(The Planet Crafter)
(Chapter 5: Northbound Scouting)

(Day Cycle 2, Terraformation Index 5300)

Waking up on this barren planet was psychologically hard for Sommen, but physically easy — the bed that was supplied in the standard build library was far and away better than the beds he had been sleeping on in the prison system. The catch was entirely mental, he just did not want to get up and get back to a shit detail that he was beholden to only because the court system was a goat rope (1) in practice if not on paper.

Still, after sitting and thinking about it, he did get up and get to it — the planet was not going to Terraform itself, he justified the stance inside the confines of his mind, and with it his reason for moving. So, up and at it, he took a couple minutes to stretch out and work out some kinks in his back, then clamored back into his encounter suit and locked down for another day at the totally-not-an-office. (That, and a packet of space food quelled his growing hunger, so…)

A step outside and a look around, and he realized that he still had some material to recover in the waypoint box up on the hill by the wreck of the Cirella-IV. So, with a sigh, he set off at a jog pace in that direction. Why the hell did I convince myself this was a good idea? Sommen Garber asked himself mentally. Because the prospect of looking at the inside of a gray metal box for two more decades sucked ass, he completed the mental dialog after a few more paces.

Along the way, Sommen again found the two containers that he crossed paths with during his initial trek over to the wreck and cleared them out completely — it was all fairly common material, nothing exotic, but helpful in the long run. When he clamored up the hill to the wreck, he found the storage containers he thought he had left with some stuff were gone — and he cursed himself for forgetting that he had indeed cleaned them out the cycle prior. "Bloody waste of effort, coming back up here," he said on his way out the door. When he turned to the right to look at the wreck, a glint of reflected light caught his right-side peripheral vision — he looked past the outpost box and saw what appeared to be a wall of ice in the mouth of a cave. "What the fresh hell?" Sommen asked as he walked up to the ice.

The mouth of the cave itself had to be at least fifteen, twenty meters tall by his estimate, and the cave was packed with multiple glaciers of variably-translucent ice chunks. He did some quick mental math on the subject and figured if the cave was cylindrical and even-sized the whole way, he was looking at several million kilograms of ice just in the first twenty meters or so. Melted, it would definitely contribute to localized flooding, and if there was ice in a pithy cave here, there was going to be a LOT more ice in other caves in the area, easily enough to start forming lakes if it melted.

"Well, son of a bitch! This planet might be workable for terraformation with this much water, but," and he cut his sentence off as he jogged over to the edge of the precipice he had set the outpost box on. Looked at from above, the location of his landing — his base — was a glacier-cut caldera with rock chunks likely from larger meteor strikes in millennia past. "But yeah, as soon as this high-quality freeze-dried H-2-O starts melting in earnest, I'll be swimming around my base. Time to pack up and hike to higher ground!"

Sommen walked up the precipice to the north and looked into the distance. "Okay, it looks like a couple kilometers north of my base and the pod, there is a hill rise about where those granite crags are, and it somewhat levels out headed toward that small ship wreck over there. Wonder what the name of that ship is." I wonder why this world has so many slagged down ships on it, this is well out of the norm even for some of the shoddy interstellar travel corpos out there, Sommen thought but did not say. He figured that Sentinel Corporation had an audio bug in his suit and would record his words to use against him in years to come.

"Yeah, that looks like decent ground to build a permanent base on. Guess it is time to get home and start planning the move out. This is going to be a mother-humper trekking all that material uphill." He jogged back to and ducked into his outpost to quickly replenish oxygen, then set out for home. Along the way he stopped to pick up a couple chunks of ice to fill water bottles; he knew he would need them and more.

-x-x-x-

(Several hours later, 10,000 TI)

Sommen had taken his 'common material' pile up to the plateau and had a quick look around. The highest real-estate after coming north up the glacial-carved hill was actually a small hillock to the east of the largest open expanse, nearby what looked like it would be a decent creek-bed after the ice flooded. The area of the hillock also overlooked multiple open expanses that would be great for setting up extended facilities for equipment and projects and have them in relatively convenient running distance from his main habitat. For certain, he was not thrilled by the consideration that he would have to be in the same contiguous structure as some of the larger industrial heater units, as it was perfectly possible to die from heat stroke even in an environment suit, so on this hillock, Sommen started his build of his new permanent home base with a different philosophy.

"Main base is where I do my day-to-day work and coordination, and rest, and store important material," he pointed the build gun at the hillock. "Thermal units over on this expanse," and he pointed to the open expanse on the southern side of the plateau. "Drilling projects on the far west end of the plateau," he shook his build gun toward the sand falls to the west. "And the bio-labs will be on the northern expanse headed toward those canyons," and he nodded to the north. "Time to get building!"

For his building, he started this time by putting down a metal foundation framework that was sunk a half-meter into the ground on average, and on top of this he put his first habitat module. A second framework went down on the ground, but this he did not abut against the existing one — he spaced it out a couple meters to allow for the curved bevels of the buildings on top, so that the foundation properly cradled the entire bottom of the building. If he made the foundation contiguous, he would need five foundations for four living compartments — or if he placed down two and two, part of his second living compartment would be hanging in open air, a bad engineering idea in an area that suffered meteor impacts.

The two foundations and two compartments ate up his on-hand titanium and iron, so he had to do some quick scrounging to pick up enough titanium and iron for a door. The silicon he already had in hand, so once the door was up, he slapped down a staircase (another iron) and ascended into his proto-home.

"Honey, I'm home!" he said glibly; he had a sometimes-on-sometimes-off girlfriend before he had been busted and jailed, and after his conviction, she had made it very clear that she would not wait for him. So, bygones being bygones, he accepted that outcome and used it to fuel his motivation to get into the Planet Crafter Program. Once his oxygen refilled, Sommen ducked out again to pick up more Iron, which he brought inside to make a stack of storage containers so he could offload the silicon and magnesium he picked up from the containers he raided in hours past.

Once offloaded, he jogged back to his early base to start cleaning it out. This began with a container filled two-thirds with iron, and the container itself went as well; on the way back, he grabbed up some more iron and four chunks of Titanium, needed for expanding the base once he got back up the hill. The legwork was impressive, he figured, and the space food packs had enough protein and fats in them to make building muscle possible, so he was not going to waste away in the process of doing this job.

Up top at his new home base, he expanded to the north, creating a 3-wide-2-deep rectangular structure for starters, and took a few minutes to make sure his foundations were proper before his next set of mods. All told, after some extra iron pickups in route, he was now down to just two bottles of water, one bottle of air, and two iron in his inventory. "Okay, with the base structure up, I'm going to start moving stuff up here, but to counterbalance taking down the windmills, I start with two up here." Once the windmills were placed a distance away from his new base, starting the encirclement of a large rock crag west of his front door, he made for the old base in the caldera at a jog and along the way picked up some extra iron and ice for water replenishment.

Back at the base, the first things he disassembled were the heat generators in the far corner from the door. "I'll stow these away until I have the heat plant set up," he promised, and to round out his inventory use, he picked up a mostly-empty storage crate and disassembled the crate as well. On his way out the door, Sommen disassembled four of the existing windmills and reassembled them up on the plateau with the two new ones he fashioned an hour past. The remainder of the material went into a storage container he set aside from his main storage stack, so he knew what its purpose was.

Another round trip to the old base and back to the new base, this time carrying only the four vegetubes (two mark 1 and two mark 2 units) as well as their flower saplings; he had no further room after stripping those down, except for enough room for a piece of ice he would need to upgrade one of the mark 1 tubes to a mark 2. At his new base, he put the first two Mark 2 tubes down on the western wall farthest from the door, then pulled a unit of silicon from his stores and upgraded the first mark 1 to a mark 2, and to upgrade the last mark 1 he pulled a chunk of ice and another unit of silicon to go along with the material of the mark 1 tube and build the better version. These tubes received a Seed Lirma, a Seed Pestera, and two Seed Shanga to maximize their output with his materials on hand.

"Haah! That'll help with Oxygen production pretty quick!" Sommen said as he took a break on the edge of a storage crate. He figured an hour or two break was warranted, the ice would not melt quickly enough to flood out the old base while he took a breather.

-x-x-x-

(Several more hours later, Terraformation Index 24,200)

Planning from Mice, Men, or Machine is always subject to Murphy's Law, Sommen thought but did not say after he stepped into his presently-shut-down Main Base and sighed. The road to this point was not fast or pretty, but it was a useful story nonetheless. And a cautionary tale about having available power generation prior to slapping down new equipment.

During his break, he had a quick meteor shower come through and pelt the land with more materials, some common, but also a couple units of Aluminum which he figured he could always use. No big deal, the Planet Crafter figured, he'd take an hour or two to police up the useful material, and if there was a good ration of Titanium and iron to work with as well, he'd expand the Main Base to the north a couple compartments.

So, while he was out and about, a second meteor storm started. He had to run back inside to take shelter, and to good effect: not two minutes after he set foot inside his main base, a meteor struck at the base of his staircase up into the living compartments. The stairs were not damaged, but the proximity of the strike was very troubling.

And again out on the ground to police up useful material, Sommen was surprised by a third meteor shower starting up while he was collecting aluminum scrap from the first and second shower, but was very quick to get out there and get collecting, because he could see multiple chunks of aluminum from his doorway, including one only about 150 meters from the bottom of his staircase.

And then a fourth shower. Four, what the fresh hell is going on with the orbit and meteor tracks around this planet? Sommen thought but did not say. This fourth shower he did not run back to base, he just kept an eye up to the sky in the vain hope that he could stay out of the path of an incoming chonk, and went about collecting material. And material he had no trouble finding, between the four clusters of meteor strikes, he was able to find enough construction material to put up the four-compartment Heat Generation Building, completely, without touching any existing collections or devices.

Thus, when the sky cleared up, Sommen went back down to the old base, collected up the remaining windmills, and pulled up the four Tier 1 drills for transplant to the far side of the plateau from his base. On the way up to that installation location, he collected four more units of titanium, since the difference between the T1 drill and the T2 drill was only that one piece of Titanium. And after installing the second drill, his base shut down due to power demand exceeding power supply.

"So, how do I straighten out the power situation?" Sommen asked. "What about better power generation?" He checked the build menus on his build gun, and found some upgrades that had been applied in recent time: a T1 Solar Panel and a T2 Solar Panel. Tier 1 required Iron, Silicon, and two Cobalt. Tier 2 required same material as T1, and added a unit of Magnesium and a unit of Aluminum. Since Sommen had collected roughly a dozen units of Aluminum during the scattered meteor showers, he figured dropping four of the T2 panels should do the job.

"So, four Aluminum, four Magnesium, four Iron, four Silicon, and eight Cobalt, time to get resource hunting," Sommen said as he ducked back out the door when his tank finished recharging. He found all the Silicon and Magnesium within an hour of exiting the building; thankfully, a Tier 3 Oxygen Tank made exterior time easier to work with. He collected enough Iron and Cobalt to make the first two, and combined with the four Aluminum from his storage, allowed him to slap down two T2 Solar Panels next to the Thermal Generator Building. A quick stop for oxygen in the (thus-far empty) Thermal Gen Building, and he ducked out again to find the last two Iron and four Cobalt needed for two more T2 panels. By the time the second of the four panels was up, power was reactivated to the base and the Terraformation continued.

With power restored, Sommen refilled his oxygen again and turned his attention to finishing tearing down his old base and moving it up to new (higher) ground. It would take a further three runs to completely empty out and disassemble the old base, but such was the breaks.

-x-x-x-

(Multiple more hours later, Terraformation Index 42,350)

Sommen placed down the first of two Tier 2 Heat Generators in the back corner of the 2x2 Thermal Generator Building, then immediately re-queued the design and dropped the second. Both came online with no problems from the power grid, because the four heavy-duty T2 Solar Panels had plenty of generation to spare. He had enough material to drop down a third T2 generator on hand, but decided against it for now in case he needed the Iridium for something else.

Once satisfied with the new generators, Sommen jogged back over to his main base and ran up the stairs to his new quarters in the back in an alcove he added to the rear of it. His bed was in place and ready to go, so he stripped down out of his encounter suit and climbed in under the covers.

"Tomorrow is going to be another day, and I've got a lot of exploration to do just in this new area," Sommen told himself after he was physically settled.

Mentally was another story…


Author's Chapter Afterword:

And to think this is just the first 2 hours of gameplay, written out into story form…

I think I am really liking doing this, as much as it is a side project and not really a serious writing project, such as my Jokers Wild series or Archangel's Amazing Adventures mega-projects. This has been a very good opportunity to do a bit of gaming, then stop and write out the actions I just took in narrative form, then do some more gaming, then write it out in narrative form, it has been very relaxing and allowed me to take my creative writing skills towards explaining a rather complex game in prose.

Of course, there are drabs of storyline in the game as well, and filling in the narrative gaps that Miju has in this work is something of a challenge. Not a show-stopper, mind you, but it is something of a personal challenge to take the chunks of plot they have woven into a build-it-yourself engineering game and make a more cohesive whole of it. And then to make the whole 'Planet Crafter' convict context make sense in a story context also takes some work, mainly because risking everything on a convict is kind of an expensive venture unless you are willing to expend the costs associated with multiple failed missions to achieve a handful of results, some tepid, some good.

Of course, to tie some things together and smooth out some logic, I have had to add a few things to the narrative such as the need for breaks, the need for sleep (which in the current game you can't even sleep at all), and similar requirements. Things will get even harder in these regards as the story progresses, because the first couple hours of gameplay have very compressed advancement schedules, the farther you get into the tech tree the more work you have to do to get to higher-level advances. On the flipside, this game does reward setting up infrastructure and then going exploring or doing menial tasks, so I intend to take advantage of that — the rapidly-advancing Terraformation Index should demonstrate that just in the course of this story.

A couple of Miju's numbers are a bit wonky in terms of what you do to the planet to get it ready, but I'll go over that farther into the story. Still, for what Miju has done in the game design so far, this is mostly (93 to 94 percent) close on what common theories hold for planetary terraformation to make a barren world habitable, so I am still behind this game 100 percent. And I am looking forward to see what else they throw in for us to work with in coming updates and expansions to the game!

That's all for today. NEXT UP: Sommen goes looking into the nearby crashed ship and the cave behind the sand falls, and there are multiple goodies to dig into…


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:

(1): Goat Rope is a military slang term for a completely disorganized or chaotic situation or organization.