So yeah, here I go.
Link Start!
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In the beginning, there was darkness. And then there was . . . still more darkness. That's odd. Let me try something.
Drivers okay.
Diagnostics all green.
Sensors functioning alright. Wait. There we go! Let's try this again.
And then there was . . . desert. A wasteland as far as the eye could see. Gently rolling dunes and endless sand stretching out for all of eternity for as far as the eye can see, well, as far as a human eye can see anyway. Measurements gathered by the instruments onboard my unit's Chassis. I had taken great joy in reading about the misadventures of my fellow SVers shoved into progenitor commanders and unfortunately I was now also stuck in one too. According to unit diagnostics, I am a Centurion commander, fun.
It occurs to me that it is likely my ramblings and log entries are being written and posted on either the Sufficient Velocity or Spacebattles creative writing forums for the enjoyment of other people, after all, it's happened to everybody else so why not me. Hi guys! Hi! Hi!
Done now. Alright, back to business. Interestingly, this planet has something like earth standard gravity and atmosphere though that wasn't exactly all that interesting or hard to tell. I could tell the composition of the air around me just by looking at it after all, I can literally see the individual molecules so all it takes is a quick headcount of what molecules I see. Unfortunately, that's boring and not at all fun, so I start running all of that stuff subconciously and just focus on regular "visible" spectrum light and lower resolution.
There. Much better.
Physics also appears to be working exactly as it did on earth with the exception of the Progenitor level bullshit physics fuckery that they were casually capable of and thus, I am capable of.
I feel like I'm forgetting something.
Doh!
Of course I'm forgetting something. I'm a commander, I'm playing an RTS game and I've just ignored one of my instincts as an RTS player, immediately getting started on an economy. I shall fix that immediately.
Right arm. Left arm. Legs. Here we go, walking motion.
Magnetic field orientation and movement of the sun allows me to grasp the orientation of this planet around the sun as well as differentiate directions. Ground penetrating scans indicate a stable plateau some distance to the north along with metal deposits that I can utilize. This is good. Walking there takes only a short time and I immediately begin constructing metal extractors., shortly followed by energy generators right next to the metal extractors and surround both with energy and mass storage buildings.
Looking over my specs, I think I'll probably be able to tank anything that comes, but just in case, I put down a bot factory, a vehicle factory, and an aircraft factory. Come to think of it, a couple of fabricators would probably do my construction time some good. By this point I've got all the metal spots on this plateau about covered, so I should probably send fabricators out all over the place to get everywhere.
. . .
I don't have unit designs.
Also I don't know how to design units.
Fortunately there's a helpful tutorial and an entire database of progenitor knowledge at my disposal. I'll just integrate everything real quick. Aaaaaaaaand my ping is spiking. That's not good.
Oh. That's a lot of la
__________________________
It's a bit short. Sorry >.>
Beneath here will be . . . a bunch of stuff. Misc stuff.
Once the hub is established, these four worlds are next on the chopping block list for our wonderful wonderful world tour.
Horray!
Mass Effect
Red Alert 3
Kancolle
Ace Combat
Possible Worlds
Fallout
Pacific Rim
RWBY
StarCraft
Sins of a Solar Empire
Men in Black
Independence Day
Halo
Final Fantasy (some are sci-fi)
Sid Meier's Civilization 5
X:COM EU & EW
Supreme Commander & SC:FA
Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
Command & Conquer Generals
Armored Core 4 & AC:4A
Arpeggio of Blue Steel
Endless Space
Stargate SG-1
Planetary Annihilation (Fight fellow commanders!)
FTL: Faster Than Light
Warhammer 40K
Star Wars
Star Trek
Muv-Luv
Sanctum
Homeworld
Honorverse
EVE
Avatar
Battleship
Code Geass
Boloverse
Archon
Star Trek (post-dominion war)
Gundam Seed
Gundam 00
Supreme Commander
Stargate
Strike Witches
Universe at War:Earth Assault
Lost Planet
Gears of War
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Familiar of Zero
ASOIAF
Infinite Stratos
Titanfall
Valkyria Chronicles
Wolfenstein: The New Order
53. Sue verse (automatic next if rolled)
__________________________
Name: Ramble
Titles:
Commander
Postmaster General
Postal Inspector General
Mom
Dad
No, it's just SI assuming that his experiences are being logged in a thread on the SV user fiction and SB creative writing forum and attempting to a meta interaction.
And I'm back. Fortunately, now I can get down to business. Also, apparently I needed to have a little existential crisis, but with handy mental acceleration, I can do that in only a few seconds. Lovely stuff that.
Anyway, now, down to business, a T1 fabricator tank, or I suppose a rover since treads would actually be a bit of a liability here, so let's go with wheels hmm? Six of them, and they're going to be big. like, let's say two meters in diameter each with three on each side of the rover. Next a chassis on which to mount a reactor and a place to put all the everything, fabricator arms, scanners, and everything else. After everything is said and done, I end up with a chassis 10 meters long, five meters wide and four meters high. All of these values are integers because I like integers and screw everyone who doesn't. A front cab for aesthetics and whatever other purpose I might have for them, four fabricator arms that fold into low profile boxes, and some bits and bobs here and there to pretty the thing up and it's done.
I'll call it the Fab Rover, and it's going to be my T1 land based fabrication vehicle.
Wait. I know what that cab is going to hold now, a little computer core to run simple AI on. It's only a small box and it doesn't fill up the entire cab, but eh, good enough. I'm a brutally efficient self replicating mechanism of war constructed by a post scarcity progenitor civilization to war on a galactic scale, I can indulge in a little inefficiency every now and again and honestly, it's not even all that much. Now I don't have to micromanage it so much. Yay!
I send the design to my vehicle factory and begin pumping it out in mass numbers, using them to build more vehicle factories. In any case, there's a Queue option where I can set actions to be performed in case I need to do something else or really can't be bothered. Lazy bastard that I am, there's really nothing I need to do for a while, and I want to have a bit of some other kind of fun.
I have land factories continuously producing Fab Rovers while all fab rovers begin networking to scan, scout, and begin spreading across the entire planet, putting down a metal extractor, two energy generators, four mass storage, and four energy storage clusters wherever they find a metal spot. With my progenitor levels of computing power, I manage to get everything necessary done in like 19-20 milliseconds and really, with everything automated now, all I have to do is wait until something happens, either my Fab Rovers run out of metal spots, or they encounter something.
I was lazy in my life before becoming a giant killbot commander of a giant swarm of killbots, and my personality hasn't been altered thus far yet so I'm going to do what I do best. Slack off until the last minute. Hooray! It's going to take like, a couple hours for my construction Rovers to get everything done anyway, so I have maybe a day or two or something. I shunt everything to mentally accelerated subconscious management while my conscious mind stays real time.
Slacking off is pointless if no time passes while you're doing it. I pull up a game of solitaire.
-TimeSkip-=-TimeSkip-=-TimeSkip-=-TimeSkip-
I have underestimated the amount of time I can manage to kill when I do something devoid of interaction with other human beings. I have a tendency to fall into a zen like state when doing something repetitive but contemplative and solitaire was one of those things. Without the need to use the restroom, sleep, eat, pay attention to mothers or roommates or adorable puppy dogs or really anything, I had managed to pass fourteen hours before I got a mental note from subconcious management.
It appears that I have encountered something very very interesting indeed.
You know what it is?
Do you?
Nah, I'm messing with you. It's a road. A busted and broken road but a road nonetheless. Any paint or anything on it may be gone, but it is no doubt an asphalt strip large enough for maybe two-three lanes or something. It appears that there's another strip only a couple more meters next to it. I have the rover follow the road or what's left of it for a while.
Unfortunately, apparently much of the road eventually becomes lost to the sand and/or is heavily broken up, eventually getting to the point where I can't tell where the road is anymore and the optical sensors on the rover can't see far enough away to see the road continuing so that's kind of a bust.
Damn. None of my units have ground penetrating Radar either, I forgot to build that into the fab rovers. Oh well. I might want to have that road around for a bit longer.
I order that particular unit to keep exploring the rest of the road, all the while paving it over again to restore it to good condition so as to mark where it had already explored and also to pretty the place up, as pretty as it could get anyway. Who knows. I don't care, I have resources to spare and not enough to spend them on.
Hmm.
I should probably flesh out a bit more of my unit and construction database.
Things to consider. Things to consider.
In other news, drowning in metal and energy. Post scarcity tech is such bullshit.
Hey guys, I've made a list of the worlds that will feel my sword I'm going to visit!
World queue
Once the hub is established, these four worlds are next on the chopping block list for our wonderful wonderful world tour. I'm going to be rolling to see which one I go to.
Horray!
Mass Effect
Red Alert 3
Kancolle
Ace Combat
Additional possible Worlds
Fallout
Pacific Rim
RWBY
StarCraft
Sins of a Solar Empire
Men in Black
Independence Day
Halo
Final Fantasy (some are sci-fi)
Sid Meier's Civilization 5
X:COM EU & EW
Supreme Commander & SC:FA
Command & Conquer (multiple universes)
Armored Core 4 & AC:4A
Arpeggio of Blue Steel
Endless Space
Stargate SG-1
Planetary Annihilation (Fight fellow commanders!)
FTL: Faster Than Light
Warhammer 40K
Star Wars
Star Trek
Muv-Luv
Sanctum
Homeworld
Honorverse
EVE
Avatar
Battleship
Code Geass
Boloverse
Star Trek (post-dominion war)
Gundam Seed
Gundam 00
Supreme Commander
Stargate
Strike Witches
38. Sue verse (automatic next if rolled)
Do note that I'm only including worlds that I've read or played the material for.
Well, something tells me you'll restore order to that particular wasteland. You may (read: you're screwed if you don't) want to design some sort of scout unit however, probably aerial.
It's a nice relaxing place to fix some problems and have fun doing ridiculous things with cars. Break out the snazzy outfits, enlist some kbots as polecats, shut down the stealth and ramp up the engine noise.
(... can you read our posts at all or not as the si ) if ya can read this a bit of advice straight away make scout's and orbital scout's and all the scout's
and maybe some long range orbital scout's also dont forget a commanders worst enemy is wasted time (if not meh)
I have my rovers halt their construction. This planet may be earthlike but I don't want to stir up any eldrich creatures that ROB may have set up for me to fight just yet. I'm not ready and I'm not sure if I really should take my chances until I have all of my bearing yet, so I err on the side of caution.
For the moment, I have a lot of resources. It's a bit silly, but I really need to get the lay of the land.
A light aircraft would probably be the way to go. Actually, it would definitely be the way to go. I believe something similar to the U2 spyplane would probably be a good idea since getting the lay of the land from almost the edge of space would probably be high enough so as not to disturb any local wildlife and if there is habitation here, it would most definitely be high enough to at least evade anti-aircraft fire, not that I'm expecting anti-aircraft fire at least. Right, designing, but first. I need to set up my base. The current air factory is wholely unsuited to my needs. It is too small for what I want to do so I need to redesign an entirely new factory if I want to build my bigger stuff.
I start out with a box, a large box, maybe 50 meters wide by 20 meters tall by 80 meters long. That should do. It needs a base and anchoring section in order to hold its other stuff. A base made entirely up of mass and energy storage cubes connected together and reinforced should serve as an acceptable base. Then what's inside is a whole lot of stuff that if I were a regular person, I would have lost track of, but I'm not, I'm a brutally efficient self replicating mechanism of war.
My new and improved construction hangar is ready to go and I plonk down seven of them. I like the number seven. It's a nice, agreeable, round number.
Now for something to operate my planes from. Well, I decide I may as well indulge my fantasies a little. I use several fab rovers to reclaim a whole lot of the surrounding material, not the metal, and use that materiel to pave eight really nice runways, each one a three kilometers long by forty meters wide, two sets of four each at an offset to each other so as not to interfere with operations.
A tower and computer center complete the whole place. Okay, the computer center building is basically a pretty reinforced concrete shell with transparent aluminum windows occupied only by a single 4 by 4 by 4 meter box. The tower is a transmitter, radar, lidar, all sorts of good stuff, and a reciever. Everything is basically so that the whole "air base" can basically run itself when I'm not paying attention to it.
A last edition, an energy generator and storage buildings on site to make it all self sufficient.
I'll just take that and save it onto a single file for later use elsewhere.
The last thing to do is design the aircraft.
Right. Resources to spare, resources to spare. Wings. Two ridiculously long wings, each one, let's say, 44 meters each, a central fuselage 25 meters long, and a nice little tail. Powerplant? Well, I'll go with the regular electrical motor driving a turbofan so that should probably be good enough. Of course, I stick a metric crapload of scanners and stuff into it including ground penetrating radar, more sophisticated sensors, and "nanite rockets" in order to get an even deeper, in depth look at anything it detects.
Due to the size of the spy plane however, it requires three factories to produce the parts separately. Simulations have shown that assembling the plane outside the factory would not have any serious effects.
I oversee construction of the first one myself. Three of the construction hangars spring to life, constructing the parts. The entire process lasts for a few minutes. I get in a round of fruit ninja in that time. And when the parts are finished, I have the fab rovers drag the pieces one by one to Runway 1. Once all the peices are in place, it's a simple matter to spray nanites on the joints and those "weld" the pieces together into a single piece of metal.
It's time to fly. You know, I've always wanted to fly but I never got to. I shall direct this first scouting mission personally. After a quick check through of my subconscious routines, I shove everything to subconscious management and take manual control of the spy plane myself.
Pre-flight diagnostics engaged.
All systems nominal.
Energy levels nominal.
Flaps.
Throttle controls.
Thrust vectoring.
Scanners.
Rockets.
All check.
All checks complete, Go for spy plane.
I throttle up all the way and the plane leaps forward, accelerating down the runway until I pull the nose up. I lift off without issue and begin my patrol. Everything seems to be working just fine, and with the progenitor alloys keeping the whole thing together, it is very maneuverable, as in, I could easily pull the thing into an aileron roll if I wanted to and everything would be alright. If that was tried with a mundane U2, the wings would shear off.
At 20000 feet, I open up the scanners, Radar, Lidar, and Ground penetrating radar.