So it's basically extending Asm. Matter in rows just under the surface with interspersed Scrying Crystals? That works, I might switch to that after Q/A... although, it doesn't sound like something that would be dependent on the Alterin being distracted or not. Does Assimilation/Generation make noise or radiation they would notice?
In the process of trying to vote, I've realized I'm unclear about a lot of mechanics, which simply wont do for a Crystalline.
1. Does the Manafield sensor mentioned in this update count as crystal type? Such as a variant of the Farseer or Scrying Crystal? Or is it specialized enough to this one place and situation that there's no point listing it anywhere?
2. Are we taking significant penalties (slowed research, can't see a meter in front of us, etc.) from the electromagnetic noise being generated by the Secretkeeper? If so, what would be the right way to stop these penalties? Wall of Armite Half-Crystal? Wall of Armite? Dome of one of those? Researching strengthened conduits? Some Absorption Field Crystals?
3. This implies the opposite of the Big Crystal example at the bottom of the same post. Here— because of reduced efficiency— the only reason to ever use a Big Crystal instead of filling the same space with smaller Crystals is for higher features (like being a True Crystalline), but there the example takes up four spaces for 300en/cycle, when filling those spaces with Base Crystal would only be 200en/cycle.
4. Since turning assimilated matter into Crystal always halves the cost of the Crystal, is there any reason to ever not go [asm. matter]→[wanted Crystal] when otherwise valueless matter is available?
5. Is this levitation, teleportation, or just sliding-along/adhering-to surfaces? Would we be able to disconnect our Core from surrounding Crystals and move just inside the Armite protection of the prison?
6. If we were to turn our Storage|Research Crystals exposed to the air into defensive/offensive/telescope Crystals, would that change be visible?
7. If we were to fill all scouted and secured rooms in the prison with crystal, what interesting things would be lost? (Out of your descriptions, I'm not quite sure what counts as a potential historical/magical/material discovery and what's definitely junk.)
8. Is there a point at which we'll use or need to start caring about a third dimension? Overworld map says yes, but I'm not sure when our current Map will be bridged to that.
Well, have some answers then!
1. Too specialized.
2. Right now we're far away enough that we aren't taking any penalties big enough to list other than the aboveground vision one and generally being distracted by just a huge wave of white noise. Getting significantly closer to them before they've sealed themselves back up would start making it harder to see in general, and if we got close enough, slow down research.
3. I should look over that then, or maybe scrap having those.
4. Originally yes, since it degraded over time. It doesn't now to make thing easier to track. Its at the top of the list for 'what would get destroyed by an overload' though, if we ever have one.
5. Its a teleport. You take the whole us and put it somewhere else, for the cost of our current cycle's energy generation. We'd need a new crystal type based on relocating specific parts to move just our core.
6. Likely not, if they stayed away for long enough. Would look a bit strange if they immediately run back to us for help, though.
7. The top right room (The one with the heavy organization), the battery storage room (top middle squiggle room), the room with the Angry Ball, and the arena are the only ones with anything of note, unless you want to attempt rebuilding all the shattered teleportation devices into one useable one, which would take quite some time.
8. Mapwise no, the way I make it doesn't support 3d at all. But you can look around in any direction, get a description of the area, and get a seperate map to expand in if we start making distant bases. If we had a topdown map it would only show the surface layer.
The surface vote is for expanding our surface...surface area to look more closely as the wrecks and such around the place, a subsurface expansion wouldn't get detected by them.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on May 15, 2017 at 11:10 AM, finished with 304 posts and 4 votes.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on May 17, 2017 at 1:36 PM, finished with 304 posts and 4 votes.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
Oh, and @the swarm, @Nevill; are you two voting to build a tower of Base Crystal with a Scrying Crystal on top? Creating a minion? The first might blow our cover or make the Alterins wary of feeding the "wishing well" and the second we apparently can't get telemetry back from without finishing wireless research.
just making suggestions for the future and asking if this or that is possible to make or researtch and give people ideas and trying to start disscusions
[X] Check out the nearby surface areas while the alterin are distracted
We may not get another chance to see what's out on top in the near future. If possible we may want to build a disguised drone/minion and send it out, and then collect any information when it returns.
I was gonna update today, since I had time to work on the map and update the text to match how far we'd gone.
Except my gpu has decided now is the time for it to start dying on me, so I can't get it to boot normally aside from safe mode.
So instead you get this unhelpful update, sorry.
Have a vote tally for what we're gonna do instead? They aren't particularly exclusive
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on May 28, 2017 at 11:22 AM, finished with 306 posts and 5 votes.
[x] Check out the nearby surface areas while the alterin are distracted
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on Jul 12, 2017 at 7:55 PM, finished with 315 posts and 6 votes.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on Jul 12, 2017 at 7:55 PM, finished with 315 posts and 6 votes.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
1. Too specialized.
2. Right now we're far away enough that we aren't taking any penalties big enough to list other than the aboveground vision one and generally being distracted by just a huge wave of white noise. Getting significantly closer to them before they've sealed themselves back up would start making it harder to see in general, and if we got close enough, slow down research.
3. I should look over that then, or maybe scrap having those.
4. Originally yes, since it degraded over time. It doesn't now to make thing easier to track. Its at the top of the list for 'what would get destroyed by an overload' though, if we ever have one.
5. Its a teleport. You take the whole us and put it somewhere else, for the cost of our current cycle's energy generation. We'd need a new crystal type based on relocating specific parts to move just our core.
6. Likely not, if they stayed away for long enough. Would look a bit strange if they immediately run back to us for help, though.
7. The top right room (The one with the heavy organization), the battery storage room (top middle squiggle room), the room with the Angry Ball, and the arena are the only ones with anything of note, unless you want to attempt rebuilding all the shattered teleportation devices into one useable one, which would take quite some time.
8. Mapwise no, the way I make it doesn't support 3d at all. But you can look around in any direction, get a description of the area, and get a seperate map to expand in if we start making distant bases. If we had a topdown map it would only show the surface layer.
The surface vote is for expanding our surface...surface area to look more closely as the wrecks and such around the place, a subsurface expansion wouldn't get detected by them.
3. Balance wise, having a larger crystal of fixed shape is an additional mild restriction on where we can put it, so you'd expect some at least some mild benefit, and in real life designing a large system from the beginning is more efficient/hard than just strapping together a bunch of smaller systems for the same purpose. Of the kinds of benefit— more unique features (True Crystalline) or more efficient features (that old example)— most games choose the former, since the latter simply encourages players to deconstruct and rebuild lots of things as they expand.
4. So Crystal made from assimilated matter is basically more fragile? Would an overload just choose Asm.M. Crystals first for damage, or are we looking at overloads being super dangerous because we'll lose more than half our crystals? (Also, if you're keeping track of which Crystals are from Asm.M., what would be the energy cost of fixing this defect?)
6. This answer implies that we have good information on the reliably/length of their memory to judge what would look strange to them, unless you're saying that the changes we make have less obvious signs with time?
7. Hm, I for one would like to examine the teleportation devices eventually; even if they prove inferior to the teleportation we can work out ourselves, they are still something we could provide to others. Probably should put that off until we have ridiculous amounts of research crystals and a mini-AI to organize that research. Perhaps also some stasis technology earlier so we can time-stop the angry thing's decay for later magic research.
8. I was just remembering things like the Dwarf Fortress map archive/viewer which can handle that sort of thing fairly efficiently. Maybe someday/year you'll run into something similar that makes 3d mapping easy for you?
So, the surface vote will be super obvious because of the advancing tide of blue in all directions? And the only reason they wont notice is because (6 or) their memory and attention is surprisingly bad? That is perhaps why we could use a tiebreaker; we might not want that. (Also, if so, is that vote prompt sort of simulating how our protagonist wouldn't realize that this plan might be a bad idea?)
On 4: The crystals converted out of it would be fine, its the Assimilated matter thats the problem. Its basically some dirt held together with a stick compared to the normal crystals, whats done in the background to keep it together could be summarized as glaring at it really hard.
6. They only can keep track of so many things at once with no AI, so if part of the place turns out to be made out of crystal and they don't have records saying there was nothing there before? They'd probably just chalk it up to the ruins continuing to fall apart around them. At least one wreck nearby has a crystallized fuel source, though they aren't sure if its intentionally so or if a wizard froze it.
7. I can have us make a scan of those then and mark the room with the biggest amount, if you just want to analyze them later.
8 would be neat! For now, I'll just stick to paint.net, once I can actually use it again. I've thought of having a extra topdown map before, but we never really needed one since everything (more or less) worked out in sideview.
Also yes, the vote options (aside from obvious ooc bits added to explain or ask for detail) are generally all considered valid options by our lone crystal protagonist, since theres no one around to tell him otherwise. Whether they are a good idea (or at least not a bad one) is up to you guys.
On 4: The crystals converted out of it would be fine, its the Assimilated matter thats the problem. Its basically some dirt held together with a stick compared to the normal crystals, whats done in the background to keep it together could be summarized as glaring at it really hard.
Back when I first read this, it kinda confused me; this conversation was started on the topic of "using asm. matter first gives a huge discount to building all crystals, is there ever any reason not to use it when possible?", then you gave a reason, but it turns out that reason doesn't count when asm. matter is used for discounting; it just matters for scouting like in the current vote, or for those temporary connections we had at the beginning. So... I guess the answer to that first question is "no, this is a bonus you get for starting with normal matter instead of using zero-point-energy-to-matter-conversion".
I have not forgottten about it, swarm! (thank you for the post though)
Just...issues in RL keep popping up all over the place recently. I got my gpu replaced and then other things break, fixed those and then more important, less computer-repairable things happen. I've been trying to think of a way to describe it without sounding like an excuse and not having much luck, so I'll just leave it at that. Sorry again
I'll make a bigger update when I can to make up for all the delaying.
I have not forgottten about it, swarm! (thank you for the post though)
Just...issues in RL keep popping up all over the place recently. I got my gpu replaced and then other things break, fixed those and then more important, less computer-repairable things happen. I've been trying to think of a way to describe it without sounding like an excuse and not having much luck, so I'll just leave it at that. Sorry again
I'll make a bigger update when I can to make up for all the delaying.
So! This is not the update post (I'll get back to writing the rest of that after this post), because I had a question for yonder thread. After having seen them in another couple threads, I thought I'd see if the accordion tags were nicer than the spoiler tags for the status block and the current crystal designs list, and the most recent threadmark now has both of them. Do they look better (and if so, is there any neat things about them I missed that would make them look better)? Do they look worse? Should they actually be used for something else entirely? Tell me what you think.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on Jul 12, 2017 at 8:16 PM, finished with 316 posts and 6 votes.
[X] Assimilate matter around the outside of the prison. How big is it really? If you spot something weird, make a Farseer Crystal and move on in non-weird directions; if it's something really weird, take a vote.
[X] Build 5 Research Crystals from the closest Asm. Matter; this will give us exactly enough Research points to finish Dampening Fields in 3 cycles.
This night, due to a certain grossly radiant island isolationist(s), you had quite a few priorities to do and only 12 Ruinos-hours to do them in: Have a look at the surface while the alterin were busy with That Which They Messed Up Up There and not around the crater. Experiment on any interesting finds there. Get Dampening Fields done soon. Experiment on the batteries in the bunker/prison/armite source. Make a scan of the shattered teleporters collection, see if they could help you at all later. Look for the bottom of the damn place from the outside. Lastly, get some goddamn support crystals already. Probably not going to get those all that soon, but it would be nice!
So simplest things first, add a couple research crystals so your estimate is accurate on when they'll be done, then take some time to scan the tech fragments.
The fragments which are quite thoroughly trashed. Demolished. Broken. Splintered. Crushed. Not shorted out, though. Whatever broke them was very, very physically thorough, but unlike your original glance at them, the leftover circuitry is theoretically salvageable, assuming you had all the pieces. So instead of just scanning them as broken tech, you go back and rescan them as a puzzle set to be eventually reforged and examined when you have all of the pieces.
Next, the batteries. You take a look at them with the mana sensor in the arena, and mana batteries they are, so you scrape together a couple sword minions out of the armite chunk you'd taken over and lever one of them open. Dropping one of them into it results in an interesting, but very ineffective dive inside what is probably a liquid form, because the armite-based minion was stripped down to its crystal core in a matter of minutes, and then sat on the bottom for about a minute while it splintered, then disintegrated into the battery as well. Aside from the locator (which is what the arena sensor is an extension of), you don't have the sensor tech to determine what exactly the mana is doing, if its pure mana or impure, or why it doesn't corrode its way out of the container, since you never really expected to deal with magic this directly.
But as far as first impressions go, these either are batteries (and thus should be left closed to work correctly), bombs (which is worrying), or highly-dangerous mana-based solvents (and thus should be opened, but only carefully and maybe with a wizard nearby), if it took apart the heavily energy-resistant armor material in minutes and splintered your own crystal in even less time. Out of curiosity however, you charge up the second minion overcapacity and then drop it in as well. Right on cue a few minutes later, theres a small thoomp from the core imploding as it falls apart, and then surprisingly, a large whine bursts out of the mana sensor readout, which stops when you see a bubble emerge and then pop on the surface of the mana.
Something else gets picked up responding to the mana-based noise a a bit later, too, quite a bit further below. But you'll worry about that when you get closer, theres exploration to be done. With As. matter to conserve energy, because who knows how far down you're going.
Finally. Whoever built this structure, they might have gone a bit overboard if the bottom of the structure is 56 crystal units below the top. The last few levels had an extra layer of armite stuffed into them, which was an interesting choice when there was already three layers of it. Not to mention the power leak you can feel through the four layers of armite! Not just sense with sensors or anything, touching the bottom few layers of armite has a distinct flow to it. A worryingly strong, regular one for something with three layers of heavy ablative insulation between you and it. A cross-reference with the mana sensor at least confirms this is the source.
Investigation: Major mana power signal.
[] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
[] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
- [] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
===
Critical Message RECEIVED For:Acting Commander Wintarian Alert code: Regnar Zero-Day
"The whatever the hell it is keeps blowing up anything near the door, sir! How in the name of all the stars in the sky do we get through something that explodes objects aggressively as a response to everything?"
No good.
This planet was, in general, no good. Interesting, yes. Complicated, oh absolutely. A mess? You couldn't find a better example. Full of neat toys (and 'toys', and not-toys, and so forth)? Very.
But then there was this. The entire bloody island was deserted! Empty! It had CEASED TO CONTAIN OCCUPANTS! Except for that one ghost that killed former Commander Wholo and this thing.
Wintarian slammed his desk once more in frustration as he'd been doing ever since the message arrived a few minutes ago and woke him out of his sleep with its damned emergency alarm. It was too late and he was too tired to pace around to try and think, but if he went back to bed it'd alert him again until he marked it as responded to. So he sat at his desk uncomfortably instead.
The one room. The one room they had not been able to get into. Was a trap. Or a seal. And whatever was inside was there intentionally, and got upset at people trying to break in. Who also knew how to explode things on demand, and while the voice was too forceful to sound anything but authoritative, from what he'd heard of the recording it could be mistaken for being almost amused at their response to spontaneous explosions.
On the plus side, at least there was no interference from it if everyone was doing what they currently were, which was glaring at the opening in frustration according to what he'd been told when he called back the message-sender. If the contents of that room weren't the entire point of Operation: Get the damn door open (unofficial title), he'd just send in some of the more stable Ruintech weaponry they'd recovered and let them blow the ghost/spirit/mage/AI/whatever up and pick over whatever wasn't broken in the aftermath.
And if they didn't have a magitech wishing well on hand, he might've just done that anyway, because there is archeology, and then there is tomb raiding. In Alterin law, the latter is only different in that it involves deadly traps as a matter of course for some godforsaken reason, but legally it means you go in armed and able, or stay in dead. So tired, grumpy, and half-awake, Acting Commander Wintarian goes to look up if wishing wells having operating hours or not.
They needed something extra heretical if the spiteful being considered the forcefield modifier's uncomfortably antiglowing material bad. And even if he had to go in there himself wielding the horrid stuff, hell, wearing the stuff if he had too, he was going to make it pay for ruining not only the main team under his command's progress towards finally succeeding, but his already-too-little sleep.
===
The surface nearby was absolutely littered with loot, once you got out of the crater! Most of the functional parts however, were in a state of brokenitude. Or didn't exist in some of the more badly-punctured armored vehicular devices.
...Thinking about it more closely, these clearly weren't Crystalline vehicular devices. There were manual controls on some of them! That probably made them vehicles instead, like pirate ships except less drunk death-seekers trying to mine the Prime Crystal and more just already dead constructs. The remains of at least four distinct battles (probably closer to four dozen than four if you include the excess of broken parts of unknown origin) sat here next to you, making it particularly hard to single out one particular faction's tech. They got more densely one type or another the further away you went however, so this may have been near the center of the battlefield.
One group, which grew more visible as you looked south, was clearly either mages or had relied on magical protection, with their heavy focus on (now nonexistant except for the remains of foci) some form of energy shielding by the look of the power conduits that remain. Very few of their vehicles survived with less than total structural failure from being drenched (for lack of a better descriptor) in high-velocity heavy kinetic rounds, several of them having simply snapped in two after being struck in a critical point. Those were the ones you could extract the most information from, since they were the least ruined yet the most damaged. Some of them appeared to have been struck in the power array, as there were intense scorchmarks all over nearby vehicles, with the one in the epicenter blown open like it was made of flimsy wood instead of plastics and metals at best, and flat missing at worst. You can't tell what weapons they used, as either they were energy-based and no longer existed without a working vehicle, or they were destroyed beyond recognition by the kinetics barrage.
Their most likely opponents, considering the plethora of kinetic rounds strewn about the craft like they were candy, were the lightly armored, lightly shielded, and heavily numerous collection of railgun arrays with tanks attached to the north-ish. Unlike the shielded craft, these ones didn't have a main cause of destruction or disablement besides just not being all that tough individually. These ones were likely drones as well, as of the ones you can pick up on as mostly intact, about 80% of the vehicle is either the guns or the ammo, with the remaining percent left for power and other non-gun essentials.
Off to relative left of you on your newly-expanded surface area, there are rather heavily armored...boats.
A check to make sure you haven't misread the sensor data later, you look at the landships again. You aren't quite sure what they were thinking, adding mechanized legs to watercraft. As far as you know, there is not a big enough lake or ocean anywhere nearby to support boats, much less ships.
But the wrecks are right there, complete with ship cannon of various sizes, general shape, and a couple with what was probably a shield generator based on the look of it and their spot in the debris field, but are too broken down (or too destroyed) to confirm.
To the relative right there are the strangest of the lot in their normalcy, a collection of hovertanks. Large guns of various technological types, large hover systems, large armor. Small engines. No energy shields or magical ones for that matter. Remarkably intact for the most part, as far as wreckage goes.
Further investigations (others can be looked at later, but this is for which to examine in more detail before we get a certain alteri coming to see us)
[] The heavily shielded, projectile-ridden vehicles
[] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[] The landships. That walk.
[] The mostly-plain, surprisingly-intact hovertanks.
Original compressed name: Shining-in-the-Space, Prime Crystal, Outer Layer Omega-Current, Xenotech-Specialist/Experimentals-Researcher True Crystalline.
Minions Status:
Infiltrator Greatsword (1x): Plenty of reserve power, recording. Shape of a stone greatsword with crystalline hilt components. Tiny solar panel and thermal absorbers. Out of command range.
Focused Manafield Sensor Construct: Setup in the Arena of Power, attuned to its magic saturation.
Arcane: Undiscovered.
The Alterin Threat:
They are bad at communication security here.
They are at least somewhat organized (managers)
They appear to lack an answer on the more arcane-bullshit sort of thing around here. Though we hardly know much either, how is that island floating...
They do take research data security seriously, and have a logging system.
Current base is not a full one.
They appear to not be concerned with nighttime security outside of basic measures.
They have a different definition of 'wishing well' than you do.
Opening the fielded door bothered the Secretkeeper's Sanctuary, which might've goen badly for them?
Location: In a crater. Pretending to be a wishing well. Near some suspicious alterin.
Normal:
Assimilated matter
The quick, dirty solution to your lack of range.
Template: Matter
Energy production: 20 per cycle
Fabrication cost: 50 energy, nearby material.
Basic Crystal
Created by converting solid materials, like rock or assimilated matter.
Energy production: 50/cycle
Template: Refined
Fabrication cost: 200 energy, nearby solid material or crystal.
Storage Crystal
A stabilized hunk of additional crystal, giving you more room to store energy without side effects.
Template: Space-filling
Fabrication cost: 200 energy, empty space.
Research Crystal
Because doing everything yourself is slow and complicated.
Template: Space-filling
Traits: Data Storage (replaces Energy Storage: Basic)
Fabrication cost: 700 energy
Research Output: 1/cycle, Research cost 10 energy/cycle.
Repair Crystal
A good helper.
Energy production: 50/cycle
Template: Refined
Traits: Repair Protocols
Fabrication cost: 1,200 energy
Mine Crystal
Storage crystal stripped down and prepared to explode via overcharge.
Template: Space-filling (minimal energy storage)
Fabrication cost: 200 energy, empty space.
Farseer Crystal
An excellent companion to scouting crystal. Energy production alignments have been realigned for exceptional sensory range instead.
Template: Intrusive
Traits: 1st Visual Augmentation
Fabrication Cost: 750 energy
Scrying Crystal
I see you.
Template: Intrusive
Traits: 2nd Visual Augmentation
Fabrication cost: 2250 energy
Available traits:
Energy Generator (Basic), Energy Storage (Basic), Data Storage, Absorption Fields, Defensive Offense, Explosive Entry, Repair Protocols, Visual Augmentation
Check the crystals threadmark for energy costs and details.
Navy Blue - Crystal core Light Blue - Base crystals Orange w/ black S - Storage Crystal Turquoise with small diamond - Farseer Crystal Black with Turquoise diamond - Scrying Crystal Purple/Orchid - Focusing Crystal Darker Purple - Overseer Crystal Blue w/ gold R - Research Crystal Purpleish - Repair Crystal Red - Diplomatic Crystalline Dark purple - Armite Half-Crystal
--- Dark Brown - Empty underground space Light Brown - Dirt or other non-solid material Light Grey - Rock Grey - Armite Sky Blue - Empty aboveground space Teal w/brown diamond - Assimilated matter (Rock is a grey diamond instead)
(Background) w/ question mark - [Unknown tech]
(Background) w/ small diamond - Mobile Thing (Purple for Alterin) Black - Unknown
--- Red cross-shaped overlay - Damaged Red X overlay - Heavily damaged
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
can we cover this side like we did with the other? and the under side?
[] The landships. That walk.
to weird to not investigate
and welcome back i have been waiting for you
[X] Very Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
-[X] Be prepared to break connection with the Farseer crystal the moment something seems to distort it.
-[X] And set up a quarantine for the information from the Farseer Crystal, with the ability to detect distortions to the physical substrate of the quarantine; only peek at the information once it's obvious the information itself doesn't distort what it has passed through or is stored in.
--[X] And even then, if you start having uncharacteristic thoughts, such as freeing what's down there or conquering the world, break connection and do as complete a self-checkup as you can manage.
[X] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[X] Extra thought; can the Alterans still drive to us with their vehicle? Or are the edges of the Base Crystals too high? If possibly blocked, insure there is a ramp around the perimeter made of whatever is cheapest and solid enough; fabricated dirt, Crystal, or whatever.
Of course we could go around. But its still going to be mostly wall from the outside.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on Jul 13, 2017 at 7:00 PM, finished with 323 posts and 4 votes.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[x] The landships. That walk.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
[x] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[X] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet. I think we should be somewhat cautious with this. At least to start.
[x] The landships. That walk.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on Jul 13, 2017 at 7:01 PM, finished with 323 posts and 4 votes.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[x] The landships. That walk.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
[x] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[X] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet. I think we should be somewhat cautious with this. At least to start.
[x] The landships. That walk.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
This is probably a bad idea, but it's the fun bad idea.
Maybe we should continue investigating the outside geometry of this structure.
[x] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[X] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet. I think we should be somewhat cautious with this. At least to start.
[X] The landships. That walk.
Did most of the players forget we have no arcane research finished at all? If we give this thing a direct line back to us, it might be able to warp us just like it makes the armite flow, and we're less magic-resistant than armite. I would be worried about needing to break the connection even if we just use the Farseer Crystal, like so:
[X] Very Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
-[X] Be prepared to break connection with the Farseer crystal the moment something seems to distort it.
-[X] And set up a quarantine for the information from the Farseer Crystal, with the ability to detect distortions to the physical substrate of the quarantine; only peek at the information once it's obvious the information itself doesn't distort what it has passed through or is stored in.
--[X] And even then, if you start having uncharacteristic thoughts, such as freeing what's down there or conquering the world, break connection and do as complete a self-checkup as you can manage.
Learning about automated or remote-contolled drones sounds like it has the most synergy with the research/experimentation we've done so far. Quantity>quality might mean less finicky parts easily broken into incomprehensibility.
[X] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[X] Extra thought; can the Alterans still drive to us with their vehicle? Or are the edges of the Base Crystals too high? If possibly blocked, insure there is a ramp around the perimeter made of whatever is cheapest and solid enough; fabricated dirt, Crystal, or whatever.
Edit: Apparently out of all the obvious things we've done, this is the last straw? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -[X] If we ruined their way into the well too, we should also make that slope a bit shallower.
+60 units asm. matter
+34 units Base Crystal
+5 units Research Crystal
Total energy production in status not updated; it should be "9,590/cycle", based on the other listings there.
26,080+8,740-3000-6800-(3500+250-1750)=23020 so that works out.
Although I wonder if we should have an abstracted cost for all the little things we do like sword minions and blasting things, although I guess the only point of that cost would be satisfying OCD, since we would have literally thousands of times the energy needed to pay it.
The splendidly updated Crystal Information page says the Intrusive trait-set increases vision by +1, but our current Farseer crystal has its listed 20 exactly (unless the square it's in counts as needing a radii point of vision?).
Fixed the total energy status I'd missed, thanks Korkator. And the Farseer only has 11 vision. Scrying Crystals have 20.
(technically should be 21, but their sight range is already gigantically huge and needs a range template to fill in without missing anything, its not going miss out on much )
Also no, we kept the slope down into the crater. Gotta at least try to be disguised still, yeah?
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on Jul 14, 2017 at 10:03 AM, finished with 325 posts and 5 votes.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
[X] Very Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
-[X] Be prepared to break connection with the Farseer crystal the moment something seems to distort it.
-[X] And set up a quarantine for the information from the Farseer Crystal, with the ability to detect distortions to the physical substrate of the quarantine; only peek at the information once it's obvious the information itself doesn't distort what it has passed through or is stored in.
--[X] And even then, if you start having uncharacteristic thoughts, such as freeing what's down there or conquering the world, break connection and do as complete a self-checkup as you can manage.
[X] Extra thought; can the Alterans still drive to us with their vehicle? Or are the edges of the Base Crystals too high? If possibly blocked, insure there is a ramp around the perimeter made of whatever is cheapest and solid enough; fabricated dirt, Crystal, or whatever.
-[X] If we ruined their way into the well too, we should also make that slope a bit shallower.
[X] Very Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
-[X] Be prepared to break connection with the Farseer crystal the moment something seems to distort it.
-[X] And set up a quarantine for the information from the Farseer Crystal, with the ability to detect distortions to the physical substrate of the quarantine; only peek at the information once it's obvious the information itself doesn't distort what it has passed through or is stored in.
--[X] And even then, if you start having uncharacteristic thoughts, such as freeing what's down there or conquering the world, break connection and do as complete a self-checkup as you can manage.
[X] Extra thought; can the Alterans still drive to us with their vehicle? Or are the edges of the Base Crystals too high? If possibly blocked, insure there is a ramp around the perimeter made of whatever is cheapest and solid enough; fabricated dirt, Crystal, or whatever.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
[X] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet. I think we should be somewhat cautious with this. At least to start.
Adhoc vote count started by Aklyon on Sep 23, 2017 at 11:54 PM, finished with 333 posts and 6 votes.
[X] Very Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
-[X] Be prepared to break connection with the Farseer crystal the moment something seems to distort it.
-[X] And set up a quarantine for the information from the Farseer Crystal, with the ability to detect distortions to the physical substrate of the quarantine; only peek at the information once it's obvious the information itself doesn't distort what it has passed through or is stored in.
--[X] And even then, if you start having uncharacteristic thoughts, such as freeing what's down there or conquering the world, break connection and do as complete a self-checkup as you can manage.
[X] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[X] Extra thought; can the Alterans still drive to us with their vehicle? Or are the edges of the Base Crystals too high? If possibly blocked, insure there is a ramp around the perimeter made of whatever is cheapest and solid enough; fabricated dirt, Crystal, or whatever.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[x] The landships. That walk.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
[X] The quantity over quality railgun-spam drones.
[X] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet. I think we should be somewhat cautious with this. At least to start.
[x] The landships. That walk.
[X] Very Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet.
-[X] Be prepared to break connection with the Farseer crystal the moment something seems to distort it.
-[X] And set up a quarantine for the information from the Farseer Crystal, with the ability to detect distortions to the physical substrate of the quarantine; only peek at the information once it's obvious the information itself doesn't distort what it has passed through or is stored in.
--[X] And even then, if you start having uncharacteristic thoughts, such as freeing what's down there or conquering the world, break connection and do as complete a self-checkup as you can manage.
[X] Extra thought; can the Alterans still drive to us with their vehicle? Or are the edges of the Base Crystals too high? If possibly blocked, insure there is a ramp around the perimeter made of whatever is cheapest and solid enough; fabricated dirt, Crystal, or whatever.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From the side with As. matter, so you can break contact at a moments notice, but cannot bring a weapons-grade charge down with you without shredding at least 60 units of As. Matter.
[x] Direct - Go in and poke the source.
- [x] From above with crystal, so you can blast it if necessary with spare power, but would have to destroy crystal to break contact.
[X] Careful - Peek at it via Farseer Crystal, no physical contact with the room yet. I think we should be somewhat cautious with this. At least to start.
