Hephaestus

Hephaestus is a former forge world used by the UWM, currently under the control of ARM. Most of the planet's surface has been covered with industrial sprawl which extends deep into the crust, and mining machines continually expand the complexes even deeper. Hephaestus has been staffed with ARM's best tinkers and inducers, who have been tasked with updating and producing ARM's equipment.
Shuttles will make periodic runs to the Paracelsus' Sword to bring supplies and new equipment as it is manufactured. When they do, anyone who wishes to leave Hephaestus, or join the permanent staff, can do so. However, those who wish to stay must undergo an evaluation by one of the Administrators (relevant to their new staff position) first. The runs will usually happen at the end of missions.
Operatives aboard the Paracelsus' Sword can interact with those on Hephaestus through the VR systems. Thanks to the wonders of quantum entanglement and fluid time, this can be done at any time.
For more information about the system that Hephaestus sits in, click here. Or here for the wiki form.
== CURRENT FACILITIES: ==
Money is basically no issue here (in most cases) it's just a matter of time. For instance, if we want to do more flesh pit stuff, we'd have to expand it, which would take a while. If we wanted to add a new facility, same thing.
*Living Quarters: All our rooms and the mess hall, basically. We all have our own little rooms with beds and desks and TVs and book cases and shelves and dressers etc. Probably won't get used much.
*Control room: It's the room that controls everything. Who knew, right? We can control most systems from here, but some functionality is only accessible from the source.
*Subject housing: Subjects are housed in solid metal, vibration and electrical isolated cells of varying sizes. Each cell contains the basics of survival and can be customized to easily accommodate special subjects. It's assumed that, at some point, we might create things that need to be stored away, or have cloned test subjects. Seemed reasonable.
** Each chamber has built in Gauss turrets, the ability to electrify the room, an atmospheric pulse to knock out living subjects, inward crushing walls, bakelite infusion (Fills the room with molten plastic), self destruct (Explosive and gravity based, both) and ejection.
** They also have an airlock system which includes two airlocks sizes; A main person sized airlock, and a smaller airlock for items.
** When containing things, they are completely isolated, connecting to nothing. They aren't even connected to the main hall.
*Test range: A configurable, modular firing range and obstacle course. For testing stuff in real life. Don't test nukes or hyper destructive stuff here.
*Materials testing: A series of Machines designed to subject materials to different degrees of force or various effects. Electricity, heat, cold, vacuum, pressure, etc.
*Flesh pits: Basically four multistory pits with ten growing tubes per story, 1500 total. All tubes are currently set to grow full sods, and take thirty days per batch
*Production lines: Right now it's empty, but it's where the newly created production systems for things invented here will be mass produced. You'll need to do some planning as to how they'll be assembled and set up the production line, but it's nothing TOO major.
*VR bay: VR machines and other virtual systems of design and use. The Tinker Dome. Piecewise's personal hell.
*Medical area: Fully featured, with advanced facilities comparable to the Sword's. It does not include the Doctor's eldritch/mad science equipment. Significantly smaller, with room for only five people. Contains facilities to automatically place brains inside robotic bodies.
*We also have the massive materials procurement systems of the planet and existing production systems.
*A specialized Stevebot production facility, which produces an indefinite number of Stevebots.
* Ground-Based Shipyard: Capable of producing ships up to light cruisers.
* Modular Orbital Shipyard: Capable of building ships of almost any size, although of course larger ships will take longer to build.
* Facilitating spaceship construction is the Mass Driver Ramp, enclosed in an enormous tunnel leading from the vicinity of the ground shipyards and up through an artificially reinforced mountain. It allows to rapidly launch into orbit any ships we have sitting in the docks or shipyard, without need for rocket boosters.
* Five Biochemical forges, capable of producing complex brains for use in wetware. They each produce thirty identical sod brains per day.
* A massive Space Magic Production Facility on a distant moon. Currently needs a lot more work to be functional, but the basic architecture and structure is complete.
* A Dedicated Armor Production Facility designed to produce infantry armors.
* A Heavy Robotic Body Production Facility capable of producing HRBs for roughly one fifth of our robosod forces.
* The Doctor's Research Facility. Details here
* Apocalypse Lab: A sprawling complex of research facilities designed for extreme hazard containment levels, situated on the 11th planet of the Hephaestus system
==OTHER LOCATIONS==
*Park:  Where the shipyards used to be before they were nuked, there is now a pleasant park filled with local fauna. In the center there is a statue of a soldier in a mk1 suit with the faceplate down.
*Gratesplosion Anomaly field A field full of craters and anomalies left over from when Grate ate a manipulator battery. All the dangerous anomalies are marked and fenced off.
**Haze of electrified mustard gas: A cloud of mustard colored gas that is crackling with electricity. It electrifies and then dissolves things. There is a 1 meter high wall marking the edge of this anomaly.
**Aurora: A large dome-shaped aurora that stretches on for miles across. Has an abrupt border that looks like the surface of a lake, except vertical. Seems to block most energy, including light, heat, and wireless signals; Because of that it is very dark and cold on the other side. The command bunker from the defense of Hephaestus is hidden in here.
**Shredding crater: A seemingly empty crater that shreds apart anything thrown into it.
**Suction Crater: A crater full of small holes. Sucks anything thrown at it into the holes.
**Metallic crater: Causes anyone near it to taste metal, and then feel metal, as if they're hugging steel.
**Hot Dot: A floating, drifting, flickering point of red-orange light that is very hot.
**Inukshuk: A statue of a person made of stacked rocks. Not an anomaly. It probably marked something at some point.
== CURRENT STAFF ==
*Simulacrus "Simus" Ferratum-Inanis - Engineering Administrator
** Makes new designs, and approves other designs that people make for production. Her job is to make and have made new technologies for the ARM movement. Former Supreme Administrator of Hephaestus, abdicated along with introducing the new staff organisation
*Anton Chernozorov - Defense Administrator
** Manages construction of fleets, the composition of our forces, building static defenses, so on and so forth. His job is to ensure that Hephaestus is as hard a target as possible for the UWM to try and take back.
*Steve Saint - Expansion Administrator
** Oversees the construction of new facilities and shipping convoys. His job is to ensure that Hephaestus can pump out as much materiel as is required at any time, and that it can all be delivered where it needs to go.
*Dr. Maurice Sanctor - Science administrator
** Researches artifacts and gives new concepts and materials for the engineers to play with. His job is to oversee and ensure the uninterrupted and maximally effective Scientific Advancement of the ARM.
* Charles Leroux - Public Relations Adviser
*ARESTEVE - Formerly ARES, the AI that runs most of Hephaestus. Merged with a Steve gestalt during the ARM invasion.
*Construction Crews - Each consists of around fifty workers, approximately two thirds of which were indentured servants that were on Hephaestus when we took over, but also engineering experts recruited from our allies (Crew 4 - Q'Bajans). Current Head of Defense and Head of Expansion share the right to assign them in equal measures .
** Crew 1: Working on the lens array in the Hep system, including big laser turrets around Hep and the solar stations around the star, ETA: mission end.
** Crew 2: same as crew 1.
** Crew 3: Currently Idle
** Crew 4: Currently Idle
* Science Teams - They are mostly the Paracelsus' Sword former science crew interns, but also scientific experts recruited from our allies (Team δ - Q'Bajan bio-specialists). Current Head of Engineering and Head of Science share the right to assign them in equal measures.
** Team α: Currently studying the construction of Skylar' God-computer, from M14. Started June 23rd
** Team β: Currently Idle
** Team γ: Currently Idle
** Team δ: Studying M20 Heabi sample, ETA for first update: end M21 cycle.
Former:
*Grate Worm Gold - Immortal Adorable Sophist. Now an NPC, due to his player being banned. Exact location unknown.
Pending:
*Project Wunderkinder interns. Will be available within two decades of local years.
== CURRENT GARRISON ==
*A large number of anti-orbital defense lasers, a network covering the entire planet. There are two covering the main base, this wasn't enough to stop the small-scale invasion though.
* A defensive net consisting of high-yield nuke mines and laser turrets at the FTL jump point.
* Observation satellites, mines and laser turrets at the FTL jump points in the 4 systems directly leading to Hep, and extra satellites in the other systems leading to Hep or the 'staging area' systems. source
*Artillery leftover from the defense of Hephaestus:
**2 heavy artillery
**6 mortars on rails
*"The Hammer of Hephaestus", an enormous gauss cannon in a shaft several miles deep hidden somewhere in the surrounding mountains. It can launch bus sized gauss shells to things in orbit or even on the planet with the right aiming.
*Possibly some leftover sods or Stevebots, depending on whether or not the Sword took them all when it left.
*The security systems in the command centre.
*7800 Robosods
**One fifth of all robosods have Heavy Robotic Bodies. Otherwise, armament is identical to flesh sods.
* 2400 Flesh Sods
** Three quarters of all sods are ARMed with low tier weapons, like Gauss rifles, crystalline projectors, with a few prototype weapons like the Spectr & Testament sprinkled in. The rest have higher tier weapons, like Sibiluses, rocket rifles, cutting lasers, and gauss cannons, with a few Radugas sprinkled in. All sods wear sharksuit armor.
*Ship Epsilon: a relatively small warship that is currently remotely controlled. Its frontal armour is lightly damaged. Currently sitting in orbit of Heph.
*The Party Wagon: an atmospheric dropship refitted from a Courier. Armed with 8 cutting laser turrets and a pair of 10-kiloton fusion missiles. Very fast. Currently waiting in the docks for Anton to personally repair it.
* The Merchant: A.k.a. "Spirit of Communism", an interstellar mass cargo transport, tasked with making delivery runs to and from the Paracelsus' Sword's latest location. Currently waiting around Heph.
* A pair of Space Construction/Salvage Ships: Currently upgrading the Jump Point defenses. They have been doing so since Jan.10th
* Six FTL-Incapable system defense cruisers: Currently guarding Hephaestus.
* Four FTL-Capable armed transports, retrofitted from UWM warships: Currently guarding Hephaestus
* One large automanipulator transport, currently equipped with a compaction automanipulator: Currently finishing the SMF.
* A fleet of scout drones, currently searching for the Teleporter Rifle.
* Thundertron the spider tank: Currently broken and forgotten about.
== CURRENT GOALS & PROJECTS ==
*Ground unit/defence production: There's going to be an eventual attack, we need the forces to defend from it, whether its overt or covert. Information providing devices like probes and monitoring stations would also be very useful. A subsection detailing various design or research done on the subject could be added later. Also fixed defenses and more Hammers and such.
*In general ARM really just needs to be modernized. The main problem the HMRC and now ARM have is that our armaments were straight out of the altered wars. They weren't really designed to deal with armored human foes. Or enclosed places. Or much else except the altered. And they lack a mid range; it basically goes from gauss rifle to gauss cannon with no middle ground. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of the weapons ARM uses, it's just that they lack focus toward the current foe and need more of a range of options. The thing you should probably do first is update and improve upon the gear of the average soldier. A standard rifle, a standard suit, standard side arm and other weapons. A nice kit of gear for everyone to get.
*Scientific Research : We've got a lot of artifacts and weird materials lying around, and it's Heph's job now to figure out how they work and then to put them to good use.
*Project Wunderkinder: We are raising super-intelligent children to help with future research. Or maybe they'll turn upon us instead.
== CURRENT PROBLEMS ==
===Production===
This is supposed to be a production world, but it's currently just doing nothing. We need to start large scale production. Teching up is good, but you need a balance between teching-up and producing units to win. Once one of the construction crews is free, we can start this.
Basically, make sure things are being built at all times. If nothing else, production right now can be geared towards expanding to other planets and moons in the system. Also note that ARESTEVE can do autonomous research, so letting him design and build spaceships for example would also keep the lines busy, and give us a navy as well.
===Project Wunderkinder===
Our new population will require additional security and surveilance measures. ARESTEVE is currently watching them, and they will be installed HMRC-type shock implants at the earliest opportunity.
===Anton's Experiment===
In the aftermath of Head of Defense Anton Chernozorov's special experiment, half the base on Hephaestus was frozen and now is slowly being thawed. Among other things, power supply to growth tanks was lost, halting all organic production for now.
== CURRENT THINGS WE'RE WAITING ON ==
(Last updated June 4th)
=== Recurring production: ===
We are currently producing 1500 trained sod brains every tenth day. Last batch arrived May 30th, next batch arrives June 10th. Note: Halted as of August 25th due to power loss.
Robotic bodies are being produced to match those rates. Brains are automatically transplanted into these bodies.
We are currently producing 1500 trained flesh sods on the twentieth of each month. Last batch arrived May 20th, Next batch arrives June 20th. Note: Halted as of August 25th due to power loss.
All fleshpits are being expanded by fifty tubes, every twentieth. Next expansion: June 20th.
All of our spaceship construction facilities are currently producing warships. They've been doing so since Jan.10th. We have no idea what exact warships they're making. We should probably find out.
=== Ephemeral production: ===
A science team is currently studying the Gratesplosion artifacts and anomalies. ETC:"Third third" July.1st
Our automanipulator transport is currently finishing the Space Magic Facility. Planet #9's mass is being compacted for it. ETC:End of M21 cycle.
Our fleet of scout drones has started searching for the Teleporter Rifle artifact. ETC:Unknown.
Friday 25/09: results analysis Green Storm field data.
The lasting return of Simus' higher brain functions. ETC: Will likely take a very long while. Maybe we should assign some science crews?
== CURRENT STOCKPILES ==
*Three normal robobodies, each equipped with a normal MK.III, a communication backpack, a flamethrower, and a set of repair tools. ((One posted in the medbay, one being used as an auxiliary body by Saint, and the last is being used as an auxiliary body by Simus.))
*Possibly a fleet of communication drones, to act as relays?
*Some samples of fleshhorror flesh
*Two Quantum Entanglement Communicator backpacks.
* All the funky materials that we got from the anomalous planetoid. A list can be found here, under 'Recovered Artifacts'
* Artifacts recovered from Mission 14, and Grate-9. A list can be found here.
* Oslaov Spears for the Space Magic Facility are finished, though they should really undergo testing and quality assurance before use.
* Seven custom synthflesh bodies with Saint's face. Well dressed, and used as auxiliary bodies by Saint.
Technology:
* A library of experimental design data on various exo and endoskeleton systems. Quite comprehensive.
* A single sod brain blueprint.
* Upgraded generators, fuel mixtures, and general computer hard- and software.
* A project to develop new types of advanced armor (Details here) is finished.
* A science team has finished examining the data recovered from the egg-pods that the M14 cult had.
* A science team has finished working with the recovered samples of 'flatground' from the anomalous planetoid to find use and possible explanation.
** The results of the above three points can be found here.
* A science team has finished working with the glowworm gun that a cultist had. Details here, and effectiveness against armor here.
* A science team has finished researching the blueraditite artifacts recovered from the anomalous planetoid. Data here (point 5), and here.
* Anton Chernozorov's Piercing Energy Weapon design has been fully researched. The excessive heat is greatly reduced while the weapon is held at near absolute zero, which is accomplished either by a dedicated cooling apparatus, or, for smaller discrete versions, by exchangeable pre-cooled "coldplates" that absorb the heat from compressed shots.
** The weapon power scales linearly with reduction in output diameter. Quad compression produces a beam 1/4 as wide as a HEP beam (~0.5m), that has four times the penetration capacity. The quad-compressed shot is capable of penetrating the entirety of a battlesuit. Relevant quote.
* A science team has finished working on a non-invasive man-machine interface. Project specifications Here, completed specifications unknown.
* Anton Chernozorov has designed two massive next-gen warships. Unknown details; ask Sean.
* The first third of the Gratesplosion artifacts have been researched. Details here
** Further details about the forcefield material: 12345 6 7
* The second third of the Gratesplosion artifacts have been researched. Details here
* Third batch of Gratesplosion artifacts here.
* A device has been built by a science team which can open the same sort of tear in reality that the soundworm people opened. This device has not been activated. Should probably wait for the apocalypse lab.
* All Hephaestus personnel have gone through mandatory scans and security checks. All brain scans were saved.
* "Analyser Blob" sample from M9B. Basically organic computers that can recreate and reprogram themselves, an organic nearal network that can adapt really well. Results here: 1
==STANDING ORDERS IN ABSENCE OF STAFF MEMBERS==
===Simulacrus Ferratum-Inanis, Head of Engineering===
* Maurice Sanctor is appointed Deputy Administrator of Engineering
===Dr. Maurice Sanctor, Head of Science===
* Steve Saint is appointed Deputy Administrator of Science
* Science Team α research orders:
** God-Computer (research in progress)
** Crystalline Technology applications [Apocalypse Lab] (weaponry and explosive use, detailed psychic properties study, etc.)
** Soundworm data [Apocalypse Lab] (including recreation of the Puddle in an autonomous section of the AL)
* Science Team β research orders:
** None, at Deputy Admin's discretion
* Science Team γ research orders:
** "Analyser Blob" sample (DONE)
** "Pink mist"&"Pink trees" samples
** Zone Storm sand samples
** "Anomalous crystals" samples from Mission 18
** "Frictionless sphere" artifact from Mission 18
* Science Team δ (Q'Bajan Bio-specialists) research orders:
** "Analyser Blob" sample (DONE)
** "Radiation Predators" species
** Haebi brain sample [Apocalypse Lab] (research in progress)
== HOW SCIENCE TEAMS AND CONSTRUCTION CREWS WORK ==
1) Each SCIENCE! team represents a coherent 'unit' and can be attached (as a whole) to a research/engineering project to increase its odds, decrease real-life time needed, work on something on their own (e.g. "start testing this artifact"), or whatever is appropriate.
2) Each CONSTRUCTION! crew represents a coherent 'unit' and can be attached (as a whole) to a build/maintenance project to increase its odds, decrease real-life time needed, work on something on their own (e.g. "start setting up automated mines on that moon"), or whatever is appropriate.
3) To keep things simple, a crew cannot, under any circumstance, be reassigned to another task until it's current one is finished.
4) Science Crews fall under the domain of the Science and Engineering admins, who share equal authority.
5) Construction Crews fall under the domain of the Defense and Expansion admins, who share equal authority.
6) Steve and his three generals can commit both kinds of crews, and do not need strict permission, either in-game or through an admin's bolded action (for the record, Radio plans on Miya keeping them in the loop as much as possible, but this ensures that, should admins be unable to post for a long while due to real life, these crews are still usable).
7) It is possible to get new crews of either flavor, but they can't be cloned or grown, they need to be normal humans, and will need to be recruited. Due to time dilation, it should take a good while for them to be 'built' (=to arrive in the system) even if recruitment is successful (which is not guaranteed).
8) Construction crews affect construction time in the following manner:
1 Crew means it takes 30% less time, rounded down.
2 Crews means it takes 50% less time, rounded down.
3 Crews means it takes 60% less time, rounded down.
==Links==
Timeskip with Hephaestus construction occurring: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108083.msg5029765#msg5029765
Hammer of Hephaestus description: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=136608.msg5118951;topicseen#msg5118951
Category:Game