Gooey Time Kilroy @Kilroy@awoo.space

Also sorry for not including captions in the last post and this post. I'll reupload these later with proper captions.

Oh boy it took so freaking long but the factory is built! It's not populated with equipment yet, but the building itself is more or less finished! There's still a LOT of work to do though, as I plan the layout of machines and conveyers. Also I forgot to cover the part about floor 3 being super basic, and jumped straight to the completed stuff. Oops? It's late and I need to get some sleep. One more post after this with one more shot! I am super happy with how this turned out.

So Like I said the miner and smelters are going to be the centerpiece of my factory, but completely walled in so I don't accidentally fall down from an upper level. And it looks nice that way from outside the mining center. And it turns out the miner itself goes up 4 layers! Anyway, the first floor's basic layout was figured out, so now it's time to figure out floor 2. For the time being I'm not doing any overhangs, so from the outside the building will just go straight up without jutting out anywhere. To make life easier I put up a small platform that connects the copper section to the new factory, with plans to expand that further later. But now I've got 2 layers of empty space directly above the miner. Do I just wall it in and forget it exists?

Heck no! Welcome to floor 2.5! ...it's not very big, and I have no idea what I'm actually going to do with it, but the space is open if I need it! Floor 3 is definitely super basic at this point, only really serving as a connection between the factory and my work area.

But I'll cover that in the next post. Anyway, I got the idea that I'm eventually going to expand my power plant, so I need a way to properly hook everything up. So welcome to my mini power distribution center! I discovered I could put a foundation support pole in the water, and it fits quite a few power poles on it! Arranging them in a plus pattern allows me to hook up power supplies to individual poles, connect those to the center pole, and the center pole to the rest of the power grid! Now I have plenty of room for expansion without having to disconnect anything!

Going to be a BIG chain of posts because I'm quite happy with how this turned out :D So we'll start out with how I started this whole thing. I wanted to find a good supply of resources away from my main base so I could really dedicate an area to cranking out more complicated things, since my main base is more of a generic parts supply depot now. I found a place not too far from where I spawned that was near a large lake, had 4 coal deposits, an iron deposit, limestone deposit, and copper deposit to mine! Plus there was oil nearby, so that was a definite plus!

So it became decided, I was going to build a new facility out there! Set up a couple miners and constructors to make a shitton of steel tubes and copper sheets so I could construct a HUGE series of hypertubes because trucking back and forth would be a pain and drain on resources. Though I had to build some bombs to clear out some rocks along the path chosen, but that wasn't too difficult. And then came the task of figuring out what I was going to do, especially with all my resources on so many levels. So, big factory time!

First thing I did was move things around. Set up the foundation, realized the iron miner could take up a 1x2 foundation layout, and decided to work from there! 2 smelters on either side, some conveyers, wall it in, and I can just literally build around this centerpiece! Oh shit that's going to be a lot of walking just to get up to the copper platform where my base of operations is. So stairs time! Because of an invisible obstacle directly behind the miner, I placed the stairs there since the first flight will clear the obstacle no problem. Also decided to see how I could lay out floors without running into clearance issues with the miner and smelters. Smelters take up 3 layers, so building a second floor wasn't going to be difficult with that in mind. The problem was the miner. That thing is TALL, and turns out it takes up 4 layers ...maybe 5. I forget. But okay, that's not a big deal, I can work around that. And it turns out the copper platform was 6 layers up, so making a third floor at that level wouldn't be too difficult.

But now how to power this? I'm going to be drawing a LOT of power when this thing gets fully operational, so I'm going to need more than 1 coal generator, and certainly not haphazardly placed wherever. Oh of course! Let's move the water extractor out a bit... can I place the power plants on either side? Oh good I can! ...oh dear they're partially submerged. Welp! Good enough I suppose! (That platform behind the water pump wasn't there at first, I'll get into that later.) Okay! Now I've got enough power to keep things running, and I can expand the power plant as I need later with how much space there is!

Been busy! I have a main base near where I first spawned, but I've been working on a second base that's near 4+ coal deposits, as well as an iron and copper deposit. There's also oil nearby so since that's my next goal anyway for plastics, rubber, and fuel, I'm working on building this thing!

For the time being though I'm just working on building the factory building that's going to house everything. So far there's an iron miner and two smelters in the center of the building; the miner takes up several floors though so that's why there's a gap in the second floor. I'm burning through iron plates like you wouldn't believe though; there are a lot of walls! I do have a set of stairs that runs up 3 floors and will connect the copper manufacturing factory I still need to build. But at least I have a way up and down without needing a truck to get around safely!

I'll give them one more opportunity before looking into another local dealer of water softener rentals.

Welp. I scheduled a consultation with my local Culligan dealer (they specialize in water treatment, specifically dealing with hard water) in order to potentially rent a water softener system, and they never got back to me on that. I chose the latest date available at the latest time, so they had plenty of opportunity to confirm the appointment. I know they got the appointment request! But the day and time has come and gone, with nothing to show for it.

And I got zero cuddle time in. What a great day today has turned out to be

Picked a bad day to hang out with my girlfriend apparently. Most of my time here has been spent watching people unpack instead of cuddling

I legit thought I popped a brake caliper when it went "kerchunk" and started making grinding sounds as I rolled to a stop, especially considering it happened as I started braking. But no, it's quite likely the equivalent of the drive axle snapping, except for a front wheel drive vehicle.

Oops car broke. Thank fuck it chose to break down as I was getting off the highway, and not on the highway itself. Especially since I think a CV joint just up and disintegrated, considering the car's wheels spin freely regardless of what gear I put it in. Even in park. Engine runs, no fluid leakage, speedometer goes up in relation to the tachometer when in drive. Managed to pull into a barely ever used section of roundabout to call for a tow. Home now, and waiting for morning to tow car to shop.

If you grind glass into a powder, is that just refined sand?

Also not shown: two more constructors just built to mass produce biofuel for the power plants. I have a shitload of wood and leaves to turn into solid biofuel (basically pellets). Everything running right now maxes out two of the three power plants I have operating.

Okay, optimized my base a bit now that I've unlocked a bunch of stuff! First picture shows my MASSIVE iron ore storage facility, a 2x3 stack of storage cubes. Those are fed by 4 miners (2 of them are in the second screenshot), and feed 2 smelters for iron ore. All 4 miners and the two smelters are fed by a small power plant that you can't really see because it's up against the cliff I'm standing on. The smelters feed into another storage cube, which feeds 3 constructers! 2 of them are on iron plate duty, and the third is on iron bar duty. I need a LOT of them, so those are going to run for a few hours. The HUB is to the right of the smelters; that's essentially my home base. And the MASSIVE structure in the background is the space elevator, where I send off specific items made to unlock further research! Second picture shows 2 of the miners at a lower elevation, with the ore being lifted up to the elevation the storage facilities are at. Third picture shows my copper production that I haven't cleaned up yet. You can kind of see the miner. What isn't shown is the power plant and smelter, but behind and to the right of the giant rock foundation is where I fabricate the copper ingots into wire, which gets run up to a storage cube near the space elevator.

Oh no lizard doggo brought me nuclear waste D: I'm not ready to deal with that! Had to drop the barrel near my limestone storage, and can't pick it up again until my health is full. It hurts to touch!

It's like a lobster and a lizard had a love affair, and at some point a coonhound got involved! I love them <3

Speaking of, aaaah new friend! :D