Bay 12 Games Forum

Ebbor, until you say that you are stoping running this, I will continue to try to rebuild civilization -- we are just getting to the interesting parts


It seems that we are in different time zones, so we only get 1 update every day or 2, even when we are both active, so 2-3 updates per week is all that seems to happen (i'm in Australia).


-- back to In-Game stuff:
5 scientists enjoyed a holiday last week ...

Shaking his head at our dis-organization,Varinius designates the newly found supply room as an emergency store. 300 food of the long life emergency ration and other prepared food will be stored in here, and not traded under any circumstances. (could you please not list this in our official stocks)? (any time we run out of food we will automatically use this though).

9 scientists and 5 soldiers butcher the gazelle, then take extra effort prepare a high quality roast meal to share.
Once they finish that butcher the last Leuk Corpse (or should we mount that as a trophy?)

Varinius connects the now empty gas bottle to the bellows to start charging (so that we can send some people a long way into the bunker). He then monitors the now charging bottle. If everything is going well, he goes to help tobias.

16 farmers farm, they don't have much to do this week ; if they have spare time they try to design either a sun-shelter.

Having finished smelting all the metal, the forge can finally stand down.
2 blacksmiths, 2 engineers, Tobias and 3 scientists do however try to build a power transmitter for the nanofactory

5 scientists trace power lines looking for the primary fusion power plant.
3 groups of 5 scientists search the lab looking for the lab where the nanofactory was designed.
2 groups of 5 builders search the lab looking for store rooms associated with the nanofactory (either advanced parts for, or random high-tech "parts" items output from)
Tobias searches the lab for the vault off-line data archives (tape based backups of the system -- I imagine that the computer would start a backup run when the "emergency evacuate" button was hit, so that the information in there should be complete, unless the tapes have been physically destroyed (manually loading and reading them could take a while though). plugs the modulated output of the radio into a data input of the computer, and writes a program to continually scan the spectrum for any signals (note, the radio is still plugged into the high-gain antenna - the idea here is we'll notice any brief signals). When any signal is detected, the computer alerts Tobias <HenceForth known as our Chief Radio Operator (bonus to any radio related roll?)> and saves the relevant spectrum to the HD.  (basically a Software-defined_radio ) - reception only, although general transmission with extra parts to do the digital to analogue transformation.

15 soldiers (5 swords, 10 rifles) make a trip to the bunker, searching for more electronics and advanced electronics parts.

7 engineers, 2 builders use the box of electronic parts to build a battery for the buggy. If they succeed, the 2 builders test the buggies speed and maneuverability (using a Leuk as the baseline). The 2 Builders try to learn to be drivers.

If anyone has spare time, they should try and devise some type of better water supply (atmospheric condenser - takes power, creates water from air (possibly based on humidity?) ). Connect the guttering on our lab our water tank, so that if it rains we can collect the water. (First_flush_device, and cutoff valves, incase we don't actually want the water to run) (who knows, you might throw wierd acidic rain at us which we don't want getting into our water (but i shouldn't mention that, in a game where the world is what we make it)

computer crashes, or DF runs stupidly low fps? -- if it is the first, then that probably isn't directly DF related, otherwise, what are you doing when it crashes?

Quote from: Carn on May 13, 2011, 03:06:32 pm

Perhaps some way to get a longer lasting fuel source, or more efficient use of fuel? Perhaps found via alchemy? Basically, something to help bridge the gap between the early stages of wood/coal burning until you can get to magma, and also make alchemy more important earlier (so we can have more irradiation accidents!)

To balance it out, it could be more dangerous to obtain (SCIENCE) than wood or coal, but more reliable (ie: you could get an economy going on maps with little coal or trees). Yes, I know you can trade for wood or coal, but it's never sufficient for the needs of a fortress since beds can only be made from wood.

Alternatively (or in addition) perhaps harvesting a tree would give you multiple units of wood based on woodcutting skill and/or tree type, and wood items would use different amounts. Perhaps a bed would use more than bolts, for instance.

I like this idea.  Unfortunately, most of the reaction raws (i.e. construct bed) are not public, and the number of logs from each tree is hard coded (to my knowledge), but I am not opposed to "alternate" fuel sources involving alchemy.

It should be possible to make trees drop a specific type of wood - ie, a "log", which can then be cut into 5 "planks" (masterwork has rough, fine, scrap wood, if you are after examples of how that could work)

5 blacksmiths, 5 engineers run the forge, smelting iron. They produce 1 coil of copper wire, 5 swords, and the rest axes. It's a quiet week around the forge this week, without that mad rush to get the trade goods ready.

5 scientists take a box of spare electronics and try to repair the computer enough for it to run properly. (1 box might not be enough to replace all the components, but in a "modern" mult-core system, missing a few cpu's still boots fine). If they start it up they a) see what command capabilities it has (it was running the emergency evac system, so must have connections throughout the lab), see if there is any type of base schematics stored (a backup copy of the internal webpage would have this), and a list of research topics for which backup data exists.

Varinius and 5 scientists see if the advanced electronics can repair the nanofactory.

5 scientist, 5 engineers use a box of electric components to fit-out the buggy (capacitor, motor control). 2 engineers take the 4 motors which we didn't trade and fit them to the buggy.

16 farmers farm. we don't replace 1 of the grain with more beets, as we may need spare food, as apples are a poor "food" source (probably good for cider, or making high quality food though). (apples, vegies, grain, grain, beets).

12 builders start construction of the bio-refinery/brewery, stopping work to do more carpentry when they run out of logs.

2 farmers cook some grain.

Everyone else
15 soldiers (10 guns),4 scientists (3 axes), 4 farmers ( 3 axes) go to the Forrest to collect wood. They take the carts with them for a single water run also. (that way the people running the carts are not separated from the main group of people.)

Tobais: a) connects the radio receiver to our new sensitive antennae and scans for any signals. b) If the computers manage to be started up, he tries to determine the detection capabilities of the Southamerica's recon satellite, then download an image from it. (note: no re-tasking, so basically no chance of other people noticing (that assuming other people are actually aware of it)).


Anyone with some spare time should search our lab for the primary fusion generator, tracing the high power connections from the forge to somewhere deeper in the lab. (fusion rather than an exotic fuel, as hydrogen is easy to come by, but we may need a large power surge to start it up)

ok:
forge duties (smelt 1/2 copper, 1/2 iron), and the motors.
5 blacksmiths, 10 engineers, 5 builders  (blacksmiths should have bonus to forging, while engineers have a bonus to the motors?), aim to produce 13 (for a total of 28, leaving 2 copper for wire for future ideas) motors. Any spare capacity would go towards smelting Iron.

Varinius, and 5 scientists will sit down with the merchant leader and 3 drivers, and discuss the buggy design, and a)how to improve it b) sources for materials for it c) how to improve/streamline the production of the electric motors. (offer them a discount vehicle purchase for any good help).

edit:
and 5 soldiers are on guard - i had that noted here, but forgot to add that to the list of tasks

5 scientists a) manage the air-hose, b) examine the lift shaft for an internal maintenance stair case, and if possible, go down to the next floor, the other side of the blast-door, and attempt to open it from the inside. (we may not have enough hose to provide ventilation to do so)

5 soldiers work on wood carpentry (note, i'm just doing this because i feel i should, ebbor's plans only call for generic wood), for materials for the brewery and 2nd windmill.

6 builders work on fixing the towers

5 scientists design armor plate for the watch tower, and people. (we built armor plates for the cars, a static building should be easy, and given we can shape metal into arbitrary shapes, either chainmail (lots of wire loops), or a basic breastplate + helmet should be posible. Not sure what either would do against guns though ...
design a propellant factory (non sulfurous based propellant) (nitrogen based; cordite or some other smokeless powder (wiki has lots of info) ). If this is impossible, just and ammonia, or nitric acid factory. (from this we can then have an ammo factory as the next stage). I don't think we can do anything more sophisticated than this, with our resource supply.

20 farmers farm; they've a big harvest this week - and they should see if they can estimate how much food the now full-grown apple trees would produce.

the 3 civilians 3 drivers, and 3 soldiers work at cooking grain as it is harvested over this week

5 scientists work out how to produce rope, rather than hose from the Leuk's (and start doing so)

15 soldiers (10 guns, 5 axes), 2 scientists, 3 engineers head out to investigate the Mysterious Hill. If an entry is located, or people observed, attempt to make contact, peacefully (ie soldiers back off). If peaceful contact is made, 1 of the scientists should stay the week to learn about them (and return next week). If there is noone around, the scientists and engineers should attempt to look for how the door should be opened.

(5 armed soldiers cover from the cars while others explore)

at home:
2 scientists pay attention to the rabbits
1 builder fixes that damaged cart, and mounts brackets on it so it can bolted/clamped/... to the buggy.
4 engineers, 12 soldiers help out wherever is needed (a bad roll would mean that they are helping with motors again) (motors, then building, then food, then Leuk processing)

At the end of the week the merchants pack up to leave; 4 weeks journey (60 food, 60 grain) 24 motors (3.6 theirs, not sure how this works ...), and 870 food (130 theirs)
We charge their vehicles with another 50 power to replace the energy we spent driving out to Mystery Hill.

(this should leave us with 35 food, 60 grain for next week, then the following week another harvest arrives, discussions over trade priorities should happen soon)


Well, once again, no exploration of the lab is done ...
Can anyone see anything there i could skip -- less motors for trade, would mean less chance we get the electronics and stuff we need, A smaller group of soldiers could be ambushed (we've lost 5 people with no sign of what happened 2 months ago), and if we run into a leuk we'll need 10-15 soldiers to take 1 down without substantial casualties.

ToDo, but not enough man-power: design chemical processes, try to power up computer, design ammo manufactory

whenever i have to calculate something i just save it as a new section (eg, the pipevolume - if 1 armor plate is x, how much pipe could we get out of the same volume of metal

The last tab, light-speed, is for somewhere else, where it calculates mass gain at relativistic velocity, with acceleration at the bottom (i believe the version i have lined shows the 6500g is needed to get to 14km/s in 1.5 km (was interested in a mag-accel sat launch)

edit:
feel free to use/edit/whatever that spreadsheet.

the beep, sure, we only discovered that signal 2 weeks ago, and it is constant, there isn't any reason to think it would end soon.

Also, we havn't had any spare manpower, and we also have no way of triangulating that signal to find out where it is actually coming from. This week, spare manpower is going to be on making trade goods, then after the merchants leave, we can see about it.

Actually, on the "no way of triangulating", we could just use a directional antenna ...

Ok, i'll add that to the things to do this week - tobias will build a portable directional antenna, a second radio, and try to establish an uplink to that recon sat. (and be promoted to chief radio operator, bonus to all radio related rolls?)

medium term plans include building a car, sending a trade envoy under our own power to the mining community, and finishing exploring our own lab.

<will post more detailed actions this afternoon, must go to work now>