Tl;DR: A fun story about scientist Stephen, who accidentally ends up at a strange planet and has to figure out how to get home. Also gives some pseudoscience to explain how Factorio world works.
Sometimes in the future: Engineer and scientist Stephen was working with his space/time machine he was inventing. The insrument was ready, just the last adjustments being made. Stephen was guiding his "hand", a floating physical hand flying around according to Stephens commands, that came through Stephens "helmet" that contained his personal computer containing all the knowledge hi had. The hand was holding a small handheld matter transformer, a blade like multipurpose tool that could disintegrate matter and reconstitute it. It was not fast but it was good for cutting through multiple different types of materials and combine the waste to separate compounds for use or store for later.
Suddenly somenthing happens and Stephen finds himself standing a forest, the floating hand next to him, matter transformer still active.
Stephen's first thought was: "IT WORKED, THE MACHINE WORKED!". The second was: Oh shit. Stephen started to feel quite scared, but composed himself and as a true engineer said to himself: "work this shit out, that's all it takes...". He looked around, but all he could see was wilderness. This could not be earth, earth had no forests anymore except in indoor gardens. The air was clean and birds chiming. OK. Either I'm on another planet or I went back in time a lot. First, I need to look around. Stephen checked his surroundins and saw a stream, some boulders, pines on a gentle uphills, mountains in the distance. Hmm, no signs of any civilization. First, strategy. "I need to secure that I don't die, the hand can wield a stick if needed and I can guide it from safe distance. The AI of my helmet takes care of the minute details of the hand and the matter transformer, so I can use it to do things directly with my mind. It works in this sunlight but in the dark the battery won't last long. Stephen used the hand to cut a sturdy wooden stick for the hand to use. The hand could be programmed with modular programming, so Stephen cuickly wrote nice short logical sequences to use as different tools: destroy an object Stephen formed in his mind, extract basic elements from objects. Also for organics a fire setting, wood cutting, splicing, making a firepit.
OK, safety, tools, fire. Water he could get from the stream, He carved a cup from wood and made a short sequnce for the hand to fill the cup from the stream for him. Matter analyser and helmet computer analysis showes the water is safe to drink. Mm, a lot fresher taste than even in level A tap water. After walking around a little Stephen found a nice small cave that should serve a his base until he had learned more of the situation. He ordered the hand to collect wood and make a fire, it seemed to work nicely. He then created an algorithm for the hand to cut an entire tree and chop it to firewood. The brances took to fire a lot easier than the moist wood, of course. Stephen was getting excited, he had never had money to got to a nature preserve, they were only foor the elite. By ordering the hand around he could do what he wanted! Stephens helmet was his pride, as thought it was best to have all knowledge at hand and an AI he could easily programme to do stuff. But where could he get food! There were no food replicators here, he would have to find food around and cook it. Stephen had only one Label 21 energybar in his pocket. Aw shucks, Stephen preferred Label 17 for less fat content but this would have to do.
Stephen was fish in the stream, so he made a program that caught fish with the hand. He checked his databanks and watched an old video file of a guy in a white outfit cursing at other similarly outfitted fellows "where's the fucking FISH. I'm dying here!". Man, that guy was probably hungry for wanting that fish. Well, Stephen created a program that cooked fish placed on sticks by the fire. This was actually good, although could use some more flawor. Well, maybe there's something else to eat. Stephen ordered the hand to cook more fish and he ordered the hand to make a basket from the sticks. Hm, one hand was not enough, he would have to do things manually also. Well, he was used to touching things, since he was only a scientist and not a top level excecutive or a senior bureucrat. Man, I wish I had more of those hands!
Unfortunately the handheld matter transformer could only do so much. He could not create the electronic components required, and he had no energy! I mean, the energy rates were not that bad but at least you had it available in different forms. The 2300 century was a little more advanced than this woodland. But Stephen did not start worrying about those things and focused on the moment. He made a backback using the bark of the white trees, as an old Finnish guy did on a video. Good thing Stephen had the whole updated omnipedia downloaded into the helmet so he could find instructions how things were done in the past. Combined with the modular programmable AI and the hand they would survive! Stephen continued walking around and started a small program to mark the surroundings to a map subprogram so he would find back to his cave. He saw small animals and birds, some berries seemed to be growing on a bush. Analysis labeled them "rasberries" by appearance and chemical stucture, Stephen decided to taste. Good, FANTASTIC! Wow, he had not experienced such flawor, not even on Central Goverment Celebration Day official workplace lunch, where level 3 scientists such as Stephen got their annual Label 9 level full meal consisting of Level 9 starter, Level 9 main course and Level 9 dessert. Last year Stephens unit had been awarded Level 8 desserts for their hard work on developing the space/time warping device, that was a great day of pride for Stephen, though a little ironic to think about it now.
Evening was coming, and Stephen realised that he was far away form his cave, and the hand would not work very long in the dark. The helmet had a backup system and small powerful battery, so he would not lose any knowledge and the hand worked during the day, but nights he could do little at this point. Stephen started running, but since he had never been on any irregular groud areas before he stumbled. BANG!
Stephen woke up, it was dark and his head hurt. The hand was on the ground, battery was full. He looked up to the sky. (Player choose): well it was the milky way at least, but time needs to be measured at a better time (pun intended). OR "OH SHIT", "where the FUCK am I". well, after collecting himself Stephen checked his map. He was not far from the cave, so he took the hand and checked his gear and walked carefully to the cave. Stephen had no bed, but luckily it was not too cold so he settled on the ground. The initial exitement of an adventure started to seep away and Stephen felt a little scared. What WOULD he do now? Just fish and collect berries and sit at the cave? Eventually the fatigue took Stephen and he fell asleep.
To be continued.
A new backround story for the start
Re: A new backround story for the start
Day 2: Plan ahead.
Stephen woke up sore, already missing his comfy Label 5 Level 13 bed. Some of his coworkers wondered why Stephen would direct such a big portion of his income flux to sleep in a level 11 bed, but Stephen felt he slept better and such he worked more efficiently. He made a fire and as he ate fish and berries for breakfast he continued to ponder what do next. He needed to implement a larger strategy. He needed to build a better shelter, secure more food and start to map the surrounding area more systematically. Stephen checked his gear and started walking again. The hand collected automatically raspberries to a basket while they went. He did not want to go far from the water so Stephen followed it uphill. Higher vantage point would be good, perhaps he would see more. Eventually Stephen was atop a hill and looked around. He was in valley that opened to a larger plain. The streams combined at the bottom of the valley and there were small ponds and lakes in the distance. In hills rose to tiny mountains and in the distance Stephen saw great mountains. The area was huge but no intelligent life in anywhere, and Stephen started to think maybe it was true literally. He might have been the biggest idiot in the world by tinkering that space/time machine without cutting ALL the energy feed to the machine first, and now he might be the ONLY idiot in the world!
Stephen sat down to think. He needed a bigger strategy, think further ahead. First he needed to analyze what he had. He had access to all the collected knowledge stored in his Omnipedia, but that would not be much help since he was alone and only the hand to keep company (ok, that was cheap
). He studied the hand. It was actually a set of nanobots that operated as hand shape, formed around a cube shaped hover unit. The nanobots could fix themselves with energy from the sun and battery, but could not replicate without external energy and matter. The closer the matter to the correct form needed, the less energy it took to replicate. The nanobots collected energy and could be reprogrammed to other forms but that took more energy as the AI needed to make the calculations for change.He could turn the hand to a large solar panel to collect more sunlight, Stephen wrote a sequence for the had to be mostly as a panel and transmit energy to the larger helmet battery.
The nanobots could analyze the elemental compositions of materials, so Stephen took a rock from the ground. Analysis showed trace amounts of copper and some atoms of iron, too! He might be able to use the matter transforming tool to separate the metals from the rock, but it was tedious and slow and what would he do with them? Hmm, he could make small amounts of nanobots slowly by converting the less needed elements, maybe he could make enough to make another hand! After working Stephen realized it was too slow, and he did not have the materials for the hover cube unit anyway. He searched more rock and made more nanobots anyway. He could program the nanobots to move in a clump to do things just like the hand did flying, but the nanobots were slow and did not possess so much strength, as they would have to intensify if used bear more load or in impact. The more diversified nanobot structures were locked behind security levels waaayy beyond Stephens level, and the low amount was the more important issue.
Stephen created an AI to automatically use the hand and matter transformer to analyze soil and rocks for elements, mainly copper and iron as they were needed a lot for the nanobots. Eventually he started to calculate. He could produce copper and iron from the rocks and the matter transformer produced the other component elements. The nanobots were stupid as a single, but used an open source platform that could be used to program them in logical collections. Stephen created some basic sets of nanobot clusters, that contained a central node upkeeping the cluster code, the borderline harder areas and the function of the cluster. He used the clusters to create larger units and eventually he had created sequence sets to make some tools. He slowly created an thin iron blade with his transformer and with a another video made an axe. The hand could use the axe, though slowly to cut trees since the matter transformer was needed to another stuff. He collected sticks and made simple nanobot "robots" that had wooden structures but were weak in strength. They could collect rocks for him, and maybe a larger one eventually could collect more raspberries.
It was getting late again, time sure flies when having fun! Stephen made the hand collect some dry grass and soft moss for sleeping and sat by his fire, waiting for the stars to appear. At sundown he ordered the nanobots to sleep in order to save precious energy. The sky was beautiful, the factory smoke clouds at home rarely made it possible to see the sky. It was usually when some production unit had blundered and the feed for whatever was down and then everyone had to hassle. Most of the time the root cause was identified to bad planning and Stephen did not want to make bad plans here! He would be organized and systematical and used logic to solve this pig puzzle. Stephen studied the helmet and computer. He had all the knowledge since everyone had, it was just the matter of access level. Any hacking was of course impossible due to omnisurveillance system watching, but here there were no consequences! But since he still had limited information, Stephen did not want to take unnecessary risks by hacking too much in case he would return suddenly. He still had no idea what went wrong with the experiment. Nor could he read the last data before the accident since raw data was under level 1 security class. He had wast knowledge about the machine and the test, but there were so many minute detail taken care of by AIs, it was not possible for Stephen to but guess what went wrong. The only way to find out would be to have access to the machine and the data, and that fact bode bad to Stephen. If he poked too deep and was suddenly returned, he would have a hard time explaining despite the accident. In fact, Omnicorp would probably deal with him very carefully anyway, since teleportation and space/time travel were the most sought out technology within the large corporations as the first one to make it would make the most profit. Government would naturally order the knowledge distributed and there were always espionage, but before the Formal trials and appeal ceremonies for the Government would be concluded and paid for, the first one to the win would get valuable advantage in the great game of profits.
Stephen went through some basic routines and found some nanobot specs more suitable for more diverse operations. Then he hit the jackpot. The matter transformer knife was such a simple tool due to its low energy flux, it was considered a common thing. The actual matter transforming nanobots were very specialized, but he could make some more of the kind that stripped matter to its components. He could increase the output of copper and iron by making a more larger matter transformer. He could eventually make a permanent one but how to power it? Nanobots collected solar energy to sustain themselves, provide some movement and the tiny AI and communications part in them. One nanobot reached to next one and so on, and power could be diverted by making more power conducting types by condensing copper. Stephen found a better solar power output type spec and programmed the nanobots to a tight, solar collecting unit that provided power through a copper cable that could be made, or a nanobot wire but nanobots were too precious now so Stephen tinkered some copper cables. The solar panel was not efficient but at least it worked, during the day he could use it to make some energy from the sun. In time he could make more of these to increase energy production, but this was slow and work would end during the night as he had no energy stores. Well, that could wait, Stephen went to "bed".
WHAT WAS THAT! Stephen woke up to a strange scary noise! The fire was burning low and it was late night. The AI did not know, and waited for Stephens approval to make a search, as Stephen had made many query gates to make sure no unneeded processing was done to save that precious energy. But now was not the time to be a tightwad, the AI made some search and no results were found. Stephen had woken the hand and it held the axe in air. Nothing, and more nothing. Morning was coming anyway, so Stephen decided to increase the fire and stay awake. He went through the omnipedia and read about the basic sciences of metals and ores to increase his knowledge to be
more efficient.
Stephen woke up sore, already missing his comfy Label 5 Level 13 bed. Some of his coworkers wondered why Stephen would direct such a big portion of his income flux to sleep in a level 11 bed, but Stephen felt he slept better and such he worked more efficiently. He made a fire and as he ate fish and berries for breakfast he continued to ponder what do next. He needed to implement a larger strategy. He needed to build a better shelter, secure more food and start to map the surrounding area more systematically. Stephen checked his gear and started walking again. The hand collected automatically raspberries to a basket while they went. He did not want to go far from the water so Stephen followed it uphill. Higher vantage point would be good, perhaps he would see more. Eventually Stephen was atop a hill and looked around. He was in valley that opened to a larger plain. The streams combined at the bottom of the valley and there were small ponds and lakes in the distance. In hills rose to tiny mountains and in the distance Stephen saw great mountains. The area was huge but no intelligent life in anywhere, and Stephen started to think maybe it was true literally. He might have been the biggest idiot in the world by tinkering that space/time machine without cutting ALL the energy feed to the machine first, and now he might be the ONLY idiot in the world!
Stephen sat down to think. He needed a bigger strategy, think further ahead. First he needed to analyze what he had. He had access to all the collected knowledge stored in his Omnipedia, but that would not be much help since he was alone and only the hand to keep company (ok, that was cheap
). He studied the hand. It was actually a set of nanobots that operated as hand shape, formed around a cube shaped hover unit. The nanobots could fix themselves with energy from the sun and battery, but could not replicate without external energy and matter. The closer the matter to the correct form needed, the less energy it took to replicate. The nanobots collected energy and could be reprogrammed to other forms but that took more energy as the AI needed to make the calculations for change.He could turn the hand to a large solar panel to collect more sunlight, Stephen wrote a sequence for the had to be mostly as a panel and transmit energy to the larger helmet battery. The nanobots could analyze the elemental compositions of materials, so Stephen took a rock from the ground. Analysis showed trace amounts of copper and some atoms of iron, too! He might be able to use the matter transforming tool to separate the metals from the rock, but it was tedious and slow and what would he do with them? Hmm, he could make small amounts of nanobots slowly by converting the less needed elements, maybe he could make enough to make another hand! After working Stephen realized it was too slow, and he did not have the materials for the hover cube unit anyway. He searched more rock and made more nanobots anyway. He could program the nanobots to move in a clump to do things just like the hand did flying, but the nanobots were slow and did not possess so much strength, as they would have to intensify if used bear more load or in impact. The more diversified nanobot structures were locked behind security levels waaayy beyond Stephens level, and the low amount was the more important issue.
Stephen created an AI to automatically use the hand and matter transformer to analyze soil and rocks for elements, mainly copper and iron as they were needed a lot for the nanobots. Eventually he started to calculate. He could produce copper and iron from the rocks and the matter transformer produced the other component elements. The nanobots were stupid as a single, but used an open source platform that could be used to program them in logical collections. Stephen created some basic sets of nanobot clusters, that contained a central node upkeeping the cluster code, the borderline harder areas and the function of the cluster. He used the clusters to create larger units and eventually he had created sequence sets to make some tools. He slowly created an thin iron blade with his transformer and with a another video made an axe. The hand could use the axe, though slowly to cut trees since the matter transformer was needed to another stuff. He collected sticks and made simple nanobot "robots" that had wooden structures but were weak in strength. They could collect rocks for him, and maybe a larger one eventually could collect more raspberries.
It was getting late again, time sure flies when having fun! Stephen made the hand collect some dry grass and soft moss for sleeping and sat by his fire, waiting for the stars to appear. At sundown he ordered the nanobots to sleep in order to save precious energy. The sky was beautiful, the factory smoke clouds at home rarely made it possible to see the sky. It was usually when some production unit had blundered and the feed for whatever was down and then everyone had to hassle. Most of the time the root cause was identified to bad planning and Stephen did not want to make bad plans here! He would be organized and systematical and used logic to solve this pig puzzle. Stephen studied the helmet and computer. He had all the knowledge since everyone had, it was just the matter of access level. Any hacking was of course impossible due to omnisurveillance system watching, but here there were no consequences! But since he still had limited information, Stephen did not want to take unnecessary risks by hacking too much in case he would return suddenly. He still had no idea what went wrong with the experiment. Nor could he read the last data before the accident since raw data was under level 1 security class. He had wast knowledge about the machine and the test, but there were so many minute detail taken care of by AIs, it was not possible for Stephen to but guess what went wrong. The only way to find out would be to have access to the machine and the data, and that fact bode bad to Stephen. If he poked too deep and was suddenly returned, he would have a hard time explaining despite the accident. In fact, Omnicorp would probably deal with him very carefully anyway, since teleportation and space/time travel were the most sought out technology within the large corporations as the first one to make it would make the most profit. Government would naturally order the knowledge distributed and there were always espionage, but before the Formal trials and appeal ceremonies for the Government would be concluded and paid for, the first one to the win would get valuable advantage in the great game of profits.
Stephen went through some basic routines and found some nanobot specs more suitable for more diverse operations. Then he hit the jackpot. The matter transformer knife was such a simple tool due to its low energy flux, it was considered a common thing. The actual matter transforming nanobots were very specialized, but he could make some more of the kind that stripped matter to its components. He could increase the output of copper and iron by making a more larger matter transformer. He could eventually make a permanent one but how to power it? Nanobots collected solar energy to sustain themselves, provide some movement and the tiny AI and communications part in them. One nanobot reached to next one and so on, and power could be diverted by making more power conducting types by condensing copper. Stephen found a better solar power output type spec and programmed the nanobots to a tight, solar collecting unit that provided power through a copper cable that could be made, or a nanobot wire but nanobots were too precious now so Stephen tinkered some copper cables. The solar panel was not efficient but at least it worked, during the day he could use it to make some energy from the sun. In time he could make more of these to increase energy production, but this was slow and work would end during the night as he had no energy stores. Well, that could wait, Stephen went to "bed".
WHAT WAS THAT! Stephen woke up to a strange scary noise! The fire was burning low and it was late night. The AI did not know, and waited for Stephens approval to make a search, as Stephen had made many query gates to make sure no unneeded processing was done to save that precious energy. But now was not the time to be a tightwad, the AI made some search and no results were found. Stephen had woken the hand and it held the axe in air. Nothing, and more nothing. Morning was coming anyway, so Stephen decided to increase the fire and stay awake. He went through the omnipedia and read about the basic sciences of metals and ores to increase his knowledge to be
more efficient.
Re: A new backround story for the start
Day 3: Expansion.
Stephen made a plan for the day during breakfast. First he organized his resources and stared a careful cataloging of data, especially different matter and energy flux. He had "blueprints" of his nanobot tools. He had plans for a small solar array, some physical helpers of various strengths and speeds. He had made more matter transforming nanobot mass and managed to enlarge the matter transformer. Unfortunately the hand could not use it anymore as it was too big. Still, the helpers brought rocks and Stephen "smelted" the rocks to collect copper. Iron was in trace amounts and it was best to specialize the nanobots to copper extraction for efficiency. He could make iron smelters separately if he found more iron rich rocks. He could use the blade to cut rocks to cubes and build from the cubes, so he made a rock chair with some grass for softening. Now he could sit and the machines would work for him while he ate raspberries! Thinking of raspberries made Stephen hungry and he was out of fish. He sent the hand to look for some fish, but clearly he needed to secure food and water also carefully.
The hand was too slow and he needed for other help anyway, so Stephen used some of his precious nanobot basic mass to construct a fish trap he saw from omnipedia video library. The nanobots could solidify as "glue" but it took some of that precious nanobot mass he needed for everything else too. He would need to make be efficient in everything. After making some traps that the hand could carry to the stream. He also perfected one simple berry collecting robot. It was a simple contraption of wooden stick frame, that was held by nanobot "joints" Small arrays for power with copper wiring. As the nanobots could create some strength locally by specializing, Stephen made moving joints powered by the solar array which made the contraption move around on four legs. It had an upper unit that held the "eye" that was a condensed AI area that could detect raspberries by analyzing the incoming light instead of collecting energy. The AI learned to recognize a raspberry and it moved around looking for those. Then a small reaching "hand" plucked the berries and moved them to a basket made from wood. That thing could go around as long as it did not go too far outside helmets reach. He would have to figure out how to improve range and design information transfer too. The nanobots discussed with the nanobots next to them, and they could concentrate to a more information specific form. Stephen used this to make small logic elements so that by combining them to larger clusters and clusters to bigger complexes he could make some rudimentary electronic units to improve the independence of his machines.
By evening Stephen had made a rudimentary drill that could smash the rock bed and move the ore next to it. He had devised a scanner for ores that the hand could carry to analyse areas Stephen indicated during walking around. He had hiked around and found an iron rich rock area, a mineral deposit. Stephen analyzed the borders of the area and drilled a small deep hole to go deep and made estimates of the iron deposit. It had a nice amount of iron, but how to get it out in large quantities? Stephen started planning a smelting unit, but it took far too much energy to efficiently smelt iron by sunlight. The nanobots could be specialized to condense and conduct heat, and as Stephen stared in to the fire at his firepit he realized that wood had energy in it. He started to design and after some hacking to get some better heat resistant designs of nanobots. By nightfall he had built a small smelting unit from rock and nanobots. Wood could burned and the energy condensed to smelt iron from the ore and push it out as standard steel plates. These he would use to built more stuff the next day. Stephen went to bed, he had made a small wall around him just in case. He read some engineering basics about machinery before dozing off.
Day 4: Logistics
Stephen woke up feeling good, he was thrilled to get to work! This was so exiting, and there was so much to do. Stephen arranged some ore for smelting. Soon Stephen realized that he could not move the smelter and drill around all the time that was not efficient. He created a large drill construction that had a wood storage box for fuel, a burning tank with an inverted smelter, which could turn heat to energy. This energy was channeled to motion energy by specialized nodes of nanobots. Stephen made larger gears from the iron plates and built his drill over the iron rich area. As the wood started to burn, the drill started to spin. The pumping motion made the drill to smash rock and the ore was moved to a storage bin. Stephen devices a simple reacher unit, that could scoop ore and throw it on the other side of it, as the thing was standing on a wooden base. It was slow but Stephen new he could improve the thing more efficient later, he still had to solve the problem of getting the ore to the smelter. He started to make an iron frame of a human like robot that would carry ores, but they would need too much logic. The bots would not work outside his helmet range, since they were too dumb to navigate without the helmet AI to help them. They were also slow. Stephen remember Omnimarkets looong escalators from the subway station number 2 grid 7R, close to his home. Those things moved people in a flux to the inside of the giant mall where you could buy all your favorite Government approved consumer products.
Stephen was on fire! He devised a brilliant blueprint! A section of a transport belt. The prototype was made from wood but it was handy for testing ideas before finishing the project and fixing the blueprint. Stephen had already adopted small project management processes to help him keep track of things. It was best to make one good design and stick with it, until enough data was collected for major upgrade design. He upgraded his devices to have the data collection and information transfer and storage in a small scale. This way the larger constructs could monitor their status and repair more efficiently. This made the drills operate quite independently as they just smashed the ground and moved the ore to the reach of the inserter. The inserter moved the ore to the first piece of transport belt. The belt had a solar array structure, and with the help of sturdy ligh frame and gears and thin metal "belt" the device could move the ore from one end of the belt to next. Stephen made standard sequences to efficiently connect too units and soon he had a set of "commands" that made the belt "units" connect when a new one was made next to each other. The beauty of the thing was that it only needed light to spin endlessly and always keep itself repaired from the normal wear. He chose a more open area nearby and built a large smelting unit and a belt carrying the ore from the drill to the smelter. Now he had iron plates coming nicely, just fill the large machines with wood and and a nice pile of plates started to appear next to the smelter. He could move the plates along the belt too, but where? Also, he needed a lot of gears for making belts. Stephen perfected the belt unit design and many others by creating some standards. He had a certain amount of standard plates coming from the smelter. The drill now collected and made some simple AI separation to a collection unit, that was a standard unit. This ore was dumped to the belt and the belts could be made running at a certain standard speed for all loads at a certain speed. Any faster and the independent AI control could not repair the thin belt fast enough after heavier things and the belt units should not have variable speeds anyway. So he had a standard unit of belt that was easy to create and it took all kinds of stuff at the same speed. Data was also collected and transmitted through the belt to make it combine smoothly to a one big belt with 90 degree turns that did not affect the speed or drop the ore.
He needed to figure out how to use the plates more efficiently. By evening Stephen had made a small assembly unit that could make different standard units of stuff, like gear units. The gear unit was a collection of standard gears of variable size. He would make all his machines work by using the standard kit, so making the machines could theoretically be chained to make more machines. But that took energy quite a lot and the plans for machines were quite complicated. After some hacking Stephen had some data storage specs for nanobots. He made memory modules that could store some data. This way his assembly unit could have all the plans it needed stored and Stephen just had to send commands via his helmet for the factory to make different stuff in standard units. He added a routine to the belt design, where the repair AI could use some data collected from the belt units to assess damage in the a periodic scale, thus reducing Stephens need to personally order a units repair directly. With these upgrades the drills now drilled as long as there was fuel and ore in its collection area. The belts would now run endlessly in the sun. The smelters also were now totally independent. As Stephen had finalized all updates to his plans, once again all went down at the sundown, since the belt stopped and thus there was no reason for the drill to operate and no ore went to the smelter. Stephen looked at the sky, wondering. He had a desire to see more stars, so he made a more light focusing node of nanobots. Eventually and with hacking help he had some lenses and a frame for a telescope. The sky seemed so strange, and all that beautiful starlight. Then Stephen had an idea. The belts needed very little energy. He managed to combine the lens nanobots to the array nanobots in a way that would absorb a little more energy of the starlight. The difference was small, but it was enough, the belt unit started spinning in the starlight! Now his belts could run practically eternally until the sun exploded, nice. But what the heck was he supposed to do with all this? Before sleep took him he read some basic logistics and project management guides.
Stephen made a plan for the day during breakfast. First he organized his resources and stared a careful cataloging of data, especially different matter and energy flux. He had "blueprints" of his nanobot tools. He had plans for a small solar array, some physical helpers of various strengths and speeds. He had made more matter transforming nanobot mass and managed to enlarge the matter transformer. Unfortunately the hand could not use it anymore as it was too big. Still, the helpers brought rocks and Stephen "smelted" the rocks to collect copper. Iron was in trace amounts and it was best to specialize the nanobots to copper extraction for efficiency. He could make iron smelters separately if he found more iron rich rocks. He could use the blade to cut rocks to cubes and build from the cubes, so he made a rock chair with some grass for softening. Now he could sit and the machines would work for him while he ate raspberries! Thinking of raspberries made Stephen hungry and he was out of fish. He sent the hand to look for some fish, but clearly he needed to secure food and water also carefully.
The hand was too slow and he needed for other help anyway, so Stephen used some of his precious nanobot basic mass to construct a fish trap he saw from omnipedia video library. The nanobots could solidify as "glue" but it took some of that precious nanobot mass he needed for everything else too. He would need to make be efficient in everything. After making some traps that the hand could carry to the stream. He also perfected one simple berry collecting robot. It was a simple contraption of wooden stick frame, that was held by nanobot "joints" Small arrays for power with copper wiring. As the nanobots could create some strength locally by specializing, Stephen made moving joints powered by the solar array which made the contraption move around on four legs. It had an upper unit that held the "eye" that was a condensed AI area that could detect raspberries by analyzing the incoming light instead of collecting energy. The AI learned to recognize a raspberry and it moved around looking for those. Then a small reaching "hand" plucked the berries and moved them to a basket made from wood. That thing could go around as long as it did not go too far outside helmets reach. He would have to figure out how to improve range and design information transfer too. The nanobots discussed with the nanobots next to them, and they could concentrate to a more information specific form. Stephen used this to make small logic elements so that by combining them to larger clusters and clusters to bigger complexes he could make some rudimentary electronic units to improve the independence of his machines.
By evening Stephen had made a rudimentary drill that could smash the rock bed and move the ore next to it. He had devised a scanner for ores that the hand could carry to analyse areas Stephen indicated during walking around. He had hiked around and found an iron rich rock area, a mineral deposit. Stephen analyzed the borders of the area and drilled a small deep hole to go deep and made estimates of the iron deposit. It had a nice amount of iron, but how to get it out in large quantities? Stephen started planning a smelting unit, but it took far too much energy to efficiently smelt iron by sunlight. The nanobots could be specialized to condense and conduct heat, and as Stephen stared in to the fire at his firepit he realized that wood had energy in it. He started to design and after some hacking to get some better heat resistant designs of nanobots. By nightfall he had built a small smelting unit from rock and nanobots. Wood could burned and the energy condensed to smelt iron from the ore and push it out as standard steel plates. These he would use to built more stuff the next day. Stephen went to bed, he had made a small wall around him just in case. He read some engineering basics about machinery before dozing off.
Day 4: Logistics
Stephen woke up feeling good, he was thrilled to get to work! This was so exiting, and there was so much to do. Stephen arranged some ore for smelting. Soon Stephen realized that he could not move the smelter and drill around all the time that was not efficient. He created a large drill construction that had a wood storage box for fuel, a burning tank with an inverted smelter, which could turn heat to energy. This energy was channeled to motion energy by specialized nodes of nanobots. Stephen made larger gears from the iron plates and built his drill over the iron rich area. As the wood started to burn, the drill started to spin. The pumping motion made the drill to smash rock and the ore was moved to a storage bin. Stephen devices a simple reacher unit, that could scoop ore and throw it on the other side of it, as the thing was standing on a wooden base. It was slow but Stephen new he could improve the thing more efficient later, he still had to solve the problem of getting the ore to the smelter. He started to make an iron frame of a human like robot that would carry ores, but they would need too much logic. The bots would not work outside his helmet range, since they were too dumb to navigate without the helmet AI to help them. They were also slow. Stephen remember Omnimarkets looong escalators from the subway station number 2 grid 7R, close to his home. Those things moved people in a flux to the inside of the giant mall where you could buy all your favorite Government approved consumer products.
Stephen was on fire! He devised a brilliant blueprint! A section of a transport belt. The prototype was made from wood but it was handy for testing ideas before finishing the project and fixing the blueprint. Stephen had already adopted small project management processes to help him keep track of things. It was best to make one good design and stick with it, until enough data was collected for major upgrade design. He upgraded his devices to have the data collection and information transfer and storage in a small scale. This way the larger constructs could monitor their status and repair more efficiently. This made the drills operate quite independently as they just smashed the ground and moved the ore to the reach of the inserter. The inserter moved the ore to the first piece of transport belt. The belt had a solar array structure, and with the help of sturdy ligh frame and gears and thin metal "belt" the device could move the ore from one end of the belt to next. Stephen made standard sequences to efficiently connect too units and soon he had a set of "commands" that made the belt "units" connect when a new one was made next to each other. The beauty of the thing was that it only needed light to spin endlessly and always keep itself repaired from the normal wear. He chose a more open area nearby and built a large smelting unit and a belt carrying the ore from the drill to the smelter. Now he had iron plates coming nicely, just fill the large machines with wood and and a nice pile of plates started to appear next to the smelter. He could move the plates along the belt too, but where? Also, he needed a lot of gears for making belts. Stephen perfected the belt unit design and many others by creating some standards. He had a certain amount of standard plates coming from the smelter. The drill now collected and made some simple AI separation to a collection unit, that was a standard unit. This ore was dumped to the belt and the belts could be made running at a certain standard speed for all loads at a certain speed. Any faster and the independent AI control could not repair the thin belt fast enough after heavier things and the belt units should not have variable speeds anyway. So he had a standard unit of belt that was easy to create and it took all kinds of stuff at the same speed. Data was also collected and transmitted through the belt to make it combine smoothly to a one big belt with 90 degree turns that did not affect the speed or drop the ore.
He needed to figure out how to use the plates more efficiently. By evening Stephen had made a small assembly unit that could make different standard units of stuff, like gear units. The gear unit was a collection of standard gears of variable size. He would make all his machines work by using the standard kit, so making the machines could theoretically be chained to make more machines. But that took energy quite a lot and the plans for machines were quite complicated. After some hacking Stephen had some data storage specs for nanobots. He made memory modules that could store some data. This way his assembly unit could have all the plans it needed stored and Stephen just had to send commands via his helmet for the factory to make different stuff in standard units. He added a routine to the belt design, where the repair AI could use some data collected from the belt units to assess damage in the a periodic scale, thus reducing Stephens need to personally order a units repair directly. With these upgrades the drills now drilled as long as there was fuel and ore in its collection area. The belts would now run endlessly in the sun. The smelters also were now totally independent. As Stephen had finalized all updates to his plans, once again all went down at the sundown, since the belt stopped and thus there was no reason for the drill to operate and no ore went to the smelter. Stephen looked at the sky, wondering. He had a desire to see more stars, so he made a more light focusing node of nanobots. Eventually and with hacking help he had some lenses and a frame for a telescope. The sky seemed so strange, and all that beautiful starlight. Then Stephen had an idea. The belts needed very little energy. He managed to combine the lens nanobots to the array nanobots in a way that would absorb a little more energy of the starlight. The difference was small, but it was enough, the belt unit started spinning in the starlight! Now his belts could run practically eternally until the sun exploded, nice. But what the heck was he supposed to do with all this? Before sleep took him he read some basic logistics and project management guides.
Re: A new backround story for the start
Day 5: thinking big.
Stephen started his morning in his routine breakfast and daily planning. The collector robot now new how to gather blueberries from the ground, and his fish traps had brought more different fish, which was good. He had updated his helmet with the starlight system, as that was enough for the AI to work small problems even at night. He had "security" bots that were not very useful but stood sentry. He still could not create a smart android type helper as they needed too much AI power. He created a sentry bot blueprint. It had a sensor part, a small AI to detect movement and turn the turret to it. Then he made a "bow! that fired arrows automatically towards movement. He new he could hack weapons designs, but that should wait since it was peaceful. The floating hand had a small bow weapon to hunt small animals and now he had access to some meat.
Stephen decided to plan the whole day, since he had no need for more resources until he knew what to do with them. Eventually he started to tinker with the AI and the memory modules, making bigger AI routines. This took a lot more work, but eventually Stephen, with the help of some quantum computing tips hacked from the database, Stephen had made an AI routine unit that could double on itself, meaning that he could use the AI to design new things. Stephen improved his memory design a lot, creating "data" units that could be stored and transferred. He made a careful project design routine and with it's help he had created an artificial "designer" unit that could analyze the condensed data packets brought to it and suggest improvements. Stephen made desired specifications for next generation of belt, inserter and other ideas. The AI could analyze the data packets and start running the iterations to reach the specs of the better design. When it was ready the new plan was ready for Stephens check and then added to his toolbank. The improvements were always so advanced, that the current types could not upgrade themselves, as the updated spec needed more of everything and the nanobot structure would have to be made completely again anyway. The requirement of nanobots was now handled by reducing their need in overall. The smelter provided the system, where more basic glue nanobots were added to the plate unit and their role was just to attach stuff and solidify. Thus their handling was made more easier. Now as he built the plate unit had all the glue to make almost anything within the resource content of the unit. The hand could easily built different entities as it needed less computing when doing a blueprint guided plan and could thus move a lot faster. Finally Stephen studied strategy basics and looked at the sky. The belts made quite a noise and he thought about shutting them off, but realized that he needed plates so he just made nanobot earplugs and went to sleep.
Day 6 Power!
Last day went making plans and now Stephen had an array of tools to turn the natural resources of the land to better use. He had been walking around yesterday making plans, and had come across some herbs that the autoanalyzer and AI search found to used in cooking. He tried some herbs to his fish and it was nice, some change in the flavor cheered him. He searched the database for more info about herbs, but for some reason Goverment protocols required surprisingly high access levels with some plants, which sounded weird. The access level problem was one thing he would have to make choice about. Six days and still no signs that he would get out of here, he did not even know if there was home anymore. What if he had broken the reality and his world existed no more? Was he in the past where there were no humans yet? OR Was he in a parallel universe, alien planet or what, the different sky was scary to Stephen. He would have to risk breaching deeply into the database and that took computing and routines. He perfected the data package to a standard format that went on the belt. These packages were made from standard kits made from copper and iron. The plate kits now had an upgrade that was incorporated to the whole factory part system along with better memory and information transfer system. Now the plates "collected" information from the entire factory at a low level, and as the plates were combined in the assembler to create the datapackage, making the system create "science" packs. The logic was run at all levels of the design system. Now the whole system could transmit data of itself to plates and the plates could be transformed to condensed data of the system but it needed improvement. He took some time to look at the matter transforming. He made some success at transforming matter to the more exotic elements needed to make the make the transformation. After some trial and error the science pack was now a standard size unit that had data compressed to it and iterative calculations units to be used as logic bombs. Now he could make larger AI center that could analyze these datapackets and he could give it parts of the data storage in his helmet to help reaching the next generation specs.
The science pack had data, and AI tech created at the assembler. The AI in the data center took the science pack and used the data collected by using the logic bombs the data center could systematically take the given database by force using the basic resources of copper and iron. He made a modular science structure, where more resources could be pooled to make more condensed and advanced packs for the AI and better logic bombs. Now he could hack to the system automatically. By targeting certain useful stuff he made better progress and soon his data-analyzation was improved, now the system could optimize the balance between estimated hack time and data input. He had a standard knowledge processing speed that could automatically make better designs by AI analyzing Omnidata library through the logic bombs and factory usage data analysis that came from the entire factory, but this system had one problem. Energy. He could not use wood, he fad found coal that had more energy density, but still burning was not enough, he would need a gigantic burning place and the nanobots had their limits in turning heat to other energy forms.
Electricity was needed, to transmit more energy. In no time with his AI help Stephen had made a small turbine that could create electricity from motion. He had made more drills and smelters and assemblers that could make stuff, but the assemblers did not work well with heat energy, the AI logics needed so much power combined with the assembly, and solar panels were not enough at this point. All his nanobot designs had the more efficient solar collection in them to reduce the need of direct power input, but he would need a lot more energy. So Stephen made copper cable units for power and information transfer. The turbine needed to have better motion than what could be achieved with burning stuff directly. Studying some basics of energy creation showed that in the old days people used to utilize boiling water to make electrical turbines move. After an afternoon of trial and error he had a rudimentary power plant ready. It needed a constant source of fresh water though, it was not enough that he filled the water tank once. Eventually Stephen had a water pump design ready. Moving the liquid was harder as the automatic repair system was under more stress to repair lost nanobots, so the pump had to be more intelligent. Eventually Stephen's standard system saw a new type of unit, an electric circuit unit. This was made in the assembly from iron plates and copper wires, which was the best ratio to create more AI nodes needed for advanced thinking. The liquids also needed to move so a pipe unit was created. The pump worked nicely, but boiling the water was hard and needed energy and the whole generator was the supposed to GIVE energy! As evening once again approached, Stephen decided to solve the problem by using a wood boiler unit made from pipe and a smelter furnace. This worked nicely, and as the sun went down the power creation was ready: a pump that pulled water to a boiler, and the hot water went to the steam engine, which started to spin! The unit showed a nice output of electrical power. While Stephen happily sat down by his fire for the night, he realized something: the pump actually did not need so much new fresh water once the system was set up, so he could improve the design to utilize the starlight system of the belts. With gears the pump would also work during the night, giving him never-ending power as long as the boilers kept burning! His last tinkering project of the day was a small lamp, made from the electrical circuit. This could be made bigger and connected to his power network to give Stephen light and he could work longer and safer in the evening. Time to sleep again.
Stephen started his morning in his routine breakfast and daily planning. The collector robot now new how to gather blueberries from the ground, and his fish traps had brought more different fish, which was good. He had updated his helmet with the starlight system, as that was enough for the AI to work small problems even at night. He had "security" bots that were not very useful but stood sentry. He still could not create a smart android type helper as they needed too much AI power. He created a sentry bot blueprint. It had a sensor part, a small AI to detect movement and turn the turret to it. Then he made a "bow! that fired arrows automatically towards movement. He new he could hack weapons designs, but that should wait since it was peaceful. The floating hand had a small bow weapon to hunt small animals and now he had access to some meat.
Stephen decided to plan the whole day, since he had no need for more resources until he knew what to do with them. Eventually he started to tinker with the AI and the memory modules, making bigger AI routines. This took a lot more work, but eventually Stephen, with the help of some quantum computing tips hacked from the database, Stephen had made an AI routine unit that could double on itself, meaning that he could use the AI to design new things. Stephen improved his memory design a lot, creating "data" units that could be stored and transferred. He made a careful project design routine and with it's help he had created an artificial "designer" unit that could analyze the condensed data packets brought to it and suggest improvements. Stephen made desired specifications for next generation of belt, inserter and other ideas. The AI could analyze the data packets and start running the iterations to reach the specs of the better design. When it was ready the new plan was ready for Stephens check and then added to his toolbank. The improvements were always so advanced, that the current types could not upgrade themselves, as the updated spec needed more of everything and the nanobot structure would have to be made completely again anyway. The requirement of nanobots was now handled by reducing their need in overall. The smelter provided the system, where more basic glue nanobots were added to the plate unit and their role was just to attach stuff and solidify. Thus their handling was made more easier. Now as he built the plate unit had all the glue to make almost anything within the resource content of the unit. The hand could easily built different entities as it needed less computing when doing a blueprint guided plan and could thus move a lot faster. Finally Stephen studied strategy basics and looked at the sky. The belts made quite a noise and he thought about shutting them off, but realized that he needed plates so he just made nanobot earplugs and went to sleep.
Day 6 Power!
Last day went making plans and now Stephen had an array of tools to turn the natural resources of the land to better use. He had been walking around yesterday making plans, and had come across some herbs that the autoanalyzer and AI search found to used in cooking. He tried some herbs to his fish and it was nice, some change in the flavor cheered him. He searched the database for more info about herbs, but for some reason Goverment protocols required surprisingly high access levels with some plants, which sounded weird. The access level problem was one thing he would have to make choice about. Six days and still no signs that he would get out of here, he did not even know if there was home anymore. What if he had broken the reality and his world existed no more? Was he in the past where there were no humans yet? OR Was he in a parallel universe, alien planet or what, the different sky was scary to Stephen. He would have to risk breaching deeply into the database and that took computing and routines. He perfected the data package to a standard format that went on the belt. These packages were made from standard kits made from copper and iron. The plate kits now had an upgrade that was incorporated to the whole factory part system along with better memory and information transfer system. Now the plates "collected" information from the entire factory at a low level, and as the plates were combined in the assembler to create the datapackage, making the system create "science" packs. The logic was run at all levels of the design system. Now the whole system could transmit data of itself to plates and the plates could be transformed to condensed data of the system but it needed improvement. He took some time to look at the matter transforming. He made some success at transforming matter to the more exotic elements needed to make the make the transformation. After some trial and error the science pack was now a standard size unit that had data compressed to it and iterative calculations units to be used as logic bombs. Now he could make larger AI center that could analyze these datapackets and he could give it parts of the data storage in his helmet to help reaching the next generation specs.
The science pack had data, and AI tech created at the assembler. The AI in the data center took the science pack and used the data collected by using the logic bombs the data center could systematically take the given database by force using the basic resources of copper and iron. He made a modular science structure, where more resources could be pooled to make more condensed and advanced packs for the AI and better logic bombs. Now he could hack to the system automatically. By targeting certain useful stuff he made better progress and soon his data-analyzation was improved, now the system could optimize the balance between estimated hack time and data input. He had a standard knowledge processing speed that could automatically make better designs by AI analyzing Omnidata library through the logic bombs and factory usage data analysis that came from the entire factory, but this system had one problem. Energy. He could not use wood, he fad found coal that had more energy density, but still burning was not enough, he would need a gigantic burning place and the nanobots had their limits in turning heat to other energy forms.
Electricity was needed, to transmit more energy. In no time with his AI help Stephen had made a small turbine that could create electricity from motion. He had made more drills and smelters and assemblers that could make stuff, but the assemblers did not work well with heat energy, the AI logics needed so much power combined with the assembly, and solar panels were not enough at this point. All his nanobot designs had the more efficient solar collection in them to reduce the need of direct power input, but he would need a lot more energy. So Stephen made copper cable units for power and information transfer. The turbine needed to have better motion than what could be achieved with burning stuff directly. Studying some basics of energy creation showed that in the old days people used to utilize boiling water to make electrical turbines move. After an afternoon of trial and error he had a rudimentary power plant ready. It needed a constant source of fresh water though, it was not enough that he filled the water tank once. Eventually Stephen had a water pump design ready. Moving the liquid was harder as the automatic repair system was under more stress to repair lost nanobots, so the pump had to be more intelligent. Eventually Stephen's standard system saw a new type of unit, an electric circuit unit. This was made in the assembly from iron plates and copper wires, which was the best ratio to create more AI nodes needed for advanced thinking. The liquids also needed to move so a pipe unit was created. The pump worked nicely, but boiling the water was hard and needed energy and the whole generator was the supposed to GIVE energy! As evening once again approached, Stephen decided to solve the problem by using a wood boiler unit made from pipe and a smelter furnace. This worked nicely, and as the sun went down the power creation was ready: a pump that pulled water to a boiler, and the hot water went to the steam engine, which started to spin! The unit showed a nice output of electrical power. While Stephen happily sat down by his fire for the night, he realized something: the pump actually did not need so much new fresh water once the system was set up, so he could improve the design to utilize the starlight system of the belts. With gears the pump would also work during the night, giving him never-ending power as long as the boilers kept burning! His last tinkering project of the day was a small lamp, made from the electrical circuit. This could be made bigger and connected to his power network to give Stephen light and he could work longer and safer in the evening. Time to sleep again.
Re: A new backround story for the start
Day 7: Logistics nightmare
Two days had gone mostly developing so now Stephen wanted some action! He began creating burner drills and belts and started to bring iron and copper to the furnaces in a larger scale, and the iron and copper plates were delivered to assembler units upgraded to utilize the electronic circuits. Now the assemblers had enough AI to make gears, pipes and cables and other basic stuff as he wished. At midday he realized there was a problem with the whole idea. The inserters, even with electronic circuit update, could not handle different stuff easily and if they threw away the not wanted stuff there would be big piles of junk at wrong places. He had to reserve each belt carefully for different things, good thing he chose the standard unit size to fit on different sides of the belt. The insertes could pick from either side, but unloading had to be chosen to one side as the inserter did not know what the product was used for. Still, he had too many belts going everywhere making long sidetracks in order to go around other belts. After some thinking he had an idea. The nanobots could make the belts go under each other! This took a lot of plates, but he managed to create a standard belt unit that went underground and came back up for a short, variable length, the underground system taking power from the end parts via larger solar arrays at the ends. Now he could dedicate belts to different things. After a long day of testing, the logistics had one more upgrade: a splitter unit that scooped standard units from one belt to another at a standard pace matching the belt speed. A logistics network was now quite ready and the last thing for the day was to craft some wooden chests for storing stuff in organized piles. These chests held surprisingly lot of stuff and the inserters could recognize different stacks since the stuff did not move. Watching the stars, Stephen let his mind process the events so far and made long term planning while eating the raspberries. He had had to improve his collector bot to have some more circuit AI, so it could scavenge a larger area.
In the evening Stephen improved the joints of his helpers and created a system of auxiliary joint units to his legs. Now the Helmet AI and battery could power his movement, and he could navigate the territory faster.
Day 8: Strategy.
Stephen now had a working system to mine, smelt and assemble basic stuff and a way to utilize the system to improve itself without Stephens help. Energy was available and it could be transferred via standard wooden electric poles.The logistics system was quite good and with simple standard components Stephen could take advantage of the splitters and underground belts to manipulate the flow of material as he saw fit. He had calculated the flow rates and new how to take most out of the entire system. Now he needed more information to make a strategy. He could not survey large areas by foot, so he needed to upgrade his survey technology. Using his standard units he created a rudimentary radar, that managed to detect iron, stone, coal and copper deposits from a long distance away, and collect the topography of the land to his helmet map AI. Unfortunately this took quite a lot of energy, but it was necessary. After the first sweeps he had more map available and some more coal in the distance, but still no signs that there were any people here. It was time to take another risk at angering the Omnicorp. Stephen hacked more info about the project he had been working on back in home and his scientist status gave him access to more data. Creating a new space/time machine felt impossible, but that was not a word in Stephens dictionary (except when thinking about getting a promotion). He made a technology assessment and realized, that if he continued to expand his raw materials network and create more science packs, he could slowly increase the rate of everything through data collected from the system and hacking the database. Eventually he would have to make some more efficient long distance transportation, between ore deposits and furnaces, but that could wait. If he could access more raw materials he could improve the nanobot specialization and create more varied units. Storing more energy would be needed, and better motion creation units. Eventually he could harness more and more power and resources and hack deeper into the database to find more about the accident. Now he just needed to start building a factory create science packs for the lab units to process. This just took time, determination and raspberries. The hand was still helping him in many ways, but he did not need any autonomous robots to make stuff, at least not yet. Stephen called it a day and took time
to read more about long term planning and logistics optimization.
GRAAAH!!! The noise woke Stephen instantly and the hand was automatically up with the axe ready. Stephen had a small stone hut for shelter but he would be trapped inside. He peeked from the small "window". The factory parts were running and his lights around them were on. The noise had been so loud it came over the plugs and the noise of the factory, but nothing was in sight. Soon one of the arrow sentries started to fire, and after some more noise and scary waiting everything settled. This was bad, there were some more dangerous creatures here and he had no proper defense if he started to wander around, and what if the creatures messed with his precious factory! Stephen decided he had no chance, and hacked in to the database to find out about weapons. After some testing he managed to make a small pistol from his materials, and ammo from iron. By creating a more compressed version of iron-nanobot structure he now had access to harder material, steel. The energy stored in the nanobot-ammo could be condensed so that it became unstable when ignited by the pistol, shooting a strong bullet from the pistol muzzle. He upgraded his turret design, man it took a lot of iron and copper! Damn those animals, he would need even more raw materials to set up a perimeter, walls from stone should be designed to reduce the need of turrets. Finally, as morning came Stephen felt more calm. The hand was now a small floating turret protecting him and he could set larger turrets to key locations, and he had a small pistol. Why did the animals start appearing, how many were there and what type, how would Stephen secure his raspberry input? These questions would need to be solved in time, but now it was time for more factory work.
Two days had gone mostly developing so now Stephen wanted some action! He began creating burner drills and belts and started to bring iron and copper to the furnaces in a larger scale, and the iron and copper plates were delivered to assembler units upgraded to utilize the electronic circuits. Now the assemblers had enough AI to make gears, pipes and cables and other basic stuff as he wished. At midday he realized there was a problem with the whole idea. The inserters, even with electronic circuit update, could not handle different stuff easily and if they threw away the not wanted stuff there would be big piles of junk at wrong places. He had to reserve each belt carefully for different things, good thing he chose the standard unit size to fit on different sides of the belt. The insertes could pick from either side, but unloading had to be chosen to one side as the inserter did not know what the product was used for. Still, he had too many belts going everywhere making long sidetracks in order to go around other belts. After some thinking he had an idea. The nanobots could make the belts go under each other! This took a lot of plates, but he managed to create a standard belt unit that went underground and came back up for a short, variable length, the underground system taking power from the end parts via larger solar arrays at the ends. Now he could dedicate belts to different things. After a long day of testing, the logistics had one more upgrade: a splitter unit that scooped standard units from one belt to another at a standard pace matching the belt speed. A logistics network was now quite ready and the last thing for the day was to craft some wooden chests for storing stuff in organized piles. These chests held surprisingly lot of stuff and the inserters could recognize different stacks since the stuff did not move. Watching the stars, Stephen let his mind process the events so far and made long term planning while eating the raspberries. He had had to improve his collector bot to have some more circuit AI, so it could scavenge a larger area.
In the evening Stephen improved the joints of his helpers and created a system of auxiliary joint units to his legs. Now the Helmet AI and battery could power his movement, and he could navigate the territory faster.
Day 8: Strategy.
Stephen now had a working system to mine, smelt and assemble basic stuff and a way to utilize the system to improve itself without Stephens help. Energy was available and it could be transferred via standard wooden electric poles.The logistics system was quite good and with simple standard components Stephen could take advantage of the splitters and underground belts to manipulate the flow of material as he saw fit. He had calculated the flow rates and new how to take most out of the entire system. Now he needed more information to make a strategy. He could not survey large areas by foot, so he needed to upgrade his survey technology. Using his standard units he created a rudimentary radar, that managed to detect iron, stone, coal and copper deposits from a long distance away, and collect the topography of the land to his helmet map AI. Unfortunately this took quite a lot of energy, but it was necessary. After the first sweeps he had more map available and some more coal in the distance, but still no signs that there were any people here. It was time to take another risk at angering the Omnicorp. Stephen hacked more info about the project he had been working on back in home and his scientist status gave him access to more data. Creating a new space/time machine felt impossible, but that was not a word in Stephens dictionary (except when thinking about getting a promotion). He made a technology assessment and realized, that if he continued to expand his raw materials network and create more science packs, he could slowly increase the rate of everything through data collected from the system and hacking the database. Eventually he would have to make some more efficient long distance transportation, between ore deposits and furnaces, but that could wait. If he could access more raw materials he could improve the nanobot specialization and create more varied units. Storing more energy would be needed, and better motion creation units. Eventually he could harness more and more power and resources and hack deeper into the database to find more about the accident. Now he just needed to start building a factory create science packs for the lab units to process. This just took time, determination and raspberries. The hand was still helping him in many ways, but he did not need any autonomous robots to make stuff, at least not yet. Stephen called it a day and took time
to read more about long term planning and logistics optimization.
GRAAAH!!! The noise woke Stephen instantly and the hand was automatically up with the axe ready. Stephen had a small stone hut for shelter but he would be trapped inside. He peeked from the small "window". The factory parts were running and his lights around them were on. The noise had been so loud it came over the plugs and the noise of the factory, but nothing was in sight. Soon one of the arrow sentries started to fire, and after some more noise and scary waiting everything settled. This was bad, there were some more dangerous creatures here and he had no proper defense if he started to wander around, and what if the creatures messed with his precious factory! Stephen decided he had no chance, and hacked in to the database to find out about weapons. After some testing he managed to make a small pistol from his materials, and ammo from iron. By creating a more compressed version of iron-nanobot structure he now had access to harder material, steel. The energy stored in the nanobot-ammo could be condensed so that it became unstable when ignited by the pistol, shooting a strong bullet from the pistol muzzle. He upgraded his turret design, man it took a lot of iron and copper! Damn those animals, he would need even more raw materials to set up a perimeter, walls from stone should be designed to reduce the need of turrets. Finally, as morning came Stephen felt more calm. The hand was now a small floating turret protecting him and he could set larger turrets to key locations, and he had a small pistol. Why did the animals start appearing, how many were there and what type, how would Stephen secure his raspberry input? These questions would need to be solved in time, but now it was time for more factory work.
Re: A new backround story for the start
Day 9: Scaling up.
After breakfast Stephen started to enlarge his complex more. More drills, more belt, more assemblers, more energy, more everything. He practiced optimizing the flow of materials and made assembly chains utilizing a chain of assemblers, inserters and chests. Through the day he worked, adding lights, electric poles, couple turrets and kept the radar sweeping the area. The valley had resources, but not for long at the rate he was scaling up. By the time afternoon started approaching he had a working flow of raw materials being transformed to science packs that went to the lab module for processing. He had a tech plan where he could direct the lab to make gradual improvements at all areas and certain discovery levels always made possible to apply that knowledge to other areas. Now it was just a matter of optimization. His rudimentary factory area did not seem spacious enough and Stephen had to adjust his thinking. The original factory had served it purpose as a test area, he would have to leave it to churn some basic materials to chests and search for a better, clearer location as removing trees took too much time.
Stephen packed his knowledge and some materials and started to follow the stream to the valley. No sign of any big creatures, and changing location made new areas available for raspberry collecting. He had augmented himself with helmet AI controlled joint units that made it possible for Stephen to run endlessly and easily through the terrain. In the afternoon, he had reached the far side of the valley. He saw the plains and took note that there was a lot more room for building there, and some good mineral deposits in the area. In the evening Stephen made plans for the next several days and read more about project management. Hw would need to standardize larger, more complex entities so building them would be easier. Now he had various belt/splitter combinations to either compress, divide or balance the flow of materials to optimize speed. He would design dedicated areas for different things, furnaces, power production, assembly areas, all connected with the belts. Now he could really boost up the science speed!. Before going to bed Stephen received info via the radar system he had left on. The turrets had started firing, then the lights and factory units had started to shut down and eventually the transmission stopped. So there had to be many creatures, but why would they attack his factory, they could not eat it could they? Perhaps the noise and light attracted them, but did they not understand the beauty of Stephens factory!
Day 10. A new start. Stephen was now determined to survive and he had a plan. He had excellent factory modules and it just took hard work and good planning to make this work. He would make such a big science factory that even a Government level 4 bureaucrat would rise his official unibrow if he could see that. He would have to think big, always plan things in a way that could be incorporated to larger scale by combining existing stuff, making expansion more efficient. Automation was needed, perhaps he could unlock the secret of the hover unit inside the hand to make more floating help. Better AIs would increase autonomy of systems and with better blueprint system he might be able to direct entire factory areas to be made automatically. Moving around would have to be improved, could he make a hover unit that carried him around at a higher vantage point? Maybe he could create rockets to fire small satellites for better survey of large areas for resources, too. Stephen was ready and he started to walk toward an iron deposit marked on his map.
(End of part one. Now Stephen is at the beginning of Factorio game. This could be it's own optional minigame that serves as a tutorial and storybase and uses the crafting system in a more simple way. Stephen has to make so much science that he can recreate the space/time machine. Part two of the game is the current Factorio. Build bigger and bigger, discover oil and start to use it. Invent the train system and start using entire factory complexes that can be built by floating robots and Stephen moves around the area by car and train to tap into new resources. Eventually he has to create a larger bulk transport system (larger 4x4 rail system?) to bigger movement of stuff. He will discover a flying command station that he can use to direct building at a larger scale in a greater area, surveyed by satellites. Perhaps the map might be planet shaped, thus creating a finite boundaries and resources. Different random seeds of planets could be created according to parameters and players could race for the finish in various maps, compete in time, efficiency or just output scale of things.)
After breakfast Stephen started to enlarge his complex more. More drills, more belt, more assemblers, more energy, more everything. He practiced optimizing the flow of materials and made assembly chains utilizing a chain of assemblers, inserters and chests. Through the day he worked, adding lights, electric poles, couple turrets and kept the radar sweeping the area. The valley had resources, but not for long at the rate he was scaling up. By the time afternoon started approaching he had a working flow of raw materials being transformed to science packs that went to the lab module for processing. He had a tech plan where he could direct the lab to make gradual improvements at all areas and certain discovery levels always made possible to apply that knowledge to other areas. Now it was just a matter of optimization. His rudimentary factory area did not seem spacious enough and Stephen had to adjust his thinking. The original factory had served it purpose as a test area, he would have to leave it to churn some basic materials to chests and search for a better, clearer location as removing trees took too much time.
Stephen packed his knowledge and some materials and started to follow the stream to the valley. No sign of any big creatures, and changing location made new areas available for raspberry collecting. He had augmented himself with helmet AI controlled joint units that made it possible for Stephen to run endlessly and easily through the terrain. In the afternoon, he had reached the far side of the valley. He saw the plains and took note that there was a lot more room for building there, and some good mineral deposits in the area. In the evening Stephen made plans for the next several days and read more about project management. Hw would need to standardize larger, more complex entities so building them would be easier. Now he had various belt/splitter combinations to either compress, divide or balance the flow of materials to optimize speed. He would design dedicated areas for different things, furnaces, power production, assembly areas, all connected with the belts. Now he could really boost up the science speed!. Before going to bed Stephen received info via the radar system he had left on. The turrets had started firing, then the lights and factory units had started to shut down and eventually the transmission stopped. So there had to be many creatures, but why would they attack his factory, they could not eat it could they? Perhaps the noise and light attracted them, but did they not understand the beauty of Stephens factory!
Day 10. A new start. Stephen was now determined to survive and he had a plan. He had excellent factory modules and it just took hard work and good planning to make this work. He would make such a big science factory that even a Government level 4 bureaucrat would rise his official unibrow if he could see that. He would have to think big, always plan things in a way that could be incorporated to larger scale by combining existing stuff, making expansion more efficient. Automation was needed, perhaps he could unlock the secret of the hover unit inside the hand to make more floating help. Better AIs would increase autonomy of systems and with better blueprint system he might be able to direct entire factory areas to be made automatically. Moving around would have to be improved, could he make a hover unit that carried him around at a higher vantage point? Maybe he could create rockets to fire small satellites for better survey of large areas for resources, too. Stephen was ready and he started to walk toward an iron deposit marked on his map.
(End of part one. Now Stephen is at the beginning of Factorio game. This could be it's own optional minigame that serves as a tutorial and storybase and uses the crafting system in a more simple way. Stephen has to make so much science that he can recreate the space/time machine. Part two of the game is the current Factorio. Build bigger and bigger, discover oil and start to use it. Invent the train system and start using entire factory complexes that can be built by floating robots and Stephen moves around the area by car and train to tap into new resources. Eventually he has to create a larger bulk transport system (larger 4x4 rail system?) to bigger movement of stuff. He will discover a flying command station that he can use to direct building at a larger scale in a greater area, surveyed by satellites. Perhaps the map might be planet shaped, thus creating a finite boundaries and resources. Different random seeds of planets could be created according to parameters and players could race for the finish in various maps, compete in time, efficiency or just output scale of things.)
Re: A new backround story for the start
Day X: epilogue:
Stephen was thrilled. His factory complex now covered enormous areas and he watched it from his hovering command station, equipped with a raspberry dispenser. Train systems delivered materials over long hauls and the logistics chains were optimized for efficiency. Huge lab complexes analyzed data from the factory and utilized the advanced logic bombs of the better science modules to hack the database. He watched as an army of floating drones started to create a new excavation complex over one of the last deposits of iron still untouched, thinking that once he had had to make those by himself. All the hard work had paid off and the new space/time machine was ready to take him home. Stephen was not sure where home was, but he had to try, he could not stay on the planet as he had consumed most of its resources. Stephen moved to the test site and was ready to try. The machine complex was huge and took enormous power to use, and still he could only make one, personal single direction jump. But if he was correct the portal could be accessed from another portal, maybe he would return one day to marvel his creation. This is it, Stephen moved to the portal and activated it. He could not see to
the other side, so checked his utility belt, the hand and his helmet and stepped through.
WTF! I'm again in the wilderness! SHIT, he did not have the correct coordinates to home and he was almost at the same situation as before, except he had his designs and better equipment this time. DOUBLE SHIT, he would have to start all over again to make another portal and use more science to find where home actually is! This might be a long trip, how many planets he would have to go through to find home?! Well, better start making some belts and survey the area. TRIPLE SHIT, the scanner indicated that there were no raspberries here, maybe they did not exist here!
(In a lunatic vision, Stephen could discover the space/time portal and discover that he can only find more empty planets. The portal can be used as a permanent material gateway, so Stephen expands to excavate multiple planets so
he can create more powerful sciencing systems to try to find his way back home as the system scales up with more advanced AIs and blueprints. Eventually he has his own personal interstellar empire with the population of one,
looking to find his way back home.)
Stephen was thrilled. His factory complex now covered enormous areas and he watched it from his hovering command station, equipped with a raspberry dispenser. Train systems delivered materials over long hauls and the logistics chains were optimized for efficiency. Huge lab complexes analyzed data from the factory and utilized the advanced logic bombs of the better science modules to hack the database. He watched as an army of floating drones started to create a new excavation complex over one of the last deposits of iron still untouched, thinking that once he had had to make those by himself. All the hard work had paid off and the new space/time machine was ready to take him home. Stephen was not sure where home was, but he had to try, he could not stay on the planet as he had consumed most of its resources. Stephen moved to the test site and was ready to try. The machine complex was huge and took enormous power to use, and still he could only make one, personal single direction jump. But if he was correct the portal could be accessed from another portal, maybe he would return one day to marvel his creation. This is it, Stephen moved to the portal and activated it. He could not see to
the other side, so checked his utility belt, the hand and his helmet and stepped through.
WTF! I'm again in the wilderness! SHIT, he did not have the correct coordinates to home and he was almost at the same situation as before, except he had his designs and better equipment this time. DOUBLE SHIT, he would have to start all over again to make another portal and use more science to find where home actually is! This might be a long trip, how many planets he would have to go through to find home?! Well, better start making some belts and survey the area. TRIPLE SHIT, the scanner indicated that there were no raspberries here, maybe they did not exist here!
(In a lunatic vision, Stephen could discover the space/time portal and discover that he can only find more empty planets. The portal can be used as a permanent material gateway, so Stephen expands to excavate multiple planets so
he can create more powerful sciencing systems to try to find his way back home as the system scales up with more advanced AIs and blueprints. Eventually he has his own personal interstellar empire with the population of one,
looking to find his way back home.)
Re: A new backround story for the start
One more idea from the story. The game could have optional modules to make the game more role-playing if the player chooses so. Stephen would tinker and spend science time to find more different foods and better collectors/cooks and recipes. If Stephen was hungry or bored of same kinds of food, his unhappiness would affect the helmet AI and thus the whole factory system, creating redundancy that lowers the speed of everything and messing the optimization.
Re: A new backround story for the start
And I could write a bit more, but after this long read, to make long things short: I would move this thread to the "art contribution" for reason: This is not a suggestion.
I recommend also to have a look into there, there is another story, somehow like this.
Marked as waiting for response.
Cool suggestion: Eatable MOUSE-pointers.
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Re: A new backround story for the start
Thank you
I was not sure which area this would fit, the art area might be better, true.
I was not sure which area this would fit, the art area might be better, true.
Re: A new backround story for the start
So moved from Suggestions to Fan Art and left a link from General Board to this.
Cool suggestion: Eatable MOUSE-pointers.
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Re: A new backround story for the start
i always love back stories to stuff. but i think it should be in itself its own tab of something called story that rolls through rather clicking because that's a bloody long story and some don't even care and just want to play the game on top of how long it is.