Update 20 - Planetfall
Febuary 2091, Landing site.
The landing spot is chosen as a flattish valley in the mountainous area to the north of Sector I8. At the time the approach is lined up, there are some clouds in the area, but the decision is to proceed anyway because they are not dense enough to really hurt visibility or threaten severe weather. The ship enters the upper atmosphere engines-first, in an attempt to kill as much speed as possible before flipping to use its control surfaces. While it does successfully lose a good amount of speed between the engines before they burn out and the poor aerodynamics, the flip does not go quite according to plan and the ship goes off the planned course already. Fortunately, unless things continue to go badly, the flight control systems will be able to compensate.
Things do continue to go wrong. About a third of the way down, a piece of hull plating breaks off from the right cryobay and detatches fully within seconds. The plate fortunately does not hit the ship anywhere else, and bulkheads seal off the damaged section, but besides the minor damage to the cryobay the ship's course is thrown off slightly more. Flight control is not impaired, and the projected landing point remains very close to the target.
The pilot manages to bring up the right side a bit and compensate with the flaps, shielding the breach partially from the direct line of air resistance, and no more external damage is sustained. However, as the ship drops below the cloudline, now traveling close to the horizontal at high speed, compensations must be made to avoid clipping a peak which stands out over the valley.
Heart of Gold makes it with several hundred meters to spare, but the flightpath is now well and truly destabilized - at this point, it will still land within a kilometer of its target point whatever happens, but the landing could be quite rough.
The tail end of the ship skims a ridge in the bottom of the valley, bouncing the whole ship up but pushing the nose down. Large bits of hull split off from the impact, rupturing multiple fuel tanks - but all the ones on the bottom of the ship had been drained anyway to act as a buffer for the ship's critical systems. The ship remains airborne for more than another kilometer before lainding almost flush with the ground and skidding to a stop.
Damage reports reveal that besides the general crushing of the lower fuel tanks and the sensor array, and some broken windows in the biodome, there is just the blast damage to the interior of the right cryobay, in which fires are starting now that the air pressure has normalized. The fire-supressant systems do their best to contain the fires, but it is estimated that three out of the ten sections of that pod are severely damaged and all fires may not be out. There is structural damage throughout the ship, but nothing critical seems to have failed. There is likely some damage to the cargo bay as well.
Heart of Gold has come to rest in a long valley surrounded on three sides by mountains. It opens up and falls off to a wide, sloping plain to the south; to the north is a long ridge stretching between the peaks to the east and west. The bottom of the valley, where the ship landed, is lergely flat, though a few spurs project out into it. The ship has come to rest at the base of one of these.
The red dot is the ship, darker colors indicate higher altitude.
The terrain here is barren rock; the only other things in the valley is the occasional red pool, ranging from puddles to large crevasse lakes. The rock seems to be mostly granite or something similar, covered with the everpresent brown coating of dead algae - though much thinner here than in many places.
You have 15 people awake. Dispose them as necessary for the actions to be done in the hours and days immediately following planetfall. They are all in vacuum suits, except for the three in the command center. Some injuries are expected, but not confirmed.
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Update 20 Status: Febuary 2091, immediately after PlanetfallStructural damage throughout the shipInstalled components:
- 4 Ark Cryobays. Size 10x4, mass 15x4. -10x4 power. Severe damage and hull breach to one of them in 3 out of 10 sections, possible fires[/color]
- Closed-Loop Lifesupport and Hydroponics. Size 4, mass 3. -6 power. 1 crew.
- Damage Control & Machine Shop. Size 4, mass 2. -1 power.
- Large Cargo Bay. Cost 4 RU. Size 43. Mass 2. Cargo Space Filled: 40/40 Damaged, extent unknown
- Organic sludge processor Cost 2 RU, Size 2, Mass 1.
- Automated production line . Cost 20 RU, Size 4, Mass 7.
- Prefabricated General Laboratory: 20 RU. Size 6. Mass 4. Electricity 3 MW.
- Optronic Central Computer. Cost 10 RU. Size 2. Mass 2.
- Seed Bank. 2 RU, 4 mass, 3 size.
- D&D vehicles. Cost 2RU, size 4, mass 4
- Powered Exo-skeleton Constructor Units. Cost 2 RU, Size 2, Mass 2
- Ore Processor. Cost 6 RU, Size 4, Mass 5.
- 3.8x Advanced parts 3x4 RU. Size 1x4. Mass 1x4.
- 2.1x Basic Parts 2.3 RU. Size 1x4. Mass 1x4.
- Advanced Medical Supplies 2 RU, size 1. Mass 1.
- 2x vac suits 1x2 RU, Size 1x2, Mass 1x2.
- 2x Air tanks. 1x2 RU. Size 1x2. Mass 1x2.
- Medical Bay. Cost 3 RU. Size 2. Mass 1. -1 power.
- Recreational Commons. Cost 5 RU. Size 4. Mass 4 units. -1 power. Modified with optronic components in the VR pod
- Biodome. Size 20. Mass 2. Hull breach
- MCF Fusion Reactor. Size 5x2. Mass 3x2. 75x2 to 37.5 power. Uses 1x2 to .5 Fuel/Yr.
- Smart Command Centre. Size 2. Mass 2. -3 power. 1 crew.
- 10 Small Fuel Tanks. Size 2x10. Mass 3x10. Fuel 8x10 4 are breached
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- 3 Improved Ion Drives. Size 3x3. Mass 7x3. -6x3 power. Thrust 9x3. Refitted the main thrust parts in 2074. Moderate re-entry damage
- Focused Detection Array. Size 1. Mass 1. -2 power. Destroyed
- 4x vac suits in hallways. 1x4 RU. Size 4/6. Mass 1x4
Expert Crew Bonus: +5 to all relevant rolls in the Flight phase, due to high levels of training and familiarity with the ship in the crew.
Masterful Engineering Bonus: Effects of having 40 vacuum suits in the crew spaces minimised - only minor mobility issues remain.
Rugged Construction: +5 to all rolls relevant to the ship being overengineered and tested further than usual.
Smart Command Center: The ship's central computer allows a high degree of automation, independent reaction, and resilience in the computer systems. It helps with lots of things.
Required power: 54 units.
Maximum power output: 150 units.
Total fuel: 25.5 units
Lifesupport: 25
Required Crew: 2
Crew Awake: 15
Introduction to the Outpost phase, 'hero' selection, and the results of these orders will be done before the Outpost phase starts in earnest.