Bay 12 Games Forum

Look, the whole militia thing has worked out well enough so far and in the words of so many people, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

A military is a good idea for our world in case of marauding pirates/mercenaries/etc who may or may not have a rational reason to raid our colony.

Pretty much everything sounds good so far but I do have a few gripes.

• Windmills aren't going to last very long up where the wind is.  Sand storms will quickly erode the blades, pedestals, generators, everything critical to generating power.  Putting them out of the way of the wind would defeat their purpose so windmills would only be a waste of resources at this time.  However, if we acquired water and the appropriate metal salts we could do as someone else suggested and create another solar power plant with these as collectors which we can hide out of the way of the wind but where they can still receive sunlight.
• A fence around a military base is also pointless for the same reasons as windmills.  Biocrete pillars with radio beacons delineating the boundaries might be a better idea, but for now we don't really need a large base, not until we start having decent population growth.

It appears that the hulk  has been reduced to it's structural elements not including the hull plating.  We should get to work on recycling the (what I presume is) steel.  Then we can use it to make the coilgun emplacements that tryrar wanted.

On that note Pyotr might wish to begin looking into ways to build very large capacitor banks using locally sourced materials.  He may also wish to figure out a way to harvest energy from the static electricity of the sand storms.  This is his decision though.

From what I gather, the crashed ship was military (by the damaged military plating we scavenged off the wreck), and it was probably lost during the war 80 years ago.  That means the encryption techniques are 80 years out of date and somebody ought to be able to crack the encryption.  We should get someone working on that right away.  For all we know the ship's logs might have useful information about the local system including potential hazards on the other planets.  It is critical we get that data so we can safely proceed to harvest water and other resources from the water planet I hope to call Lympha (although the logs may provide its original name too).

In the meantime, Stefan will begin drawing up plans for a semi-automated factory that can be quickly re-tooled to produce nearly anything given the proper materials.  Hopefully the factory would take advantage the scavenged electronics and database system.

This^3600x1080 is the new background I setup today for my slightly awkward (new) dual monitor setup.  I got a nice, new second monitor to go with my nice, new machine.  Sadly, my old machine died the day after I got my new one working, so I was unable to revive my old machine as a print/media server for my home.

We are establishing only the one colony, my proposed actions are focused on gathering resources for our colony from the other bodies in the system.

I think we seriously need to consider building/moving critical infrastructure underground.  We have the equipment to do so and not many reasons not to.  Of course we will need to keep some things outside, like the solar plant, but hopefully we will be able to move all other facilities underground.  By having our critical infrastructure underground we can better avoid damage done by rogue asteroids, sandstorms, and potential hostile action.  We will also probably have better access to water underground.  Building underground will also provide a stable environment during the terraforming that we are eventually going to do.

As for the terraforming itself we certainly need to get more water.  To do that we might want to use the ship or the drone to capture comets and crash them into the opposite side of our desert moon in order to add their water (and minerals) to our moon.  Then we Need to develop life on the surface, working our way up in size and complexity.

Work for the coming weeks should be setting up for terraforming, searching for and harvesting/refining minerals that we can use, and moving habitation and hydroponics underground.

The ads are probably laid out that way because it generates better revenue.  The design has a small banner ad unintrusively inserted at the top and vertical ads under the comic on the left hand side.  Those ads are placed in such a way that your eyes will wander over them while viewing the site.  They aren't placed in such a way as to repel you or intrude on the site's content.  That's why you don't see vertical ads to the sides of the comic.  Instead you have an ad at the top, near the title and some buttons which take you to other parts of the site you may be interested in.  As you view these buttons you will also inadvertently see the ad; your brain may pick up on something about that ad that makes you pay attention to it, maybe even click on it, and potentially buy something from the advertiser.  There is a similar strategy at play with the vertical ads by the chapter links.  Overall it is a fairly clean design that is both pleasing to the eye (of the end-user, you an I) and to advertisers.  With this design Tom is able to make a small profit from his comic at practically no cost to you. (Except if you buy a shirt from snorg tees or something)

All said and done, having and viewing an offline archive of your own will be depriving Tom of some income, and if that makes you feel bad you may wish to consider donating directly to Tom or buying some hardcopies instead.  Just don't distribute your script or archive because that is almost definitely illegal.

Kick it?  Headbutt if we can.  We have a helmet.