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Based on what happened before does she think we can safely cross it with the dozer? Take into account depth, flow rate, substrate etc. If it's a meter or two deep we should be fine I guess. And if the dozer can tow a cable across we should be golden. Do we have anything that can fly like an RC plane or drone? Do we have a futuristic mono filament strong line? Send over the drone trailing a light line. Use it to pull a thicker line, use that to pull a rope, etc etc. I'd assume the landers would have a few drones for surveying and poo poo. Maybe?
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Mar 10, 2017 02:40
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Yeah, drone ferry sounds the best option.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:49
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And on the subject of monofillament wires and poo poo. Do we have some wire we can work into a curved shape? Maybe with a barb on it? I don't know what's in that river but I reckon it'll taste pretty good if we can get the atmopoop stench out of it.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:53
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Plan Outrail
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Mar 10, 2017 02:58
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Might be worth radioing to the other group on the river that it is full of horrible man eating monsters before they stumble in blind too
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Mar 10, 2017 03:11
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Outrail posted:Based on what happened before does she think we can safely cross it with the dozer? Outrail posted:Do we have anything that can fly like an RC plane or drone? Do we have a futuristic mono filament strong line? Send over the drone trailing a light line. Use it to pull a thicker line, use that to pull a rope, etc etc.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:21
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GNX
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Mar 10, 2017 04:01
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Plan Outrail
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Mar 10, 2017 04:13
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It's neat that we're the Hippie Division, and we're about to drive a piece of heavy construction machinery into a Kraken's livingroom and drop bombs on its sofa. 
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Mar 10, 2017 06:05
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There's a difference between 'peace, love and good shepherdship' and 'S̵̴̻̠͍͛̓̈́̆̈́̿ͩU̷̡͉̥͙̼̺̮̙̾ͩ̊B̷̶̯̜̠͈͕͆̄ͣ̾̄M̙̗͍̝͍̎̅͛̎͟ͅȈ̭̘͚̿̌ͯ͊ͦͬ͂ͫ͜ͅT͖̹ͪ̐͗ͪ ̢̤͓͌͗̍̒ͫ͗̀T̡̙̗̜͖́̽̐ͣ͛Ọ̴̧͕͚̳͛ͮ̔ͤ̉ͥ̚ ̶͊͒̀҉̣̹͇G̨̨̰̫̰̲͖̜̀ͧ́́̆A̸̬͍̲̹̤̜͆͂̋̄ͤ̄̋̓̕͢I̴͉̫̐ͪ̐̈́͞Ą̫͍̯̪͚̅ͯ̏ͫͥ̂͑̐'. Plan Outrail sounds fine for now.
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Mar 10, 2017 09:29
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Blasphemaster posted:It's neat that we're the Hippie Division, and we're about to drive a piece of heavy construction machinery into a Kraken's livingroom and drop bombs on its sofa. I'm all for peace love and understanding, but  is going to get 5000 colonists killed.I'm so happy that we've found the mind worms so quickly, I cannot wait for those colonists to come marching back as animated husks, starting us down the road of a mind worm army 
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Mar 10, 2017 15:28
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LLSix posted:Drones? Sure, you've got a handful of short range quad-rotor drones typically used to help with construction planning and inspections. You could build a rope bridge that way. Keep in mind that a rope 2kms long is going to sag a bit in the middle. Monofilaments were still a pipe dream when you left Earth, but you could get a more conventional rope across the river without having to swim across. Oh hey, new idea. Rig up a cargo net between four of the drones and ferry the people to safety without risking going in the water, or just get the food supplies to them that way. Share the load, see if that gives us enough carry capacity.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:02
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AJ_Impy posted:Oh hey, new idea. Rig up a cargo net between four of the drones and ferry the people to safety without risking going in the water, or just get the food supplies to them that way. You're assuming that the drones have a good carrying capacity. Don't forget, water is actually pretty heavy.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:10
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Volmarias posted:You're assuming that the drones have a good carrying capacity. Don't forget, water is actually pretty heavy. We have engineers. If they don't, let's see if we can enhance them until they do.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:30
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There are so many problems with building a two kilometer rope bridge. The first is simply asking "Did we bring four kilometers of rope?" The fact the rope would break under its own weight, the rope having a dip of several hundred meters even it magically had enough tensile strength ... weren't we supposed to be the faction of skilled engineers?
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Mar 10, 2017 17:03
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AJ_Impy posted:Oh hey, new idea. Rig up a cargo net between four of the drones and ferry the people to safety without risking going in the water, or just get the food supplies to them that way. Isn't there like 5000 people over there, with no food (because it's assumed they'd be asleep?) Also: why didn't we put the colonists back to sleep again? I know there was a reason, but I forget.
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Mar 10, 2017 17:07
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Can we use the drones to ferry food? What're the numbers on that?
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Mar 10, 2017 18:03
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Telling them to go back the gently caress to sleep is a good plan if possible.
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Mar 10, 2017 18:06
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nothing to seehere posted:Isn't there like 5000 people over there, with no food (because it's assumed they'd be asleep?) nothing to seehere posted:Also: why didn't we put the colonists back to sleep again? I know there was a reason, but I forget. AJ_Impy posted:Oh hey, new idea. Rig up a cargo net between four of the drones and ferry the people to safety without risking going in the water, or just get the food supplies to them that way. At just under a half kilogram per prepackaged meal (1400 calories), each drone could carry 8 meals each. Guess at a round trip time of 6 minutes to make the math easy, each drone can carry 80 meals per hour. 12 drones, means 960 meals in an hour. There are 5,000 colonists so it would take ~10 hours a day to get 2000 calories per person across the river. That's doable. You could cut it done to 1 meal a day, 1400 calories, since most of the people probably aren't going to be doing much which gets it done to a much more sane 5 hours a day. 1400 calories is a lot to eat in a single meal. Most office workers could live on that many calories in a day. The plan is to eat 3 or 4 of these meals a day because the colonists are expected to be doing hard physical labor most of the time and will need that many calories. The meals each have an entree with a self-heating element activated by pulling a tab to start a chemical reaction. The entrees are things like spaghetti, chili, chicken, or beans and rice. Solid meals with lots of protein that can taste pretty good after being heated especially when combined with the spice packets included in each package. The entree provides about a third of the calories in the meal. To go with the entree is usually some hard crackers with cheese or other paste that can be spread on the crackers and a side dish usually dried fruit of some sort. There's no water in the meals, but they do come with some sort of powdered drink mix. The passengers come from all over the world so any given package might have tea, coffee, gatorade mix, chai or a similar drink powder. Where appropriate, a packet to heat the drink is also included. The rest of the calories are made up of a candy and/or desert. Something like a bag of skittles, m&ms, pudding powder, sweet cookie or other treat high in sugar. Trace vitamins and nutrients are included in the different elements as appropriate so that as long as you eat everything in the package, you won't have to worry about nutritional deficiencies. A person needs at least 1 liter of water a day. 1 liter of water weighs one kilogram, so you can fly 480 liters of water across in an hour. With 5000 people, you need to send 5,000 liters of water which works out to 10.5 hours. 10.5 + 5 = ~16 hours a day to fly all the food and water across for the stranded lander. That's assuming you have 2 people on duty per quadcoptor drone working constantly without breaks, or 4, 4 hour shifts of 24 people each. That's just the time to fly the food and water across the river, but you can certainly have people carry enough supplies to the load point every day so I'm not doing that math right now. You do not have the airlift capacity to carry people. Even combined the drones could only manage 48kg and a person weighs ~70kg in their birthday suit. In reality the person would be wearing an environment suit and so weigh more. The drones would need to use some sort of ridiculously large net and rope contraption which would count against their carrying capacity and there's not really a good way to synch up the engines from that many copters together. Something would definitely go wrong. Added Space posted:There are so many problems with building a two kilometer rope bridge. The first is simply asking "Did we bring four kilometers of rope?" The fact the rope would break under its own weight, the rope having a dip of several hundred meters even it magically had enough tensile strength ... weren't we supposed to be the faction of skilled engineers? I think that's everyone's questions? Let me know if I missed something. Some great ideas.
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Mar 10, 2017 19:17
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Do we have water filters for the stranded colonists to procure their own water? Or solar stills, or pots and flammable flora?
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Mar 10, 2017 19:39
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So, looks like we waste a huge amount of resources and time trying to ferry goods across while we try and fail to construct a bridge. At which point the 5000 stranded colonists have themselves a celebratory Donner party. How many dozers do we have? Would the loss of one be catastrophic for us short or long term? Towing something over water us much easier than carrying it. Is the river flowing slow enough that a raft being towed by two quadcopters would work? I'm thinking even if it drifts downstream a few kilometers or more it'll be fine for them to go pick Up with their dozer or similar vehicle equivalent. If the first raft works we can send people on it, but first just remotely send a big raft with as much food as we can shift. A bigger raft will look like less of a meal for predatory animals. Hopefully. Have a remote cut off in case it goes under so we can recover the copter. Edit: can we fix up a motor propeller? Make the rudder so the boat/raft points upstream and slightly to the left/right or put a remote on it. It'll go slow but as long as it can go a kilometer or two an hour it'll get across. Outrail fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 19:45
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Also tell these highly trained space nerds to brainstorm some solutions while they're shifting food back and forth. C'mon!
Outrail fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 19:52
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Worst comes to worst, you've got the human resources to build a raft, Black Freighter style.
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Mar 10, 2017 19:53
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Before the mind worms drag it down to the depths, that is
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Mar 10, 2017 20:02
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Rockopolis posted:Do we have water filters for the stranded colonists to procure their own water? Or solar stills, or pots and flammable flora? The populated colonist landers are basically big boxes filled to bursting with 5,000 cold sleep pods and the associated machinery. You personally couldn't make water filters out of that, but a good engineer with the right skills might be able to, so probably yeah. The obvious source of water to filter is the river. So far everyone who has gone into the river has died. Admittedly 3 people is a small sample size, but you're not going to find many volunteers for the job of installing a water intake pump in the river. Solar stills are pretty cool but there's no plastic sheeting in the lander on the far side of the river. The area where you are, ~7km from the nearest river bank doesn't have a lot of plant life, but you've seen a few trees like this one, only without the animals. Come to think of it, you haven't seen any animals or animal tracks yet.  This being an alien planet, you're not sure if you should be more surprised that there aren't any animals or that there is life at all. You file the matter in a folder for later consideration and get back to thinking about solar stills. You could make a dew-based solar still using the branches and leaves from a tree like that. There are probably similar plants on the far side of the river. It'd be pretty primitive and not provide much water though. Since there's only 9 people able to leave the stranded lander (Ann and the 8 other crew) there's no way they're going to be able to make in a significant dent in the amount of water 5,000 people need by making solar stills by digging holes and covering them with branches. There are no pots, but there are lots of cold sleep pods which are air-tight containers for most purposes. You'd guess the tree would burn. Why?
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Mar 10, 2017 20:05
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Outrail posted:So, looks like we waste a huge amount of resources and time trying to ferry goods across while we try and fail to construct a bridge. At which point the 5000 stranded colonists have themselves a celebratory Donner party. There is already an option to build a raft. I don't think you could tow it with the drones but assuming nothing goes wrong you can get it across the river using more primitive methods. You can definitely make a motor propeller given time. You probably don't want to take the time right now because in the meantime 5,000 stranded people are starving and dying of dehydration.
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Mar 10, 2017 20:10
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Gah. Changing my vote to make a biggish raft and fill it with food and have a volunteer from our side pole it across the river. In the meantime have one or two people from the stranded lander observe the river and throw some rocks in BUT DON'T GET TOO CLOSE. try and get a glimpse of the creatures so we know what we're dealing with. The things that killed the three can't be too big or they'd have killed the guy instantly. But not to small or it wouldn't be able to bite his leg off. Also they haven't seen any sign of the animals when they were in a few feet of water. So I'm thinking something the size of a big salt water crocodile. If they're like a shark and don't have manipulaters we should be good. If they have some amphibious or grasping capabilities like a croc or crab we might be in trouble. If it's aggressive giant octopus were hosed. Given other CYOA creatures over the last week or so I'm worried.
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Mar 10, 2017 20:25
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If it's a croctopus, we give it some grognardy game to keep it occupied for the next several
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Mar 10, 2017 20:36
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Outrail posted:Gah. Changing my vote to make a biggish raft and fill it with food and have a volunteer from our side pole it across the river. In the meantime have one or two people from the stranded lander observe the river and throw some rocks in BUT DON'T GET TOO CLOSE. try and get a glimpse of the creatures so we know what we're dealing with. I'll agree with this and add: Use two volunteers, make sure to securely tethered to the centre of the raft and arm them, one of them poles the thing across, the other keeps guard.
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Mar 10, 2017 20:47
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Yeah, I was thinking that we can boil water if we had fuel. Can we just push the intake out instead of wading in? Can you use the pod canopies to make solar stills?
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Mar 10, 2017 21:41
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Possible longer-term solution: Hovercraft, we could probably whip up a small ducted fan model in very short order. Since it goes over the water rather than through it, and has the pressurised skirt to ride on and dissuade anything reaching up, I'd rate it as having better odds than a raft if the hostiles go after them.
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Mar 10, 2017 21:47
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AJ_Impy posted:Possible longer-term solution: Hovercraft, we could probably whip up a small ducted fan model in very short order. Since it goes over the water rather than through it, and has the pressurised skirt to ride on and dissuade anything reaching up, I'd rate it as having better odds than a raft if the hostiles go after them. Just had a mental image of a bunch of malovent tentacles reaching up into a whirling fan and can't stop giggling. 'Gonna eat these wierd aliens and drown their loud stupid boat and GGHAAAARRHHHHHH gently caress WHAT THE gently caress!!!'
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Mar 10, 2017 23:15
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Mar 11, 2017 02:27
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Outrail posted:G. Looks like this is basically the winning plan even though Outrail changed his/her mind since and you aren't unpacking vehicles for food. I'm going to start writing the update now but leave the vote open until I post the update in case people want to change their minds. LLSix fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 17:01
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Hardrock is not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. - Lama Freya Silvstedt, reading from the Reformed Unitary Vedas LLSix posted:"Obadiah and Mikhailovich disobeyed orders and ran into the river to help Joshua when he disappeared under the surface of the river. They were sucked under too. Obadiah shouted 'it got me' and Michailovich screamed something that sounded like 'it bit off my loving leg' before their screams descended into incoherence. The screams lasted for several minutes before their radio and telemetery cut out. I think there's something living in the river. Something that is eating us and there's only 8 other crew with me. We don't have any weapons or food. Please advise. Over." Lander 3 is the only lander on the far side of the river. All the food and supplies are on your side of the river. If you can't get clean water across the river safely, 5,000 colonists, a quarter of the Second Chancers are going to die of dehydration in two or three days. Less than 24 hours on the planet and you're already being attacked by alien life forms. You radio Jennifer Skye and ask her to take over organizing getting food and water to the landers on this side of the river, you and Digant are going to see if you can punch your way across the river with a bulldozer. Then you radio Digant, one of your crew, and tell him that you want him to unload a bulldozer and check it out for amphibious operations. These first few hours, every person is essential to building up the number of accessible environment suits and thus available workers so you decide to put the whole burden of saving 5,000 lives on the pair of yours' shoulders. Finally, you radio Ann, and her little band of 8 other space suit wearers to get back in their lander to save their air tanks. They need to be used as little as possible until the colony has air compressors set up. Having arranged your limited man power as best as you can imagine, you put your head down and focus on marching towards the lander with your weapon stash.  The sensors on your suit indicate that the air here has a decent amount of humidity in it, but the land you walk across has few green plants. Even those seem strange to your eyes after so long ensconced in the Herald. Everything is strange. It's been 1,600 years since you last stood under an open sky but here the sun beats down on your head from beyond your reach. The Herald was alive and vibrant in a way this land is not. The ground does not vibrate beneath your boots with the thrumming of the engines. The air does not hum with the murmur of a thousand machines busily working to keep you alive. The only sounds you hear are your gasps for breath as you jog and the wind. Looking back, you can't see the lander you arrived in. Looking ahead you can't see the lander you are headed to. You are further from your fellow humans than you have been since you left Earth. In a sudden burst of panic and paranoia you wonder if your voyage has all been a heatstroke induced hallucination as you jog across this barren plain. The vice grip of fear on your heart only eases when you tune your radio to the channel used by your crew and hear their chatter as they work together to haul food, water, and environment suits back to the populated landers. *** More than two hours later, you arrive at the lander. It looks like nobody is here right now, though you see their tracks in the dust leading up to one of the two, smaller, personnel air-locks. You cycle your way through the air lock doors. The readouts on your suit say the air inside is breathable. You unseal your helmet and push it back to hang from the hinge in the back of your neck like a hoodie. You take a cautious sniff and the air smells fine except for the faintest hint of rotten eggs. Probably trace amounts of selenium gas carried inside on your suit. All the lander's are equipped with air recyclers and filtration systems with the expectation that they'd be scavenged and installed into colony buildings as needed, but the system must be powered down to conserve energy since there hasn't been time to construct a solar panel power grid yet. You take the broad ramp up to the third floor. All the landers have broad rampways with a gentle incline and sweeping curves instead of elevators to conserve power during the early days of the colony. Except for the area right around the rampwell, the third floor is packed floor to ceiling with crates strapped to the floor, ceiling, and each other into an acceleration tolerant net of cables and supplies. What you want is along the left wall, halfway into the room. It's going to take some time to unpack what you want. And longer to get all the boxes back in place afterwards, but there is little choice. With the weapons in the stash a single person could take over the colony. As a UN mission, none of the host countries were willing to supply blueprints for their latest weapons to the Auto-fabricators. Even once you find the resources and time to begin building weapons, the equipment you'll be able to create is all at least 50 years behind that which is secreted in this stash and the colony doesn't currently have any other weapons. *** Finally, you stand outside the lander again, and just in time too. From the radio chatter, it sounds like the people from the nearest populated lander are on their way back for another load of food and suits. You'd rather be gone before they get here so you push yourself into a run until you get over the horizon. The less other people know about where the weapons are, the better for everyone. You chose to take 2 satchels of concussion grenades with you, one slung from each shoulder. Inside each satchel are a score of the handy little things, each about halfway between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. You haven't used one since basic training, but fortunately there was a little instruction manual inside each satchel. The grenades have a fuse time of 3-5 seconds. 3-5 because after so long in storage the maker doesn't want to promise they'll still work perfectly. An effective blast radius of 2 meters in the open, you expect they'll do a number on anything caught underwater with them and you wouldn't want to be the poor bastard caught in a small room with one. Although there's no deliberate fragmentation effect, the instruction manual warns that fragments of the grenade casing can be hurled as far as 200m away. While you were fetching the grenades you also saw boxes containing 1cm plasma SMGs and 2cm rifles but didn't take either since the plasma bolts they fire can't penetrate the surface of the water effectively. ***  Back at the first lander, Digant has prepped a bulldozer for you. The bulldozers you brought are all battery powered, sealed against the elements, and remote operated. The remote control looks like the world's largest game console controller with an 8" LED screen on top. The first thing the controller does when you boot it up is run you through a tutorial on how to use it. Amongst other things, you learn that it is 6' 2" tall to the top deck, that the blade of the bulldozer can be lifted straight up giving it a maximum height of 8' 3" and that the air-tight seals used to enable it to operate in potentially hostile alien atmospheres also means it is water tight and can operate under up to 20' of water as long as the ground is stable enough. Digant has it hooked up to a crude array of solar panels laid out on the ground and he finishes hooking up the 10th panel just before you finish running through the tutorial. As a remote operated bulldozer there's no good place to stack food and water crates, but if you lift the blade straight up, you can put down a layer of crates on the "floor" inside the scoop of the blade. The two of you make several trips in and out of the lander, cycling through one of the personnel airlocks each time, and put down a layer of food and water. Checking the power gauge you see that you've only got half a charge. The vehicles' batteries must have been shipped nearly dead. Its not ideal, but its getting late already, so after taking a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the controls on solid ground you climb up and try to driving it while sitting on top. You find it is difficult to keep your seat while both your hands are occupied with the controls so you go back into the lander and cut apart the acceleration netting to make some rope. You fashion yourself some stirrups, and a wrist rope to hold the remote in case you need both hands free while you're at it. With the improvised bulldozer stirups to brace yourself you find it much easier to keep your balance and control vehicle. You tell Digant to prep another bulldozer and get it charging before reporting to Jennifer Skye for further instructions. With a jaunty wave from atop your mechanical steed you head out to rescue the stranded colonists. *** The 20-hour days on Hardrock means the night falls fast here. The sun is starting to edge below the horizon as you ease the bulldozer into the river. Golden light glitters back from the slow moving surface of the deceptively serene waters. Images from cameras on the underbody of the bulldozer and repeated on your hand-held display and you are surprised to see a riot of plant life lurking just beneath the surface of the water. Reeds, fronds, and riverweeds all compete for space. The first 100 meters passes uneventfully, although you do catch glimpses of small fish darting through the reeds under the water and the water has been getting steadily deeper. The fish seems to be hiding from your bulldozer, which seems a little odd. How could they know to fear something so large? Up ahead the sensors detect a circular depression (i.e. a hole) several feet deep. The water is already 3 and a half feet deep so driving into the depression would bring the water level within inches of the deck you are riding on top of. 1) How do you proceed? A. I drive to the left of the hole B. I drive to the right of the hole C. I drive straight through D. C, and I get on top of the food and water stacked on top of the upright blade, keeping me several extra feet from the water. write in You brought 40 concussion grenades with you and still have 1900 meters of river to cross. There are more grenades back in the lander, but once the grenades you brought with you are used up you have no way to make more of a similar quality. 2) Do you want to toss a grenade into the hole? H. No I. Yes, well ahead of me J. Yes, just before I come to the hole LLSix fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 20:10
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AH
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Mar 13, 2017 20:18
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BJ
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Mar 13, 2017 21:53
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AI Can the grenades be expected to damage the bulldozer? If not can we retroactively put some on the outside with the wins attached to string tied to the windscreen? Basically so if something attacks the left, we hit the left wiper and it pulls the rope attached to the pin attached to the grenade dictated to the left side of the dozer. Better than nothing and we stay safe and dry inside. I mean at 20ft waterproofing it's practically a lovely submarine.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:29
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A HAJ_Impy posted:Possible longer-term solution: Hovercraft, we could probably whip up a small ducted fan model in very short order. Since it goes over the water rather than through it, and has the pressurised skirt to ride on and dissuade anything reaching up, I'd rate it as having better odds than a raft if the hostiles go after them.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:42
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Which side is upstream from the hole? Take that side And H
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Mar 13, 2017 22:54
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