As I planned the base's new shipyard expansion, I groaned. Roughly 2 weeks previously I'd woken...
Welcome Aboard (Space Engineers/Multiverse SI)
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Prologue (World 1 START)
We Just Write
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My techbase is, for the most part, Vanilla Space Engineers. However, I've also been given knowledge of the principles the technology actually works on, along with some other parts that make a great deal of sense. This includes Free Electron Lasers, among other things. I also don't have to deal with a speed limit, jump range is now measured in light days rather than km (along with being calculated using volume in m3 rather than mass in metric tons), I'm using Uranium's actual energy density rather than the game's reduced amount, and everything is now realistically proportioned/distanced.
Still, I suppose things could be a lot worse. I'd arrived right next to a particularly rich asteroid 12 km across that had nice usable concentrations of all the elements I needed. My tools worked wonderfully fast, and I'd soon had a pressurized base set up to live in, complete with greenhouse to provide food and oxygen (apparently the rescue ship had some seeds stashed away for setting up a hydroponic garden). It also had a Gravity Generator that I'd set up.
On the other hand, the sun I was orbiting around was most definitely NOT Sol, as Sol was not, to the best of my knowledge, a red dwarf. Another gripe was that even with my tools, digging out ore was still enough of a pain that I'd delegated the task to an autonomous drone once I'd amassed the required resources to do so.
I was also utterly convinced I was starting to go mad from isolation, given that there was absolutely no-one to talk to. Back in the present, I put on my space helmet as I entered the airlock and hit the depressurize button. I was going to take a short spacewalk to designate where the welder drone should build the shipyard's foundations, and I wanted to make sure I was properly equipped. As the last of the air was pumped out, I stepped onto the surface of the asteroid I currently called home.
Inserting the first surveying stake with my miniature piledriver went well enough, and I moved to the second corner. That one went in fairly easily as well. I began walking to the third point, when suddenly a big red exclamation point appeared on my HUD and-
I suddenly woke up in the capsule of my Medical Room. As I exited the device, I tried to mentally go over what had happened. I was setting up survey stakes outside, I was walking to the next corner and then... Nothing. My sneaking suspicions about what happened were suddenly confirmed as I glanced at the readout panel on the medical bay. It read 'StillAlive Entanglement Lost. Most Recent BrainSnap applied to clone. Time elapsed: 31 minutes, 43 seconds.'
I... I... I just died! Shuddering, I began slipping into one of the spare space suits that I'd made in case of something like this. I could cry later, right now, I needed to finish putting in those survey stakes. I'd known on an intellectual level that the Medical Station could bring me back to life, but until now it hadn't really registered just what that actually meant. Still, if I didn't want to die permanently, I'd better get back to work.
The airlock cycled again, and I was treated to a rather disturbing sight. Namely, my corpse smashed into the ground by some intense kinetic force, a hole clean through the helmet and the rock below and behind where my head had been flaked with red. I nearly retched at the sight of... myself as I walked over and picked up the piledriver. Survey Stakes 3 and 4 went in without any issues, and I hurriedly got back to the safety of my base.
Once I was back inside the pressurized structure, I went over my priorities again. Running out of resources and dying from that wasn't much of a critical threat at the moment, but if I went too much longer alone I'd probably start talking to random doors. I also needed some way to deal with those meteoroids, as I really didn't want to get killed by them again. Fortunately, I had a cloning machine and I knew how to make a whole lot of interesting technology...
Our hero gets a new friend, DNA is tampered with, and physics is reduced to crying in the corner!
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We Just Write
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Hey, it's a prologue. Things haven't really gotten going yet.
Baughn
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The thing is, everyone with the forum on 'watch' gets a notification when a new thread is started. That's how I found this one.
You should make the most of it.
Interesting start, lets see where you go with this.
HarakoniWarhawk
Striking from the Skies
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This is the first SE story posted for a long time. I believe Orion was the last person with his Worm/SE story last year.
We Just Write
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Main reason I picked it is because I don't think I'm good enough to write a decent Commander SI. This is a lot less OP.
HarakoniWarhawk
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Artificial mass blocks combined with Gravity Generators.
With no speed limit that combo is pretty OP.
Infinite acceleration and all that.
Hammerheadcruiser
Eagle-1 my beloved
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And I just picked up space engineers too. Though if you could be a little more explicit with what killed you next time, like mentioning a big dent in your helmet rather then just died because blunt trauma. It makes the story flow a little better if your audience has to start guessing about details half way through, yes even if you do mention meteoroids in the following sentences.
We Just Write
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I'm guessing you got shafted and didn't have a nice big hole or crater to build your base in? I build in those and it protects me from the majority of meteorites while limiting the remainder to a limited number of vectors so my turrets can hit them easily.
huh, you would think that if he had an automated mining drone up and running he would have never bothered leaving his hab and just built a scout drone for him to remotely pilot. Much safer.
The messing with DNA is just screaming for an amusing gender swap in the future. It's not even permanent. Just die again!
The implications that the med bay resurrects you from a mind state has interesting implications. Not just from the idea that it can actually get that mind state but that it opens up the possibility of using your brain as a computer terminal to connect to things in range. You could get yourself a sort of budget unbounding going that way. Maybe make yourself into a Pod Pilot? it's a possibility anyway.
The messing with DNA is just screaming for an amusing gender swap in the future. It's not even permanent. Just die again!
The implications that the med bay resurrects you from a mind state has interesting implications. Not just from the idea that it can actually get that mind state but that it opens up the possibility of using your brain as a computer terminal to connect to things in range. You could get yourself a sort of budget unbounding going that way. Maybe make yourself into a Pod Pilot? it's a possibility anyway.
World 1 (Space Engineers), Chapter 1
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I hummed to myself as I messed with one of the artificial fertilized zygotes the medical room used to grow new clones. Looking through the microscope, I could clearly see the nucleus, and inside it my genome. A bit of poking around led me to find both my X and Y chromosome, and I removed the Y chromosome. I then proceeded to take another of said artificial zygotes, and appropriated its X chromosome before transferring it back to the first zygote. The second zygote and spare Y chromosome were then subsequently disposed of, and I placed the first one into one of the gestation pods attached to the medical bay.
I got up from the workbench, genetic tampering complete. After the accelerated one week gestation period, I should finally have someone to talk to, even if that someone would technically be me. Now, the next issue on my agenda was to deal with the meteoroid problem. Thus, I suited up for another spacewalk, grabbed my welder, grinder and a batch of Steel Plates, and got to work.
As the airlock cycled, I immediately made my way to the top of my base, using my jetpack to do so. Once there, I made sure I was over the right corridor, before I began boxing myself in with Light Armor. I only had enough steel plates on me for 5 sections of Light Armor, so I had to make a further 19 trips in order to get an airtight box on top of my base in the shape and size I wanted. Once that was done, I once again verified I was over the correct corridor. And then I got out my Grinder.
As I breached the hull plating leading into the main base, there was a sudden burst as pressures equalized between the box and the corridor. This was expected, but only further drove home the point that I needed to get this segment connected to the power grid properly and independently pressurizable. Still, now that I was in a pressurized environment I could take off my suit's helmet.
It took a couple days of work, but eventually my base's new defensive laser turret was ready for duty. Coupled to an impressive radar system, it should be capable of intercepting any dangerous objects long before they impacted. Admittedly it needed 8 megawatts of power even on standby, but I'd gladly exchange that for not dying of unannounced meteoroid impacts.
The next bit of excitement happened several days later, when that modified zygote finished gestating. Despite being all ready to go, the medical room wouldn't activate her unless I were to die. Given that the whole point of this genetic tampering was to make someone to talk to who didn't look (or think when you took hormones into account) exactly like me, that wouldn't be desirable. Thus, I instead took a peek inside the code running the machine, and did a couple interesting tricks.
First, I saved a static brain-state from my cortical stack to the medbay's built-in buffer. Next, I changed the username it was designated for from 'Luke' to 'Catherine'. This was followed by then looking at the code for the pod containing Catherine's soon-to-be body. Another quick switch of the username, and I sat back to let the machine go about it's task. The readout panel lit up with 'StillAlive Entanglement Lost. Applying most recent BrainSnap to clone.' and a progress bar began ticking away. Seeing this, I retrieved some of the... tea I'd grown, and set about making some to pass the time.
30 minutes later, I had a mostly full pot of tea, and I was drinking some from a mug. I'd also brought out a mug for Catherine, who looked like she was going to be ready just about... now.
(Catherine)
As I clicked the 'save' button, my view jerked, and I found myself suddenly inside the medical bay's pod wearing a basic skintight jumpsuit. Just across the room, I was also at the table pouring some tea into a blank white mug. I walked forwards to the second chair at the table. As I sat down... I remarked to me "Hello Catherine, it's nice to finally have someone to talk to."
I chuckled and replied "Yeah. inanimate objects make for boring conversation partners." as I picked up the mug of tea that was obviously for me. As I took a sip, I remarked "I'm guessing you put a bit of our first Citrus crop into this?" To which I received an affirmative nod.
As we both drank a bit more tea, I noted "So, we still need to get the shipyard set up if we want to get off this rock and really go anywhere. There's also the drones to attend to as well."
My... brother, genetically speaking, answered "Yes. How about I take care of the drones while you do the shipyard?"
I drank the rest of my tea in comfortable silence with him, before I responded "Alright. So, should we get back to work now, or can it wait a bit longer?"
Luke told me "Catherine, with how long it's been since we had someone to talk to, I kind of just want to spend some time with you. Is that alright?"
I nodded before terminating the conversation with "Alright, how about some stargazing then? It's not like we've got much else to do."
It was several days later that I finished off the shipyard. Equipped with several Welder drones, it could easily manufacture ships up to 100 meters in length. However, its first product would be significantly smaller.
Coming in at a mere 20 meters long, the runaround was built purely for speed. Equipped with a gravity drive for primary propulsion, the runaround served as a test of both how gravity drives would actually work, and how well the system we'd come up with actually worked. As I loaded in the blueprints, the drones moved into position. The ship was completed in a period of time that was distinctly less than a minute, and I grinned as I put my helmet on to take it for a test flight.
As the cockpit pressurized, I radioed Home Base with "This is Runaround to Home Base, beginning test flight."
Luke replied "You're good to go, Catherine. Just please stay within real-time communications range."
I ended the brief exchange with "Affirmative. I should still have bandwidth to send up to date BrainSnaps if I stay within 20,000 km. Fortunately, there's another asteroid we've spotted within that range." And with that, I engaged the gravity drive. I was forced back into my seat by the acceleration, streaking towards my destination 15,000 km away at a bit under 2 gees of acceleration.
As I traveled, I mused on just what was actually going on. Gravity generators worked by 'tilting' spacetime, rendering 'up' a higher energy state than 'down'. Normally, this wouldn't make a ship move due to this process itself exerting a reaction force on the gravity generator, which was then evenly distributed across the ship via some mechanism I didn't quite understand. Artificial Mass changed this by sort of... grabbing ahold of the spacetime slope allowing the ship to fall or something like that. What I did know for certain was that Newton was spinning fast enough in his grave that we could probably use him to generate significant amounts of electricity.
I soon reached my turnaround point, and spun the ship around before gunning the engines again, my shoulder-length hair falling behind me from the acceleration. As I came to a stop though, I was treated to a sight I really didn't expect to see, given how big space was. Namely, that I'd come within visual range of another spacecraft. It took me a bit to recognize the profile from one of those videos I'd watched on the game before being forced to live it, but I soon realized it was an Informant. Crap.
Next time on Welcome Aboard: Fortifications are installed, a bigger ship is built, and pirates are surprisingly reasonable.
I got up from the workbench, genetic tampering complete. After the accelerated one week gestation period, I should finally have someone to talk to, even if that someone would technically be me. Now, the next issue on my agenda was to deal with the meteoroid problem. Thus, I suited up for another spacewalk, grabbed my welder, grinder and a batch of Steel Plates, and got to work.
As the airlock cycled, I immediately made my way to the top of my base, using my jetpack to do so. Once there, I made sure I was over the right corridor, before I began boxing myself in with Light Armor. I only had enough steel plates on me for 5 sections of Light Armor, so I had to make a further 19 trips in order to get an airtight box on top of my base in the shape and size I wanted. Once that was done, I once again verified I was over the correct corridor. And then I got out my Grinder.
As I breached the hull plating leading into the main base, there was a sudden burst as pressures equalized between the box and the corridor. This was expected, but only further drove home the point that I needed to get this segment connected to the power grid properly and independently pressurizable. Still, now that I was in a pressurized environment I could take off my suit's helmet.
It took a couple days of work, but eventually my base's new defensive laser turret was ready for duty. Coupled to an impressive radar system, it should be capable of intercepting any dangerous objects long before they impacted. Admittedly it needed 8 megawatts of power even on standby, but I'd gladly exchange that for not dying of unannounced meteoroid impacts.
The next bit of excitement happened several days later, when that modified zygote finished gestating. Despite being all ready to go, the medical room wouldn't activate her unless I were to die. Given that the whole point of this genetic tampering was to make someone to talk to who didn't look (or think when you took hormones into account) exactly like me, that wouldn't be desirable. Thus, I instead took a peek inside the code running the machine, and did a couple interesting tricks.
First, I saved a static brain-state from my cortical stack to the medbay's built-in buffer. Next, I changed the username it was designated for from 'Luke' to 'Catherine'. This was followed by then looking at the code for the pod containing Catherine's soon-to-be body. Another quick switch of the username, and I sat back to let the machine go about it's task. The readout panel lit up with 'StillAlive Entanglement Lost. Applying most recent BrainSnap to clone.' and a progress bar began ticking away. Seeing this, I retrieved some of the... tea I'd grown, and set about making some to pass the time.
30 minutes later, I had a mostly full pot of tea, and I was drinking some from a mug. I'd also brought out a mug for Catherine, who looked like she was going to be ready just about... now.
(Catherine)
As I clicked the 'save' button, my view jerked, and I found myself suddenly inside the medical bay's pod wearing a basic skintight jumpsuit. Just across the room, I was also at the table pouring some tea into a blank white mug. I walked forwards to the second chair at the table. As I sat down... I remarked to me "Hello Catherine, it's nice to finally have someone to talk to."
I chuckled and replied "Yeah. inanimate objects make for boring conversation partners." as I picked up the mug of tea that was obviously for me. As I took a sip, I remarked "I'm guessing you put a bit of our first Citrus crop into this?" To which I received an affirmative nod.
As we both drank a bit more tea, I noted "So, we still need to get the shipyard set up if we want to get off this rock and really go anywhere. There's also the drones to attend to as well."
My... brother, genetically speaking, answered "Yes. How about I take care of the drones while you do the shipyard?"
I drank the rest of my tea in comfortable silence with him, before I responded "Alright. So, should we get back to work now, or can it wait a bit longer?"
Luke told me "Catherine, with how long it's been since we had someone to talk to, I kind of just want to spend some time with you. Is that alright?"
I nodded before terminating the conversation with "Alright, how about some stargazing then? It's not like we've got much else to do."
It was several days later that I finished off the shipyard. Equipped with several Welder drones, it could easily manufacture ships up to 100 meters in length. However, its first product would be significantly smaller.
Coming in at a mere 20 meters long, the runaround was built purely for speed. Equipped with a gravity drive for primary propulsion, the runaround served as a test of both how gravity drives would actually work, and how well the system we'd come up with actually worked. As I loaded in the blueprints, the drones moved into position. The ship was completed in a period of time that was distinctly less than a minute, and I grinned as I put my helmet on to take it for a test flight.
As the cockpit pressurized, I radioed Home Base with "This is Runaround to Home Base, beginning test flight."
Luke replied "You're good to go, Catherine. Just please stay within real-time communications range."
I ended the brief exchange with "Affirmative. I should still have bandwidth to send up to date BrainSnaps if I stay within 20,000 km. Fortunately, there's another asteroid we've spotted within that range." And with that, I engaged the gravity drive. I was forced back into my seat by the acceleration, streaking towards my destination 15,000 km away at a bit under 2 gees of acceleration.
As I traveled, I mused on just what was actually going on. Gravity generators worked by 'tilting' spacetime, rendering 'up' a higher energy state than 'down'. Normally, this wouldn't make a ship move due to this process itself exerting a reaction force on the gravity generator, which was then evenly distributed across the ship via some mechanism I didn't quite understand. Artificial Mass changed this by sort of... grabbing ahold of the spacetime slope allowing the ship to fall or something like that. What I did know for certain was that Newton was spinning fast enough in his grave that we could probably use him to generate significant amounts of electricity.
I soon reached my turnaround point, and spun the ship around before gunning the engines again, my shoulder-length hair falling behind me from the acceleration. As I came to a stop though, I was treated to a sight I really didn't expect to see, given how big space was. Namely, that I'd come within visual range of another spacecraft. It took me a bit to recognize the profile from one of those videos I'd watched on the game before being forced to live it, but I soon realized it was an Informant. Crap.
Next time on Welcome Aboard: Fortifications are installed, a bigger ship is built, and pirates are surprisingly reasonable.
We Just Write
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Yeah, I'll be relying on drones a lot more in future. You were half right about what the genetic tampering was for, as you now see.
As to the medical bay, can you think of any way it could possibly work besides that without completely throwing physics out the window? Also, I've got... plans for that mind state technology.
...You are going to be banging inside of a month.
That said, the kind of tech would likely rapidly evolve once you actually had the scanning tech required for taking a brain state but may or may not have ever actually taken off. After all, mapping out ways to interact and reprogram the brain has dangerous implications for free will.
Incidentally, shouldn't the gravity drive not actually exert G forces on the pilot? It just changes the way you are falling right?
Well, there are a few ways you can go about it. Most of them are just about the grainularity of the device. Having a constantly updating image to re apply to new clones does not necessarily mean that you have actual methods of interfacing with a brain by way of Matrix like brain jacks. It just means that you can take a static image and reproduce it. Sort of like how a camera doesn't actually understand the picture it takes but it can still reproduce a scene perfectly.
That said, the kind of tech would likely rapidly evolve once you actually had the scanning tech required for taking a brain state but may or may not have ever actually taken off. After all, mapping out ways to interact and reprogram the brain has dangerous implications for free will.
Incidentally, shouldn't the gravity drive not actually exert G forces on the pilot? It just changes the way you are falling right?
We Just Write
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I constrained the grav fields to the actual engine pods. If I hadn't done that, the gravity field would outclass the ship's forwards acceleration, causing me to experience acceleration forces forwards, which is much more dangerous. And you do indeed have an excellent point about the BrainSnap technology. Also, no, I won't be... interfacing with my clone. That's incest!
...It's not incest if there's no kids?
On a more serious note, they are going to be the only people that they implicitly trust in fairly close confines for months on end. They didn't grow up together and are also in an incredibly stressful situation. The sexual tension could be used as construction materials.
On a more serious note, they are going to be the only people that they implicitly trust in fairly close confines for months on end. They didn't grow up together and are also in an incredibly stressful situation. The sexual tension could be used as construction materials.
Yeah...
Or, weird possible incest could just be ignored because this is a story about Space Engineers. Plus, it just gives me bad memories of that one SE/Worm crossover. Remember the one with the utterly out of place attempted rape scene? So why don't we just ignore relationship stuff.
We Just Write
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Technically speaking, they did. It's just that they were the same person until recently.
Malbutorius
C'est le bien qui fait mal
Actually that's an interesting question. Would doing your own clone be incest, or masturbation?
I think the point is the psychological whatsits that make most people not attracted to siblings requires them to actually grow up with them. Your brain isn't likely to care about intellectual analogies. Furthermore, in cases where siblings that didn't grow up together meet, they are often *more* attracted.
Nobody will blame you if you ignore the subject... but in any realistic universe (that is to say, realistic portrayal of human behavior, which is a very different thing from excusing space magic) there is a good chance of some sexual tension, even if they never act on it. Given the lack of alternatives in the tin can.
Either way, what matters is the Commander style building stuff adventure, so don't anyones nitpicking kill your enthusiasm!
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Two copies of the same X chromosome.
...How on earth does that not result in an inbred abomination?
Don't you basically get every single possible negative recessive trait?
...How on earth does that not result in an inbred abomination?
Don't you basically get every single possible negative recessive trait?
We Just Write
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Because the medical bay automatically corrects for that. [/handwave]
