolt, another Seed Shanga, and a pack of eggplant seeds. Of these, he grabbed them all, and realized there was a small container against the wall nearby a powered-up informational terminal, so he resolved to make one last run into the ship after he emptied his inventory.
It was about an hour round-trip back out of the ship, offload most of his material to the third container (the container filled up faster than he ran out of material to offload), so he ran back in with a partial allotment of salvage in his inventory. Still and all, when he arrived at the active terminal in the engineering room, the only thing in the small container was another blueprint chip, which he readily grabbed up and and turned his attention to the terminal.
"Huh. Ship's hull designation Cirella-IV. Crash-landed after it dropped out of hyperspace with no warning and lost power. 3021 is when they landed, that would have been 37 years ago. I wonder what caused that." Sommen considered it for a few moments, looked around the engineering bay, and realized that there was no hardware malfunction that could explain the whole ship dropping offline. He didn't spend too much time dwelling on it, he figured (not incorrectly) he had work to do, so he turned his mind back to the task. And that task now meant getting back to his collected material so he could start shuttling it out to base.
Back in the outpost, Sommen loaded up with an array of the salvage and made for his main base.
-x-
(Terraformation Index: 3410)
Cleaning out the temporary storage at the outpost took three trips from the outpost to the base. The runs back and forth cost him two bottles of water and two packs of Space Food to cover how long it took, but even despite these expenditures Sommen walked away with five more packs of the food and at least two more bottles of water.
As part of the transfer, the first load carried back several Aluminum chunks, and shortly after he cleared out his inventory he discovered on the blueprint panel that he now had access to the Tier 3 Backpack. So, Sommen cleared his inventory into a container and offloaded the backpack, then grabbed up the necessary extra materials to upgrade a T2 Backpack to a Tier 3: two units Aluminum, one Titanium, one Silicon. Press a button on the crafting terminal, sixty seconds later, new Tier 3 Backpack. The extra four storage slots sounded fairly pithy on paper and in his mind, but Sommen knew four more slots would go a long way to making things easier and faster going forward.
From the four Blueprint chips he had acquired on his jaunt over to the Cirella-IV, his processing of the contained blueprints netted him the microchip for a Compass, the Tier 2 Mining Speed Upgrade, and the first and second versions of the Agility Boots. All of these he considered a worthy investment of material for a different reason each, but in production terms he figured he could not do any so far — he would need to find some more Aluminum to do the boots or the compass, and the mining speed enhancement was a good idea but not yet practical for prime-time (and he also needed aluminum for the T1 Mining Upgrade). So, he resolved to get the needed materials for the compass on his next run — if he could find aluminum, he would need magnesium and silicon.
After the backpack was prepared, Planet Crafter Garber reached into the material he collected and withdrew two Iridium, two Iron, and one Silicon — the latter he realized he would need a second SI to fire up two more of the T1 Heaters and really start racking up the (small-scale) numbers. So, with a smile on his face for the prospect of advancing progress, he made his way out and around the back of the rock outcrop where he had placed his eight wind turbines thus far.
The first impact was jarring. Sommen was only able to barely hear where the impact was, but it was fast enough for him to look at it to realize that the strike was a meteor. A second strike in that general direction gave him an idea of the vector they were coming in on, and he looked up to the sky to see at least a half-dozen more inbound. "Well, shit, I don't want to be out in that crap, a strike from that would do a lot more than just ruin my good looks and boyish charm," he said in a joking manner. He was quick to find a unit of silicon and returned to the base a matter of minutes before a meteor struck close enough to where he was that the debris splash would have taken out his legs.
Inside, the impacts continued unabated in the wasteland outside, but only some of the impact jarring was felt by Sommen as he set down two more of the T1 Heaters in his project room. With that done, he sat down on the corner of one of the storage crates and popped the top on a bottle of water. This time, rather than pulling it through his suit's straw, he removed his helmet and set it aside so he could flex his neck in open air. "It's progress, baby," he said to the base, devoid of all other human activity except his own, and chuckled ruefully. Insanity was likely to quickly creep up on him unless he could start seeing some tangible results, he figured.
-x-
(Terraformation Index: 4050)
Sommen's adventure outside after his quick break quickly changed from a resource hunt for more Vegetubes to 'scour the asteroid impacts'. In one of the more distant meteor impact debris zones, Sommen found two units of Aluminum scattered in the impact detritus, and quickly policed them up for use. So he checked the other meteor impacts he could find and identify, and found a goodly portion of iron, the necessary magnesium and silicon for the compass, a chunk of ice, and three more (!) aluminum chunks to bring his total to five. It cost him an air capsule to be out that long, but Sommen figured that a small price to pay and easily compensated — he picked up two Cobalt on his way back to the base and quickly replaced the expended air canister easily.
So, back at base, his first setup was to prep a compass for himself. Magnesium and Silicon, two units of Aluminium in, one compass chip out, and Sommen quickly attached it to his suit to help him navigate going forward. Second, he figured the Agility Boots would be a good fit, since he did a lot of jogging the boost in his speed would be very handy. Two aluminum, two cloth, and he added the boots to his suit by replacing his existing encounter suit boots. He took a little to dash back and forth inside the confines of his three-section base, and figured them a good fit and they did improve his overland speed, if only slightly.
"Now, where was I before that asteroid shower came down on the area?" Sommen asked himself. "Ah, Vegetubes. I can do the new Tier 2 tubes, but to do those, I need more material and I need to add power to the grid — the new tubes use 1.25 megawatts of power, and I only have 2.4 megs to spare. So, two extra wind turbines should do, and for the tubes, I need…" Sommen consulted his build gun library and determined it was one unit of iron, two chunks of ice, one unit magnesium, and one unit silicon. "So, I need four iron, four ice, two magnesium, two silicon for this project. Let's get to it!"
Collecting the materials and returning to base took less than 50 minutes. On the way in, Sommen took a couple moments to drop down two more wind turbines (bringing his collection up to 10) before he entered the base and headed back to the project area. A flick of the selector switch on the build gun, a section of the Tier 2 Vegetube, and he was on his way with the next build. The new tubes were a bit bigger than the T1 units, but altogether not bad or too big as to not fit four to a wall length if he was creative and tight with the placement.
"Tubes up, now what — ah, need the seedlings," he turned to the storage containers and had to root around in them for 90 seconds to find the new Shanga seedlings he had acquired. "Two tubes, two seedlings. Math checks out," he semi-joked as he opened up and inserted first the nearer of the seedlings, then the farther of the two, giving him now four active Vegetubes and an Oxygen generation rate of 3.90 Parts Per Quadrillion, what he needed to really start bringing life to this red-rock craphole planet.
"So, I have the most Oxygen generation at 3.9 PPQ, second is heat generation at 0.9 nanoKelvin, and pressure at 0.8 nanopascals. Rookie numbers, but I can't reasonably expect Sentinel Corp to give me the blueprints and materials to put down some good gear — that would be far too easy, and this task is supposed to kill me, not be successful," Sommen Garber put voice to what he had concluded in the weeks prior to planetfall, that this task was an execution by exposure with a 'promise' of 'clemency' should he achieve an effectively impossible task.
Of course, I am a hardass even if I was a software engineer, so I intend to succeed on this shit task just to spite the assholes in Sentinel Corp, he thought behind a devilish smirk. And I can be a very spiteful hardass when provoked, so here we are.
"I think it is time to prep myself a bed and get some sleep. New habitat section and a bed will require…" Sommen checked his math on the builds; "Three iron, a titanium, and three fabric. Time to get running!"
About an hour later, Sommen slapped down the new compartment and queued up the bed. That he aligned to the eastern wall of the compartment and placed down for use.
The extra iron he collected along the way he dropped in a storage container, since he seemed to always need more iron no matter how much he picked up. With the bed now in place, Sommen stripped himself out of his environmental suit and flopped down for a sleep cycle.
Author's Chapter Afterword:
Another section of writing, and the expansion is on!
The relaxed mode of this game is actually quite relaxing, you can go about your tasks with a minimum of hazard but the hazards (such as oxygen, food, distances) are still there. In the standard mode, which is what I am playing for this writing session, is a bit more frenetic in terms of food and water exhaustion and oxygen use is way up over the relax mode, but still easily manageable — my first time making it to the fish level was before they implemented the difficulty options, and also that was before they implemented fish in the game at all, soo…
A thing I would really like to see in this game is a fatigue option, as I stated in my last after-chapter notes, which would make the bed and other furniture make some amount of sense. Or maybe a modder could add that in. We'll see what we'll see.
With the first exploration completed, I will have to revisit the ship once I get to the point of having fusion energy cells — the reactor at the end of the compartments serves a purpose, but I won't spoil it here. As shall be written, all this will need to be explored by the narrator. And trust me, there will be a few more derelict ships to inspect before all is said and done.
I think the next section is going to be some ground exploration and planning for next steps — this game does not lend itself to impulsive action, you have to plan a few steps forward if you don't want to be falling all over yourself. So, it may be a while before the next segment is written out, but I will continue forward!
NEXT UP: after getting a bit cramped in base layout terms, Sommen goes searching for new real estate. What he finds in the area around him is quite surprising.
Review Replies: No reviews for the last chapter. I want to hear your thoughts!
The Gripe Sheet:
Takeshi Yamato had a few corrections for me, nothing reported by readers. Thank you to my beta reader for keeping my prose straight!
Footnotes:
None for this chapter!