The solar power plant has a build in powerstorage of 200 units. (Each one lasting a day). No powershortages soon.
Anyway, why did we build the quarry near the sand? We should move operations more to the west to prevent flows of sand from getting into the quarry. Also, any improvements to the mining vehicles should be done to ones that we manufacture, in order to continue collecting resources. We could take the current ones off production to improve them when we have replacements built.
Also, we should put the construction of an underground facility on the back-burner in order to collect resources. Those are more critical than an underground facility to defend against sandstorms that may or may not arrive in winds strong enough to damage buildings. Besides, whoever was in charge at the time chose a poor spot to build, if there is enough sand flowing in to be a problem, which makes it sound like the quarry penetrated the desert or is too close.
The only place that isn't near the sand would be the planet, which is about 300.000 km away. It's mostly the wind that is blowing the sand into the pit. After all, the entire planet is mostly covered by it.
Oh, and players only directly control their character. Basic suggestion games mechanics are in effect for the rest of the civilians.
I rarely do +1, but I have nothing to add to xtank5 post except that we should start mining not only copper, but nice quality stones, too. Oh, and stone road to the mining site should be nice
We would mine other stones, but the only ones we accurately know the location of is the copper. Considering the deposit seems to be on stone rather than sand, a stone road would not be necessary. Once the deposit is mined out, we could convert it to a base.
Isn't there a way we can determine ground and bed rock composition using like radio waves or magnetics or something?
Seismics or drill samples work pretty well for that purpose. Oh, and since it appears the layout is not that clear: Both the base, the quarry and the ore deposit lie on a partly sandcovered rocky plateau.
Good names for the planets, though they likely already have names. Nothing a good downhome new name can't fix though.
I'm proposing a trip to Lympha simply to pick up a large amount of water and edible aquatic plantlife I can grow. The protein sources can come later, I'm sure we have plenty proteins synthesized. A desert needs an oasis, after all.
The original names died with those who used them when most of the system was bombarded with all sorts of nuclear, kinetic and biochemical weaponry.
Snip
Just noting that the drone is just that, a drone. It's not going to fly independently between planets, and certainly not in a timely or resource efficient manner.