August 11th 3419 | Marcus Jones | Ipswi VIII
After hitting nothing but dead ends on the advanced-ion-battery front, I decided to postpone my auto-miner project and headed to Ipswi VIII to mine some paraffinium by hand. Unfortunately, when I got back to base and started to expand my star bulb plantings, I found that I was also desperately short of star bulb cuttings. So back to Ipswi VIII I went. What followed was a long series of short hops across the planet surface, looking for star bulb groves. I raided several manufacturing facilities along the way, and while none of them had the advanced ion battery blueprint I wanted, a few stocked the batteries themselves. I had three batteries by the time I rounded up enough star bulb cuttings to return to base.
After planting, I used my three batteries to set up three auto-miners: a paraffinium miner and a copper miner on Ipswi VIII, and a uranium miner on Pingwold V. Unfortunately the uranium miner went on the fritz and started producing copper instead. I suspect the radioactive decay of the uranium is triggering a teleportation after-effect in the machinery, causing the ore to swap places with copper ore from elsewhere...I need to figure out how to break the entanglement without actually tracking down the copper source.
I also welcomed an exocraft specialist to my base today. Once I'd cobbled together my first circuit board (the fruits of my farming labor), my overseer insisted that the time was right to hire one...which is a far cry from his previous stance. Every time I'd mentioned the topic up until now, he'd acted like he had never heard of exocraft and was profoundly uninterested in learning more. I thought about hiring a specialist without his approval, but frankly I'm afraid he would sabotage any co-worker he didn't like. He loves a good grudge more than almost anything. But no point dwelling on that now. All in all, things are looking good: the farm is running smoothly, my first exocraft is under construction, and I even have a trade terminal now (so no more running downhill to the outpost). With a bit of luck, it should be smooth sailing from here on out.