Meraki'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 (it doesn't copy good from my story). 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 and to prevent showing spoilers. 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.

picture omitted

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.

DAY 2: further automating red science and making power

I start my second day by continuing doing science hand mining feeding it to the furnaces, filling the chests, selecting technologies and repeat the cycle. At a given moment I decided I had enough of it. I am an engineer not a factory worker, so I redesigned my factory. Burner mining drills put coal, iron, and copper ore on a transport belt. Two transport belts with on one side each ore and the other the coal goes to an array of furnaces. And the iron plates (and coal) go to the assembling machines of gears and put on the same transport belt as the copper plates. This belt then goes to the assembling machines of the red science and directly into the labs.

This reduced my workload immense, no more mining, everything is transported and assembled directly in the right machines (except for coal in the science labs/assemblers). This means I have more free time and what do we do with our free time? That’s right work more. As a new project I made electricity. You can make electricity with placing a conductor in a changing magnetic field. A magnetic field can be changed by for example rotating magnets. So, we need a rotational movement. How do we generate a rotational movement? Attach it to a motor: the simple solution, but not energy efficient. Make movement by using moving water. The problem I didn’t find moving water only the water in the lakes. Make movement by moving steam. Much more energy dense than moving water, much more energy efficient than an engine. But how do we produce moving steam? By boiling water in a (semi)closed system. The boiling of the water produces the steam, the pressure rises because it is a closed system and that causes the movement of steam. But how do we boil water? By doing what we are good in as humankind burning fuel. Sidenote how do you make holy water? Same as steam: burn the hell out of it.

So, to have water in our system we need a pump. To transform the water into pressurized steam we need a boiler. To make the pressurized steam into rotational motion we need a steam engine/turbine (and to make a motion into electricity we need a generator). Sounds good, doesn’t work.

Why? Because like so many things it follows the first law of Newton a body at rest stays at rest. A body in movement stays in movement. You see it in many motors and systems burning engines needs a starter motor, electrical engines need some electric tricks to make it start, … Have you found the flaw in the system yet? It’s the electric pump to put water into the system. We need electricity to pump water, and we create electricity by pumping water. How do we solve this? By kickstarting it with an inefficient smaller setup (burner turbine generator) like kickstarting a big motor with a small motor. The next question is how much electricity do we need? The answer as much as possible. So how much water can a pump deliver? enough for 20 boilers then we need 20 boilers. How much steam engines can 1 boiler provide? 2 then we need 40 of them.

How do we provide the fuel? By mining coal with electricity and then turn the coal in electricity sounds logic, a positive feedback loop (inherent unstable). As said so done and with that my day ends.

DAY 3: automating green science

The number of technologies that I can research with the red science is rapidly decreasing time to do something about it. The next step is to make green science (logistic science pack). Because my old setup still requires some hand feeding, I decide to add it also into my new factory. 2 science per second seems a realistic goal to me. With the use of a program on the informatron called hellmod I plan my factory.

• 2 red = 2 gears 2 copper plates

• 2 green = 2 belts and 1 inserter

• 1 inserter = 1 small electric motor and 1 burner inserter

• 1 small electric motor = 6 copper wires 1 gear 1 iron plate

• 1 burner inserter = 2 iron sticks 1 single cylinder engine

• 1 single cylinder engine = 2 gears 2 iron plates

• 6 copper plates = 3 copper plates

• 2 iron sticks = 1 iron plate

• 5 gears = 10 iron plate

To simplify 5 copper plates and 15 iron plates equals 2 red and 2 green. That is 1 belt of iron plates and a third of a belt of copper (to simplify also 1 belt). Therefor I needed a smelting array of 48 furnaces for each belt. So, I made it. Then I needed 17 assembling machines for making all the products needed for it and a whopping 20 assembling machines for each science pack.

It took some time but my first fully automated start to finish factory was a fact. This means I have more free time and what do we do with our free time? That’s right work more. As a new project I improved my fuel consumption. With the research going I become smarter every hour. I discovered a machine called fuel processor. I tested it out I put 200 coal in it and 88 processed fuel came out. Is that worth it? First, it compresses the fuel so we can have more energy density which is positive. If we look at the fuel values 200 coal= 800MJ (200x4MJ) that’s a 10% increase. I tried the same for wood 400 wood=800MJ (400x2MJ) and 88 processed fuel (PF) = 880MJ (88x10MJ). It doesn’t work with PF strangely. I can make energy from energy something in me says that something is wrong, I vaguely remember something called the first law of thermodynamics. With that knowledge I made all my fuel PF (fully automated of course). This made my factory a little bit more energy efficient like the green boy I am and with that positive taught, I end my day.

DAY 4 furnaces

Yesterday I took way too much time to craft all the machines. I am an engineer not a factory worker so my next project will be the designing of a mall. I begin my design with hellmod and add everything I want. I set the timebase to 10 minutes and think for each item how much I need max in that timeframe. After it is all decide I determine all the intermediate products until the metal plates. The amounts of material needed surprised me: 7 yellow belts for iron plates, 0.5 yellow belt for steel, two for copper and 1 for stone.

So, I designed a (modular) smelter setup that feed in 2 red belts and consume everything (except fuel) and gives 2 red belts back. I recalculated everything and determined that 7 smelter setups are what I need. So, I place the 7 fucking huge smelter setups next to each other. Now I am happy with that I have an engineering suit and not a survival one. The ability to use blueprints and copy paste setups is super handy and would cost me way more time (or research) with a survival suit. The only drawback is that I am way more vulnerable. But except fish and plant life I haven’t encounter animal life. I tried to eat the fish the other day and became sick (plant-based diet it is) if only they had a value.

I had to craft a lot of items to make the smelter setup. Today I was a factory worker not an engineer. But hopefully one of the last times, after a long workday I finished the smelters and went to sleep.

DAY 5 mall

I was quite happy about the work I did yesterday, only I realized now that I totally can’t feed the furnaces with the 1 mine/resource I got. But that won’t be a big problem, you will never need all the items at the same time, so you never need the full load. It’s the same with your electricity, a normal circuit breaker is 20 A each circuit while your main breaker is only rated for 32A. Or like the internet providers say they deliver x amount of Mbs (if you are the only one in the street who uses the internet). If only I knew that yesterday I could have spared me much work.

The mall I designed works with the main bus principle. All resources are in the main bus, get to the side to the assemblers, and the finished products go back to the main bus. Repeat for each product you need. At the end of the bus, I set chest where it gets stored until needed. I limited the quantities to 2 or 4 stacks depending on the product to prevent overproduction and to not pick up too much material each time. I also made a big chest where I will drop my things when my inventory is too crowded.