Sol 23
6002 Ti
Back from my latest salvage mission. Though that sounds kinda clinical, doesn't it? I need something more interesting to call it. So from now on, scavenging a shipwreck shall be called dumpster diving. So proclaims King Asher I, Tyrant and Autocrat of Planet Steve.
Anyways this ship was a lot smaller than the Cirella-IV, seems to have been a large personal ship. No records on this ship, though, but when I got a bit further into the wreck I found a number of canisters of radioactive waste. That does at least tell me what it was doing, but personally I'm just thankful that none of the canisters were cracked. My exosuit protects me against radiation but not so much as to save my DNA from being scrambled like an egg.
Lots of useful materials, too. Some iridium, some aluminum, and a few more plant seeds. And of course more food. Right now I have more than enough for 200 sols after scavenging both wrecks and a number of crates that I've found in the area too.
I am wondering though...there's two wrecks so far on this planet, and probably more around here. If there are some wrecks, well...someone must have survived, right? Statistically someone must have survived the crash-landings. I don't expect to find a functioning base on this planet or some colony of hardy survivalist women ready to take me in, save me from the hell of having to terraform a planet single-handedly, ask me to take their hands and remind them of that thing they've been deprived of for so long, that thing called "love"...
Goddamn, I'm more deprived than I thought I was.
Okay, calm down. Serious face.
So more to the point, if someone did survive any of the crashes here, they must have left something behind that I can use. A lot of technology is very standard-issue on starships and even if they're a decade or two out of date it should be easy enough to hook them up to my existing hardware without too much issue.
That being said, the very fact that I'm terraforming this planet is working against me here. When I got here this planet had an atmosphere so thin as to be nonexistent, and no free oxygen whatsoever. Every time I set up a drill, though, the air gets denser and more oxygen is released. And oxygen doesn't like being released, so even when it's bonded to itself it still wants to latch onto anything possible, which is why this planet is covered in iron oxide to begin with. The more that I terraform, the more oxygen I release, and the more that anything left behind by anyone who'd been here before me will start to decay. So I need to get out and start dumpster diving before that happens.
Damn it. Why does everything have to be outside? Don't people know that outside is dangerous? That's where the Arranikan War was held!
Sol 24
7017 Ti
Since I have a calorie surplus lately, I decided to indulge in a complete luxury: taking a nice walk. Shocker, I know, but I figured that since right now I have a massive calorie surplus it might be nice to try and give myself some measure of comfort. Plus, the agility boots are actually super useful for reducing the exertion I need to walk over the surface here. The two kinds of surface here are either hard and rocky or soft and sandy, neither of which is great for walking on.
But it did serve a purpose. Since I don't have access to a rover or any kind of sensor array, the only way I can get a handle on my surroundings is by physically walking around. At the very least it did show me a few things of interest, what nerds like me call "anomalies". To the west of me, there's a large cave where there seems to have been sand pouring down from a cliffside, probably driven by the wind. To the east, though, are large gray rocks jutting directly out of the ground. That doesn't sound interesting on its own, but on a planet where everything is some shade of red or brown that's enough to warrant paying attention to.
Meanwhile to the south is the basin that'll fill up eventually, across it is the Cirella-IV, and halfway between me and it is my landing pod. I've already salvaged everything I can out of it, and it's far too heavy for me to move, nor do I want to. To the north I can see some kind of huge thing jutting up from the ground when I go to that crashed freighter, and off in the northwest I can see a giant sandy dune area.
My kingdom for a pencil and paper.
Sol 26
8179 Ti
Dust storm again. I can't tell if they're getting stronger yet, and I'm not looking forward to when they do. My solar panels are out of commission, but my wind turbines are holding up well.
I did some digging in the data files they send with you when you're a Planet Crafter but annoyingly the only things are materials relevant to terraforming projects. All of it is extremely dry, but it's all I've got to entertain myself besides talking to myself. Plus, some of these are useless to me. One of them, "The Terraformer's Handbook", has a whole section on how to coordinate groups of people to specialize on different tasks ranging from setting up drills to collecting resources to managing food production. Meanwhile I'm just me. I have no way to know whether Sentinel sent me this out of incompetence or malice, because at this point I'm entirely convinced it could be either one.
