Overview
One player’s Orbital Energy Transfer adventure.
Forward
You know, the word “epic” is used pretty freely these days.
At this point, I’ve seen plenty of cutscenes, discovered plenty of set pieces, followed plenty of plots, and virtually trekked across plenty of virtual worlds. Some few of these experiences have been really “epic”. Most of them were just, you know, neat. Exciting or interesting or clever or beautiful. Good, but something short of “epic”.
I’ve had “FortressCraft Evolved” stewing in my queue for quite some time. I’d poked at it a couple of times in Early Access, and while it was intriguing, it was obviously unfinished.
Of course. Early Access.
It certainly seemed raw when I first cracked it open, but still there was something captivating about it. Something about a single beam of power shooting downward through a vast cavern of oppressive darkness. That beam was mine. That was me, plunging further into the unknown. And no matter how far I delved into the chittering deeps, I could follow that beam back home.
As long as I kept placing new beams, of course. Otherwise, I could only delve about sixty-four meters. Details.
I forgot about FortressCraft Evolved for a time. Then I saw the Frozen Factory DLC in Steam. I poked around a little more, found the wiki, and saw that, hey, things have expanded quite a bit. I’ll give it another go.
Setting The Scene
I knew what I was getting into this time, so I planned my base out a bit more thoroughly. Separate shafts per resource. A lazy river of refined material. A path to upgrade my base, one that was flexible enough to account for earlier technologies, but that could evolve as necessary. As I sorted out the research tree and clicked around in the (very cool, if sometimes incomplete) help files, I began to appreciate a lot of the new stuff.
It was fun! I played conservatively. Through the Tier I nonsense quickly enough. Gold, then titanium, then nickel, then nickel, then nickel again, because I kept running out of frigging nickel. But I eventually considered “building a base” a solved problem. Got as far as the toxic caves, saturated my capacity for those fuel pod things. What next?
How about defenses? I’d never kicked my notoriety with the locals above about four or five hundred. As I scaled up my base, so I scaled up my pheromone emitter things. I built up a close layer of Mark II lasers, and a then a further ring of Mark IIs, upgrading to III whenever I came across enough lenses.
Oh, and hey, missile launchers! I bet those are cool. I started tossing up little four-launcher batteries around the circumference of my base. Tied ’em in to the ring. I soon had a loop of missiles visiting each battery. All those launchers tracking back and fourth, all those snub-nosed Mark IIIs, it was all far more power than I needed. Desultory laser shots took out whatever got past the SpiderBot, if anything. And that was whenever I was above a 0 threat, which was usually only during the day.
My missiles never ended up firing. I guess there was no reason to bother.
Okay. Base. Materials. Matériel. The clock said this had taken over two days, all told. It hadn’t felt nearly that long. Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. The story, to this point, has probably been duplicated thousands of times across thousands of other players. I assume you’ve heard it before.
The Orbital Energy Transmitter
I’d found the game interesting, certainly. Clever in parts. All in all, I’d felt I got my money’s worth. I hadn’t touched the Frozen Factory yet, but at this point I assumed that it was just an extrapolation of the same.
I’d grown comfortable with the game, and felt that there was nothing really new to sort out. But I’d come this far, I may as well sort out the Orbital Energy Transmitter before I moved on to other things. I just saw the announcement where over a thousand people had done it, so how hard could it . . . are you kidding me?
A hundred million?
Some small part of me wanted to just call it a good game and move on. A greater part said that a good design half-proved is only half-good. I could do a hundred million. At least, I can do math. So I sorted out a couple of designs. I did some napkin math (on an actual napkin, as it happened) and figured out that, if I used 24 (!) turbines, I could power the transmitter in under four hours. Then I figured, hey, with these numbers, let’s go nuts. If I have enough resources to create 24, I can do 48. That’s under two hours to 100%.
Okay, sure.
I automated manufacturing the blocks for the turbines. Automating the OET blocks was a bit more involved, but at this point, I was familiar with how things worked, and had the resources to spare. The one thing that I was a bit iffy about was the notoriety that the turbines would run me, but I’d hit over 1000 a couple of times at this point, and my missiles hadn’t even twitched. My lasers had barely shrugged. I figured I was covered.
It took me some time to sort everything out, but not too much time. The game really does shine, automation-wise. The clock said something over three days when I was finished. 48 turbines in four rows of 2x2x3. Conveyers circulating among them, providing fuel and removing empties. The expensive purple energy transmitters, each with a cheap lens for just a bit more. Everything pointed at the finished OET, sitting there (looking really cool) at 0%.
I’d left one block out of each turbine, so I could turn the whole thing on in one go by just adding the last block to each. I remember actually taking a breath, which in retrospect is kind of a big deal, because I hadn’t done that for a -game- in a long time, and perhaps it should have hinted at what was about to transpire. Then I ran around the structure and added each last block.
Everything switched on precisely as I had planned. The turbines spooled up. Energy started pulsing. I was terribly pleased with myself. That feeling, when a big complicated thing comes together flawlessly the first time . . . the game had already been worth it at this point, but this certainly underlined the experience.
I took a picture.
With the added lenses, I was pushing almost 20,000 units of power per second.
About an hour and a half to charge. Unspeakable, if it’d been another game, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I’d do for the hour and a half. Maybe just leave it on in the background.
Then the alarm sounded. I ran over and glanced at the scanner. My notoriety was about 500. That made sense. It was night, now. Most of my power was solar at this point, and the turbines probably hadn’t been running long enough to kick it up before things went off. 500 was nothing. Oh, hey, then I noticed that the OET had disabled my emitters. That seemed a little contrived, but I guess there could be a reason for it. They only dampened things around 4000, or thereabouts.
So I was curious what the new turbines would put me at. I stuck around.
The sun rose over the base, and even with the screaming turbines in the backround, it was kind of peaceful. The alarm sounded again, but I wasn’t in any hurry. I took another picture.
Escalation
I eventually started making my way back to the scanner to check the new numbers. As I approached the center of my base, I heard a “whoosh” sound, something I couldn’t remember hearing before. Then a quiet, distant whump.
Then it happened a couple more times. And then more. I looked around my base, but nothing seemed weird. Then I looked up, and I saw that the sky was filled with contrails.
Oh. That . . . Oh. That was the sound of launching missiles.
I watched for a moment as another volley torched away from my nearest four-launcher battery. Cool. Then I heard the distant whump whump whump somewhere past the rendering fog. Heh. Fellas got what was coming to them. Nice to see my missile batteries working as designed.
Then another volley launched. That gave me pause. Whatever was out there had just absorbed several dozen missiles. The subsequent whump whump whump was disquieting, now. Then another volley launched.
I specifically remember that next volley, because it gave me a little chill. And that was something I hadn’t experienced from a game like this for some time. I was standing in the middle of my base, not an enemy in sight, but salvo after salvo of rocket-fueled violence was beating against something in the fog-muffled distance, and that violence was insufficient, because it kept happening.
Better go check it out.
It took me a moment to top up my energy, then I jetted out to follow the contrails. (Jetpack. Awesome.) When I got out there, I found a lot of alien parts, and my giant SpiderBot thumping around, but just a couple of leftover heavies that didn’t stand a chance. The number of parts was unsettling, but it looked like my defenses carried the day.
I flew back to the base, finally remembering to check the scanner. It was over 12,000 and climbing. Yikes! The next wave was going to be worse, then.
Turns out the next wave was a lot worse. It was the first time I’d sighted a boss, let alone several. They actually reached the perimeter of my base, within easy sight of the Central Power Hub. My hands were just a little sweaty when the last boss was brought down by massed laser fire. The threat had been over 14,000 and now it was climbing again, even as the stragglers of the last wave were cut down.
I realized then that my defenses were insufficient for this task.
I had a scattering of Mark III lasers. I had a lot of Mark II lasers, but I didn’t have enough lenses to upgrade them. Then I remembered that great big field of alien bits. Of course! I jetted out there as the alarm went off again. The next few minutes was filled with slapdash activity; sorting out a quick gold PCB automation line, running out and harvesting lenses, pulling down Mark IIs and placing Mark IIIs.
I think I upgraded at least twenty by the time the next wave had reached the base. And it had reached the base in force! Once again, the final pair of bosses reached just short of spitting distance before they were brought down.
The upgraded lasers had worked, but barely. I had originally planned to upgrade the energy infrastructure along with the lasers, but hadn’t had time to do so in this last-minute hustle. Many of the Mark IIIs had run out of energy right at the end. That wave had been destroyed, but the alarm had already sounded on the next one, and my energy reserves wouldn’t have enough time to refill.
Crap. What did I have? What could I use?
Desperation
I still had the automation lines I used to create the 48 turbines. The feed hoppers had filled up, but I’d turned the manufacturing off. I jetted over and turned them back on, (really, by turning the feed hoppers back to “remove”) and they spooled right back up again. It was quiet for a few moments while the lines churned.
Too quiet. I looked up, and the sky was clear. Oh crap.
I flew over to the nearest missile battery and saw that the hopper was dry, and the four launchers were empty. I actually felt a little frantic now. Like, real-life frantic. Just a little. I flew to the reserves and found that I actually had many hundreds of missiles still stored, but there was a huge bottleneck between the stores and the missile batteries. So I spent the next few minutes running back and forth, adding a sloppy assortment of tubes and belts and whatever would connect my ordinance to the launchers ringing the base. (The ctrl-click build-to-me functionality was apparently added after the first 1002 OET powerups, and it was crucial to this. So thanks for that, First 1002 Folks.)
Rockets started launching in ones and twos as soon as they hit the batteries. It’d have to be good enough for now. I ran back to the automation and grabbed a full hopper of the newly-minted machine blocks. Enough for two turbines. Better than nothing, and I didn’t have time for a proper design. I tore the solar panels off of a couple of those big orange batteries and stuck the turbines right on top. Didn’t have time for automated feeds; missiles kept launching, and some of the outermost lasers had started snapping off shots. Just attached a hopper to each and dumped a bunch of fuel. “Add”. No, “Remove”. No, back to “Add-and-remove”. I’d have to clear out the empties later. NO TIME.
The turbines began whining, and the dead batteries slowly . . . slowly started spinning up. The missiles were still only launching in ones and twos, so I checked my lines again, and discovered one of those twisty splitters was stuck pointed backwards, jamming up the whole thing. DAMN IT. Cut it out, replaced it with a hopper. No time to futz with it.
Flew out to check on the enemy’s progress, and I didn’t have to go far. Just over the hill from the base, there they were. Too many of them. Way too many of them. My missiles would still need a couple of moments to feed, and my batteries were just getting enough juice, and it wouldn’t be enough. Just too many of them, too soon.
Damn.
So I just switched to my blaster and started shooting at the nearest heavy. Just shooting and shooting and cursing and shooting. Not really doing any notable damage, of course, but it was certainly loud and flashy white, and the hell if I was just going to stand there and . . .
. . . and then one of the heavies died. Then another. Did I . . ? No. I realized then that there were also streams of green energy cutting into the enemy. And then a series of missile explosions punched into a big group of them, and more fell. I turned around, and actually cheered. Out loud. To myself, in an empty room, in real life.
Crawling around the hill behind me, my SpiderBot was unloading energy death into the enemy like a big damn eleventh-hour gunship rescue. And my missile batteries had opened up again in earnest. I just stared for a moment. Then I took a picture.
The wave was beaten back. Just barely.
Final Run
It got a little easier after that. I managed to erect two more missile batteries, which helped.
I almost didn’t notice when the alarm went off -yet again-. How many times was that now? I might have missed a couple. I was too busy thinking about my missile reserves, which the new batteries hadn’t helped. And my slapped-together “enhanced” missile dispersal system was inefficient and uneven. I was physically flying missiles back and forth to some of the hoppers, until I had no more missiles to collect. The Mark IIIs took down the last of the latest wave, but again, things were starting to look desperate. My missile production lines were horribly insufficient for this kind of constant demand.
I flew back to the hub, thinking maybe I’d have enough time to expand my missile production, thinking that I probably didn’t, that this was a bad idea that wouldn’t work. I’d given it a good run, and . . . wait, how good a run? How much time did I have left? The percentage complete had stopped appearing on the screen in lieu of the health of my hub. There was something big and ominous and glowing in the sky. Was that a good sign? I hopped over to the OET, and . . . 98% and counting.
I’d been at this for well over an hour. It had felt like minutes.
Maybe I still had time.
What next? A strike controller! I didn’t have enough parts! Heart sinking (seriously) I ran over to the automation line for those components and discovered that I’d forgotten to turn it off. Hooray! I had a full hopper, which combined with my leftovers to be more than enough. Done. What now? Select the strike controller and read the little info box.
Nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure. Sounds good.
Requires a fully-charged OET. I’M WORKING ON IT.
Place near enemy base.
Okay.
I took one more moment to make sure my energy was charged, because falling out of the sky and freezing to death halfway to the base would be ridiculous. A few last contrails were overhead, and I figured that’s as good a direction as any. So off I went.
I passed the approaching enemy on my way. That was the wave that was probably going to breach the defenses. My SpiderBot was down there, doggedly fighting that losing battle. Give ’em hell, SpiderBot, but of course it wouldn’t be enough at this point. It was a race, me against them. But maybe not so desperate that I didn’t have time to take a picture.
I reached the enemy “base” right when I got the message. OET ready for Strike Controller!
Now Or Never
It wasn’t entirely a game for me at this point. I was standing at the foot of this atrocity, this black beast, whose swarms of winged vermin were on the cusp of overrunning my base, and I wanted it dead. This isn’t your planet anymore, big guy. It’s -mine-. I’m going to look you in the eye, right in the eye during what should be your very moment of triumph, you monster, and then you are going to fail and die.
Turned out they don’t have eyes.
Close enough.
I set the controller. Caught a glimpse of something like “30%” but I didn’t really pay attention. Then I hopped away and waited. And waited. Tried not to think of how many seconds my base had left. And waited. And . . .
KABOOM
I just stood, enraptured by this inferno I had unleashed. After all that work, all those close calls and that frantic patchwork and hopeless manual transfer of the last few missiles . . . I just stood and watched.
I forgot to take another picture until after it was all over. I didn’t move. I’m not sure I even breathed.
EPIC.
Nothing left but dark and dirty ash. And one of those little booger beasts, somehow.
One down. Three to go.
Afterward
It was epic for me, at least. For a game to have it all come together like this, in such an organic and challenging and visceral experience . . . that’s not something that I encounter every day. Something to share.
Will your experience be the same? Not exactly the same. You build your own way, of course, in your own sandbox. My own experience might have been a little less tense had I prepared a bit more.
But it’s a story that happened. Something that shows what this game is capable of. Something that you all can go out and do. I highly recommend.