Sixty-four Pixel Colonists

>Martha: Live damnit live

>Archivist Tom: Admit personal feelings of suspicion, as they were unfounded. copying the structure of the mold and using it for a flagpole to conserve resources is actually really clever. You just worried that if the truth was grim, it would have been better to have privacy and work on how to bring it up with others.
>Medic Sedna: Ok Ok we get it everyone has personal memories and wants this all to go well. Was it not obvious from the get-go that Shiva wouldn't be growing space weed the first chance we got? They're the exact person who would find a time to put weed in an asteroid's hydroponic bay. Think of the selling rate of weed grown on an asteroid.

>Other colonists: Connect the mold to the flag pole in structure. Maybe consider what would happen if you tried to rig algae to take on the properties of biopaint and remain edible. The mold must have been a bioengineering project between the biologist and the artist to have excess rations be usable as biopaint. Examining it should still be done, but the truth is probably just mundane.
>Also can we put forth the motion to upgrade the landing pod with wheels so it can be moved like a mobile walker? Extending drone radius by day, and coming back later. Like the early step of turning it into a mobile drone hub. Next step would be it's own dedicated micro-solar sourcing so that cables aren't necessary. Then changing it's shape just a bit for drone storage.

>Next turn spend 10 plasticarbon for a new solar pannel
(btw shouldn't that be +10 plasticarbon per turn in the numbers now ?)

(then the turn after that, build another compact algae tank which will be put on plasticarbon, then same for the turn after and then one more solar array (to replace the broken one), two more anks on food duty (finally decent rations for everyone) and we will have a funtcional colony as well as enouh plasticarbon to get started on more expensive projct like the bateries, the radar, the common room and so on....)

>Well, well that mold might actaly be genuinely alien, this is... actualy kind of great.
Tank A needs to stay on alien mold duty but should be moved away from other tanks to avoid further contamination.

>Without giving up, the group, or one or two members of it at least, should go back to camp with the broken drone, see if there's any images that can be salvaged from it's memory banks and then knowing what to expect, go again but better equiped (like say with extra rations and a tool to taw ice)

>More or less agreed
>Geologist, try to rig up the broken drone to transmit a message back to base. Set a rendezvous where a drone send out with resupply, and the broken drone is taken back for repairs. Another rendezvouz at the same site is guaranteed in the next period they are needed. Two members split off for pickup, and come back to the group. Assume that the arm is being sent back, and possibly exchanged for tools.

My thoughts:

SpoilerShow

On the potential power crisis:
We don't necessarily need to build batteries right away. They require additional resources that, from what I can tell, we don't know how to get, and the GFP is probably sending us at least one. It will take a lot more work to build a battery than just wait for one to arrive, and in that time, we can just fix the solar array proper.

On gathering additional resources:
To build a battery, we need post-transition metals. According to the regolith analysis on turn 2, we have Andalusite, which contains Aluminum, which is a post-transition metal. So we need to build some sort of refinery to get those resources. An oscillator crystal for the radar tower, like quartz for example, could theoretically be made from silicon and oxygen. Both of these elements can also be found in the regolith. There is a chance we can get all that through mining as well.

On building space:
We just gots to tear out those rocks to the west, unless we just want to build plain on top of them, which won't be easy. We can probably build a bulldozer of some sort to clear away rocks quickly, or we can start the perhaps slower process of mining and get some resources to boot. We COULD recycle old buildings, but it may be worth expanding the buildings we already have. Building the radar tower on top of one of the domes, for example, would save plasticarbon. And we mustn't forget about a52's hallway idea; I think it's a really good one.

On the mold in Algae Tank A:
That mold needs to be contained. Cut out a piece of the tank if we must; we can recycle the rest of the tank for more resources, or simply rebuild it. We need to know how this mold spreads if at all, how it grows, how it affects what it grows on, how toxic it might be, its chemical makeup, if it's safe to bring indoors, and so forth. Someone ought to look at the blueprint for more details, and get that shit contained.

On the Biologist:
He's gone, my dudes. Whatever did that to him and the scouting drone can do it to the rest of the expeditioners also. We need to cut our losses now and go home before we lose someone else. We can hope that he'll show up again later, but finding the rest of him now is NOT worth more casualties. Come back to the base immediately. Keep watch on that ice, also - I have a very strong suspicion that whatever is in these icicles is more of that mold, and we ought to keep our distance until we know more.

On building a lab:
Just convert one of the habitation domes to a lab. We have the space for living, and we need to analyze this mold proper ASAP. If anything is an emergency right now, it's this.

On the alien spire:
This should be destroyed and recycled for resources. We have the blueprints, and we don't need a physical structure to analyze it, probably.

On storage space:
The radar tower will take a whopping 35 plasticarbon to build, and we only have storage capacity for 30 units. We need more storage crates, for plasticarbon, food, AND the stuff we will probably mine soon. Although we are close to building some other structures we may want, at 10 plasticarbon per turn, we will have enough in the long term.

My suggested course of action, from most to least important:
- Build a mining drone if we can. If not, just fix the damn solar array.
- Design a lab, to occupy one of the prefab shelters.
- Have the other drone aid in pushing the busted one back to base with possible help from the expeditioners as they return. Prioritize getting everyone back to base safely, while keeping the busted drone within sight.
- Design a bulldozer for clearing away land quickly.
- Build a storage crate.
- Design a refinery for rapidly extracting resources from regolith and rubble.
- Design ways to combine buildings.

SpoilerShow

I'm having loooots of fun reading this. The strange events have been excellently timed and written.

Design suggestion: If you put the headers in the numbers tab in bold, it would be much easier to read and distinguish powered from unpowered devices.

>Agreed on Power
>Consider adaptations to the construction drone be used for mining, or at least carving and transporting blocks


>Designate an ansible message in ascii format of the base
~~XXXXXI
RRXXXX~~
RRXXXX~~
~XXXX~~~
This is an approximated map of the base
~ empty,Xoccupiedbase,I-icefield,R-rock
Use any designated ~ space for drops
Please coordinate from last drop metrics

>Observe how the mold functions in the vacuum, aka cut out parts of the tank to leave it outside

Personally I think the ice-cicles are just the rod-protrusions from the ice patch, and it may be a europa-like scenario. chemical reactions ongoing in the core of the asteroid, and water sits as the outer layer, rarely causing venting blasts which compromise spikes after vents end.
I think they're being sent back as samples for study. What if the biologist wanted to prove their claim and decided they could work with just 1 active arm, and the other contained in a sealed suit. Inefficient, but possible. Unless they cannibalized.

>Yeah everyone left at the base can just stay in one or two habitation modules. Let's retrofit it to function as a lab.

>The spire should not be deconstructed for now. It should be considered that the highly similar nature of both results in materials imitating life. It should be melted down more or less before reuse.

Furthermore the 'alien' nature of the mold if it's not a byproduct should be considered as something that exists from microspores in asteroid rings. Clinging to ice vents like this and forming where it can. It could have clung to a suit passing from habitat and into the algae and found our source of high liquid.
If that's an issue we should probably consider a sort of cleaning drone for the algael pools. Melts off and melts down the mold.


edit:

>I fucking love smuchmuch's blueprint