The Water Planet
Well, I found the fourth planet. It didn't take very long, it's only five tiles away. Just far enough away that scans from my home planet didn't reach it though, so I had to venture out into space a bit and chill there while the scanning commenced. But I found it. Remember Miller's Planet from Interstellar? Yeah, seems kinda like that. Just without the 1-mile tall waves and crazy time dilation. But probably the same thing otherwise.
What a name, by the way. It's called Dampista. Klei always figures out how to make me feel some kind of way.
Although having just three duplicants worked out alright when I went to the Rootial planetoid from my last post, I just didn't really know what I was getting into and also wasn't planning on bringing back too much stuff. It would've been much nicer to have a bigger crew to get stuff done faster though. Since I'm hoping to find graphite, I'm assuming that a big workforce to haul stuff back to the rockets should be a priority.
My cast of characters for this journey includes only the smartest of printable genetic oozes:
- Hassan - Builder, can demolish Gravitas buildings
- Joshua - Rocket Pilot, flies faster than others
- Meep - Digger, can even dig up diamond
- Frankie - Researcher, analyzes vents/geysers/volcanoes
- Ren - Builder and Engineer, in case I need some automated item shipping
- Ellie - another Digger
They're also strong boys and gals. Morning routines consist of 100 sit-ups, 200 push-ups, 500 seconds of yoga stretches, and 1.6-ton bench presses. That last exercise is the only one I have evidence for, and it's circumstantial at best.
So, I take off; it's a 4-5ish day long journey to get there. And here's what the planet looks like from above:
Oh god. Well then. At least there's space for two rocket landings. Surely there's something below the water... right? Surely.
As it turns out, yes there is, but it is quite a ways down.
I built a ladder all the way down and started building a floor out of tiles just above the core of planetoid. I quickly realized that the pressure from all that water was so high that even a double-layer floor wasn't thick enough to withstand it. The tiles start cracking and eventually broke, unless I repaired them, which costs me more building material resources. I had to triple-layer the floor. In this game, a triple layer of blocks is always enough to withstand any amount of pressure, even if you build one of those infinite-liquid tanks and store thousands of tons in a single tile of space.
It was only after I built this floor that I realized something. I... really don't care if the core is flooded. I'd have to think about how to make some sort of airlock that can keep the water out but still allow my people to pass through freely... but it really doesn't matter. This planetoid has graphite which thankfully is the last resource I need to make Super Coolant. Building anything resembling a a sustainable base on this planet is probably a waste of time though, and there's nothing on this planet that I actually need to preserve in an un-flooded state. So... let it flood. I broke a hole through the triple-layered floor, dug up all the graphite, loaded everything on to the rockets, and came home.
I did leave one thing behind on this planet. Four things, technically. Dampista has the archeology side quest. There are these fossils that I need someone to analyze. This requires someone who has Masterwork decorating skills. If you scroll back up to the cast of this episode, you may notice that none of my astronauts were skilled in decorating. I don't really want to make any of them learn that, because doing so would make them require more morale to be happy (they get accustomed a higher standard of living I guess) and that's not something I really want to be guaranteeing when they're crammed in a rocket for several days on end.
I'll make another excursion back to Dampista at some point to take care of the archeologist stuff. In the same run, I'll bring along a digger or two so we can completely uproot the planetoid, stuff it into the rocket, and leave. I don't expect to make a third trip unless I find someway to 1) use all the water here and 2) transfer resources to/from the main base easily.
Next on the to-do list? Hydrogen rockets.