Player stories

This is an area for player to write up their own experiences. It can be a simple overview of interesting events, but bonus points if you can make it a little more story-like.

Earendel's Story

FACTORIO space exploration by Meraki (Purely fiction, based on factorio space exploration) This text is written purely as joy, the author makes no commitment to upload any further texts (but plans to) The author means no harm to anyone who might feel offended by this text. English is not my first (or second) language, there might be some vocabular or grammar mistakes. It isn’t proofread by anyone so feel free to correct them. Also, the layout/placement in this wiki can be changed. If you want you may then add edited/corrected by your name under or above the page. Positive critism/comments is welcomed and encouraged This story may be copied and shared as long as you credit the author. Pictures of my bases will be omitted because of the prohibition of uploading mods assets. Earendel if this was not what you intended for this page feel free to delete it or place it in a new page like your story. As the story advanced there could be a point that I say some spoilers, so readers be warned about it. Game settings: •	Standard Space exploration •	Resources dialed back to 75% •	No enemy bases •	Technology tree enabled Mods: •	SE mod pack and recommended mods (version 0.5.78) •	Auto deconstruct (mindmix) •	Bottleneck (Troels Bjerre Lund) •	Builder Bot start (Prymaldark •	Even distribution (321freddy) •	Ghost in hand (Jarcionek) •	Helmod (Helfima) •	Long and far reach (Themightygugi) •	LTN (Optera) •	YARM (Octav ‘narc’ Sandulesco) Huge thanks to •	Wube team for creating this great game •	Earendel for creating this great mod(pack) •	All the creators of the mods I use (see above) •	You for reading

Day 1: the crash My mission was simple: go to the solar system of Callidus, explore the planets around it and report back to the base station. Upon arrival to the system, I first went into orbit around the sun, preparing to scan all the celestial bodies. An Alarm went off, Coronal Mass Ejections detected unknown duration, unknown Power, ETA processing. The newest simulators can predict its timing and power but the cheap bastards from district 9 decided that an old simulator 2000 is enough. I can barely produce a small message. This situation can seriously delay my work, and even cost my promotion to squad commandant. I weighed my options: 1.	Preparing the ship and wait until it is over. My energy shields can withstand temporarily those extreme streams of particles; however it takes so much energy that I can’t use my scanning equipment to do my job. This is the standard approach for small CME’s. Without further information about the duration or force of the CME because a big or a long one can easily destroy my ship. This this option not alluring at all. 2.	Aborting the mission and returning to the base station. This could be an option if I wasn’t 10 lightyears away from it. 3.	Land my ship on a planet and await the storm. This could work if I had scanned them. There is no way to know if it is safe to land. Let alone finding a good landing spot. 4.	I have heard from an adventurous hero about a tactic to withstand extreme CME’s. Use a planet as a shield, go into orbit reload your shields when you are on “the dark side of the moon”/planet. Hit your shields when you are on the light side. It’s a risk but better than my other options. I decided to use Nauvis a small earth like planet, that is furthest away from the sun that I can reach before the CME hits me. I go into orbit and prepare my ship. Everything seems ready for the CME. I look outside Nauvis has some blue spots on them, is it possible it has water? Maybe life? Aliens? My dreams are broken with a new alarm Coronal Mass Ejection ETA 1 hour. Perfect, I am then behind the planet. The CME begins. With an enormous speed hits, the particles the atmosphere of Nauvis. The particles are then deflected towards the poles of the planet. It provides a beautiful sight; on earth we call this aurora borealis. I wait and watch the spectacle, such events let you think how powerful nature is and how small humankind is in the bigger picture. As I am orbiting, I slowly go towards the CME, my heat shields are ready, my accumulators are fully charged. Turbulence hit my ship, bright light is only what I see in the windows, an message pops up CME arrived, energy shield activated, blinds going down. The shaking stops and the windows get covered; you only hear the electricity consumed by the shields. As Time passes, I notice that the noise gets quieter and quieter, we are back to the dark side (we have cookies). I check the systems only 15% of the energy is used, 0.6% damage, temperature normal, pressure normal. that means that the CME is a lot weaker than I feared. With that knowledge I decided to minimize the delay this situation has caused. I started my equipment to scan the planet. The results come in: •	Resources: nothing special the typical iron, coal, stone, and copper. Some oil Umerico could declare war to it. Trace amounts of uranium but no other types of materials where the cooperation is interested in. •	Atmosphere: a mix of nitrogen, oxygen, methane, CO2, … almost earth like. •	Temperature: -20C until 50C, pressure around 1.3 bar Those conditions sound perfect for developing life. I wondered if I could finally find life on another planet. I quickly check if I have some time left for a scan for possible life forms, barely enough but my curiosity is too much for the possible discoveries. I start the scan, slowly the progress climbs. 10% … 20% ... 30% ... 40% ... BEEP BEEP CME incoming, that will be close … 50% … 60% ... My ship starts shaking, the CME has begun. That’s sooner than I expected. I ready the shields and soon a popup comes up: shields activated. 70% … 80% … A warning sounds: warning LOW ENERGY. Shit, I forgot about my energy consumption. Those scan use way more power than I expected. 90% … I look at the battery level 30% and dropping. I decide to stop the scanning but just at that moment it said 100% scanning complete. PROCESSING. An alarm went off: CRITICAL HIGH TEMPERATURES heat shield 2 and 5, cooling required. I put on the cooling for them. The CME has way more power than the first round. BANG, the ship starts shaking, alarms start blaring, heat shield 5 stabilized, heat shield 2 failed, if heat shields 1 and 3 will hold it will be ok. Another alarm goes off CRITICAL LOW ENERGY, damn my ship will not hold it any longer, I must make an emergency landing, descending into the atmosphere. Another Alarms Echoes to my ship Too low power to maintain energy shields. My ship starts shaking violently, the temperature is feelable rising. I must land as soon as possible I shout to my computer “Divert all power from life support to the main thrusters”. I descend further into the atmosphere. I set the auto pilot to the nearest landing place possible. Another alarm goes off damage to the pressure loss detected. My dashboard looks like a goddamn circus so much is going wrong. I feel the air gets thinner, breathing becomes difficult, I hear: assessment complete carbon based life detected. Then I lose my conscious. I wake up, everything hurts but at least I am alive. My ship is burning, smoke is slowly filling the cabin. Hastily I go to the cargo dock to find a space suit. In the dock there is only an engineering suit with built in robot ports night vision and an adequate power supply for it. It also has some blueprints in it from a previous life. Like if I ever get building a factory! This one has no life support not even an air supply or self-healing abilities. If the air is toxic, too thin or If I get hurt, I will die. The cheap bastard couldn’t even provide a proper suit. Because I have no other choice, I put it on and leave the ship. I step outside and become blinded right away. The CME is continuing and reaches down to the surface of the planet. It gives a column of bright light and setting everything ablaze. I take a deep breath. The air is heavy, and smells burned but breathable, that part of the scan was right, luckily otherwise I couldn’t survive with this worthless suit. My eyes become slowly acclimated to the bright light and I look around, my ship is a wreck, everything is burning, wait what is burning? Are those threes? I finally found biological life on another planet. Suddenly I realize that if plants exist there can also be animals been developed, and that could mean that predators have developed depending how far the evolution on this planet is. Slowly I see that the CME is weakening in power and finally stops. I asses my position: I crashed on a planet with no means to escape it, lightyears away from civilization. My ship is unrepairable. I will need to survive on this planet for some time. I decided to go back in my ship and try to fight the flames to salvage what’s left. I enter the ship, the fire is still going, I pull the sprinkler system, no effect, of course otherwise it would have activated long before than the old-fashioned way with a fire extinguisher going from room to room. Finally, all the fires are out. I try to boot the computer hoping it has survived, no effect was not unexpected if you saw the fire damage. It means that I lost all the data on the ship. If I will go off this planet, I must reinvent the wheel, no technology has survived it. With that disappointment I search the ship for equipment. The only useful thing that I find are some med packs, some metal plates (who knows what you can built with it) and a Unit pack with a description top secret BIG BITER (Without knowledge what it is, or what it is used for, I decide to take it anyway). In the back of the cargo bay, I find an ancient burner lab with 10 automation science packs (why do I even have such old equipment on board?). In the corner stands a little robot with an inscription informatron. I try to start it and wonder well it still works. I find out that as a robot it can do nothing else then give me information, on it are just some information, a program called hellmod (to calculate factories or something I think), a navigational satellite uplink (that would be cool but this planet has no satellite so no use for that so far), a star map (this would be helpful if I had scanned this universe, sadly I had no time for that so there is only information about Callidus the sun and Nauvis where we are), a Universe explorer (sadly with no data) I go outside and hope that I ever can come back to civilization with so little tools or knowledge? The first thing I do is trying to get the burner lab working. In the instructions stands that you need to install it. Done. Decide which technology you want to discover. There are a lot of options after some taught, I decide to develop basic automation. Add science packs. I put all the science packs that I have in it. Fuel it. With what? I look around and see that there is a coal patch nearby I start mining it until I have 10 coal and put it in the burner lab and watch how it works. It took some time but eventually I discovered my first technology. I now have the knowledge how to build burner inserters and burner assembling machines. For new technologies to develop I needed more automation science packs. I look in the informatron how to make automation science packs (red science), it is made from a gear and a copper plate. A copper plate can I make by smelting copper ore in a furnace. A gear I can make from a metal plate and a metal plate I can make by smelting iron ore and ores I can mine. I made a few with my hands but it took a lot of time to do it, so I decided to use my new learned technology to automate it. I made my first setup, with 3 labs, 6 burner assembling machines, 12 burner inserters, 6 wooden chests and 2 stone furnaces. It took me a lot of time to assemble it all I just hope that the time I win on the long run will be worth it. Ores needed to be mined by hand put in the furnaces and then the plates needed to be put in the chests and everything needs coal. With my first small victory/factory I ended my first day at Nauvis, my new world.