Day 8((Wow artificial muscles is dragging on))
This time for sure, finish Artificial muscles. Continue work on Quantum brains.
It's a large project and rolls are not flattering. Like so:
Rising headache drives your work effiency under the floor, probably straight down into mantle, figuratively speaking. Only with power of handful of medication and sheer stubborness you manage to mash together the muscle printer. You tell assistants to try it out and retreat nursing your head for rest of the day.
Research in progress:
Quantum brain
To be researched:
Miniature nuclear reactor
High density capacitors
EMP hardening
Modular design
Research done:
Armored exoskeleton structure
Artificial muscles
Major Technologies:
Electricity driven cells
Test subjects expired: 17
Fucking- ugh. Work on the MMI device. This plan may have just gotten less elegant.
At least with MMI you can mark your process. Before you can start designing new devices you need to know where to implant it. Answer is obviously brain, but there's a rather large amount of real estate to insert computer chip and you can't randomly shove a device in and say you are done. Studying brain is also easier because you can work with mostly known quantities. You get a rough idea of good location; parietal cortex seems to be best area. Bit more study is required for pinning down the optimal location.
Research in progress:
Mind to machine interface
To be researched:
Artificial muscles
Exoskeleton
Mind merging
Advanced medical procedures
Optical camouflage
Overclocked biology
Research done:
Stable weapon attachment point and remote aiming designator
Hive minds! Excellent. Keep at designing those. Microchips in the brain are fun!
As for which drug cocktail, presumably the one linked to depression and apathy. That was the group bonding cocktail if I understand correctly. If there's several with these effects, work on those as well.
Finally, increasing test group size is mostly a matter of offsetting losses due to testing.
Neuron connection pattern design slows down when you start hitting on the really complex parts. Math starts involving sixth dimension. Despite of difficulties some progress is made.
Based on results of test groups behaviour, it appears that subjects who were given improved reaction times treatments are the only ones suffering of apathy. That makes it fairly easy to say that drugs involved in that process are faulty. It's too late to be able to devote much time on figuring out what's wrong with it.
By they way, all twenty people who got those reaction time treatment are now dead. As it currently stands you lead of body count meter with total number of 31. Somehow even the person who produces most horrible bioweapons has so far only one victim. What's going on here?
Research in progress:
Hive mind
Correcting Improved reaction times
To be researched:
Research done:
Improved coordination
Improved cooperative bonding
Improved learning ability
Martial arts training
10 test subjects - 5 days trained
Major Technologies:
NERVOUS SYSTEM DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING
Test subjects expired: 31
Automated research
Exoskeleton. It must be able to bear considerable weight. Its own, attached armor, weapons, power packs, other equipment, and possible entire weight of opposing enemy. At bare minimum. So its structure must be made of extremely light, strong and rigid material. It would also help to have strong microstructure.
Actuators for the exoskeleton also have to be light and very strong. Pneumatic artificial muscles are currently hottest hot on exoskeleton development, barring possibly your competitors. Perhaps it is good idea to start from there and improve? Maybe boost power with electric servomotors? Combining those two known factors would be relatively fast job, you think. Inventing entirely new actuator, perhaps electroactive polymers on the other hand is complex work of trying out things without knowing how long it will take. Payout could be impressive on success, however.
Last part is powering it all up. Use a battery array? Or generator? Something new? Whatever you decide, it must be able to provide a lot of power fast.
Skeleton material is probably good way to start while you weight your options. Your work starts with a major eureka moment. A new hypothesis to derive molecule shape and formula from its final properties! If this hypothesis is correct, you'll overshadow Einstein with your smarts! Exoskeleton be damned, it's time to start testing!
Research in progress:
Reverse chemical formulation
To be researched:
Improved exoskeleton
Advanced energy generation
Rail-guns
Improved training speeds
Intelligence increasing treatments
50 test subjects + 15 + 1
Research done:
Layered lighweight armor
Test subjects expired: 6
Shotgun approach! Research everything at once and hope for a breakthrough.
Everything? Uh huh. Trying to run six very different research lines in your head at same time results your brain shorting out after a short time. No breakthroughs today for you, sir. Nope. Not really even progress. A bit work on camouflage and high density battery. You may have grossly overestimated your brain capacity.
Research in progress:
Optical camouflage
High density battery
Brain integrated chips - Improved reaction speed
Brain integrated chips - Imprinted knowledge
Killing emotions
Associate obedience with joy
To be researched:
Researched done:
Reaction time study
Test subjects expired: 15
same as yesterday: nanotech and life support.
If you really wanna contribute early, you could attempt to steal some tech from my competitors. Do try to be stealthy abut it if you do.
You originally decide to put your efforts for finishing life support because you can see it being near completion. For its internal power system you decide to use double approach: a high capacity battery and new high temperature fuel cells. The system utilizes heat fuel cells generate to manage brain and battery temperatures in cold enviroment, and in temperate enviroments it uses it to produce additional power. It's a nifty, highly efficient system. Two dudes dies while you tune the power system into perfection.
With major points of nanotech written on paper you make up with lost work yesterday. You think you are roughly halfway done the tool building process. Maybe a day or two of dedicated work before you get to making the final device and its programming.
Research in progress:
Nanomachines
To be researched:
Robotic body
Armor
Multibrain control systems
Distributed neural networks
Research done:
Nerve interface
Brain in a jar
Test subjects expired: 19
Automated research
With most of actual work already done in various phases, the only remaining problem is rebuilding human DNA into something functional and horrific with timed self destruction. Lizards tend to have most fun features; bone spikes, sharp teeths, claws, scales, ect. You create something you think is along the plan, but test subjects' cells destroy themselves far too quickly to confirm results. Some weird timing issues. After ironing those out you can probably claim to have something extraoridinary.
Research in progress:
Monster maker
To be researched:
Rapid bio growth / healing
Forced growth activation
New nerve pathways
Research done:
Targeted hyper cancer
Inline DNA manipulation
Artificial Siamese Twins
Major Technologies:
PANACEA
Test subjects expired: 6
Quite an intriguing idea. It will have to be properly investigated.
Actually shelve the idea for the moment. Control systems will be the last stage of the core project. Right now, continue working on wear protection, the first body prototype cannot be assembled without that technology. Acquire samples of materials with similar-to-required properties, and conduct tests with isotopes, allotropes, or perhaps alloys of those materials, to see if anything exhibits the full set of desired properties.
Lay the groundwork in for the cooling system, mimicking the circulation system of animals, that will draw heat away from muscles, processors, and the to-be-designed powerplant. Design it in such a way that, at specific intervals, major vessels carrying coolant can close themselves off via emergency valves (similar to valves in veins, perhaps?), preventing the first major wound from causing complete loss of coolant.
The primary pump would be of a design mimicking a 'heart', since the myomer technology we developed allows unheard-of efficiency. A secondary pump, however, could be placed further down on the "abdominal aorta", the primary coolant vessel running the length of the body, which would be of a typical inline turbine pump design, acting primarily as a means of redundancy.
The "lungs"/heat exchange system there will likely be no time for, but keep them in mind as well.
Right, process must be done in proper order. What you were even thinking yesterday? Whatever it was, it must have drained your focus considerably. You can barely focus on a single matter, let alone two.
Materials are express delivered and you spend some time staring vials, pondering what might be for dinner today. At least you get testing procedures ready even if testing may have to wait for better day. Likewise cooling faces almost non-existant process. It's your brain that needs cooling more than your robot. Yeah, heart is cool. It's really cool to have one. What does it pump? Fuck if you know. What are coolant veins made of? Something non-conductive, you reason, because muscles are conductive.
Focus, where art thou? Please come back.
Research in progress:
Wear protection
Cooling
Research to do:
Wetware AI
High capacity fuel cell
Research completed:
Structural skeleton
Myomers
Muscle layout