Repair the Canterlot 59%
Over the next few weeks, Twilight had one focus above all others: they needed to get the Canterlot back to working order. She would’ve been as happy as anypony else if they had the resources to spare repairing their rooms and making the place feel like home again. But ultimately it didn’t matter how ugly everything was, if the air vents worked and the water kept flowing.
They had already restored a great deal of the station’s manufacturing infrastructure, at least as much as their small population currently needed. Every day she met with Applejack or some other engineer, discussing the parts they’d replaced and how close the station was to operational.
Much of it went over Twilight’s head—the station wasn’t just a station anymore. It had been hastily modified into a starship, without much grace in the conversion. The longer her ponies worked, the more signs of ugly kitbashing they discovered, and the more potential “catastrophic failure points” went onto Applejack’s board.
“We’ll never be done, you know,” Spike said one evening, his alien body appearing from a doorway and taking the portable terminal she’d been reading. A Signaler design Node had built had her request. The ruler of her whole civilization had the right to a few perks. “Canterlot is old. There are thousands of tons of original stone tucked inside, left over from when it was still a mountain city. There are cathedrals, dungeons, labyrinths.”
“All full of ghosts, no doubt,” Twilight finished for him, glaring. But it was hard to look up into the eyes of something so much taller and not feel at least a little intimidated.
“Sort of,” Spike said. “The parts ponies knew about are stacked full of caskets. The ones they didn’t… no idea. I don’t have cameras down there. But with all these sensors under my control, I know how wide things are, what they’re composed of…” he held out the terminal. “Node, Starlight, and I want to talk to you. I know you’ve been putting off this conversation, but… it’s time we had it.”
“There’s so much to fix,” Twilight argued. “I just discovered there’s a blockage in the waste reprocessing—”
Spike reached out, gently touching her mouth closed with a set of delicate fingers. She’d never have tolerated that behavior from any other creature. But instead of rage, she felt only familiarity. “If we wait forever, the rot that came to Equestria will reach us here. We have to use the Highway while we can.”
Twilight groaned, then tucked the flat plastic and glass away into her satchel. “Alright. I assume you’ve been… working together on something.”
“Together,” Spike repeated. “That’s, uh… well, we’ve been working on the same general goals. At… cross purposes. But you’ll see.”
What she found waiting for her was a set of mutually exclusive presentations, waiting in the section of the ship Twilight had come to think of as the “Signaler lab.”
All of Node and Apple Bloom’s work had ended up here, which meant it was packed full of little repair drones and the other unknowable projects they were working on. Spike hadn’t come with Twilight, but he was already waiting when she arrived. Because that wasn’t creepy at all.
Starlight looked like the visitor, clutching a projector and a crystal Datascroll. “Twilight! You have to see the design I’ve been working on. Well, Applejack and me. But she’s… you know her, always working hard.”
“She don’t want this to be a family dispute,” Apple Bloom interrupted. She rested metal hooves on the edge of a large table, which glowed with light from a signaler-style screen set into its surface. “We respectfully disagree, so don’t bring her into it.”
“Right.” Starlight took a few nervous steps towards Twilight, still unsteady even after all her time to heal. At least the necrotic patches on her face were gone. “Princess, I’ve reviewed Node’s specifications for the Stellar Highway, and I believe I’ve designed an acceptable sail for the Canterlot. Applejack took care of the technical details, but I think you’ll approve. It’s highly innovative.”
Node cleared her throat, or at least sounded like she had. With more time and resources on the Canterlot, she’d taken to wearing even more clothing than Rarity. Flowing layers of different dress, with tight sleeves of different colors on both sets of arms.
“Innovative is another way of saying that it’s an engineering nightmare that relies entirely on your, uh… magic?” She held one hand out over her forehead, where a horn might’ve been. “Apple Bloom and I adapted something I’ve seen used on a thousand different ships from galleons to hypercruisers. Yeah, it’ll take longer to build. But you know what else it does? Keep working when your magic runs out. Wouldn’t it be just great for your little magic sail to tear right off the front of this thing, and keep going on its own while your station stops accelerating and loses any way to stop? Yeah, sounds great.”
“That won’t happen, princess,” Starlight argued, settling her projector on the ground and projecting it onto a section of blank ceiling. “There are failbacks, safeties in place. The spell will fail gradually, with plenty of time to repair.”
Twilight took a moment to inspect it, then compared it to the design on the screens. What Node and Apple Bloom designed were effectively two new sections of the station, spread in a system of many cables and support pilons. It probably used as much metal as the rest of Canterlot just holding it in place.
Starlight’s design was much thinner, her sail made of light and spells and crystal. Growing it would take time, but probably a small fraction. Not to mention the cost in material.
“I’ve reviewed Node’s highway specifications thoroughly,” Starlight said. “The Highway will accept this sail.”
“I didn’t day it wouldn’t,” Node folded both sets of arms, interlinking them in a strangely complex pattern. “I just wouldn’t trust my entire population to moonbeams and rainbows. But that’s up to you, Princess.”
1. Use Starlight’s design. Built in one month, but relies on spells to keep working or else suffer terrible consequences.
2. Use Node’s design. Built in six months, these sails will add additional real estate to the Canterlot, but all mining resources during their construction will go to providing materials. They’re safe, tested, and reliable.
I think its about time we didn't take the slowest option.
This is interesting. Node's skepticism is understandable, but have we ever seen a magical system undergo the sort of catastrophic failure she's worried about? Yes, we're putting trust in something Starlight put together, but it's passed Twilight's scrutiny. We don't know how much time we have left, and this will take massively lower amounts of time and materials. I'm in favor of the spellsail.
You should never underestimate the value of working air vents and water supplies.
Without them things will get ugly in no time.
Isn't that how most of Equestria works? Both in this story and in the show?
Interesting choice this time.
Guaranteed(?) success, but high time and ressource costs vs. may-or-may-not-work, but far faster and far less expensive.
Too bad we don't know how much time we have, otherwise we may could have ruled out one option.
I think we should go for the magic sails and hope for the best.
The Hunger may come any moment (I still think we should have researched that one), and if it comes too early they are stuck (do they have any warning at all to set things into motion or will the Hunger appear entirely unannounced?).
Additionally we may need the ressuorces later.
I know this is gambling with high stakes, but I'm confident it'll work. Because magic didn't fail us (yet).
Let's see what the other readers think.
We're running out of time... Maybe,
And worse, without a way to see it coming we won't know until it's too late. Magitech as served them this long.
There's one option not listed here: do both. Get the set-up for Applebloom and Node's sail ready, and put Starlight's sail as the initial booster, then once its impetus runs out, finish the other design and deploy it. It might take only three months to be ready to move, it might not, but are the options mutually-exclusive?
On the pure impudens of Node saying "moonbeams and rainbows" we got to go whit the mgick opption.
i certainly see where node is coming from. if I'd only just learned of magic within the last year(?) I'd probably not trust it with the survival of every known living being. of course starlight (and twilight) is much more experienced with magic and what it can do.
Why are we even debating this? Safe'n'Slow is the best way to go
Even split at this time
10078294
It's a more complicated decision than that implies.
It's being debated because the reason they're building sails in the first place is to escape from an incoming danger that some characters are warning it might already be too late to run from. Since that warning, we've picked options that delayed building the sails until Spike literally walked into Twilight's office and made her decide on which design for the sails to use.
We couldn't have put this decision off much more if we tried, and we've abandoned every opportunity to know when the danger is coming. If there's a time limit, we don't know what it is, and we're sitting pretty close to as long as it could possibly have taken us to get here.
When you look at it in that light, it's not a choice between "quick but could possibly fail" and "slow but safe". The second option is really "slow but safe (provided the Hunger doesn't overtake us while we procrastinate)".
Friendship is Magic, not Friendship is Some Other Races Technology.
It’s only a mistake if you lose the roll.
We’ve taken a lot of time already, and all of the miner’s resources will be going to the sail with the technology option. We need to be building up a stockpile while we can and get out of the path. Six months for the sail and then how many more months to get the rest of the material we need?
I think magic is the way we need to go before the hunger gets us.
This story has evolved to be similar to Frostpunk, the last autumn. Haste makes waste, but you also need to keep deadlines both literally and figuratively.
The vote was 39 to 39 when I voted. I don't think a vote has stayed so close for so long.
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44 to 44 at this time. I think both ideas have a lot of merit, but I'm generally a fan of safety. I understand the concern for time, though.
Based on this, I'm good with Starlight's design. We probably need the time savings.
I have to agree with the spell sail. Like others have said, we may be running out of time. And the Hunger doesn't actually know much about magic so it might not be able to damage the thing as well. After all fixing the station was all so that we could bug out in a hurry without everyone dying, or at least I think.
48 to 48. This is going to be the closest one yet.
This vote is very close, I chose starlight's design I trust her when it comes to magic to get this done right.
I used to be more on the side of taking the longer option if it meant improving the canterlot and our chances of survival, however that was awhile ago and a good point was given the canterlot is never going to be perfect not even close, it would be faster to probably build a new ship to replace it entirely than fix it and I'm realizing that more and more the longer we stay, I think we are now getting dangerously close to running out of time, so I say we should start choosing what we do next with maximum scrutiny, collect whatever supplies we can and leave before it's too late.
"had built had her request" looks like a typo for "had built at her request".
I've always voted under the assumption that Hunger could arrive at any moment, but prior decisions involved things that could not be allowed to fail or else we'd die. This isn't the same case, and an additional five months is too long sitting in one place. Spell sail or bust.
As tempting Starlight's design is, I don't think it is a good idea. The technology they are working with is completely alien to the Equestrians and much more advanced than anything they have, there might be something Starlight is missing about it. Node doesn't seem very confident with the design either, so the highway might not accept it due to it originally being built to function on completely different principles without magic.
74 votes to 74 votes now...
...what happens if there's a tie?
Always the slowest, when does late become too late?
Hmm, faster might be better in this case. They can maybe make the slower to construct design later during the whole voyage thing, or if an emergency happens, share ships with the other travelers. No telling when the darkness is coming.
10078201 This is a wonderful third option and should be used. Magitech to buy them time, Signaler sail for saftey.
Off hand I'd say do both. use the magic version to get on the highway soonest, while continuing to build Node's Hardware version.
This would be an easier choice if I knew about the limitations of magic in this world.
Tough choice! Trouble is, we have no idea what the hidden time limit is, nor even a clear indication of how much warning there will be. Voting for magic here, because of that. Previous delay decisions made more sense because those repairs were more critical.
In fact, it's not just a choice of slow vs. fast; slow also means devoting all the mining resources to this sail, instead of to vital repairs and infrastructure.
10081433
It is like the chambers of a gun. Click click click one of these choices boom. Not like we will get a warning.
I also think the ship will get a more interesting reaction when it arrives if it is using a magical sail than it would with a cobbled together standard sail.
The trick is whether this part of the ship is worth risking other parts of the ship. I have no doubts that if we did the fast option for each part of the ship, we'd "fix" the entire ship, except for maybe a few parts.
We could get it done quick, but it fails when we need it the most, or we could take out time, but we run out of time to do other important things. It's basically deciding whether the quality of this part of the ship is worth potentially lowering the quality of other parts of the ship. A high quality sail may prevent us from having enough time to wake enough crew to man it, while a low quality one may end up sacrificing crew to keep going. A patchjob is better than no job, but no job is better than a good job.