Cycle 42You tell Outpost Smoothed to take a peek into the intact stone hut above it and report what it sees later, you have your idea.
The partially-assimilated forgite will look like it has a problem with it, considering the reactor is encased with it, and with the quick help of Outpost Fortress, you pick back up on the communication link. You put together a very simple, straightforward message about localized quakes near changed reactor forgite in the style of the automated announcement that will hopefully cover the resulting vibrations involved in attuning half the forgite shaft and some of it elsewhere, along with two doors. You set the outpost to transmit the signal into the link through the attuned forgite adjacent to it, and with a very difficultly held in place amount of energy collected into the refined crystal next to the shaft, you set to attuning all of them at once, followed by the non-shaft pieces. As soon as the excessive amount of simultaneous energy manipulation is finished, you don't exactly pass out from the strain, crystalline can't do that. So you do the closest thing to it and hope the amethysts don't see through your fake message.
Cycle 43, subcycle 5As you wake back up, you get a number of messages from the outposts. Smoothed reports the results of the hutpeek, which you put aside for the moment. Fortress reports a number of amethysts examining the arms crystals with panicked looks, one of them even standing on top of it instead of avoiding contact; it seems they are not sure how to proceed clearing the shaft without destroying their new geological specimen and didn't see through your attempt at sounding robotic. it also reports a new technology is above one of the attuned forgite sections, you note that for later as well. Cavern sent no report (you expected none anyway), so you take a look at the hut scouting.
There is, like you thought there would be, glyphs in the belowground level. They apparently are covering the
entire belowground room however, not just the floor, which asks the question of why
those glyphs on the walls and ceiling did not stay intact yet scorched under the stone-burning fire of the plasma attack while the floor's did. The only major difference (aside from the numerous different shapes of glyph all over the place) between the two groups is the floor ones are arranged in a rather precisely perfect circle with symmetrical glyph placement and do not cover any other floorspace outside of that shape (although the shape does reach all four edges of the floor, so there is not a lot of space left anyway), far more precision than you thought possible for stone-huts level of technology. The wall/ceiling group just covers the entire area thoroughly but without any aesthetically pretty geometric arrangement, of which you disapprove of now that you know they can do what they did on the floor. The aboveground level is not particularly notable, it looks like any other sort of minorly-technological structure you remember finding out about from the
Prime Crystal. Table, chairs, fire-based machine near the table with small dead creature inside, containers, random objects, arguing Proxians. You point one of the Processor crystals at them; you'd forgotten they were still untranslated.
Speaking of processors, more wouldn't hurt. You put some more down near the ones that already sit near Outpost Cavern, you don't see why to not continue using that space. Although, you aren't getting much out of the storage right next to you, and the round hole you found sometime ago isn't quite that big either. You replace both with some more processor crystals, but leave the other two smaller storage regions. They are set to assorted topics while you attempt to assume control of the dead proxian. First attempt to do so by giving it a good jolt (10k energy) fails spectacularly: It has now caught on fire.
Fortress exploration:
Integrity: Intact
Detection: Yes. (not as a sentient crystal though, thus the yellow instead of the red)
Stored Energy: 368,115
Storage effect: No effect, due to your much increased storage space!
Energy Generation:
Core: 100/cycle
Low-Q: 0 @ 20/cycle - 0/cycle
Refined: 2891 @ 50/cycle - 144,550/cycle
Repair Crystal: 86 @ 50/cycle - 4,300/cycle
Med-As. [9]: 906 @ 140/cycle - 126,840/cycle
Med-As. [8]: 344 @ 130/cycle - 44,720/cycle
Med-As. [7]: 1358 @ 120/cycle - 162,960/cycle
Total Energy production: 483,470/cycle
Location: Subsurface of an unknown planet with two races on it.
Navy Blue - Crystal core
Teal - Low-Q crystals
Light Blue - Refined crystals
Orange w/ black S - Storage crystals
Brighter Orange w/ black S - High-Density Storage Crystal
Orangeish Red w/ black S - Energy Vault Crystal
Grey/Black/Navy Striped - Partially Assimilated Forgite
Black/Navy Striped - Attuned Forgite
Dark Cyan - Feeler Crystal
Turquoise with small diamond - Farseer Crystal
Purple/Orchid - Focusing Crystal
Orange /w Light Green outline - Shield Crystal
Purpleish - Repair Crystal
Gold w/ blue S - Processor Crystal
Dark Cyan w/black cross-shaped overlay - Arms Crystal
---
Dark Brown - Empty underground space
Light Brown - Dirt or other non-solid material
Grey - Rock
Sky Blue - Empty inside or aboveground space
Teal w/brown diamond - Low-assimilation matter
Teal w/grey diamond - Medium-assimilation matter
Grey/Black Striped - Forgite
Sky Blue w/small diamond - Mobile thing
Sky Blue w/ rectangle outline - Door
Sky Blue w/ question mark - [Unknown tech]
Sky Blue w/ Amethyst T - Amethyst impact-teleporter tech
Black - Unknown
---
Red cross-shaped overlay - Damaged
Red X overlay - Heavily damaged
Core Crystal
Your core. If this can be replicated, you don't remember how.
Energy production: 100/cycle
Low Quality Crystal
Created by converting materials not able to become better tiers, like dirt.
Energy production: 20/cycle.
Fabrication cost: 100 energy, nearby material.
Refined Crystal
Created by converting solid materials, like rock. Also made by refining the structure of Low quality crystals.
Energy production: 50/cycle
Fabrication cost: 200 energy, nearby solid material.
Refinement cost: 400 energy, LQ crystal connected to the core. (300 if adjacent to another refined crystal)
Level reference: Lv.1 energy production (Refined-level)
Storage Crystal
A hunk of additional crystal, giving you more room to store energy without side effects.
No energy production
Fabrication cost: 200 energy and 1 empty space per section. Connected storage sections give greater results than scattered ones. In emergencies, the empty space can be replaced with 100 energy and a low quality crystal.
Level reference: Lv.0 Storage bonus (for storage calculation, for point fabrication treat this as part of No energy production)
---
Feeler Crystal
Little more than a hunk of crystal, but a sturdy scout nonetheless.
No energy production
Fabrication cost: 1,250 energy (2.5 points).
Refined Conversion cost: 625 energy
Level reference: Freebuild, Removed energy production
Farseer Crystal
An excellent companion to the feeler. Energy production alignments have been realigned for exceptional sensory range instead.
No energy production
Fabrication cost: 3,000 energy (6 points)
Level reference: Extended Vision 6 (9 total vision), Removed energy production
High-Density Storage Crystal
Store more, hold more, contain more, add more synonyms here.
No energy production
Fabrication cost: 750 energy (1.5 points) or 375 energy (if converting from base storage), 1 empty space per section or 1 storage crystal each.
Level reference: Storage bonus 3, Base: Storage
Focusing Crystal
Half conduit, half relay point, all-around pretty useful crystal.
No energy production
Fabrication cost: 3,250 energy (6.5 points), not adjacent to other outposts or core.
Level reference: Outpost minor, Energy transformation 5 (-25% to energy costs within 3 tiles), Removed energy production.
Attuned Forgite
Created by looping energy into the forgite until the vibration aligns itself with the crystals.
No energy production, but would be an excellent conduit if fully integrated.
Reflects energy pulse (cannot accumulate power from area blocked off with this)
Fabrication cost: 6,000+ energy (more will take less time to align, but over 8k will destroy nearby Low-Q), nearby Forgite or partially-assimilated forgite.
Special: Tech-echo (reveals empty space or technological parts in nearby material if pulsed, normal sight radius)
Shield Crystal
Not particularly great cover. But it should work.
No energy production, storage converted to camouflage.
Fabrication cost: 2,500 energy (5 points)
Level reference: Extended Vision (4 total), Durability 4, Base: Storage
Repair Crystal
A good helper.
Energy production: 50/cycle
Fabrication cost: 4,750 energy (9.5 points)
Level reference: Repair 5 (-25% to cost of non-severe repairs, autostabilizes ruined Low-Q within 3 tiles at minimal survival amount.)
Processor Crystal
Because doing everything yourself is slow and complicated.
No energy production, stores data instead of energy.
Fabrication cost: 5,000 (10 points)
Level reference: Data Storage, Research 8 (tier 1 speed, almost 2), Base: Storage
Arms Crystal
Avast! Yar've been boarded! *pew*
No (internal) energy production
Fabrication cost: 5,250 (10.5 points)
Level reference: Base: Feeler (Refined), Durability 3, Energy Blast 4 (untested weapon: aimed shot, usable for AI in theory, rather unlikely for AV at this level)
Energy Vault Crystal
[additional synonyms for 'More space!' continued from the High-density description]
No energy production
Fabrication cost: 3,000 energy (6 points) or 1,500 energy (if converting from lower storage), 1 empty space per section or 1 storage crystal each.
Level reference: Storage bonus 6, Base: Storage
---
Assimilated matter conversion cost: Remainder of the cost to crystal form +50 per cycle its been there.
Low-assimilation matter
Created by not fully converting low-tier matter.
Will crumble into dust in 5 cycles, leaving an empty space.
Energy production: 50/40/30/20/10 per cycle. Crumbles on the next energy pulse once it hits 10/cycle.
Fabrication cost: 50 energy, nearby material.
Medium-assimilation matter
Created by not fully converting matter eligible to become Refined Crystal.
Will degenerate into low-assimilated matter in 10 cycles.
Energy production: 150/140/130/120/110/100/90/80/70/60 per cycle. Degenerates on next pulse after reaching 60/cycle.
Fabrication cost: 100 energy, nearby solid material.
Partially Assimilated Forgite
Created by dumping energy into forgite until it weakens enough for you to get in.
Does not degrade from energy pulse
Does not produce energy
Vibrates if overloaded with energy, very heavily resistant to energy otherwise.
Fabrication cost: 1,500+ energy (extra will produce vibrations, too much vibration will shatter nearby Low-Q), nearby Forgite.
The map isn't really built to support multiple small beings in one spot, I tried to make it look close enough.
Also, 132 Hi-density direct is apparently 23k more expensive than converting from normal storage it looks like, Rolep. Wasn't expecting that, but it works out in your favor
132*750 = 99k
(132*200) + (132*375) = 75,900