Raise the Facilities
"This is what sex is. What else would it be?"
Lee Hwi-hyun muttered to himself as he watched sixty tons of debris inside the control tower’s basement get crushed to pieces in the recycler and processed into raw materials.
By the laws of thermodynamics—laws he wanted to beat to death—those materials would probably amount to barely over ten tons on a good day, but even that was enough to raise the fuel refining facility without any trouble.
Games in this genre always worked that way: the early facilities were dirt cheap and fast to build, but the further you got, the more they demanded in resources and time until you were left thinking, “What the hell, is this really balanced?”
"How long until all the raw materials are ready?"
At the current processing rate, it is expected to take about 3 hours.
"Three hours... Is there any fuel left in the base that could be used right now?"
None at the moment. However, if we shut down the main generator and divert the fuel stored for it, several round trips should be possible.
"What about the emergency power grid?"
The emergency power supply can currently be maintained for 72 hours.
"I see... Then let’s do it that way for now. Activate the emergency grid and divert the generator fuel to the trucks."
I will relay the instructions accordingly.
It felt like a loss, but it really wasn’t. Batteries were designed to recharge automatically whenever the generator was running anyway, and before the day was even out the raw materials would be processed into something usable. If he dragged things out, the fuel refining facility would still be installed by tomorrow afternoon, so no matter what he did, the fuel wouldn’t run dry within those 72 hours.
The so-called emergency cheese.
Early in the game, everything was scarce, so players had to cut consumption wherever they could, and what they eventually fixated on was the emergency battery. After all, if you restarted the generator before emergency power ran out—whether an hour before or a minute before—everything was fine.
"People really do think alike."
It seemed that because everyone was scrambling to raise early-game tech, the players who were familiar with the game were trying emergency cheese in their own way, much like Hwi-hyun. If the function existed, they were going to make the most of it.
Commander. Jeremy’s unit has finished refueling the truck and is departing again. Opening the west gate.
"Mm. No BT reactions nearby yet, right?"
There are no Bloom Spore parasite reactions within a 12 km radius.
"Good. Let’s keep it safe."
In the early stages of Quarantine City, BTs didn’t attack. That made sense; if they were going to dump you in charge of a quarantine zone that was already a complete mess from the start and then ask you to stop hordes of BTs from raiding it, every player would trigger a refund riot.
The closest thing to combat with BTs was either expedition teams fighting them outside, or entering special maps through the World Union’s BT hive-clearing quests and wiping out the nest while commanding troops in a mini-RTS style. And then there was defense against BTs trying to storm the quarantine zone. That was it.
What was even more frightening than the BTs themselves was Bloom Spore. What would happen if a sudden spore storm rolled in, or the spore concentration rose to the point that the control tower’s air purification systems couldn’t keep up?
Simple. You were finished.
More precisely, the food production facilities would have to burn every infected crop that got in through the spores, the residential buildings would require people to sleep with masks on just to avoid getting sick, stored food would get contaminated and force everyone to survive on disgusting preserved rations, the fuel refinery would lose the ability to capture carbon dioxide and be reduced to a dead stop, and every machine would fail to perform properly as fine spore dust infected its interior.
Humanity hadn’t gone to hell for no reason.
According to the setting, areas within roughly 300 kilometers of the coast—and islands floating out at sea—weren’t affected by Bloom Spore, which was supposedly why the World Union had formed around coastlines and islands. But for players stationed in inland quarantine zones, that was no more than flavor text.
*
The fuel refining facility has been completed. Beginning carbon dioxide capture procedures.
"Finally!"
Hwi-hyun let out a cheer as he watched the fuel refining facility—its long chimney especially impressive—come online.
A facility that captured carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produced fuel. In other words, a refinery that could generate and consume endlessly was the backbone of ammunition production and a host of high-tech facilities, so calling it the most important structure in the quarantine zone was no exaggeration.
"As expected, everyone’s congratulating me."
With a satisfied expression, Hwi-hyun posted to the gallery, then clicked into the recommendations list and began reading through the information currently being shared there.
Don’t get it?
If you don’t have fuel, you can’t explore. If you can’t explore, you can’t gather resources. If you can’t gather resources, you can’t produce anything. If you can’t produce anything, you won’t have fuel.
What part of that doesn’t make sense?
Just let the survivors starve if you have to—build the fuel refinery first, no matter what!!!
"Look at this—he even replies to every single comment individually? That’s impressive, really."
The guide posted by the hardcore veteran HumanAnimalFarm, which Hwi-hyun had glimpsed before the disaster, was very basic at its core.
If you didn’t have fuel, you couldn’t do anything. That much was obvious. Even the main generator running right now was only operating because it was burning through stored fuel.
You guys seem to be misunderstanding something. The generator isn’t an infinite power source. It’s just like a gas station—it has fuel tanks underground and runs on what’s stored there.
The control tower runs on geothermal power too, so strictly speaking it’s not infinite energy either. It just provides enough functionality to process raw materials, handle the basic UI, and use drones so that you can at least claw your way back up even if the game goes to hell.
I’m seeing a bunch of hipsters right now building other stuff instead of the refinery, and half of them are veterans who’ve played the game multiple times and know exactly how to let their base bleed out early. If you copy them, you’re dead, got it?
If you don’t have fuel, you can’t run your facilities!!!
And then, as the opening stretch of the game finally began to settle into its course, the gallery filled with late-arriving newbies who had opened the red pill (?) and were wailing in despair.
Come to think of it, this sort of survival city-builder really was a pretty niche genre.
For hardcore gamers like Hwi-hyun, who tried just about everything, the adjustment came faster. But for people who had bought the game and never even played it, or for those with only a little experience, there simply wasn’t enough skill or familiarity to glide through the opening without stumbling.