Finally, Caroline, who was much more knowledgeable about these things, spoke up.
"I think the second idea will work better; I assume it also includes the use of the battleship as a transport?" she asked Ridge.
"Yes," he replied quickly.
Nodding, she continued, "The Battleship from our last checkup should be more than capable of being used as a transport; the only thing is that before it even starts flying, the prep work alone for it to fly will probably take an hour or two by itself," she said slowly.
"Of course, but it also saves more than enough time by flying to the deposits. Even if the roads were built right now with the snap of my fingers, it'll still take a few hours to travel there and back, whereas the battleship will take ten minutes to and from the location, maybe even less," Ridge explained.
"Understood, I think that's the best idea then. In the meantime, while that gets set up, before sending over manpower to the veltrite deposit, we should scan it first. This also merges with my next idea, or rather unofficial protocol, but I've divided the needed manpower for each deposit size if you'd care to listen; in this way we don't put people where they aren't needed," she said.
"Sure, I wouldn't mind at all. If it's sound enough, we can just add it to our databases," he replied.
"Okay, for large deposits, the necessary labor force needed to oversee it after building the outpost in the first place, of course, currently is one engineer and four normal crew members, who are being actively taught how to supervise the machines. This, I think, is more than fine for a large mining outpost, but for medium-sized outposts and deposits, I recommend one engineer and two to three crew members, and for the small outpost and deposits I highly recommend one engineer and one to two regular crew members.
The automated machines really only need to be watched over and checked on now and then once built, so a large labor force being moved away from the main base to these outposts, I think, would be a foolish decision," she explained.
Ridge didn't need long to think about this before he also agreed with it. "No problem, I think that works out just fine." After all, splitting up only made them weaker in his mind to possible ambushes and attacks by those sneaky fungi.
Yayha also agreed with the division of labor. Seeing the details all essentially hashed out, Ridge stood up to leave. The others, assuming the meeting was finished, seeing him do so, followed suit, but just as he was getting up, he quickly remembered something else, so he gestured for the others to sit back down, while he also returned to his seat.
"I almost forgot, Caroline, do you have plans yet for a drone factory or something like that?" he asked.
"Uh, yes and no. I personally am drawing up those designs, so I only briefly managed to get started. My time has been taken up with the generator and the outpost wall, but those things are relatively settled now, and I can just have Stuart oversee them while I work on finishing that for you," she replied after some thought.
"Okay, that's good. I want to set this up as quickly as possible; it's also one of my plans to finally fully survey this planet. It'll also help us get a grasp on where things are," he told the group.
"Once that's up and running, I think we can also begin focusing on plans to expand our munitions and weapons capabilities. Maybe given enough time we can build up some ground vehicles," Ridge said with some hope in his voice.
"Agreed, I feel like the base needs to start accelerating in its development as well, especially for these types of things," Yayha replied.
"Mhm, that was all I forgot. Meeting adjourned," he got up," Also let's turn this empty room into a conference/meeting room. We can use the second empty room for more generators and batteries if need be. Caroline, I imagine even with the crystal generator, we will probably be needing more power in the future."
Caroline, hearing this, nodded and agreed before leaving with Stuart in tow. Yayha was also in agreement to transform the two empty rooms before he left as well.
With the meeting finished and seeing as he was now caught up, Ridge got back to work organizing the base.
Two weeks passed by quite quickly; within those two weeks, Ridge was constantly checking up on progress with the laboratory, especially on the carcass that they brought back, but the only thing he got from Ryan was that the meat was technically edible; there was just no way it would help the food situation without hunting much more than the one they found, so Ridge was planning on relying on the drones to help with that.
The construction of the crystal generator and the upgrade of the wall had also been completed during the two weeks that passed.
Although Ridge liked going into action himself, he was slowly savoring the feeling of watching the base grow one project after another. Another development was setting up the second outpost at the veltrite ore deposit. Unfortunately, their scanners found it was only a small one, so it would last them about a year at the rate they planned to mine it.
Nonetheless, that year's worth of supply for Ridge was good enough, so he had the crew work on it after the wall was upgraded. The small outpost itself, with living quarters, equipment shelters, a more basic solar panel power source, storage, and a wall, required ninety-five metal units and twenty-eight wiring units from the stockpile. But that wasn't all; the automated machine equipment to actually mine the small deposit needed an extra sixty metal units and another twenty wiring units.
Finally, he also wanted them to refine their own ores, so he had a smaller refinery planned to be built up there as well, which cost forty-five metal units and eighteen wiring units.
The generator being completed meant he could have Caroline start the type-L greenhouses, and the scientists start producing more of the seeds needed for it, which was surprisingly easy; apparently they basically just took the seeds from the native plants and did the exact same experiment to get the needed seeds for the starch plants. Praise the technological prowess of the coro federations scientists.
So, in total, for those two weeks the base consumed 428 Metal units and 234 wiring units on projects. It was a number that Ridge was quite proud of since each project was meaningful in some way to the progression of the base. Of course, with two weeks having passed the food consumed was roughly around 798 units which unlike the other resources gave him a much bigger headache. It'll get resolved in time, he thought to himself constantly.
Luckily, the base was also producing resources and not just using them all up. For the two weeks that passed, the large mining outpost was able to contribute an extra 198 metal units and sixty wiring units. Once the drone problem was settled, they would be able to add more to those figures with the third deposit. Ridge opted to wait just a bit longer before they got started on that one.
Besides planning projects and running around organizing the base, Ridge had also spent some time with the crew members running the trailblazers to create the long road to the veltrite deposit. It was a long-term project that could take a month even with two of these large vehicles running twenty-four seven, but he figured it was better to put the trailblazers into use, rather than have them sitting idle in the base looking pretty.
The plans he had asked for regarding the drone factory had also reached him at some point; thinking of Caroline running around the base all the time and still managing to finish the blueprint plans for the factory, Ridge could only shake his head.
It was during one of these trips with the trailblazer crew that he had started reading through them since he had the time.
Opening his wrist panel and then accessing the data packet he was sent, he began reading through her notes.
'Commander,
Caroline here, obviously, the drone factory I have planned, which is most suitable for our current level, so to speak, is as follows. A twelve-meter by eight-meter factory building; its function is to fabricate, assemble, and test drones. The crew required to operate it at full capacity sits at five, including an engineer, though with some extra training we should be able to replace that engineer quickly with a promoted supervisor from the regular crew members.
It will need around point eight refined veltrite metal per drone, which means the factory to run at full capacity and produce eight drones a week will need a total of six point four refined veltrite. Unfortunately, within my calculations, the small outpost will only be able to produce around five units of refined veltire per week, so it's unlikely we will be able to actually produce eight per week; nonetheless, over time the number of drones will grow, and we will be able to realize your plan to survey the planet.
Finally, the cost to actually build the factory sits around 115 metal units and forty-five wiring units.
Caroline out.'
Scrolling through the data and re-reading some parts that he may have missed, Ridge clicked his tongue against his teeth in frustration.
It seems his plans involving the drones would have to wait a bit longer.