Milk Run

Journal Entry 811;
recording entity - Seargent Frit Fatham

Date: 021412

As a maintence engineer in DEEME, I'm given special priveledges.
For one, I have my own quarters on Dry Station... the only one in fact.  All other personnel live aboard their own particular vessels.

It's good to wake up to a view.  Looks like SVG Excavator is back from the outer sectors.

The shipyard at Dry Station has been occupied building a new design of frigate... a support vessel with a new experimental jump drive that should really speed up my job, among others... and ultimately allow Dry Empire to expand into more sectors by drastically reducing travel costs and times.

I have a call out to one of the mining posts today - apparently it was damaged recently by a rogue roid impacting it.  Pirate troubles are few and far between these last few months, but that hasn't reduced my own workload, it seems.  As more things are built, more things get damaged and need maintenance.  It's only a matter of time until I'm running a crew.

 

One of the very best perks of my position is my private run-about... an Ajax Keelboat affectionately named "Green Meanie".

 She has tan synthetic leather seats. Yeah baby.

As I pull away from Dry Station I always inspect my own quarters. The last thing I want is for some structural stress crack to open up the structure like a grenade and blow me out into space while I sleep.  It's right next to Green Meanie's dock, so it's just instinct really, to check it out on the way in and out.

Not much for privacy, but I wouldn't trade my creature comforts for curtains if they were solid threns.

The airlock accesses a small external passageway to the library.  There's an internal door too, but it's permanently sealed until the library is pressurised... no immediately plans for that, but apparently Chairman Broez intends to at some point, or there's little reason to include an internal door between pressurised and vaccuum-filled sections of Dry Station...  Either that or there's a little red button in his quarters that allows him to open that hatchway if ever he decides my services are no longer required... heh.  Good thing I'm good at what I do, I guess.

The WDU's always get a little cranky when I pass through the shipyard area... but I've got to inspect for maintenance issues now, don't I?  Nothing to do with getting a sticky beak at the progress of the ship being built, of course.

Dry Station has grown so much since I was hired by Chairman Broez...

I lay in a course for Sarafrey Mining Outpost, and increase the tint on my LCD visors, putting Green Meanie into overdrive as she heads almost directly at the sun.

I pass through the outer asteroid belt, which is studded with 6-point turret emplacements... they always get a bit twitchy if you hang around too long, so a quick inspection is enough for me in this unshielded boat without disarm codes at the ready...

Several hours later I reach Sarafrey and approach the dock... hailing the station's operator to inform them I've arrived to carry out the inspection and repairs.

Already I can see some of the damage to the infrastructure... shouldn't be hard to fix in zero gravity with the aide of the station's WDU... just some simple combinating and welding... no big deal.

One of the lateral I-Beams got hit pretty badly it seems.  Again a reasonably easy fix, if time consuming.

The main habitation facility appears to be structurally intact.

Airlock systems functioning fine.

Internals are fully pressurised, and the station operator reports no issues.  I have to check it all out thoroughly for myself though, while I'm here.  The operator is a twitchy fellow that prefers to just let me go about my duty, staying in his quarters till I'm done.  Pretty typical for operators of stations like this - they live out here alone for so long that interacting with people tends to make them uncomfortable.

External airlock to the drone facility was a little glitchy, but turns out it was just a small wiring issue - fixed it as I inspected it.

The drone control facility was grubby and scattered with trash, but otherwise functional.  Not my job to recommend different life-style choices, although the conditions would certainly go down in my report...

Structurally the habitation facility appeared in pretty good nick.  I've seen far worse.  Micro-asteroids cause the most damage usually... smashing into the most unexpected places and leaving tiny holes no bigger than a pin-prick that leak fluids, atmosphere, sever wires, and sometimes ignite combustables.  Cheaper to risk the entire facility and crew than to install shields, apparently.

The cargo bay had a light out, but the doors functioned well. Cargo pods were scattered hap-hazardly and again there was clutter everywhere.  I carried out the necessary repairs over the next two days, prefering to live in my suit and Green Meanie than to interact too much with the station operator. Stam, his name was. He seemed to prefer it that way too.

Repairs were completed without incident, and it was good to return home.  I'll spend the next day filling out paperwork.

Glad I've got my quarters and don't live out there like those mining outpost operators...

Ajax Keelboat is downloadable (available in white and green) and available for public use for free.  Simply put the file into your "blueprints" folder (eg: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\StarMade\StarMade\blueprints) and you will have access to this station in-game under "Catalog" menu.

Work Drone Utility

FRG Thor had taken me a very long time to build, as every digital matter signature needed to be combinated manually, every hull rivet driven in by hand, every weld put down by me meter by meter, and every computer wired and programmed between coffee breaks... It was very slow going as a one-man job... even with the wonders of modern technology at my disposal.

It was time for help.

I created a new work drone that could assist me in collecting materials from the digital matter signature storage facility, and combinate them into the correct format as determined by plans and blueprints, altered in real time as required.  The drone could be operated manually, remotely, or be fully automated while I stirred extra cream into the next coffee.

The base unit is a robotic simple AI with 4 cameras, flashing danger lights, work lights, and 3 attachment points.

The basic initial setup for the WDU includes a power-generation device, fusion welder, small fusion reactor, and a portable digital matter combinator and storage device.

With no defensive or offensive abilities, the WDU is created entirely to assist with building and maintaining infrastructure.

The Work Drone Utility was born, and I immediately set it about creating another 5 just like it.

I watched with delight as the first generated the second, then they both generated another, and so on... geometrically getting faster and faster with the building until finally the last Work Drone Utility took around a quarter of the time that the first one had built the second.  It was poetry in motion.

The rapid consumption of Threns and Mattise in the build forced me to locate my first Tekt and Jisper asteroids.

It left me free to mine or dream up new concepts for the growth of my budding empire while my automated work force went about carrying out my instructions.

The first task I gave my new work force (apart from creating itself) was to create a rack and reload system on the Dry Station infrastructure that would both serve as storage for the units when they were not being operated as well as a place where they could obtain instructions and digital matter signatures for their projects while in operation.

The WDU rack fits 6 units, with the option to easily expand to cope with many others in the future.

Digital Matter Signatures and instructions are transmitted into the docked WDUs via a new cable link

The Work Drone Utility (WDU) has greatly improved my build speeds, and the work sites are always clearly visible even from a long distance due to the collection of flashing orange danger lights the WDUs emit.

WDU is downloadable and available for public use for free.  Simply unzip the folder into your "blueprints" folder (eg: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\StarMade\StarMade\blueprints) and you will have access to this machine in-game under "Catalog" menu.

Deep Space Scanner

Having stumbled on a couple of pirate bases and hundreds of raider vessels while flying various ships, it became obvious that the surrounding space was filled to the gills with bad guys.

While I was apparently able to dispatch these guys with relative ease now using FRG Thor and even CRV Alannis, they still caused me headaches in SVG Excavator and SVG Speeder (although I almost never took her out any more, as she was now obsolete).

In addition, I knew that somewhere out there was a force of ships large enough to blockade the Trading Guild, which were far larger and stronger than my own empire.  Therefore the raider force must be pretty significant.

So it became desirable to locate and map other bases, and either avoid them, negotiate with them, or wipe them out... which I was becoming quite good at, it seemed.

I made plans to build a large deep space scanner.

Scanner scaffolding braces the structure while it is being built.

The scanner would be able to scan 4 sectors in all directions for enemy vessel activity, and scan the entire star system for bases and derelict space craft.  The Trading Guild advised that their own bases employed a cloaking system that bypassed the Geiger signature detected by the scanner, so their own structures would remain invisible to me.

The underside of the docked structure requires its own power and data feed to the station's core.

An independently docked structure, the scanner extends far above the station.

The scanner is docked to the station as an independent structure... effectively it's a vessel.  The station's own Geiger resonance needs to be isolated for the scanner to work, so attaching it directly causes the scanner to fail, requiring that it is its own structure.

Having it separate like this also will allow it to be undocked and moved as Dry Station expands and grows over time with new additional structure.

The scanner towers above the rest of the station, giving great penetration into deep space.

Once the device was fully operational, I engaged it and performed it's first scan of the system (hit P in game to see system/galactic map).

To my great surprise other bases began popping up on the monitors throughout the system... it seems I was surrounded by structures not my own...

My local sector had only my own Dry Station, the local Trading Guild shop and my own vessels in it.

My local star was smothered in other structures... enemy or derelict was unknown at this time.

My star is one of very many in the local area.

After some few hours of scanning telemetry, the device's systems were able to plot every star and wormhole in the entire galaxy... I was an insignificant speck in a sea of stars.

It was time to scout and map every one of those structures in my local space, to identify if they were enemy, friendly, or derelict.

Docks and cargo siphons

During the final stages of building FRG Thor, one of the key things I found was that having ships drifing nearby Dry Station was awkward and somewhat cluttered.  Additionally it was both slow and inconvenient to do several astronaut trips between a newly returned vessel and the station's Factory, using my own personal data banks as a shuttle to carry digital mass signatures to my facility.

So I drafted plans to build a dock at Dry Station and fit it with a system that would automatically siphon digital signatures from a drop box next to the docked vessel, so that I wouldn't have to travel any distance and therefore save me a bunch of time.

Dry Station with her initial compliment of docking arms fitted.

The docking arms were a continuation of Dry Station's simple and inexpensive alloy mesh structure acting as a support for the mammoth cables required to transmit digital matter signals.  e=mc2, which meant that even small amounts of matter converted into monstrous amounts of energy.  All that energy required very heavy duty cabling to avoid being burnt out during transmission and storage.

At the end of each docking arm I've fitted a drop box connected to the central factory matter signature storage facility.

The docking arms were capped with a labelled drop box into which I could drop all matter signatures without having to travel the distance from the docked vessel to the factory myself.  From the drop box the signatures are siphoned down the heavy duty cabling to a central storage box, which in turn feeds all matter signatures into the sorting box.  The sorting box (which has until now been my overall drop-box) then distributes matter signatures into various sorted boxes to make finding and accessing them much easier.

Thor requires the biggest docking arm to date due to her size.

Different coloured cabling leads to different docking arms.

Red is SVG Speeder's docking arm cable.
Yellow is SVG Excavator's docking arm cable.
White is CRV Alannis's docking arm cable.
Orange is the recently added docking arm cable for FRG Thor.

Black cable is for a recently wired in scanner complex.

The central siphon box is connected directly to the power grid to cope with the humongous quantity of energy required.  Matter signatures can be drained from all siphon boxes simultaneously and then fed at a steady pace into the factory's sorting box.

The entire set up allows me to disembark a newly docked vessel, and drop all matter signatures into the siphon box immediately adjacent to the docked ship.  From there Dry Station will automatically draw it into the matter signature facility and sort it into it's necessary home.  Whenever a new matter signature is encounted that does not have a home yet, it remains idle in the sorting box, and this acts as a prompt for me to either re-configure an existing storage box to receive it, or create a new storage box for that catagory of matter signatures.

The entire set up makes life much easier for me, and ensures that the factory always has a precise location to draw any particular type of matter signature from.

Thor crushes a small nearby raider outpost

After months of building using Dry Station's shipyard and automated construction facilities, the frigate FRG Thor was finally ready to be launched.

She had all paint, decals, computer systems, navigation lights, docking, weapons, and crew systems in place, and was fully outfitted with a full compliment of fuel, water, food stuffs and weaponry.

My first frigate was ready to her inaugural voyage.

Thor ready for launch.

I recruited a single officer from the Trading Guild, one Ensign Zakfield, to man the engineering systems and tested Thor's systems ready for her launch.

Everything came back green, and Zakfield confirmed we were ready for launch.

We eased FRG Thor out of dock and took her on her inaugural flight to the nearby raider's station responsible for the recent pirate harassment on Dry Station, and which had also harrassed SVG Excavator on a few recent trips to the nearby asteroid field to collect resources.  It would be an excellent test of her abilities and send a clear message to the raiders that Dry Station was not to be trifled with.

After several hours of travel Thor arrived in the airspace of the raider station and was immediately swarmed by dozens of fighters who opened up on Thor and barraged us with small fire.  Thor's shields absorbed hit after hit and we sat with impunity in half the range of the frigate's large rocket launcher commanding the surrender of the station and her fighter contingency.

FRG Thor's shields absorbed an unprecedented amount of fire from raider fighters.

The pirates ignored our transmissions and grew in numbers as still more fighters flooded into the system from nearby asteroid fields.  Soon Thor's considerable shields had dropped to within 80% capacity and my patience drew to a close.

I targeted the station with the Thor's main rocket array and let a single round loose.  It covered the space between Thor and the station in seconds, screaming a blue trail behind it as it went, before battering the station with it's colossal detonation.  The station's shield fizzled and arced as it strained to disperse the immense energy of the blast around the structure.

Another round was released as soon as it was chambered, and this time the station shield could not restrain it.  The shield collapsed and superstructure crumbled under the blast, exploding metal, glass, bodies and gas into space from a gaping wound in the structure.

The station's radio chatter went quiet, but the assault from the cloud of fighters continued unabaited.

It was time to turn Thor's attention towards the swarm.

The main rocket launcher on board Thor was like shooting ants with a shotgun, although somewhat cumbersome.

Her smaller wing-mounted lock-on missiles fired rounds much faster and were more effective against the smaller craft.

Turning the frigate to track the highly maneuverable fighters was a small challenge, however I found that once I'd locked the weapons onto a target that the lock-on missiles (including Thor's main rocket) would follow the target regardless of it's maneuvers.  In this way I was able to swivel, track, and swat one fighter at a time until I was swimming in a sea of burning wrecks and drifting debris.  I was flying a one-ship exterminator, and I liked it.

Thor was almost invulnerable to attack from a swarm of raider fighters, while she swatted them one by one.

Zakfield kept the frigate's main systems operating at peak and continued cycling the phase of the shields while I focused on target tracking and blowing fighters out of the sky, and the system worked well.

Destroyed pirates would often spill debris and loot into space as their cores overheated and crew perished.

Before long my frigate was surrounded by drifting debris, overheating cores, and a rapidly expanding field of atmospheric gases released from shattered hulls... Her shields never dropped below 75%, and were now slowly recharging as she sat unmolested in space outside the silent raider station.

Thor parks outside the raider station while I board and inspect the ruin.

I exited her airlock and made my way into the huge hole that Thor had blown in the side of the raider station, while Zakfield held Thor menacingly outside with weapons trained and ready.

Thor sat outside the station while I boarded and inspected it.

The station had several very large holes blown into it as well as small fire damage from fighter cross-fire.

The station's main cores were intact however... no threat of nuclear meltdown just yet.  I left them thrumming healthily while I returned to Thor waiting outside.

Within the station I found several dead raiders, destroyed computer systems, and shattered debris as a tribute to my total domination.  A raider survivor was found hiding in the main control facility, and I captured him and held him in the crew quarters of Thor for the journey back to Dry Station.

Little else of value existed on the station, which I resolved to soak up later by returning to the zone with SVG Excavator.

Thor returns triumphantly to Dry Station with her cargo of loot and a prisoner of war.

 That particular raider station would trouble me no more.  I could take Excavator safely out into the asteroid fields without fear of harassment or raids.