If there is a nearby community short on food, we should do our best to help them:
we have 1 week until we have a batch of food ready, i propose the traders leave at the end of next week, taking about 700 food with them again (this time it will be closer to 500 of ours to trade, perhaps more depending on how the next 2 weeks go)
mineral resources:
potassium and sodium are extractable from electrolysis of salt, if we switch our high current power supply from our smelter to electrolysis, or even put in secondary tap, we could buy salt and get the potassium and sodium for further chemistry (and a fair whack of chlorine, which is also useful ...) by my calcs the energy to smelt 1 ton of steel, is about the same as electrolizing 100kg of nacl, producing 40kg of sodium, 60kg of cl2
(300 kwh to melt 1 ton of steel, 9.4kj to electrolyze 1 gram of NaCl (4ev reaction potential, but correct for the cl2 product) )
non-mineral resources:
BioFuels - we can ferment our excess grain quite easly, and fuel would be much more valuable than food (except to the poor mining community nearby)
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Compressed air:
Compressing air is easy, with some bellows attached to the windmill, and a 1 way valve - imagine a big bicycle pump, attached to a crank on the windmill.
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Anyway, for this week,
(Question - do i need to design "plans" separate from the actual items?)
10 scientists create plans /templates to create in the furnace: a basic gas tank
They then work on:
a set of tools to helping manual operation of the forge. (temporary replacement for the robotics)
Metal-working tools (for when we want to forge something more complex).
Generic tools to help engineers with their construction.
plans for A better wheelbarrow/cart (learning from the 2 months we used the old ones, and the "mistake" which lost 2 of them in the mud). (they set about making 2 new ones, if there is time)
If they complete the design, check to see if the furnace room is electrically shielded (would have to be, as you couldn't have the stray power from the arcs interfering with the nano-tech lab, several rooms over).
Finally they turn on the Generator, then join the lab search party.
How much material can we smelt in 1 week?
(i feel like i'm trying to forge the first anvil here .... )
5 scientists build tools (or design if build is not possible) necessary to create wire from copper and steel (dropped because this is a second stage step, we need basic tools as a high priority first)
5 engineers make more axes. If they make more than 6, move onto cross-bows.
5 4 armed soldiers guard. (mount the AT in the watchtower) (1 soldier idly picks through the last of the scrap pile (random item?))
9 scientists continue to search the lab, looking for parts storage, where we can get a controller circuit board for the nano-factory. If we don't find that, just an oscilloscope would be preferable to scrap.
1 scientist instead has an idea about how the power transmission works, and sets about building basic coil/wave-guide (power transmission has to be at a high frequency, otherwise nano-elements couldn't couple to it, just like you need a long antenna to receive AM radio well), then searching the labs for a signal generator. (aim to create : extreme low efficiency, low power (typical signal generators only have a few v output), tune-able power transmitter).
2 engineers and builders work to finish the kitchen, then work on the anti-vehicle defences.
20 farmers farm. As they have no harvesting and planting to do, they look to install an irrigation system (aiming to decrease the number of people required to work the farm)
everyone else
(20 armed soldiers, 10 unarmed soldiers, 10 scientists, 10 builders, 10 engineers (with 4 axes), 6 drivers, 3 civies, 2 leaders) (71 people, + leader bonus + 4 axes + 20 capable people)
head out to get resources from the forest.
This major expedition will focus on resource gathering, the edible bark trees would be a good target, otherwise the edible berries identified last week. (resources + food, but if i have to choose, then just food) ) (and collect water, not a double run, so everyone stays as 1 group)
The scientists in the group, when not collecting resources, carefully examine the mud where we lost the carts, and look for both food and material resources (good lumber, and they should take a set of samples from everything they see, we'll analyze those when we get back home).
With the extra man-power we'll try to retrieve those carts also.
They'll also note what the soil/sand/clay/rock type, both on the trip to the forest, and when we start harvesting.
Because of the lack of people at home we enable the electric fence before we leave.
(this is the first time we have dropped below 10 soldiers able to respond at home, because some of the soldiers are now farmers)
I'll spend my spare time chatting with the other leader, to find out more about her, and the merchants.
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summary of work
4(+4 bonus) finish kitchen, then start on anti-vehicle defenses on the other gate.
20 farmers farm
10 scientists explore lab
5 armed guard
15+15 blueprints and tools
71+30 forest
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Todo:
finish tools
get access to bunker
get forge running
get nano-fab running (need power transmitter - once we find the lab where the fab was created, we'll at least know what we need (it can only be basic inductive transfer, so i was thinking of just doing the brute force approach, building a coil of wire, and running a low power, slowly varying frequency through it until we hit the correct frequency - it'll be inefficient, but it might be enough to get a few nano-bots powered up. Once we know what we are aiming at, we can then build a proper tuned power transmission system.
<fakeEdit:>
Actually i'll re-task a scientist for that now ...
<Edit:>
removing double spaces ... anyone know why i always get double-space paragraphs when i post? (1 blank line turning into 2?)