Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 59: New blueprints!
[Construct a constructor: 1/1]
[Construct a constructor: Completed!]
Pretty much as soon as the crafting finished, Theo dropped the constructor right next to the smelter.
With just a bit of his remaining belts, he connected the two before adding up another belt leading to two bins’ worth of storage units chained in series.
And a lone thought later, Theo assigned all of his available workpoints, fulfilling the next part of the quest.
[Assign the workpoints to each of the proto-industry machines: 3/3]
[Assign the workpoints to each of the proto-industry machines: Completed!]
[Assign workpoints to the logistic lines connecting each of the machines: 2/2]
[Assign workpoints to the logistic lines connecting each of the machines: Completed!]
And then, at long last…
[Automate the production of at least 10 iron plates/minute: Completed!]
[Proto-Industry - Tutorial!: Completed!]
Theo took a deep breath.
[Received rewards: Initial Tier blueprints]
[+10 workpoints]
Even though Theo wasn’t looking, he could tell something had happened to his system.
It was as if a flash of energy struck him down, reaching deep into some very precise part of his brain.
Before Theo could even wink, his crafting window opened all on its own… only for new icons to start cluttering the list as they popped into existence one by one in a small burst of golden sparks.
’Oh damn…’
Theo blinked his eyes, overwhelmed by the sight before his eyes. Or rather… all the meaning behind it.
The new list of buildings and tools Theo could craft now came with buildings he could somewhat recognize. And while there were some minor changes, the gameplay loop this subsystem followed… Theo could now recognize it!
But what was even more important, this subsystem wasn’t perfectly consistent with one franchise, to a lesser degree including clearly foreign elements and mechanics.
And that created an opportunity for Theo to exploit.
’For now, though…’
Quickly turning his attention back to the actual crux of the matter, Theo glanced back at the newly obtained blueprints.
From the concrete foundations through the entire early chain of production and initial means of creating power.
Obviously, it would be a while before Theo could easily afford all of the buildings on his newly expanded list, but… but right as he planned to go get some rest, Theo found himself like a child in a sandbox with all the toys he could dream of playing with.
’Generators. And of the full-release version to boot!’
Theo quickly concluded the few pressing points of these new designs.
Contrary to the beta version of the main franchise his subsystem borrowed from, the new biofuel generators accepted their fuel from a belt, allowing for automation of the most tedious part of the early game: the constant refilling of the engine of one’s entire factory by hand, one machine after the other…
Additionally, when it came to biofuel…
Theo glanced over at his inventory, where his short gardening session up on the surface provided him with a considerable amount of biomass of varied kinds. Biomass that, through a new recipe he had just received, he could all turn into a uniform and much more efficient form of fuel, jellied biomass.
Using the same process as modern gunpowder, the conditioning of this biomass allowed for a controlled release of the energy stored within this compacted fuel, greatly extending the efficiency of it over its original form.
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Meaning that even if the act of gathering biomass couldn’t really be automated… every other part of the process could.
’Energy is everything. That’s one rule above all. But before I can set up a proper engine for the grid…’
Thanks to the reward from the tutorial, Theo’s number of workpoints doubled. Meaning, he could set up a number of buildings without a proper power grid by affording one workpoint to each. By relying on the belts, he could make quite a neat little factory…
And that could mean only one thing.
"I guess I’ll have to automate every last part that I now have access to!"
From the biomass through the tier 2 items, base parts, and even ores, Theo would need at least a bit of everything. In this way, he could do away with the annoying process of crafting everything by hand!
But for that to happen, he needed more of… everything.
Thankfully, with the use of the belt dividers and connectors, Theo could now properly adjust the flow of material from set ’A’ of machines to set ’B’ of them, making sure to maintain proper and constant throughput.
As it turned out, one smelter could process up to sixty ore per workpoint, while a mine could produce, at most, ninety pieces of ore when maxed out with three workpoints.
"Wait…" Theo raised his eyes over to the patch of metal, only to instantly cancel the rest of the materials he had queued for the other constructors. Instead, he quickly confirmed he could afford another miner…
Before placing it nearly side by side with the first one, squeezing it as much as he could on this single patch!
"Oh shit…"
Theo’s eyes widened as he quickly combined the belts between the two… before repeating the whole process two more times before finally leading the outputs of four different miners to a total of two smelters.
Once smelted down, the ingots would go down one of three possible paths.
The main half would go to craft the iron plates, while the other half would feed into iron rods. Whatever backlog of iron ingots would remain would then overflow to the last place, where a single storage bin stored a handful of them.
’For now, that will have to suffice…’
With the combination of the items he could craft now, increased with Theo getting access to the combiner, the next-tier crafting machine…
Theo shook his head before taking a deep breath.
’Focus up, man. For now, automate everything at the copper’s place. Then, get the richstone vein so that I won’t have to dig it up manually all the time. And then…’
Theo gulped his saliva as he suddenly realized the reality of the mess he had just thrown himself into.
"Getting power sounds all nice and dandy, but how could I forget this…!" Scratching the skin behind his ear, Theo planted his hand against his face. ’Aren’t those like… the first skill-check in most of those games?’
One memory flashed in Theo’s mind.
Some years back, when he was building the overengineered fuel plant that was supposed to last him until the very late game. A plant that ultimately fulfilled its job… but one that also used every possible means to push the efficiency of several local patches of oil into a borderline crazy amount of fuel.
A project that Theo could still recall finding quite annoyingly surprising when he found out not just how insane the amount of power that overdesigned landmass of concrete and metal would provide… but when he realized just how many massive fuel-powered generators he would have to place down!
It wouldn’t be until reaching the stage that gulped energy like nothing before the game’s full release that he would have to look toward the end-game sources of energy.
And now, rather than in a game… he had to set up a plant that would produce condensed biomass as fast as it could, to bring the limits of how much Theo could scale up to an absolutely ridiculous range!
’I might still rely on getting the biomass by hand, but if I find a way to get a single automated turret and the ability to provide it with ammo…’
Theo’s eyes suddenly clouded as he looked at the timer in the corner of his vision with a rather fresh expression.
All of a sudden, the lethal fauna of this whole place turned from a source of danger… to walking treasures worth scores and scores of biomass and research material!
"Well, there will come a time for everything. For now, though," Theo muttered as he turned to the other tunnel leading out of the iron-works cavern. He then shook his head and looked back at his current area.
He still needed more crafters to get the production of all the simple iron parts going. Only then could he afford to move over to the copper area to automate all the related parts. Then, by bringing those two outputs together in yet another place to centralize the logistics…
Only then could Theo even begin to think about getting some rest.
"This is all too good to waste time resting rather than working…" Theo grinned, taken aback by just how eager he was to go and get more stuff done.
For this stuff was what brought him closer to the abolishment of the very thing that plagued him right this very moment, as he looked down into his crafting queue.
’Those damned, pesky delays!’
