//------------------------------//
// Chapter 17: Plumbite 
// Story: Mystic Machinery: Industry is Magic 
// by Conglomerate 
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126 km : 292 km

The Carbite line was already well underway, and in that time the cleaner team had finished partially clearing the Plumbite line.

I could finally get some more Plumbite! I was starting to get a bit starved for it after all.

First things first, I had to mine it. Sending a little drill tech over was easy enough, the real problem came with dictating where it would mine. There was Plumbite everywhere, but if I just started harvesting it all willy-nilly then there were sure to be some complications. For that reason I brought plenty of supports along with me.

For now, I would simply harvest it manually, until I could spare another A.I. cabin at least. As much as I wanted to clean up the cleaner team, they were desperately needed elsewhere, and I was once again out of Erudite. I really needed to find a place to get some of my own.

Most of the cleaners were split between the dump tunnel and the Titanite tunnel, while in the meantime I reserved a spare A.I. cabin to begin work on completing the track. There was only one, so there couldn’t be an automated team, I was its teammate. Since it couldn’t do extremely complicated tasks, it mostly hung around the end of the track. In the meantime, I would be the one supplying it, I would harvest as much Plumbite as I could, refine it and fabricate with it at my own little station prepared at the end of the track, then venture out and deliver the completed tracks to the builder, which it would then use.

This way the travel times were getting progressively shorter, and at the same time I was carving out a space for a proper mine. It was unfortunate that I could only use this method for the Plumbite tunnel, it being the only one that could supply rails on both ends after all, but by the time the others were ready for work, I would probably have the resources to automate the entire process.

Head out, supply, come back, mine.

This continued for pretty much an entire day, and with the increased efficiency of construction, the track was more or less completed by the end of it. At the moment it was nothing more than a rail between two points, and as such I relinquished the A.I. of its train, placing it in the miner I was previously using. Without the intricacies of signals and stops, I couldn’t trust the A.I. to work the track effectively, so for now whenever I needed more Plumbite, I would take the train myself and go pick some up.

Plumbite wasn’t the only material I was getting either. While I was clearing out the future mine, I managed to dig out a small tunnel leading to the surface. I breached right where I had first found the seam, nestled in between a couple hills with a forest off to the side.

I didn’t spend a lot of time on the surface, but I did make sure to harvest plenty of Fibrewood and Rubber Jelly for future use, making sure to map out the area for a proper logging installation.

With this new influx of material, I was able to flesh out the interior of my base a little more. As opposed to a bunch of manufacturing equipment sitting at the bottom of a pit, I could give it some verticality with some actual frames and supports. Of course the limited conveyor belts couldn’t traverse the distance easily, but it allowed more space for production.

Speaking of production, now that I had a supply of Plumbite, I could begin work on the first leg. Since Plumbite would be one of, if not the most commonly used material in the entire factory, it needed to be properly processed and distributed accordingly. A typical made-to-order system wouldn’t be enough, so instead there was going to be some specialization.

The Plumbite would enter the system at a single point when it was unloaded from the train. It would then be split off into several branches, refined if needed, then shaped or combined with something else to make the next product. Each line would have its own set of fabricators and storages, each making a specific part to be used in the whole process.

Considering the complexity of the interceptor satellite and rocket though, I sincerely doubted that there was enough space to fit the entire assembly line underground. At least for the moment, I could always expand later. Though now that I’ve already built up so much, I would have to be careful where and how I did it.

Right now my main gripe was where to actually begin. Not all recipes called for the refined version of Plumbite, and while they might not need it to be a chunk of raw ore, it reduced efficiency. I semi-had to conserve space too, so I had to decide whether to refine the Plumbite on site, or at the mine where it was harvested.

Refining on site would allow for better distribution, able to send the right amount of Plumbite to the right place in the right form at the right time to fabricate the items needed. That kind of setup would require space though, and probably a bunch of trial and error. The speed it could operate at was the main attraction, but if it required too much work to complete then it wouldn’t be worth it.

On the other side of things, refining the Plumbite at the mine would allow me to craft resource blocks, which could be used as bulk storage, and would dramatically increase the amount of resources my trains could carry. Albeit at the cost of time. It would take time for the Plumbite to be refined, then fabricated into blocks, then loaded onto the train, and I’m not even going to mention unloading when the alternative was just to load raw ore.

Or loose ingots I suppose. That would cut down on time, and with a uniform shape I might be able to fit more on the train.

The bulk storage was so appealing though, it would increase the efficiency of my trains despite the time loss, and that would allow for faster production back at base. If I had an obscene amount of Plumbite flowing in, then I wouldn’t need to focus as much on proper ratios and timing. The whole thing would be fully saturated, and all the machines would be running at max capacity, but only if the transport could keep up with the production, and only if the mining could keep up with the transport.

Until I had the actual numbers, there wasn’t much I could do to experiment, but I did have some ideas. Since I didn’t exactly have the resources though, I couldn’t even make them a reality either, but I could start work on the actual assembly lines.

With Plumbite and Luxite, and maybe Titanite being my only ‘constant’ resources right now, I could only delve into one or two component trees: Gears, Greebles, and Alloys. Those didn’t allow me to make many complicated blocks, but it did allow me to create a bunch of structure, armor, and simple weapons. All welcome additions to my arsenal.

I actually wasn’t too fond of armoring my techs. It was like putting a shell over everything, it was protective for sure, but with the loss of attachment points you lose a lot of your adaptability. Armor was heavy too, it slowed down techs and left them in the line of fire for longer, because of that, it was actually worse to pair armor with shield bubbles, but I was lacking bubble projectors to begin with, so there might be some merit to fabricating some.

All of these components were necessary for the final product as well, so anything I made wouldn’t be a waste of space unless it was inefficient.

It would be, but that was standard for all first iterations. Things would be refined when more things became available.

For now, I began work on routing conveyor belts from the refineries to the component factories and fabricators. One line took Plumbite and fashioned it into gears, with some splitting off to combine with Luxite to form Plubonic Greebles and eventually Plubonic Alloy. Each ended with its own storage, slowly amassing more and more components with every load of Plumbite.

With Titanite, it was hardened with Luxite to form… you guessed it, Hardened Titanic, then Titanic Alloy. Despite the amount of Titanite I had stored, I wasn’t putting it all into the factory, as it was currently more useful on its own. The simplest of armor was just a combination of pure Plumbite and Titanite, with a little Luxite to hold it all together.

I could probably fit the plane with some, and definitely the drills, but mainly they would be a precaution for any automated techs that I sent to the surface.

I started automated production of small armor plates.

To Be Continued…