Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 65: Only a hundred generators, how hard could it be?
"There we go." Looking down into an unsettlingly huge hole he had just created, Theo couldn’t help but smile.
While digging directly into the ground provided Theo with no benefit in the form of a rich stone, as opposed to digging directly into the stone, it still gave him what he currently needed the most—a huge hole that reached all the way to the surface, only connected to the rest of his factory with a narrow tunnel at its very bottom.
And now, with his personal inventory filled to the brim with copper wires, cables, reinforced plates, and all the other items he needed to construct biomass generators and then a shitload of conveyor belts and belt dividers… Theo was finally ready.
"Best bet is to build it in a spiral. This way, if something screws up, I will already have a nice, climbable path to get down there." Looking over the edge one last time, Theo chuckled before using the staircase he had created into the walls of the hole to climb all the way down—a task that seemed simple on the surface yet turned out to be quite nerve-wracking when one slip was all it would take for him to plummet down into this massive hole stretching for a whopping hundred meters down!
In the end, however, thanks to the mix of carefulness, experience, and the simple ability to just summon a platform if he ever happened to slip, Theo was able to descend safely. Yet, as he found himself at the very bottom of the rather spacious hole, he couldn’t help but sigh.
"Now, for the actually annoying part…"
If descending down this hole was already a challenge, then the next part would be nothing short of torture. And, contrary to what Theo had mentally prepared himself for, things didn’t seem all that bad.
First, using precisely a fifth of the space within the hole, Theo placed the first biomass generator, squeezing it as far up the hole walls as he could while making sure to keep its intake mouth at a proper orientation.
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Next, rather than building the generators, he took a short break to drag over a total of four belts and a single power line from the bottom of the power plant all the way back to his main production cave. Then, and only then, did he return to the power plant, only to move to the next corner—but not before constructing a concrete platform exactly the size necessary to house another biomass generator… one lifted just a little more than a meter off the ground.
Sticking to the concrete reinforcement Theo had laid over the hole walls, the platform could serve as both a climbing foothold and a foundation necessary to place down another generator.
’Now, for the annoying part…’
When designing the whole plant, Theo had realized he would have to use a bigger hole than he initially intended. A hole that could fit not only all the power generators he wanted to construct but still house all the logistics necessary to keep them properly fueled up!
’With just one belt, I should be able to feed fifteen generators.’ Squinting his eyes as he committed the number to memory, Theo took his sweet time designing a proper way for his belt to fulfill three conditions.
First, it had to occupy as small of a footprint as possible to save space for all the other belts. Secondly, it had to rise at a manageable angle so that it could continue in a spiral and reach all the generators it was supposed to service. Finally, it had to have just enough room on every flat stretch for Theo to fit it out with a belt divider, allowing him to connect the generator to the logistic line without putting a decisive end to it.
In the end, however, despite his many attempts to come up with something original, the simplest design of them all proved to be the most effective.
The belt would start flat, splitting through a divider just half a meter away from the generator’s intake. There, a separate belt would feed into the generator, while the main conveyor would instantly start its gentle climb before turning right and leveling out perfectly. From there, all Theo had to do was replicate the design, adding one copy of it for every platform and generator he constructed.
Fifteen generators later, Theo sat down on the platform he had just slapped a generator on, squeezing his body into the small gap created by the bulky, uneven shape of the building itself.
Contrary to the blocks provided by the earlier subroutine, the machines of the industrial path appeared much closer to how they would look in reality, with various parts, chimneys, windows, and technical panels creating the illusion of something man-made rather than just a three-dimensional graphic design.
"Now, I only need to do it… four more times…" Looking up, Theo searched for the sky, now only a small dot high up the narrow stretch of Theo’s hole.
His project was so deep, in fact, that only an abysmal amount of sunlight managed to reach its bottom, forcing Theo to put his building overlay and quite a number of torches into use, just so that he wouldn’t worry about slipping every living second he was in the hole.
"Just gotta do it three more times. But, before that…" Looking down the hole in the middle—one designed to house just the belts and belts alone—Theo somehow managed to make out the endpoint of one of his belts.
’Will it reach, I wonder…?’
Focusing as much as he could, Theo went straight back into his building mode, all of his attention gathered on this one, extremely tiny element from so high up… No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get the new belt to connect to the existing one!
"Don’t tell me…" Gritting his teeth in silent, powerless frustration, Theo exhaled a long sigh before rising to his feet and then carefully jumping from one platform to the other as he made his descent.
Only five platforms down, he finally reached the range necessary for him to connect to the end of any of the three unoccupied belts left at the very bottom of his hole. And while he hurriedly went ahead and dragged two of them as far up as his building range allowed, the last one…
The last one Theo kept active as he started his climb back to the fifteenth platform, all the while holding the building at the ready. Only upon reaching his previous place of rest did he bring the conveyor lift—a shape that, thankfully, had unlocked with the first expansion of his blueprints—exactly as high up as he needed, bringing it to exactly the same level as the mouth of the next biogenerator he would place. And then…
And then, while trying not to think about all the time he was spending doing so, Theo continued to replicate the same process three more times, creating a platform in each corner of his hole, each one a tiny bit more than just a meter higher than the last, before placing down the generators, connecting them to the belts… and then repeating the process again and again, all the while fighting off the mounting exhaustion.
’Is it just me,’ Theo stopped once he had barely reached half the hole’s height, ’or am I getting too tired… a bit too quickly?’
Yet, all those stupid thoughts vanished when he stuffed his face with another handful of berry mush, the sweet taste of the berry’s nectar putting those worthless worries aside.
He still had fifty meters of the hole… or, to be more precise, forty-five more generators to build!
Then, and only then, would the last preparatory step be completed, allowing Theo to fully embrace the most core of all the ideas that shaped up the factory-building game—automating all one could to remove as much manual involvement in further expansion as was physically possible.
Or, as was the case for him right now, automating power production so that he could cast aside the chains of the workpoints that limited his use to just upwards of twenty machines, allowing him to make proper use of his manufacturing cave, filling it up to the brim with smelters, constructors, combiners, and all the other buildings he would ever deem necessary… or even most remotely useful!
