//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8: Improvements 
// Story: Mystic Machinery: Industry is Magic 
// by Conglomerate 
//------------------------------//

As fun as it was to drive around the moon, I realized how quickly it would get boring in the long run, and began to regret not bringing a harvester A.I. to do the work for me. I would have to send one up the next time I could, but that was for when I could launch a rocket without immediately being found out. The demand has yet to meet the supply though, so as long as I kept my silos full on the surface I would be fine.

The next load of Titanite was launched into orbit, and while I still had time I began restocking the moonbase, finally clearing out a small perimeter around it. Once that was done, I switched back to the plane and took off to go collect my spoils.

Ding

The drill was finished, it had arrived at the Plumbite resource location. Fantastic, once I returned with the Titanite, I could begin work on expanding even more. 

The repeated trips with the plane were also rapidly getting dull, there was only so many times you could see the same landscape pass underneath over and over without getting bored. I would probably be working on the Titanite tunnel first.

It was just turning evening when I returned with the last of the Titanite, and by that time a fair bit of the Plumbite line had been cleared away. Most of the stone was simply off to the side in cubes, but a good chunk of it had been used in the construction of the base. Speaking of, the foundation was done, and while I had plenty of Rodite Cement left to use, it wouldn’t perform very well above ground, it needed reinforcements first.

Fabricating a bunch of Plumbite bars, I had another automated tech set out planting them in the foundation, with another constructing temporary walls around them. They would then be filled with concrete, and since they were done in sections, all the construction techs could work in unison, planting, walling, and filling, gradually building up the next layer of my base.

Things were looking good, but with all this automation, my Erudite stock was already quickly depleting. I had blown through more than half of it in just a few days, and while I was sitting pretty where I was now, I was going to need a lot more in the future. I doubted I could get more from the dogs right now either, as while they had a decent amount of it when I traded, they probably didn’t mine as fast as I would.

I would give them a week or two to replenish, but in the meantime, I halved what was left of my Erudite again to construct two more drills. Luckily I could cannibalize parts from some of my more obsolete techs, but even with that I could only afford the two.

Nevertheless, I flew out to the other resource locations, marking the Oleite one, then Rodite, and finally the Titanite receiver. Unfortunately, I had to backtrack the first drill over some usable stone, but I was confident I would have more than enough to finish the first part of the base, and would soon need somewhere else to put it. That could wait however, as once the drills were in position, they set off, tunneling through the earth once more.

1053 km : 2 km for Titanite.
568 km : 1 km for Rodite.
331 km : 1 km for Oleite.

Only the Titanite measurement accounted for how far the drill actually was from the base, as both the Rodite and Oleite drills were branching off of the Plumbite line. Oleite was by far the closest, sitting a bit Southeast of the Plumbite hills, the fields were about the same distance from my base, and as such the tunnels branched off early. Rodite was a bit more Northern, requiring a later offshoot and a lot more tunneling, but once they were all completed they could be roped into a single transport line. Titanite was almost directly South, and as such the drill had quite the distance to cross to get there.

Each drill had their own set of special instructions too. For Rodite, it would be crossing under a rather large river, so in order to avoid any flooding, it would stop when the liquid content underground reached a certain threshold. The Titanite drill was ordered to stop once it hit softer rock or sandstone. At the intensity they were working at, there was a considerable risk of a collapse, something I definitely couldn’t afford to deal with if it reached the surface. Oleite was a bit simpler, shorter distance and smoother landscape, it was just instructed to stop a fair distance from the actual resource location so that it wouldn’t breach the underground reservoir.

I would also be monitoring each one from the surface to make sure there are no irregularities. Thankfully there were none from the previous dig, but some of the landscape looked questionable in some places, it would be better to be safe in that regard. That was for the coming days however, as once again my resources were dwindling, and I would need to restock soon if I wanted to do anything besides wait. So while a multitude of automated techs toiled away in and around my base, I flew out to go collect some more materials.

The surface deposits of Plumbite were completely gone by the time I was done with them. Underground was a completely different story though, as before the drill was even finished digging the tunnel, it had started pulling up more ore than stone, alluding to the fact that the whole area was saturated with Plumbite. When the drill pulled away, I could see just how much was embedded in the rock, or rather, how much rock was embedded in the Plumbite. I had certainly seen much larger deposits of resources on other planets, but it was nice to know that this one should last me for quite a bit.

The only issue with the ore underground was transporting it, as there were still miles of uncleared tunnels to cross before it could be refined. The plane could make the trip in about an hour, so I scrounged up what little Plumbite was left and flew back. Rodite was much easier, as the mountains where it was located were still teeming with runoff, and I was easily able to gather enough at the base. Putting a mine at the peak would be an interesting challenge however.

Oleite was just as simple, as several pools awaited me at the location, with some of the previously harvested ones already refilling. With a quick look towards Canterlot, I gathered what I needed and returned to base.

There were a few other resources I needed as well, a few trips back East awarded me with more Carbite and Cuprite, and it was about time for the first batch of Luxite to finish growing. Checking on the growth chambers revealed less than spectacular growth; the crystals were just barely large enough to be harvested and replanted. It was clear that the soil here wasn’t as saturated as the soil from the forest. Still, there was growth, and though it would take longer for Luxite to grow, it was still growing, and I could continue to expand production. I replanted half of my surplus.

I then had a wide array of resources to use, but I was still missing two key things. Ignite and Celestite. This was the moment I had been dreading. There was simply no way for me to properly defend myself, generate power, or produce enough rockets in time without those two crystals. If I couldn’t find a way to reliably harvest them, then I was as good as done.

Celestite was difficult due to its location, it being so far North that it took a couple days for one of my small planes to make the trip. It would take extraordinarily long to drill that distance, and there was no telling what I would encounter along the way. It didn’t help that the crystals themselves were difficult to access, requiring advanced mining techniques not only to extract them from the ice, but to avoid causing any avalanches in the process. I had a couple of ideas on how to get more, but that would have to wait until I had a drill on standby.

Ignite was a whole other issue. I could travel and possibly tunnel to the desert easily enough, but the last few times I went to harvest some were not easily forgotten. If I wanted Ignite, I would need to be prepared for a fight, and when I needed more than I could count, things would only get uglier from there.

Luckily, both of those materials weren’t essential yet, and while they would be incredibly, incredibly helpful to my cause at the moment, I could go without them for now. Probably. 

Once I had a proper factory up and running however, I could produce powerful enough techs to the point where I wouldn’t have to worry about traveling large distances or getting into scuffles every now and then. That required I actually build the factory however, and with more of the resource lines being dug every moment, I was looking to start transporting some materials.

This is where the trains came in. I had the designs, I had the location, and I had the resources. It was time to get to work. By now, a large space had been carved underneath the plateau thanks to an excavator tech, and with plenty of additional supports, there was a very low risk of it collapsing any time soon. Most of the space was actually taken up with a bunch of rock cubes, and with the cleaner tech continuing to venture into the tunnels to get more, the remaining space was dwindling by the hour.

I shut off the cleaner, I had more than enough stone around the base right now, and while the tunnels still needed to be cleared, I needed somewhere to put the stone first. The Oleite drill should be done in a few days, I’ll have it sneak off to a dumping site later. Once I found a suitable location of course.

Moving several of the stone cubes back into the tunnel, I set up a small circle of track in the center of the basement. Since I didn’t have much Fibrewood, it was made purely of Plumbite, which given how much I was going to be pulling in soon, shouldn’t be an issue.

I assembled a basic train, a cabin, an A.I., and plenty of storage space. Luxite based storage wasn’t viable due to both the lack of resources and the speed the train would be travelling at, so the idea was just to have a line of flat cars, with plenty of attachment points for resource blocks. Though it required a few extra steps when loading and unloading, it was compact and secure, and the cars could easily be modified to hold other, more loose materials, which would come in handy when they had to be loaded up with crushed stone and rock or anything miscellaneous or unrefined. I also added the option for a tank car, which would be helpful for transporting any liquids that couldn’t be compacted, such as water.

The way it worked, there was no need for a primary engine up front, meaning every car could be used for transport. Aerodynamics were still an issue however, so it would be better to give each end of the train a pointed tip, which gave a nice housing for the cabin and A.I. as well. The whole thing functioned decently well in the small circuit I had available, though there were some minor issues that were cropping up.

As expected, it couldn’t take tight turns at high speeds, which would be accounted for with the rather straight tunnels being dug. Endpoints and stations would be the only real speed limiters for the trains, and with a proper schedule that could be reduced to a degree. They also couldn’t hold as much as I would have liked. Compared to some other wheel type blocks, the train foundations could only hold so much before failing completely, and that limit was on the lower end of the spectrum. I could only put so much of certain resources on a car before it would falter, which was nowhere near their total volume.

They were not very efficient, which made sense. Given the restrictions I had when designing them, it was a wonder they functioned so well in the first place, but now that I had access to a near unlimited supply of Titanite, I could begin work on an improved version.

I started right away, pulling up the previously saved blueprint in the fabricator and immediately replacing some of the extensive Plumbite supports with Titanite ones. A quick fabrication revealed an immediate improvement, with an increase in handling and carrying capacity. It could take turns faster, and could hold more weight. It was still decently expensive, but with a few cost reducing methods, I ended up with a new and improved Train Foundation 2.0, which could perform to the specifications I had.

I could fill a car to the brim, send it careening around a corner, and have it screech to a halt with little overall damage to the car itself. Cargo was another issue, but with proper restrictions I could get the trains to move pretty fast without dumping their loads at any minor disturbance.

Things were looking good, and I couldn’t wait to put these trains to work, but first that required the tunnels to be dug and cleared, and that would take time.

To Be Continued…