T1 Engineering Robot

Stendhal turned around and jumped at the sight of the robot before him. "Dad?"

Delighted, he circled the robot, carefully examining every joint and component.

"Yes, Mr. Stendhal."

Watching Stendhal's excitement, Luo Qi felt confident about his own future as well.

"But this camera..." Stendhal rubbed his helmet thoughtfully. "I feel like I've seen it somewhere!"

Then realization struck, and he slapped his helmet. "Isn't this one from the base?"

Luo Qi: "..."

Forget it. No point quibbling with a mere mortal.

The base now possessed a basic production capacity.

All that remained was to keep expanding, replicating, expanding, replicating, expanding, replicating... increasing his capacity to multiply until he completely transformed the face of this planet.

At that moment, the T1 robot raised its head and silently gazed into the black sky.

Humanity should have reacted by now, no matter how hesitant they were. Unfortunately, he still couldn't see beyond the planet, and even if he could, there was little he could do for the time being.

Day 39, clear skies.

The new Metal Smelter had been established, and it housed an Automated Construction Mining Vehicle Workshop.

Meanwhile, the vacant space inside Factory No. 1 was converted into an Electromagnetic Force Research Lab.

It was Luo Qi's first laboratory capable of conducting research, but Luo Qi had no intention of delving deeply into the Electromagnetic Force System yet. Instead, he would focus on developing practical technologies for widespread use.

Electromagnetic force was merely a broad foundation for scientific research. Built upon that foundation were all sorts of crucial applied technologies.

Scientific research and applied technology were always two different concepts.

Another reason was that Luo Qi still lacked the necessary material resources. He needed more effective observation equipment.

To conduct research, he first needed to see and then to think.

On Earth in his previous life, nearly two hundred years of industrial development had passed before humanity began touching upon the Intermediate Electromagnetic Force System and approaching the threshold of Controlled Magnetic-Field Confinement Fusion.

Even merely reaching that threshold had taken humanity roughly two centuries of effort to open up a new era.

On Orange Star, Luo Qi continued upgrading the base's electromagnetic equipment using the resources already available.

The number of mining vehicles began to increase. The steel and construction materials gathered each day were prioritized for building more mining vehicles.

This time, Luo Qi designed them himself, using only parts and circuits manufactured on Orange Star.

Every three hours, the factory could produce a brand-new tracked mining vehicle about the same size as the modified transport vehicle.

After the laboratory had operated for just one day, Luo Qi had already made gains in applied technology.

By rearranging and testing radio frequencies and superconducting wires, Luo Qi successfully developed a new generation of electromagnetic equipment.

This could increase mining vehicle efficiency by around 30%, improve metal furnace efficiency by 16%, and reduce energy consumption by 7%.

Miniaturized electromagnetic polishing equipment further improved the efficiency of the production lines and mechanical operations. It could now be mounted on robotic arms.

And if its power were increased, wouldn't equipment that polished metal surfaces through the impact of a powerful charged magnetic field also serve as a close-range weapon?

Luo Qi also made some progress in miniaturizing powerful electromagnetic-wave emitters, but it was damn near useless, since he still couldn't manufacture high-precision electronic sensing instruments.

Still, the hole burned through the floor during an experiment that day showed Luo Qi this technology's potential as a weapon.

The virtual second world-

Luo Qi looked at the enormous monster before him.

A Large Construction Robot-a tower crane in another form.

It stood 25 meters high, 60 meters long, and 32 meters wide.

It resembled a ladder laid flat, supported by twelve thick, long legs.

These long legs could be driven by large electric motors to move along the longitudinal beams.

By moving the twelve legs in alternation, the entire machine could travel under its own power.

Within the rectangular frame, a small crossbeam was placed every three meters, with a large crossbeam after every three small ones.

Each large crossbeam on either side carried eight mobile lifting units.

It was practically a combination of a gantry crane and a massive container-handling tower crane.

As long as construction materials were delivered beside it, the crane could begin distributing supplies.

The mobile hoist bases traveling along the crossbeams would use cable-operated lifting arms to begin construction.

It was an utterly insane design, built solely for constructing factory buildings.

Yet Luo Qi had only just begun designing his first-generation Multifunctional Construction Vehicle, an engineering vehicle with basic lifting capabilities for building factories.

"At our current metal output, we'd have to wait quite a few days to produce a steel monster this size. Only a medium-sized Metal Smelter would have the capacity to forge large steel components."

"I'd better focus on expanding production capacity first and making ordinary construction vehicles. If it's slower, so be it."

A new construction vehicle rolled out of the steelworks, and Luo Qi built another three hundred T1 Engineering Robots.

Working alongside all manner of mechanical creations, they became an insignificant part of the expanding base.

Day 40-clear skies.

Stendhal focused on cultivating plants, gathering fermented waste and burying it in the soil as fertilizer.

Through the cameras, Luo Qi saw the man beaming, though his bushy beard and long hair were getting rather hard to look at.

The Power Storage Station continued expanding, serving as the energy foundation for the entire base.

To some extent, the station's storage capacity determined the factories' processing capacity.

Luo Qi began subdividing production into separate, more specialized factories. Warehouses were essential.

By this point, his finished steel output had reached thirteen tonnes per day.

That was with only ten mining vehicles working. As more mining vehicles continued rolling off the line,

steel output was bound to rise in a straight line.

Luo Qi began preparing another round of expansion. There were still many precision devices he couldn't manufacture himself.

The Parts Manufacturing Line, Composite Assembly Line, Electronic Components Production Line, and Chemical Workshop inside Factory No. 1 would all be moved into independent factory buildings.

Through the efforts of the robots and construction vehicles, the new factories began taking shape.

At the new base on Orange Star, whenever one robot fell, another took its place. They were like the pioneers of human history who had pressed forward without regard for themselves.

When one mining vehicle was scrapped, a steady stream of replacements emerged from the Mining Vehicle Workshop.

The base's mining capacity increased enormously. It now had a dedicated smelter and was still adding independent factories.

The factories' steel output could now support basic defensive construction, and Luo Qi could manufacture Supercapacitors as well. To counter threats from the sky, he immediately decided to deploy defenses around the base.

Fully developed Electromagnetic Cannons! Luo Qi now met the applied technological requirements for electromagnetic weapons.

Without precision scanning radar, optical lenses would have to do.

Among the cameras left over from manufacturing the T1 robots, he found eighteen large cameras with long-range zoom capabilities.

Design work began on the first generation of electromagnetic weapons, followed by the casting of the first-generation Electromagnetic Cannons.

To defend against overhead meteorites and threats from extraterrestrial spacecraft, the Defense Weapons Stations would employ three calibers.

These were the optimal equipment configurations derived through computation, based on the mature technologies already available at the base.

The first used 220-millimeter ammunition to target large meteorites.

The second used 95-millimeter ammunition to target fragments.

The third used 35-millimeter ammunition, quite literally for shooting tiny bits of meteorite debris.

The Electromagnetic Force Research Lab immediately began preparing prototypes. Electromagnetic Cannons were different from Earth's gunpowder firearms and artillery.

They required neither cylindrical launch tubes nor chambers capable of withstanding the pressure of burning gunpowder.

The 220-millimeter Electromagnetic Cannon used a single-barrel configuration, with nine ten-meter-long straight silicon insulating rods arranged in a diamond pattern to form a barrel support measuring 230 millimeters across at its narrowest point.

Superconducting wires were wound around the support in multiple layers to form an electromagnetic barrel, paired with a Discharge Capacitor and input equipment.

The 75-millimeter Electromagnetic Cannon used a twin-barrel configuration, with seven four-meter-long straight silicon insulating rods arranged in a diamond pattern to form a barrel support measuring 81 millimeters across at its narrowest point.

The 35-millimeter model was a multi-barrel cannon using hollow silicon-insulated firing tubes with a 40-millimeter bore.

Seven two-meter-long silicon insulating tubes, each with an internal diameter of 40 millimeters, formed a single launcher.

The electromagnetic mechanism differed from acceleration through gunpowder-generated chamber pressure. An Electromagnetic Cannon used an invisible magnetic field to instantaneously pull and launch magnetically responsive metal.

Its primary driving force came from the intensity of the electromagnetic field's instantaneous release.

Weapons commonly used on Earth fired gunpowder cartridges, whether they were World War II Mosin-Nagants and Kar98ks or twenty-first-century M4s, Type 95s, and AK-series rifles.

For artillery shells of various calibers as well, the primary propulsive force came from the expanding gas pressure generated as gunpowder burned instantaneously inside the casing, driving the projectile out of the firing chamber at high speed.

Luo Qi's first experimental prototype was soon complete: a two-meter-long hollow insulating tube made from a metal-silicon material.

It used the heat-resistant metal silicide he had accidentally obtained while casting molds earlier.

To manufacture this insulating barrel, Luo Qi also had the steelworks produce matching steel rods and hollow chambers.