Day 3 - First Factory
It was a busy day! With my first temporaray HUB completed, I was finally able to start building the sort of facilities that FICSIT expects of its employees. Time to start showing them that their investment in my training and outfitting was worthwhile. With six iron ore sources all available in one place, I have plans for quite the factory!
With the aid of my trusty build gun and all of its nanobots, it didn't take long for a nice, huge foundation to be laid across the desert floor. "Bigger is better" is what they taught me, so it was BIG! So big, that I realized I'd need to move my HUB and other workstations in order to make room! So I did. I'm envisioning a nice "regional headquarters" sort of look, so I built out a platform annex to the factory to house the HUB, MAM, and workshop. They'll probably get shuffled around again, but it'll do for now.
As I was laying the foundations, I noticed something off in the distance to the north. Investigating, I discovered the wreckage of a FICSIT landing pod. Some poor pioneer apparently had some difficulty. Wreckage was strewn about, but there was no sign of the pioneer. This may have been due to the pair of creatures that were patrolling the area. They were nasty, but my Xeno-Zapper was up to the task of dealing with them. After a bit of repair work, I was able to extract the hard drive from the pod's memory, and my MAM unit was able to salvage a build process for screws that seemed much better than the one I was provided with. Perhaps FICSIT is still experimenting with processes, and this guy was testing something? Either way, finding this now was great for me - I'll use it in the factory right away!
While I was out on this little excursion, I also came across another strange creature. It wasn't aggressive; it just sat there. (The biting flies around it were a different story!) The thing looked like a giant earth slug, except it was blue... and glowing! Perhaps the MAM will be able to tell me more about this thing.
Getting back to work, I got all six iron miners set up with belts to deliver their ore to the new factory. A pair of smelters was built for each of the six lines - that's maximum capacity given the technology I now have. And then, with a dozen smelters ready to churn out ingots of beautiful iron, it was time to start manufacturing!
First up was an assembly line to create Reinforced Iron Plates. These are laminated iron plates held together with screws. So... three machines making plates, and three more making screws and I was ready to build the Assembly machines to produce the reinforced plates. By the end of the day, I was producing 10 plates per minute!
Before wrapping up for the day, I connected a few more smelters and constructors up so that I could also stockpile the basic Iron Plates and Iron Rods that my nanobots build stuff out of. (These replaced the temporary machines I had first set up yesterday.)
All in all, it was a very productive first day! Tomorrow, I'll get the other end of the factory going to produce Rotors. And with Rotors and Reinforced Plates, I can make Smart Plating, which is the first thing that FICSIT expects me to deliver up to their orbiting facility. But for now, time to rest. Tomorrow will be another busy day!
With the aid of my trusty build gun and all of its nanobots, it didn't take long for a nice, huge foundation to be laid across the desert floor. "Bigger is better" is what they taught me, so it was BIG! So big, that I realized I'd need to move my HUB and other workstations in order to make room! So I did. I'm envisioning a nice "regional headquarters" sort of look, so I built out a platform annex to the factory to house the HUB, MAM, and workshop. They'll probably get shuffled around again, but it'll do for now.
As I was laying the foundations, I noticed something off in the distance to the north. Investigating, I discovered the wreckage of a FICSIT landing pod. Some poor pioneer apparently had some difficulty. Wreckage was strewn about, but there was no sign of the pioneer. This may have been due to the pair of creatures that were patrolling the area. They were nasty, but my Xeno-Zapper was up to the task of dealing with them. After a bit of repair work, I was able to extract the hard drive from the pod's memory, and my MAM unit was able to salvage a build process for screws that seemed much better than the one I was provided with. Perhaps FICSIT is still experimenting with processes, and this guy was testing something? Either way, finding this now was great for me - I'll use it in the factory right away!
Wreckage in the Distance
While I was out on this little excursion, I also came across another strange creature. It wasn't aggressive; it just sat there. (The biting flies around it were a different story!) The thing looked like a giant earth slug, except it was blue... and glowing! Perhaps the MAM will be able to tell me more about this thing.
A Power Slug
Getting back to work, I got all six iron miners set up with belts to deliver their ore to the new factory. A pair of smelters was built for each of the six lines - that's maximum capacity given the technology I now have. And then, with a dozen smelters ready to churn out ingots of beautiful iron, it was time to start manufacturing!
First up was an assembly line to create Reinforced Iron Plates. These are laminated iron plates held together with screws. So... three machines making plates, and three more making screws and I was ready to build the Assembly machines to produce the reinforced plates. By the end of the day, I was producing 10 plates per minute!
Before wrapping up for the day, I connected a few more smelters and constructors up so that I could also stockpile the basic Iron Plates and Iron Rods that my nanobots build stuff out of. (These replaced the temporary machines I had first set up yesterday.)
All in all, it was a very productive first day! Tomorrow, I'll get the other end of the factory going to produce Rotors. And with Rotors and Reinforced Plates, I can make Smart Plating, which is the first thing that FICSIT expects me to deliver up to their orbiting facility. But for now, time to rest. Tomorrow will be another busy day!
First Factory Running
What is the MAM?
The HUB is not the only source of build recipes provided to Pioneers; another valuable reseach tool is the MAM, or Molecular Analysis Machine. Once this is unlocked and built, Pioneers can use it to research properties of things they find in their travels.The MAM offers a series of research trees that unlock new recipes, new tools, expanded inventory, and other benefits. The food items (berries, nuts, mushrooms) found on the planet can be converted into instant health restoratives; new resources such as quartz and sulfur can be used to produce valuable tools; remains of defeated critters can be turned into valuable items as well. There's more which the Pioneer can uncover along the way, so it is important that you get your MAM up and running as soon as possible, and complete any available research in it as quickly as possible.
Scavenging Drop Pods
When you landed, you were congratulated upon being the third to survive the process. If it didn't dawn on you then, this meant that, apparently, there were unsuccessful attempts to land Pioneers on the planet. You'll find the debris from these failures scattered all over the planet.Each wreck site will contain three elements. FIrst, there will be some sort of hostile creature(s) defending it that you'll have to defeat to get close enough to the wreck. Next, you'll find various bits of material such as wire, cable, screws, computers, etc. scattered about on the ground. You can pick these up and add them to your inventory; some materials will be beyond your current ability to manufacture, but all will eventually be useful.
Finally, in the large yellow drop pod itself, you'll find a hard drive. To access this, you will have to "perform some repairs" by supplying some sort of material, or possibly a modicum of electric power. The requirement varies from pod to pod, but once provided, the hard drive is yours.
When the MAM analyzes this hard drive, it will present you with three Alternate Recipes for materials that you are currently capable of producing. You must select one of the choices offered. These alternates may produce things more quickly, or using different input materials, or both. Some are more useful than others, but the more alternate recipes you have in your arsenal, the better your factories will be.
The recipes offered are randomly selected, but are limited to whatever production tiers you have currently unlocked, so the best way to get the really useful low-tier recipes is to get out and harvest hard drives as early in the game as you can.
Power Slugs
Another thing the MAM is used for is to research the strange blue, yellow, and purple "Power Slugs" that are scattered around the world. The MAM will allow you to convert these into devices that give you better control over the efficiency of the machines in your factories - allowing you to change the default efficiencies (and hence the default input and output flows as well as power needs).Instead of everything having to run at their baseline levels, you can tune machines to run at anywhere from 1% to 250% efficiency. Anything over 100% requires devices that are constructed from the Power Slugs themselves in your crafting bench.
Power slugs should be collected and (once the research tree is completed), converted to these overclocking devices whenever possible. Sooner or later, you'll need as many of these as you can get.
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