Bleakbane plays Rimworld Part F (22-26)

Part Twenty-Two

((Added "faster bio-sculpting" mod, since the 25 days thing is ridonculous. Vanilla values used, except bioregen time set to 10 days (as it was before the change) instead of 25.))

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-One.

Two bionic eyes done. Navarro - your turn!

Stab authorised four more sleep accelerators for Trocur, Worm, Oscura and Reille plus Barracuda.

Falcon and Navarro would have to go into their age cycle soon. Stab figured she'd send Euphemia for an age-regen cycle.

((Oops didn't set-it up right, sorry Euphemia, let's try again would you recovered from being booted out of the tank... Seeing as I'd have to repeat the day again or lose her for 11 days, it was worth some sickness and 30 wasted nutrition.))

Balgucha might as well go in for a bioregen cycle too.

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Two.

Precision rifling done, IEDs next...

That was fast. Right research paused while the girls located more deposits...

A little delayed, but Euphemia and Balgucha went for their bioregen cycles.

Wut.

Well, it was a young puppy and didn't have training. Slaughter!

(Also, disallow ambrosia. Wait, the addition was only mild, nevermind. No animals were getting addicted, though.)

It occurred to Stab, to stop the animals going into the main freezer, maybe all she needed to do was put a couple of shelves of simple meals in Freezer Two, and then they could be restricted to that one. Worth a try.

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Three.

Stab ordered a harpsichord built, seeing as they'd researched it. She'd do it herself, actually.

A couple more steel autodoors were added.

Superlative! Dusk found a second component lump. no time like the present... For the moment, they'd turn the long-range scanner off, since it would concentrate everyone on the local one.

Dusk, Espinosa and Worm would go, with Sam as an escort. (Since their other miners were all down for the count, and Stab wanted Beatriz to stay behind to mine at the base.)

Right, Trocur, time to replace both your ears with bionic ones!

Guests from Southeastern Alia arrived.

Wow, harpsichords were MASSIVE.

*sigh*

If the idiots were going to insist on still eating meals in the freezer, Stab would put a table and chairs in greenhouse two...

A red fox was hunting one of the puppies. It tripped one tap on the (long) way in... Would it last long enough for the turrets to get their first outing...?

Maybe! But it had taken three hours to get that far. Clearly, the base was quite clean now, since four of the autocleaners were trying to clean fox blood up...!

The autocleaners hiding. That's precious.

Yep. The turrets gunned it down as it came out.

((Thank you, animal logic mod!))

The southern defences were all sorted at this point, too.

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Four.

Dusk arrived at the mining site. (Somehow, they'd brought an alpaca with them as a pack animal Huh?)

Back at base a rare psychic soothe started for the girls, which made for a nice change.

A nice little temporary camp. Dusk wasn't going to bother with a table or anything this time.

Yeah, animal feed was not going to be a problem again...

By nightfall, they had nearly mined all the components. A quick blast in the morning, and they'd be off home!

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Five.

OH. That was why that labrador wasn't moving. Whelp. Okay then. Slaughter time...

Pfft, for that? No chance, mate.

Falcon and Navarro were back out.

By ten, Dusk was back on the road.

At midnight, Oscura found another iron deposit. This one was in a much less convenient place, though. She'd keep searching.

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Five.

A Lenere tribe caravan arrived. The visitors departed leaving a valuable four components.

Kasil was FINALLY up and about.

The reader had nothing to buy, so Hallie just sold off some sandstone sculptures.

Dusk was back too. A few more hours until Euphemia and Balgucha were out of their pods, and tomorrow they'd hold the Industrial Advent celebration!

Hey, third bonded dog. That was fine!

A combat trader arrived - with a skin hardening tech print! Nice. That took the last two jade sculptures.

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Six.

Stab finally elected to build the vitals monitor. And a ninth chemfuel generator.

Industrial Advent time!

((No game, you are no having a terrible one. No, nor are you deciding to infect half the colony with muscle parasites because you weren't allowed to RNG-screw me. Frack off.))

((That's better.))

Sam would do going for her age treatment.

In the meantime, sandstone fortifications, for they were going to open the ancient danger vault!

Crap, there were 30(!) labradors at the moment. STILL not a dozen haulers.

All the batteries discharged again. And that was why they back the back-up system...

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Seven.

But first, maneating huskies.

((OH FOR FRACK'S SAKE. One of the autocleaners picked that specific moment to frack everything up and run outside the base. RELOAD.))

Correction, man-eating arctic wolves.

((And of COURSE they decided to randomly change the direction they were approaching from, so everyone was in the wrong position. The game really does like throwing wobblies sometimes.))

Fortunately, turrets.

And of course, they got through to hurt Stab because OF COURSE THEY DID.

Lenere tribe visitors.

Well, didn't look like they were unearthing anything TODAY, did it. Fine, Falcon could have her eyes put in.

Still, 15 wolf corpses was 15 lots of dogmeat, Stab supposed...

Second hay store, while they were at it.

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Eight.

Okay, the trap were reset and they could try ag-

((LITERALLY the second after I set everyone to the fortification, there was a mad immature dryad notification.))

Okay, let's go.

Ancient hostile mechanoids... And apparently some dudes as well, who just appeared out of thin air. Huh?

Still the raiders and the mechanoids fought each other, so it made things easier. Two of the raiders survived to be captured, too. Barracuda took a couple of shots, but that was all.

Hmm... Maybe later.

*sigh*

... A tortured artist who is also sanguine? So a net +4 mood-buff? Recruit.

The other... Wouldn't do grunt work, but they could make her into a research specialist or something, which wouldn't hurt. Hmmm... Yah, okay. Recruit.

OH! They were ancient soldiers, they must have been in the cryosleep chambers! That made sense.

((Yep, more girls. I... Am not sure what to think about this...))

And, they would require a new barrack block, wouldn't they?

Trocur decided to throw a victory party...

And there is where we shall leave it.

Part Twenty-Three

Day Two-Hundred and Fifty-Nine.

Stab was just doing a health check to see who needed bionics. (Oscura, Beatriz, Euphemia, Worm, Balgucha - probably Sam and the potential new pair, too.)

What. That one shot that hit Barracuda was more severe than they thought. Dammit, they hadn’t gotten any spares to hand! And they couldn't make, like, bionic kidneys. (And they were going to recruit those prisoners.)

Typical.

75 uranium from the visitors. Not too shabby.

Pretty neat, Falc. Very meta.

By the 3end of the day, the corpses had all been disposed of, the extension to the guest room and the biosculpting chamber had been done and two new biosculpting pods were on the way and Beatriz was scheduled for a bionic leg.

And another set of visitors from Southeastern Alia had arrived.

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty.

Right. They had 13 adult labradors now capable of hauling. They had 23 (!) puppies, which was Too Many Dogs. Now they had a stable adult population, Stab proved how evil she truly was by setting the auto-slaughter to eliminate all but one female puppy (so they'd eventually have 14). That should kill some of the heavy food load and such.

Deathsnarl, don't eat the puppies. Who slaughters stuff and leaves them on the floor anyway SAWBONES, Stab is looking at you.

Stab decided to move the hay storage into one contiguous place (and expand the textile storage) and at that point, and a cooler to refrigerate the massive quantities of hay.

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-One.

Three more chemfuel generators, to give them some more excess.

Another guarian pod sprout.

At some point maybe they'd do something with them all...

Several more autodoors would need to go in, to cover the most-used routes.

They had bow built back up to maintain 400 food.

((GRRRR. Despite reloading because I did it wrong once, I STILL managed to put the overwall cooler in backwards again.))

Stab built another shelf in the hospital for medicine, largely because now they had a stupid amount of herbal medicine, to the point Stab was starting to get a little worried it was taking too much freezer space...

What, when did Darkhoof get ASTHMA? And of his birthday too!

Speaking of, Stabbunny had dementia. Still he was now 9, a year passed a hare's normal life expectancy...

More visitors.

Anon was almost recruit worthy as a researcher, given his traits but... Ah, why not, they'd try.

FRAGDAMMIT. Stab thought something was off. They only had twenty biosculpting pods, since Oscura's and Christian's had apparently de-tuned or something and weren’t labelled. They'd need a new biosculpting chamber after all.

There was enough for a second run of them, but Stab elected to start with eight, since that would be enough for the new dorm block. And another room for neural superchargers...

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Two.

Stab order a load more animal beds, to get rid of some of the random leather.

Bionic leg for Euphemia...

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Three.

Whelp, that was it, the steel deposit was empty. And unless they wanted to go to the very exposed one, they'd have to wait for another one to be found.

Steady, quiet day of building stuff.

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Four.

The visitors left, leaving clothes.

Okay. Dusk and Oscura were off construction duty for a bit, so that they could alternately scan while the other constructors carried on the extensions.

Hrrrm.

That was a big cluster.

Oh, yeah, THAT was better!

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Five.

Autumn.

Yeah, Stab decided that a thunderstorm for 19 days was not worth any gear, frankly, as that quest expired.

New - slightly less impressive, currently - south dining room.

An ibex self-trained. More slaughter...

Incompetent cook...? Huh?

Probably Dan, because he's the lowest on cooking 7, and the chance in a sterile room is very low. (Unless a guest cooked...?) Lucky the dog ate it, really...!

Wow, they were actually going to finally have to MINE limestone, they'd used the entire area's chunks!

Sam! Time for bionic eyes!

As opposed to normally, where Stabbunny wanders around randomly.

Stab sighed, though. Yeah, it was probably time for Stabbunny to be put to sleep.

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Six.

Vagabonds wanting medicine.

Well Stab figured, frack it, they might as well, since they had so much spare (she'd actually need to buy some more neutroamine at some point, though).

Oscura found underground gold. Woo.

It was time, Stabbunny. Trocur would put him to sleep and then... Well, put him to sleep. With the dementia getting severe, his quality of life just wasn't any good anymore.

Night, night, Stabbunny. You were the first tamed animal of the colony and you were... Present for a long time.

((Yeah, in hindsight, Stabbunny really wasn't much help I don't think he could nuzzle anyone and without the ability to train him to do anything useful, he was just kinda there. In future, with this sort of thing, it's not worth doing anything but slaughtering.))

Macy dug a nice grave for him near Esdo, and Stab buried him.

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Seven.

The first stage of the new dorm block was done. Now the key issue was just getting enough limestone, since they were having to mine it now! Still, Stab had found that, at least the last place they'd mined for steel would produce limestone if they needed it.

Second (closer!) battery room planned.

Plenty of devilstrand - time to start making some dusters. Four to begin with, since they didn't have THAT much yet. (But come string, the outdoor cloth and herbal medicine would be given over to devilstrand too.

Bionic leg for Worm...

A Higobum Covenant transport pod crashed. Ah, excellent, Barracuda's new kidney had arrived...

Mine, girls, mine!

Yes, now, this was more Stab's speed!

Not instantly, but in a day or two, they'd go.

Ooh, Trocur, a masterwork duster for Stab. (Yes, Stab, Trocur, you didn't get shot at as much.)

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Eight.

The Higobum Covenant hated them again for organ harvesting. Eh. Stab didn't care... Barracuda would get her new kidney shortly!

Stab had GOT to remember to strip the organ harvest victims before they killed them...

Neat! Oscura had found a nice deposit of plasteel.

And steel.

Right there.

Crapbaskets.

Well, they could probably unroof the room and drill from there.

And that ought to be done FIRST. They put a little dump zone in there for steel, too.#

Still, Stab reckoned they might as well turn the long-range scanner on now, since they'd found two steel deposits.

A BIG standard raid from the Bialei Kinship.

Who apparently wandered into the base and got rather mauled before they started their attack, though it took Stab by surprise.

Still did NOT go well for them! Oscura got a minor cut, and that was all.

There was but one prisoner - nope, he bled out as Christian reached the prison hospital doorway. Darn. No survivors at all then, as no-one got away.

Still, Justina was converted now, so into the better cell for her conversion!

Despite her knock, Oscura was pleased enough to go into a go frenzy!

DAMMIT, Beatriz, Dusk had removed a lot of the roofs so that didn't happen and you STILL managed it.

No, don't play chess, get to the hospital you dummy!

Balgucha nearly did it again, and the shock was enough to send her into a break to her room.

Day Two-Hundred and Sixty-Nine.

Hi, Justina! just in time to join to burial detail!

As the day wore on, Dan threw a party.

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy.

More Lenere tribe visitors.

Justina mad marine armour on, which meant she couldn't wear a flak vest. Stab ordered her a bearskin formal vest to put on her middle layer instead.

*sigh*

Another short-circuit event.

((Next time, that gets switched off. It adds nothing to the game except to be annoying RNG-screw.))

It took Stab most of the day to burn all the tainted apparel.

((I had a try with that quest with the big mechanoid cluster.))

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-One.

First, Stab wanted a sniper rifle. Then she'd try some sniping - there was a nice explosive thing which might help, and there was also a shield against mortars, either one of which might be worth trying to pop at range and they had 2.9 days to play with...

((Okay, apparently the game cheats and has auto-mortars start firing instantly. That's stupid, when it is allowed a magical base shield and you aren't.))

So, that meant Dusk taking out the rocket launcher to see if that could do anything.

OH FOR *&^%&'S SAKE OSCURA WHY IS THE PATHFINDING WALKING YOU OUTSIDE THE %&*^IN BASE AND PAST THE ENEMY FRACK OFF GAME.

No, okay, game that's a reload and you're not having those cluster at all ever.))

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-One Again.

So, yeah, frack that quest, Stab would deal with the raider camp.

Research was re-started, on miniguns (multibarrel weapons). Stab would start on a sniper rifle, though. And ordered eight shield belts.

And, for good measure, called for a second deep drill to hopefully speed up steel acquisition.

The raider base would be around for 24 days, so they had some time to start on the dorm's other buildings.

They would be going in the next 8 days though...

Dusk had the feeling Stab might have been extracting the urine just a little bit.

Navarro took that, passing her masterwork assault rifle to Sam. Justina (who, since she had armour, was going to be given the task of Getting To Be A Good Shot The Hard Way) and Sawbones finally swapped his autopistol out for a chain shotgun.

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Two.

Oops. They were just about out of plasteel.

Okay, they'd mine a corridor to the plasteel area so they could mine it later.

Christian and Beatriz? Well, that took a long time to come.

OH FOR... DOGS, stop eating the chocolate, seriously!

On the plus side, a combat suppler arrived. That got rid of all the excess weapons - and it netted them a techprint for flesh-shaping!

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Three.

Stab was about to set off, when she found they didn't have any bedrolls. Apparently the mining crew forgot to bring them back, dammit.

After SEVERAL false starts, Stab was finally permitted to pack the damn things, and prepared to set off with Sam, Euphemia, Justina, Falcon and Navarro.

Second dorm finally done, with enough biosculpting pods and superchargers for the new recruits. When Jenni finally cracked, of course...

Dusk order all the biosculpting pods being loaded up. Stab intended to hold off until winter and they rotate everyone in two passes. (And some of the older ones, like Trocur and Euphemia, maybe both times.)

Barghest, for a top predator, you sure do get beaten up by donkeys a lot.

Having built up a nice load of stock, Dusk started on the process of replacing the throne room floor with sandstone tiles. (They were never going to have enough steel spare!)

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Four.

Stab arrived at the bandit camp.

Hey, they took two down with killing them. They weren't really recruits, but maybe organ harvest?

Hey, they captured them okay. Home again. There wasn't any loot at the enemy base, disappointingly.

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Five.

More Southeastern Alia visitors.

Nelson looked like me might be worth a recruit.

Darn it, somehow, one of the autocleaners set off a trap (because a couple of donkeys had splortched themselves, nearly faster than Dusk and Macy could repair the traps.

There. Even before Stab got back!

Hmm. No idea what to do with the dead autocleaner body.

((As Steam appears to have crapped itself out, can't check or ask the modder...))

Screw it, they had a lot of slate they weren't using, they couldn't steel-tile, but maybe slate tile would be nearly as good for the dorms.

Crap. Dry thunderstorm.

By midnight, they'd put all the fires out.

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Six.

A couple of thrumbos had wandered in. And apparently decided to go through the traps.

Better get everyone to battle stations, else the turrets wouldn't last long...

Balgucha snapped again and wandered around insulting everyone. Still, at least with them almost all in the same place, she would spread it out.

Wow. It still took a lot of shooting to bring the pair down, and Reille and Hallie took some hurt. And probably only that because the damn thing broke one of the granite fortification walls. Yowch.

And that was what greeted Stab as they came back in the morning.

Oh, Balgucha got shot as well (sort of served her right...), but as she was wandering round in a screaming fit, couldn't be told to go to bed.

The visitors were leaving. (The colonists were apparently just really bad at befriending people), but at least they left some clothes as gifts. Yay?

((GRR. In the second or two I looked away, the thrumbo shattered Reille's nose. Because I was keeping a careful eye open SPECIFICALLY because the game is terrible at letting you know when a colonist loses a body part. After researching smokepoppers (which was very short), fleshshaping needed to be a priority now.))

Stab considered carefully, but elected not to recruit Monkey. Though he had good plants and could have been a meleer, he'd need a healing cycle to fix him and darn it, Stab had just got everything about up to speed... Same applied to Viper, the other one.

Balgucha ended her insulting spree by getting punched out by Macy.

AND OF COURSE Balgucha was the only who'd started on the autocleaner replacement.

Well, on the "plus" side, the raging fires outside the base walls were likely to at least ensure there was no cover for any attackers...

Eh, it was a sort of Aotrs thing to do...

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Seven.

Snow finally ended the fires, which had done some significant damage to the forest...

((DAMMIT. Sam hit a trap too. And then Dusk did, so no, game reload because ha, I saved a minute or two ago; frack off, you're not having multiple 1/250 chances in a row.))

At last! Jenni was converted.

She had no resistance and no will, but she was transferred to the "nice cell" anyway.

Kitty, Christian's ex-missus was back again...

HEATSTROKE? How... Was the temperature 105ºC in there?!

Okay, so it didn't say it generated heat, and especially not that much! Okay, vent to the refinery (uninstall that heater!) and all the way into the pet house, try and bleed some of that heat off.

A cargo pod full of hops crashed down.

'Kay, the vents heated the rooms to 50ºC and dropped the generator room to only 70ºC or so. Uh... Vent to outside?

Okay, researchers, fleshshaping go!

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Eight.

And Jenni joined the crew!

She would be assigned to the role of Cogitouser. Since she wouldn't do half of what the role forbade anyway, it wasn't much of a loss; sure they were losing 6-one-passion animal skill, but they had lots of animal people around.

Stab had the outside devilstrand and herbal medicine harvested. Sure it wouldn't yield a much, but Stab felt it was better to get what they could (especially in the latter case), rather than lose it to cold.

Manhunting...

ELEPHANTS?

Jenni, grab the LMG.

Okay, well, the elephants triggered every trap...

Wow, there was so much blood. Better disallow the traps until the autocleaners got it all, or else There Would Be Trouble.

Okay. Two elephants downed and they were a male and female... And, if Stab understood this, if they captured them and cured their scaria, they could maybe tame them...?

Sod it, worth a try, these were the first elephants they'd seen!

Okay, Navarro carting and elephant off, that's hilarious.

Oh, for frack's sake. Medium female psychic drone.

Sawbones FRANTICALLY patched the bull elephant up. There was no time for medicine or to move him, it was touch and go. Sawbones got him to 5 hours bleed-out and then rushed him to the barn.

((OH FOR FRACK'S SAKE GAME. The other elephant in the bedding bled out and of course I don't have a save from before they went down I HATE the way it plays gotcha.))

*sigh*

And, okay, they needed Freezer 3 and quickly.

Day Two-Hundred and Seventy-Nine.

And as they started on that and Trocur operated on the elephant, an ibex doe went mad. Traps weren't back yet, of course, so Navarro shot it as it meandered towards her.

They detected a nearby steel mining site.

Okay, they had flesh-shaping. Beer brewing next, since they had that hops.

And with Freezer Three done, we will leave it there.

Part Twenty-Four

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty.

Winter.

Okay. The first job was having a re-vamp of the trap system such that there were more doors for the colonists and autocleaners to use and thus minimise the chances of setting the traps off. It hadn't happened very often but... Stab had looked up and found steel traps were particularly effective. Adding one or two seemed like a good idea, but then they ABSOLUTELY needed clear paths to avoid setting any off.

Brewing done, neural computation next.

Experimentally, Stab set one of the autocleaners to an area which was basically just the Graveyards corridor - to see if autocleaners could be set to clean an area that WASN'T the whole home area. It seemed as though it wouldn't clean if the area wasn't designated as the home area... But the question was whether it would leave the area it was now assigned to that was contiguous with the home area...

To prove the point, Oscura set off a trap as she was supposed to be uninstalling them.

THAT was better, the colonist were now using the doors and not going over the traps.

Next, the graveyard trap corridor. In addition to aid cleaning, Stab added a couple of doors to the side so that the cleaners wouldn't have to slowly traipse up and down, especially as they weren't logically cleaning in a row.

Some traders wandered in.

There. A single steel trap right at the entrance, and doors for every two traps. That should make things a lot easier (and critically, SAFER) to access.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-One.

Early in the morning...

Seventeen for sixteen days, huh.

Well... There was an interesting point that Stab could simply have everyone go into the age-reducing cycle at once...! Probably unwise but... Ah heck, Stab would give it a go.

((After saving, of course...

WOW. Seventeen refugees and not a single worthy recruit among them. The ones with passable traits had severe health problems (like multiple addictions) and the ones without health problems had severe mental problems like pyromania. FRACK that, then, it wasn't worth it if not a SINGLE ONE was even half-worth considering, especially during winter. Reload!))

Speaking of age-regen, Stab thought it was time to get the first half in. She elected to do it by upper and lower batches. 12 then ten. The first group (including the two oldies who would be going in for a second cycle), herself, Sawbones, Barracuda, Reille, Balgucha, Hallie, Espinoza, Trocur, Kasil, Worm, Euphemia and Macy.

That batch dealt with the most overdue and was convenient with the placement. (Also, it would synchronise better.)

The traders didn't have anything, but Falcon managed to ditch some weapons and a couple of worn flak vests at least.

Perfect! Stab had learned autocleaners recharged in room corners, so she roofed over a little bit of the wall to see if would work. It did! She didn't even need to extend the power cable (they obviously wirelessly charged from the conduit supplying the turrets. That would dramatically reduce the time for the autocleaners to do stuff there. The bad news was, it DID still traipse all over the traps, which was annoying, but maybe if Stab cleared a bit better path... flooring up to the doors, maybe...? That might suggest a quicker route (and stop any trees growing like there were currently.

Even better! With the corridors clear, the autocleaner set to "trapclean" areas sat around and didn't take off anywhere else. Dusk, on orders, put it back to home area for the moment, but now they could control where the cleaners went much tighter and direct the cleaning.

Actually, as Dusk examined things... The trapclean zone didn't allow access to the doors, which was clearly why they didn't use them. Flooring unnecessary, likely.

A long overhaul of areas was done. The home area was now set to everything inside the base walls, plus a strip to access the trap doors. The autocleaners had a new area assigned to them, which was every structure, plus the killboxes, but not the trap corridors (which were now assigned collectively to "trapclean." Dusk toyed with having one for each area, but then that would make there be an uncomfortably number of areas. Stab or Dusk would simply swap a cleaner over to that area occasionally - or perhaps make one specifically dedicated just to those areas, they'd see how they got on.

Okay, a dedicated researcher was stupid good. They were no onto artificial metabolism already!

They could make bionics hearts and stomach already. Something else to do once the limbs were done and they had plentiful advanced components.

in the meantime, Dusk order an aesthetic nose for Reille.
Ooh, a second steel mining site. They could grab a LOT of steel...

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Two.

Ace start, Dan formed a bond with one of the labradors. Four bonded, nice!

Not got far with the elephant, which was now wandering around in the barn. I appeared to have hearing loss, which was annoying, since they probably couldn't treat that.

Psychic sooth, for a nice change.

Artificial metabolism now researched, on to skin hardening!

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Three.

New mortar station and a second mortar.

((Oh, for frack's sake. JUST as I was about to manually grab Sam to train the elephant, the game decided to start a social fight with Justina. You know what? FRACK YOU. Game. Reload. Yeah, I don't care that I have to make the new mortar station AGAIN.))

More Southeastern Alia visitors.

There. New mortar station, with shells and barrels much closer to hand, standing on smoothed stone. Actually, Dusk though it prudent to add a firefoam popper the other side of the shells for good measure.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Three.

Second battery room.

Pahahahahaha, you have got to be kidding. That for THAT reward. Pssh, yeah right, mate.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Four.

First rotation was out of the pods.

Restock, then it would be time for the second lot!

Trocur and Kasil went back in, along with Dusk, Dan, Oscura, Justina, Jenni, Sam, Navarro, Falcon, Beatriz and Christian.

Err... Whoops. Looked like inadvertently, the only one outside the pods with handling skill was Worm. Well, the elephants was getting tamed quickly, was it?

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Five.

Lenere tribe visitors arrived.

Battery room two was done. Only three batteries of the eventual six, because Stab didn't want to use too many components, since they were running low-ish again.

Chunks of a space craft smashed down.

Little steel, six components. Well, once the three new batteries had charged, that was enough to replace them.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Six.

Stab was having a bit of ADD with her crafting, but finally finished Reille's new nose.

Worm was still failing to tame that elephant.

Reille was now officially the most beautiful person in the colony, like Squidward-after-being-hit-by-the-door handsome or something, with a beauty of 4.

Haille did some frantic last-second trading and managed to sell off some of the worn out clothes that were increasingly filling the wardrobe.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Seven.

Just past midnight, a Lenere tribe bulk trader passed by... But again, they had little to buy and served mainly to get rid of more of that clothing.

And we shall leave it there.

Part Twenty-Four

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty.

Winter.

Okay. The first job was having a re-vamp of the trap system such that there were more doors for the colonists and autocleaners to use and thus minimise the chances of setting the traps off. It hadn't happened very often but... Stab had looked up and found steel traps were particularly effective. Adding one or two seemed like a good idea, but then they ABSOLUTELY needed clear paths to avoid setting any off.

Brewing done, neural computation next.

Experimentally, Stab set one of the autocleaners to an area which was basically just the Graveyards corridor - to see if autocleaners could be set to clean an area that WASN'T the whole home area. It seemed as though it wouldn't clean if the area wasn't designated as the home area... But the question was whether it would leave the area it was now assigned to that was contiguous with the home area...

To prove the point, Oscura set off a trap as she was supposed to be uninstalling them.

THAT was better, the colonist were now using the doors and not going over the traps.

Next, the graveyard trap corridor. In addition to aid cleaning, Stab added a couple of doors to the side so that the cleaners wouldn't have to slowly traipse up and down, especially as they weren't logically cleaning in a row.

Some traders wandered in.

There. A single steel trap right at the entrance, and doors for every two traps. That should make things a lot easier (and critically, SAFER) to access.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-One.

Early in the morning...

Seventeen for sixteen days, huh.

Well... There was an interesting point that Stab could simply have everyone go into the age-reducing cycle at once...! Probably unwise but... Ah heck, Stab would give it a go.

((After saving, of course...

WOW. Seventeen refugees and not a single worthy recruit among them. The ones with passable traits had severe health problems (like multiple addictions) and the ones without health problems had severe mental problems like pyromania. FRACK that, then, it wasn't worth it if not a SINGLE ONE was even half-worth considering, especially during winter. Reload!))

Speaking of age-regen, Stab thought it was time to get the first half in. She elected to do it by upper and lower batches. 12 then ten. The first group (including the two oldies who would be going in for a second cycle), herself, Sawbones, Barracuda, Reille, Balgucha, Hallie, Espinoza, Trocur, Kasil, Worm, Euphemia and Macy.

That batch dealt with the most overdue and was convenient with the placement. (Also, it would synchronise better.)

The traders didn't have anything, but Falcon managed to ditch some weapons and a couple of worn flak vests at least.

Perfect! Stab had learned autocleaners recharged in room corners, so she roofed over a little bit of the wall to see if would work. It did! She didn't even need to extend the power cable (they obviously wirelessly charged from the conduit supplying the turrets. That would dramatically reduce the time for the autocleaners to do stuff there. The bad news was, it DID still traipse all over the traps, which was annoying, but maybe if Stab cleared a bit better path... flooring up to the doors, maybe...? That might suggest a quicker route (and stop any trees growing like there were currently.

Even better! With the corridors clear, the autocleaner set to "trapclean" areas sat around and didn't take off anywhere else. Dusk, on orders, put it back to home area for the moment, but now they could control where the cleaners went much tighter and direct the cleaning.

Actually, as Dusk examined things... The trapclean zone didn't allow access to the doors, which was clearly why they didn't use them. Flooring unnecessary, likely.

A long overhaul of areas was done. The home area was now set to everything inside the base walls, plus a strip to access the trap doors. The autocleaners had a new area assigned to them, which was every structure, plus the killboxes, but not the trap corridors (which were now assigned collectively to "trapclean." Dusk toyed with having one for each area, but then that would make there be an uncomfortably number of areas. Stab or Dusk would simply swap a cleaner over to that area occasionally - or perhaps make one specifically dedicated just to those areas, they'd see how they got on.

Okay, a dedicated researcher was stupid good. They were no onto artificial metabolism already!

They could make bionics hearts and stomach already. Something else to do once the limbs were done and they had plentiful advanced components.

in the meantime, Dusk order an aesthetic nose for Reille.
Ooh, a second steel mining site. They could grab a LOT of steel...

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Two.

Ace start, Dan formed a bond with one of the labradors. Four bonded, nice!

Not got far with the elephant, which was now wandering around in the barn. I appeared to have hearing loss, which was annoying, since they probably couldn't treat that.

Psychic sooth, for a nice change.

Artificial metabolism now researched, on to skin hardening!

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Three.

New mortar station and a second mortar.

((Oh, for frack's sake. JUST as I was about to manually grab Sam to train the elephant, the game decided to start a social fight with Justina. You know what? FRACK YOU. Game. Reload. Yeah, I don't care that I have to make the new mortar station AGAIN.))

More Southeastern Alia visitors.

There. New mortar station, with shells and barrels much closer to hand, standing on smoothed stone. Actually, Dusk though it prudent to add a firefoam popper the other side of the shells for good measure.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Three.

Second battery room.

Pahahahahaha, you have got to be kidding. That for THAT reward. Pssh, yeah right, mate.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Four.

First rotation was out of the pods.

Restock, then it would be time for the second lot!

Trocur and Kasil went back in, along with Dusk, Dan, Oscura, Justina, Jenni, Sam, Navarro, Falcon, Beatriz and Christian.

Err... Whoops. Looked like inadvertently, the only one outside the pods with handling skill was Worm. Well, the elephants was getting tamed quickly, was it?

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Five.

Lenere tribe visitors arrived.

Battery room two was done. Only three batteries of the eventual six, because Stab didn't want to use too many components, since they were running low-ish again.

Chunks of a space craft smashed down.

Little steel, six components. Well, once the three new batteries had charged, that was enough to replace them.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Six.

Stab was having a bit of ADD with her crafting, but finally finished Reille's new nose.

Worm was still failing to tame that elephant.

Reille was now officially the most beautiful person in the colony, like Squidward-after-being-hit-by-the-door handsome or something, with a beauty of 4.

Haille did some frantic last-second trading and managed to sell off some of the worn out clothes that were increasingly filling the wardrobe.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Seven.

Just past midnight, a Lenere tribe bulk trader passed by... But again, they had little to buy and served mainly to get rid of more of that clothing.

And we shall leave it there.

Part Twenty-Five

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Seven continued.

Three batteries moved to battery room two, three more built. Stab got on with crafting more dusters, first thrumbo fur and then four devilstrand.

Outside herbal medicine patch given over to devilstrand; devilstrand patch to hops.

Stab experimentally added a couple of fermenting barrels in the alcove near Freezer Two.

Ah, okay, they'd only work in inside-sort of temperatures. Stab had them moved to the chicken-hatching room, for want of a better place.

OH. You needed a brewery to make hops into wort to put into the barrels. Whelp, the chicken-hatching room was now the brewery.

Hey, the harpsichord could go into the south dining room, there was loads space there.

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Eight.

At four in the morning, the age-regen cycle was complete, things could kick back into gear again!

Reille had a go on the installed harpsichord.

Next research: jump packs!

Oscura was having bionics eyes put in.

Kitty was back AGAIN for a visit.

Frack, it, she wasn't terrible, if she was going to come around this often, she might as well be offered a permanent stay or something.

Woah.

A BIG raid of Bialei Kinship people.

Hay, Macy, Christian? Wanna blow summat up?

Sure, one hi-explosive, on incendiary, let's see what happens!

One down, one miss.

Eh. They weren’t charging, so...

LITTTLE better. Macy, shift your aim a little, duck.

Oh, THAT guy was definitely getting it, How dare he try to usurp Barracuda's good name!

Dammit, two shots, two misses. Well, okay, Macy mildly set one guy (and some of the bodies) on fire.

Got a few more.

And they started their attack. Still, they got nice and thinned out!

Okay, the enemy were going for the Graveyard and not to the south gate. Um, okay...

Sill, that meant Christian could sneak out the south gate.... THE SOUTH GATE, MACY AND CHRISTIAN, why would path to the SOUTH EAST CORNER via the NORTH GATE?

Wow, breaking already?

FIVE potential prisoners. Guess the mortar did enough to down some of the hapless fools after all.

Oops, one bled-out...

Make that two.

Yeah, probably ought to sneak a door in at the east corner, actually.

Hmm... Yeah, ugly wasn't a deal-breaker (and they could fix that to some extent with bionics... And she had some useful skills, so recruit.

Eh, usable. Recruit.

Last guy was a druggy, gourmand and staggeringly ugly. Well, Maelan did need a kidney and two lungs, so...

Day Two-Hundred and Eighty-Nine.

Falcon went to hide in her room. (Despite not really being at all near a major risk break, so some reason.) Whatever.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up and starting to put the harvested organs into Maelan. (They forgot to strip the body before doing it again...)

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety.

When Maelan woke up, he'd be wondering the frack happened to his asthma...

Next research - gunlink!

Kitty and co were leaving again. Well, as often as she was back (and they left happy enough to leave five glitterworld medicine), they'd keep trying...

*sigh*

AHA!

Trocur!

Go! Elephant! First chance you can!

Which is at eight o'clock. Sam, let Trocur do it, she's got this!

Huz-freakin-zah!

Oliphant joined the colony!

Okay, in the morning, steel raid caravan!

Not that they were SHORT of steel now, with over 5500, but Stab could never have enough steel.

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety-One.

Gunlinks done. Research pause while more component mining sites were found...

Caravan prepared: Stab, Falcon, Sam, Navarro, Euphemia, Justina. Oops, added an alpaca again by mistake. Ah, sod it.

Frag.

Still, they had potentially 11 days before it was a major problem.

Okay. If Stab believed what she'd researched:

this was the safe zone they had to deal with without waking the enemy up. If they could at least nail the mortar, the rest would be - hopefully - comparatively easy.

Good luck, Dusk!

FRAGDAMMIT.

Dusk would ignore it, but... that was a lot of tech prints.

Eclipse, because of COURSE.

Okay, Macy had set up four IED high explosives as close to the automortar as she could. She built them outside the base and very slowly and deliberately moved in and out to put them in place.

Balgucha would be set on making mortar rounds; a couple of EMP rounds (even though it HURT to use components) for potentially an EMP IED for the middle of the mechanoid cluster and a couple of smoke rounds.

Other than that, they would have to wait. Still, if something set the stuff off, at least they had a good chance of taking the mortar out quickly now.

Next job - the shuttle.

Okay team, build some more defences, since the last lot got burned down.

With no clear idea of where the enemy would be coming from, Dusk had no clue where she could place any traps, unfortunately.

Okay everyone except Macy and Christian (EMP-ers) and Balgucha (working on the shells) assemble in the fortifications now, four hours to go!

Dusk had put another door in, all special-like.

Darn it, not quite fast enough...

Okay, well, that wasn't too bad...

Single prisoner too.

POSSIBLE convert - they'd see.

A bulk trader arrived. That gave them components, neutroamine and advanced components and got shot of more excess clothing.

Right! ONE problem dealt with.

Tech prints for cataphract armour, self-healing and compact weapons applied! Darn it, they needed two for cataphract armour.

Macy completed building a third shelf for the mortars to house more shells.

And there we would have to leave it for the week!

Part Twenty-Six

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety-Two.

Back to it. First off, in the re-start check, the outside deep drill needed to be moved, as it had drilled out the deposits.

Hmm. Still up in the air about Mantis, who now was also infected. He was addicted to drugs, but a prolonged absence of smokeleaf ought to fix that...

Nice, a spacecraft chunk!

A component lump was also detected, a modest distance away.

Time to restart the research - on healing factors.

Okay, they now had fifteen (!) adult labradors for hauling, time to cap off and autoslaughter any more puppies!

Just as Dusk was worrying they were going to have to start on the reserve batteries, the eclipse ended.

Much of the day was spent clearing the pile of corpses.

A second meteor, this one of slate, crashed down to the north.

Dusk wasn't really bothered about that...

As evening drew in Stab's party reached the first steel mining site.

Hey! Stab had a Thing! Might as well use it.

Two possible prisoners...

Wow! Quite a base. Especially since Stab realised they could get things done much faster if the just CLAIMED doors instead of knocking them down!

Right, back to base sharpish, everyone! Well, relatively - it'd take a couple of days to tramp back with all the loot!

Hmm... Dusk figured they'd better get started on the next four rooms, too...

All the dead puppies had given them quite a bit of dog leather, so another ten animal beds would do nicely.

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety-Three.

Healing factors researched - compact weaponry was next!

Another very silly sole ambusher...

Yes, he did not last long.

While mining out to try and find ore limestone, they instead struck components! Well, that'd do...!

Wow, this visitor was really quite skilled...!

Darn it. Less good. Three sick caravan animals...

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety-Four.

Bad news... Prisoner Snow was really not well. Would she make it back to base?

((MANY reloads, since it seemed almost impossible to do anything about people dying from infection in a caravan. The last try was to go back AGAIN and ramp up prisoner Snows medical treatment to medicine from before the final round of treatment and hope... And she had a bionic implant, so frack damn the game if she was going to die literally an hour outside the base...))

Good news - Maelan was converted.

On to specialised limb research...

The medicine did the trick, since Snow was not now dying horribly.

((Oh, yeah, sure, game. pathfind the caravan past the mechanoids so I have to explicitly make a zone and forbid anyone passing through it, thanks.))

FINALLY through that day...

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety-Five.

Spring again.

Once stuff was unloaded, it was probably PAST time they dealt with that mechanoid cluster, especially as the ere was a quest threatening another...

Crocodile, that pretty pyromaniac Dusk banged was back with some more visitors. Yeah, if it wasn't for that whole pyromaniac thing, they might have tried bringing him on, but NO frelling way.

'Kay. Next research - pulse-charged munitions.

Heh.

Well, that was nice.

NICE job, Beatriz! Bonded with Oliphant.

Not sure what that did, but... AH. He needed to be trained to guard first.

Bonehaul was critically ill from plague now, without any warning.

((Thanks game.))

And he died, before they could try and better treatment. DAMMIT. Grave digging time, Dusk. Next to Stabbunny, if you please.

Stab did her duty.

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety-Six.

Okay. they would try this. Stab would snipe at one of the IEDs, with the mortars ready to land EMPs.

Well. it didn't go quite as planned, since the smoke mortar rounds never got put in but... They did it.

((No, wait, Stab (of course it was Stab) had gotten her hand shot off. Reload.

Game decided to shoot EMP shell when I'd not told it too. Reload.))

Mortar shell this time. The enemy did, in fact charge in, and the traps were dealing with the first couple nicely.

Better. No damage this time, though the mortar had utterly failed to detonate the IEDS from range.

((AND FRACK OFF GAME, because Trocur and Sawbones started a social fight for no reason and it decided that Trocur's finger was destroyed. RELOAD.

Mortar so off target it destroyed the valuable salvage component. RELOAD.))

FINALLY, the mortars set off the IEDS.

Better. Mortars now holding fire, reading smoke and EMP rounds.

After for freaking ever, the mechanoids reached the kill-box and died.

((And no game you know what happens, you make me reload more than once, you don't get to give me less than perfect. The turrets die, the mech node doesn't like the first two times. And yes, you little crap-basket, I'm saving every step of the way this time.

No.

No.

No.))

Finally. Only minor injury to Oscura.

Day Two-Hundred and Ninety-Seven.

((A cold snap set in. Because of course it did. Actually, you know what, frack you game, no it doesn't.))

Alligator was converted and moved into the "better" cells...

Mantis, too. But he was in such a sorry state anyway that they weren't going to rush to convert him - he'd need a lung and a leg...

On the other hand...

By evening, they could build charge weapons and Stab had them start on uranium slug turrets.

And, just literally before the last save of the night, manhunting megasloths happened.

And two animals refused to actually got eat again.

*sigh*