RECOVERED LOGS: CHARACTERISTICS OF CORAL - 3
One of the more unusual phenomena present in Coral is the resonance characteristic. Coral has the capacity to transmit data through itself and to other Coral masses, but it does so in odd ways.
Coral masses are synced together under normal circumstances, forming the 'resonance' state. While in this state, they can transmit to each other over long distances without any apparent lossiness or inaccuracies. This effect bypasses all known forms of jamming, cutting straight through even heavy ECM fog. However, if taken too far apart, this connection breaks, and the Coral cannot communicate with itself.
We still haven't figured out how to send and receive signals between Coral masses on purpose, so it's not of much use to us. If in the future it does become possible, be aware of the following;
1) Coral can resynchronize, given that two or more masses spend enough time in close proximity
2) Larger masses of Coral will synchronise faster with smaller masses of Coral
3) There are still additional factors that we haven't yet determined that have an effect here.
The best way to break such a resonance is simply to separate Coral masses by sheer distance. Orphaned Coral is no different from regular Coral, however, so this usually isn't worth it.
It is possible to break the resonance by transmitting sustained and massive amounts of data through a Coral mass, but this is unreliable on account of producing the occasional Coral Surge, almost certainly resulting in damage.
2.0
It took me the better part of the year to get all the bots under my control.
All I can say on the matter is; Humans build good. The software that goes into even the basic maintenance drones is damned incredible. Overriding that stuff is not easy, even with the fact that I can alter the signals from inside the computer. What would be an automatic victory in any other circumstance is just the starting point of sometimes getting things done here.
Even just shifting their directives was an endeavour that requires every scrap of knowledge I've picked up in my time here. And, sure, This might have been a first for me, but I did have access to significant wealths of data that had passed through the systems I'd been able to peer into, and that included a ton of educational materials. I had entire formal education courses from 'just beginning school' to 'extremely specialized, field-specific, post-masters' knowledge, here.
Bleh.
If I'd had access to an actual control centre -and, you know, not just the capacity to replace signals-, it would have been much easier. I didn't, and no such facility even existed anymore. The CEL 240 has the highest permission parameters for everything that communicates in the ruins of the city, but those permissions are not universal and there are a few specific circumstances that even mere drones can override the CEL.
The CEL 240 -and everything else here, as a matter of fact- were equipped with Expert Systems that were only just below Artificial General Intelligences in terms of capacity. These things were coordinated and secure. Bypassing them had required a few tricks- and I'd lost six maintenance drones over the course of my experiments because the systems picked up that they weren't 'acting correctly' and so went to obliterate them.
Eventually, I'd been able to induce an override in the CEL 240's system to send a command through the network, which had been backed with a cryptographic key that I'd picked up from the Director's office. Theoretically, that key existed only inside of an implant in Nagai's brain, was automatically erased by all systems it passed through, and was good until countermanded by higher authorizations from people higher up in the chain of RRI- none of which were on Rubicon and only a few of which had even set foot there.
That put the bots in standby mode, which meant they wouldn't do anything other than a few basic duties. They'd defend themselves if attacked, for example, and they'd see to continued high-priority tasks like 'staying active', but aside from that?
I was free to do pretty much whatever I wanted with them.
First thing I did was turn off the more violent directives like 'shoot everything that doesn't respond correctly'.
Second had been to get the majority of the MTs to go into scout mode, which was a standardised set of behaviours installed into seemingly every automatic system, from the drones to the MTs to the HELIANTHUS and even to the CEL 240 itself. Mostly that meant they'd be gathering environmental data, but they were smart enough to identify useful things like non-broken machines.
Thorough stuff.
Third had been to completely re-do their security keys. Nobody but me was getting into them if I had an opinion in the matter.
After that, I tried getting them into command mode, which would have allowed me to direct them much easier. That took a bit more effort- the systems expected the presence of a user to give actual commands, and in the absence of such, would automatically go into standby modes while continuing previous objectives. Their systems failed to perceive me at all, so I had to jury-rig a loop of going into command mode while I faked an extant but not-actually-giving-commands authority, which was basically setting a flag in their files that they were connected to a higher functioning AI.
Command mode had a lot of options, and multiple tiers. It started out at minimal interaction, with the bots basically responding to outside commands to the best of their actually-rather-large abilities. That tier was there for humans giving commands over the radio or in person.
It went all the way up to a full assuming direct control thing, which was there for remote operators or AIs jumping into the system. Naturally, I turned that on, but it turns out even that isn't enough for me to immediately get going.
All of that was handled by an internal interface program, which took in the data of the entire system and was the actual controlling process. All necessary things, for anyone else who might try to use it, and all stuff I didn't actually need, since I already had the info feeds from the sensors and the ability to send signals directly to and from each component.
That was the system responsible for my inability to control mechs directly. It registered commands it hadn't sent and immediately attempted to counteract them. I tried to work with it, and it did give me some actual control, but in the end I just turned that system off entirely.
And with that done?
I flew through the air, thrusters burning red as I spun in circles. A thought, and I flipped in mid air, waves of red light shooting forwards. My drones sparked, crackling chains of energy linking them together.
I'd had bodies.
And with bodies? I was in business.
The first stop there was visiting the depots of the ruined city. In most cases, most of these depots had been wrecked alongside most everything else inside, but more than a few still contained parts, components, and occasionally even entire mechs that only needed to be reactivated in order for me to use them.
The second stop had been visiting the manufacturing centres of the city. I had a bit less luck there, since every single one of them was inoperational. No easy reactivation for me.
But everything being inoperational was not the same as everything is broken. Most everything was damaged, yes, but not all in the same way. Humans had long since optimised their entire industrial processing abilities, standardising every single step of the process that could be standardised. Nobody was interested in reinventing the wheel again, and all that meant that, while every individual machine might not be operational, some parts of it were at the very least not damaged.
I'd gotten spectacularly lucky to find that one of the microchip production setups was nearly entirely untouched inside, and only had its exterior control and power components burnt out.
I'd had to get a ton of MTs and maintenance drones to pull the places apart, but I managed to scavenge enough components to get one of the manufacturing plants going again. It was a very ad-hoc and jury-rigged setup, to the point that I'd had to tape together six servers to run the software, repurpose a construction MT's tools to replace a few welders, and use a pair of HELIANTHUS machines to supply power in order to get it actually functioning.
Don't get me started on feeding materials into the damn thing. The entire logistical setup that went into supporting the centres was nonexistent, and I'd gotten lucky by being able to borrow some feedstock materials from the Vascular Plant.
Credit where credit is due though, I'd have gotten nowhere fast if their tech hadn't been as rugged and optimised as it was.
The first order was actual, dedicated replacement parts for that very same setup, a decision that proved prophetic when one of the manufacturing arms had burned out in the middle of the third set of components. Eventually, I had spares for everything and then some, so I turned my attention to the logistical side of things.
The good news was that I was surrounded by lots, and lots, and lots of useful material that didn't need much processing. The city being in ruins meant there was plenty of metal, silicates, ceramics, and plastics available. It meant that I didn't have to do much setup for the full industrial procedures.
Less common were organic materials and other chemical setups, but Humans had long since figured out the best ways of synthesising those with enough energy, and, well.
Coral.
There was enough energy.
After the industrial capacity was built up into something that actually deserved the name, I started dedicating my attention to poking around the cavern I was stuck in.
This was significantly easier said than done, considering this place was so large that it had its own weather system. There were plenty of fissures and collapsed areas, smaller caves and melted features. Finding the way out took literal months of systematically searching in grid-based coordinates.
The only things that could actually use that exit were fully flight-capable units. There were some long vertical distances involved, literally a dozen kilometres just to get up there, and then multiple kilometres more to get through the long cave systems, which were already multiple kilometres below the ground.
Fourteen kilometres. The entrance to this cavern was three kilometres further underground than Challenger Deep reached on Earth.
Did that mean I could leave the place?
Nope.
In Armored Core 6, in the aftermath of the Fires of Ibis where the Coral had been burned, an organisation known as the Planetary Closure Administration stepped in for the aftermath. With the vast majority of... everything on Rubicon ruined, the PCA declared to everyone that the planet was now forbidden. They built a series of orbital defences, and later on in the game, you'd also find out that they helped themselves to surviving RRI tech. Eventually, after the halfway point of the game, you'd come to Depths Missions, where you'd attack Watchpoint Alpha, a PCA base that guarded the entrance into Institute City. The final defence that blocked actual entry was a continuous laser barrier that would shred anything that tried to pass.
Those events? They hadn't happened yet for me.
The laser barrier was still there, and I couldn't actually breach into the generator from below.
Which was a little frustrating, wasting so much time and effort- but in hindsight, probably a good thing. If I had actually left that way, I'd have gotten the PCA's attention real quick, and that... probably wouldn't have been a good thing.
I wasn't exactly mobile, after all. And the PCA would have drowned everything in sheer numbers with ease.
Still, that meant I needed another way out. As it happened?
There were ways.
I was just going to have to resort to some unconventional thinking.