Vapourware Let's go space truckin' on Titan Outpost

[CappenVarra]

methane tycoon

 

[Darth Roxor]

Once contracted, your muscles won't relax

Spoiler

 

[Strange Fellow]

Once contracted, your muscles won't relax

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Darth Roxor]

Check out our sweet ride.

Spoiler

 

[baud]

Check out our sweet ride.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Strange Fellow]

inb4 abandoned on first page

What do you say now, ratboy

LOG 5: TITAN: TIDES OF NUMENERA

TL;DR

Sup Karl!

Ten days? I thought we had a month.

Change of plans. The first freighter isn’t due until October, but the ship you arrived on is heading back here.
Why?

I wasn’t told. It’s classified and I don’t have clearance. Ask Karen when you get the chance. In any case, she will send you a message with details about the shipment.
OK. About that lake.

Your next stop will be Abaya Lacus. I’ll transmit the coordinates now.

There is only one drone for now, but we have two tanks built so we’ll be able to make more efficient use of that drone. You can always build more if you get the resources. IASA will send you more of the good stuff with every freighter, but you should make finding resources on site a priority.
Understood. Anything else?

IASA has started an official investigation into the failed landing.


Karl seems like a good guy, so we’ll try to be nice to him for the time being. Especially considering he’s the only one of the two people we know who probably didn’t try to kill us. Probably. Because it’s never the person you least suspect, right?


I’ll do my best to investigate, Karl. For Val.

I appreciate that. Karen says it’s just a formality and they don’t really give a shit. Your ass is on Titan, the mission is underway and that’s all they care about.
But we care, don’t we? What have you found?

Yes. I checked the logs more times than I can count. The telemetry checks out… Everything checks out, but there’s only so much I can do from fifty thousand kilometers up. I’m counting on you. You’re running this investigation, like it or not. Good luck, inspector.
I have some questions.

I have some orbital adjustments to run through. We’ll talk about this later.
Very well.


And then he promptly hangs up on us. Ringing Kronos station again gives us Karen on the line, and she informs us that Karl is currently asleep. We can have her wake him up though. That’s just how we treat our friends. We’ll talk to Karen after, but we don’t want her to know we’re aware of the sabotage just yet.

OK, here I am, this had better be good.
I have an update on the crash investigation.

Tell me.
I recovered the flight recorder from the lander.

Well, what’s on it?
The command to release the parachute early was given from Kronos station.


Karl is understandably perturbed.

What? Are you sure? How… What the… I’ll check the systems. Everything checks out. Maybe it was Karen.


We gain some additional information due to our Awareness:

“His surprise seems genuine, his poker face is temporarily lifted.” [Awareness]
Maybe, maybe not. Let’s not throw out accusations like that just yet. Can you ask her?

I’d rather not. Can you confront her about it? I have to live with her here, and I don’t need her death stares to get any worse than they already are. Falsely accusing her will not help matters. I mean… maybe we got hacked or something.
Are you sure the command couldn’t have been given by the automated systems?

100% sure. It’s a manual override. Please ask Karen.


We could tell Karl to go fuck himself, but again, he seems cool, and we’re fabulously optimistic.


I will, Karl.


Before doing so, however, we can ask Karl if there are any other missions available.

Since the mining operation is underway now, I can move up that exploratory mission to Poleyla Macula if you want. On a personal note, I have an idea that might help you figure out what went wrong in the crash.
Tell me about your idea.

You’ll need to find William.
Who’s William?

He was the first one down there. No sense in risking more than one neck on the first try. You don’t know about William? What the fuck did they tell you in briefing?
Just that everything is going smoothly.

Well…don’t believe everything you hear. Anyway, Billy killed himself after he heard about his wife and kids. Left a suicide note on his log. I told Karen not to tell him about it until he was back up here, but she insisted. No empathy, that woman.
What happened to his wife and kids?

We didn’t get any information on the cause of death, but I suspect they’re casualties of the food riots I’ve been hearing about.
Food riots?

Yeah.


Food riots?

Spoiler

Yeah. Things were bad when I left Earth, but there was still a glimmer of hope. By the time you boarded the Hesiod, things must’ve been way worse. And that was years ago. Who could still be crazy enough to buy into the salvation narrative IASA is selling us. The world has truly gone to shit, and sometimes I think we’re just making things worse.
What happened to him?

That’s what I want you to find out. Like I said, he probably killed himself. He left the outpost, started walking west until our cameras couldn’t track him and never returned. I’ll forward you his suicide note. You know what it’s like to be down there, maybe you can find a clue about where his body is.


“I’ll forward you his suicide note”? What kind of operation are these clowns running here? Allow me to point out that as far as we’re aware, landing on Titan literally has a 33% survival rate.


OK, I’ll find him. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?

I tried putting this on the mission roster, but Karen disapproved. That hasn’t changed.
That’s not really an answer, is it? Why did she disapprove?

“It’s not crucial to the mission!” You can hear her say it, can’t you?


Haha yeah, she is a bitch.

Yes I can.


Here’s the note in question:

This is getting more Alien-esque by the minute. And Macleod’s precious? What’s that about?


Before we check it out, though, we chat up Karl some more. About that exploration assignment we failed to persuade him to give us last time we talked:

Tell me about Polelyla Macula.

Polelyla Macula is a dark spot on the surface relatively close to the outpost. We’re still not sure what it is, but it is probably an impact crater, which means you’ll have a good chance to find some heavier elements. We still know precious little about this moon and we need all the information we can get.


Thanks, now get lost so we can talk to Karen. She also has a mission for us:

Yes, it’s worse than we thought. We can’t even power all the systems simultaneously with life support enabled.

It’s not unexpected. We knew the outpost was behind schedule. The life support tests returned positive so descent was greenlit anyway.


Sure, when you’re planning to have us killed on the way down, any accommodation is good enough.


Is that callous attitude towards life IASA policy, or is that just you?

It’s not just my orders. Survival of mankind is at stake here. Forgive me if I’m less concerned about individuals.


Translation:

Are you following orders or are you just being a bitch?

I’m just being a bitch.

Alright, it’s fine. I’m here, let’s work on it.

I’m impressed with your attitude, commander. Let’s get to work.
What did you have in mind?

Self-sustainability, improved living conditions, more tanks and drones. IPMS should have a list of things you can do. Coordinate improvements with the base computer if you’re not already doing that.


Hey lady, I know what I’m doing, I don’t need to be nannied.

The first thing you’ll need, though, is more power. I happen to now where you can get some more plutonium for the RTG. A few months before launch a shipment went off course due to unexpected wind gusts.


All right, now you’re talking.


Ok, I’ll take the rover and find it.

That’s not going to work. It landed in direct vicinity of the outpost in a series of dry methane riverbeds to the west. The Rover won’t be able to navigate that terrain.
So you want me to hoof it?

You know, I’m a little offended that queen bitch up in orbit doesn’t trust in our ability to find these things on foot. Yeah, in fact, screw you lady, and screw your precious robot. We’re going.

OK, now which way is west?

Probably this way.

Have to move south a bit to get past this cliff that's in our way.

Oh cool, a valley. I shall call it, Death Valle- actually, hang on, never mind.

Going getting a bit tough… but what’s this?

The lost shipment!

4500 units of delightful plutonium. There’s nothing better to carry around in your pockets. Mind you, it’s getting a bit chilly now.

What’s the normal body temperature? Pretty sure it’s somewhere around 33 degrees. No worries.

Wait…

Fight it!

Oh man.

Oh well.

 

[baud]

Pretty sure a good lump of plutonium would have kept us at a livable temperature.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Survival of mankind is at stake here. Forgive me if I’m less concerned about individuals.

Spoiler

 

[Strange Fellow]

Pretty sure a good lump of plutonium would have kept us at a livable temperature.

Another good point. Of course, you have to consider what we're up against: the surface temperature of Titan is estimated to be around -180 degrees Celsius, which is pretty crisp even by solar system standards. But yes, even then I suspect that hugging 2000 watts' worth of plutonium would help somewhat -- then again, asking the game to take this into account is probably a bit much, considering we're talking about a fringe solution to a minor task we're meant to solve in a different way, which I only tried for the lulz.

That said, I actually had a a similar thought earlier regarding the heating capability of the RTG. Tangent and TLDR: Fuckin watts, how do they work?
Here's the readout on the power panel:

According to this, Plutonium-238 gives off about 0.5 watts of heat per gram, and (initially) we have 40 kilograms of it, which comes out to 20 kilowatts of heat, of which half is used to actually heat the base. That's not very much, which means that even with all those watts we still require a ton of extra air-con power, which comes from... the heat given off by the RTG. This is purportedly the reason why only half the heat actually heats things up ( ). What's more, our energy conversion rate is piss poor, as you can see. So we're meant to believe that not only is it a good idea to harness electricity from heat in order to make heat, it's also a good idea even when one of these steps is hideously inefficient. Something something conversion rates something something perpetuum mobile something something entropy. I'd need someone who took physics in school to confirm my assumption that this is just nonsense made to facilitate X-COM base building.

That's not really a problem, so this isn't a complaint per se, just an observation. As sci-fi comes this game's still pretty damn hard, as evidenced by the fact that I can even ask these dumb questions.

 

[baud]

Pretty sure a good lump of plutonium would have kept us at a livable temperature.

Another good point. Of course, you have to consider what we're up against: the surface temperature of Titan is estimated to be around -180 degrees Celsius, which is pretty crisp even by solar system standards. But yes, even then I suspect that hugging 2000 watts' worth of plutonium would help somewhat -- then again, asking the game to take this into account is probably a bit much, considering we're talking about a fringe solution to a minor task we're meant to solve in a different way, which I only tried for the lulz.

Yeah, it's not something I would have expected to work in a RPG. Perhaps in a roguelike, but in that case you'd get stats debuff from the radiations

 

[Strange Fellow]

You thought this was dead, didn't you? Well it isn't. I just took a month-long break to build hype.

LOG 6: A WHOLE BUNCH OF HALF-ASSED THINGS

Spoiler

First, a quick recap:

We’re on Titan, on a mission to acquire methane, which is a valuable source of energy in future dystopian Earth society. Our descent from orbiting Kronos station was less than successful, with the descent module crashing, our crewmate Valentina dying and us just barely making it inside the base. Nevertheless, it’s now seemingly business as usual, with methane extraction and various other tasks proceeding as planned. Except not quite – while searching the descent module for Val’s body, we discovered that it wasn't there. What we did find, however, was evidence indicating that the parachutes designed to slow our descent detached prematurely. This could only have been done by someone on board Kronos station. The current inhabitants of Kronos station are:

Karen.
We don’t know much about her yet, since she’s reluctant to answer any personal questions. All we really know is that she’s not a very pleasant person, and we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot with her already. On an unrelated matter we also suspect her of trying to kill us.

Karl.
Certified member of the billion-mile-high club on account of doing our crewmember Val while en route to Titan. Now recently single. We’ve already discussed the sabotage with him, and he wants us to bring it up with Karen since he’s too much of a pussy to do it himself. Other than that, he generally seems like an unassuming guy, which makes him super-duper suspicious.

When we left off last time, we had just been given a set of missions:

1. We need to retrieve a lost shipment of plutonium, which crash-landed not too far away from the base. Last time, our… simulations… revealed that this could not be done on foot, so we’ll be sending Wall-E to do it. Remember him? Nice robot. Kind of a Nazi, but what can you do.
2. The second mission, and the most interesting one, is to look for the final resting place of the station’s first inhabitant, William. We’ve learned that William committed suicide because this entire program is a slipshod disaster as a result of great personal distress, by simply walking out of the base and just not coming back. We learned from his suicide note, which command very wisely allowed us to read (Werther effect, what’s that?), that he set out due west. We’ll be looking for him next.
3. We also have an exploration mission, to Polelyla Macula. It is what it is. God knows what we can expect to find there. Aliens, probably.
4. Finally, there are a bunch of methane-gathering missions for us. We’ll need to have 100 tons of the stuff ready to ship within 10 days. We’ll see how that goes after we’ve taken care of our various vanity projects. Always remember that work comes last.

As we re-join the action, we’re in the process of manually piloting Wall-E over to the missing plutonium shipment.

You’ve seen this journey before. Wall-E doesn’t handle all that well, and the terrain is rough, but we reach the shipment and carry it back to the entrance to the base without too much trouble. One quick EVA out to carry it inside, and we're golden.

The result is that instead of having a mere 3600 Watts of power, we now have over 4000! It makes no difference. We still can’t power any of the more useful facilities at the same time. Still, considering we’re currently in the process of doing some stuff which should improve our RTG’s output, hopefully this contributes to some real results along the line.

Now onto more interesting things: looking for William. Initially I go for using the rover again, since there’s no telling how far away he could be and I’d like to avoid freezing to death (again).

But it turns out he’s just around the corner. It’s fairly dark and hard to see, but he’s standing there with his hand raised in front of his helmet, covering his face. Can’t do anything with him as Wall-E, however. Suiting up and heading out:

I really can’t emphasize enough how close he is to the base. If he really wanted to screw his bosses, the least he could have done is taken the rover. As it is, what he’s done is basically the Titan equivalent of running away from home by going out into the yard and falling over.

On our way there, however, we discover something interesting. Well, OK, interesting might be stretching it:

We perform a cursory search:

We also gain 10 XP for our trouble. Too bad our exploration stat is a solid zero, or we could’ve done something more here. Oh well. Let’s find our frozen Willy.

Check him out.

Turns out old Willy’s got some goodies on him, including a fancy wallet with an iris scanner on it. The only problem is that his irises have a frozen hand covering them. It’s time to put our dumped strength to good use:

Apparently, dumped strength is enough in this case.

Delightful.

And the wallet’s eye scanner is bypassed. Before we can take a closer look at the wallet, though, we're forced to hustle back to base as our oxygen is getting low. We make it all right, though. Safely back at base, we discover that the iris scanner wasn’t the only thing securing Willy’s wallet:

Doesn’t seem like there’s anything we can do with this for the time being. We’ll have to keep it in mind for later. Of course, the wallet wasn’t the only thing William had on him. He also had a thermos full of bona fide Space Hooch:

We’ll save that for a rainy day.

We’ve taken the William thing as far as we can for right now, and with the deadline looming, it looks like it’s time for methane pumping. We need to build another pump to get an operation running in Abaya Lacus.

…Except it takes 15 days, and we only have 10 until our assignment is due. Marvellous.

Guess actually doing our job is right out as well. Maybe we’ll see about this research we completed last time. As you may or may not remember, we decided to research a quick and dirty fix to get our power up to par, which turned out to be more complicated than it seemed. This was it:

As you can see, what it revealed is that we need some McGuffinite in order to put our new research to use. Luckily, our trusty automated system HAL IPMS knows a thing or two about funky substances.



I need some Cobalt Arsenide.

Skuterrudite is a hydrothermal ore mineral found in moderate to high temperature veins on Earth. Deposits from the nearby cryovolcano are probably your best option.
Where is the cryovolcano?

From the outpost airlock door, walk straight ahead to the south, past the elevator platform . You will run into it before long. It is hard to miss.
Great, thanks.


We suit up and head south as instructed. However:

Uh… yes?

No.

Blueballed at every turn, we head back to base. Our best (read: only) course of action at this point appears to be the exploration mission. Never mind that we don’t have any exploration skills, there’s exploration to be done, dammit. Planning ahead is for suckers. And besides, in a turn of events completely unrelated to this philosophy, we somehow find ourselves out of options.

Luckily there is some recourse as to the issue with the cryovolcano. While we’re away getting our Lewis and Clark on, we can configure the lab to research some improved insulation, which hopefully will make our suit last long enough to complete the mission:

With that process started, we head for our trusty rover, and set course towards Poleya Macula.

Poleyla Macula, named after a Slavic god, is a dark spot in infrared imagery.

Right. After a quick drive we arrive at Slavic God Crater, and exit the rover. Exploration is go.

Now, as it turns out, exploration is not quite as nail-bitingly exciting as it sounds. It essentially consists of this:

Yep, follow the quest marker over featureless orange rock. For the true experience, stare at the above image for 3-5 minutes, or until you feel you’ve had enough.

Eventually we reach a spot where we can do some observation, although with zero exploration there really isn’t much to learn:

We examine the near and far crater walls, as well as the centre, for a grand total of 3 processable minerals. Mind you, those minerals come in handy, but it’s still a rather disappointing yield for such a long drive. Thanks for the boring character build, fuckers.

Not pictured: me having to do this entire thing twice because I forgot to power up the lab while we were away.

Once we return, we just sort of hang around for a bit waiting for the research to complete, which it eventually does:

Thankfully there’s no Bullshitium required for this one. Let’s hope a 25% increase in suit power cuts the methane, as they say on Titan.

Scaling a cryovolcano, take 2:

Okay, well it no longer says we’re definitely going to die, so that’s encouraging.

We make it to the top, where we find something rather unexpected:

We examine the strange crystal more closely:

Nice. Throwing all our skills at it yields a new research option, as well as a crystal fragment, which we hack off with our pick axe. The pick axe is hands down the most useful item we’ve obtained so far.

Off to the side of the summit is another point of interest:

…which after a few minutes of casual observation yields the material we need, as well as a couple of processable minerals. However, getting them was the easy part. We now face having to climb down the side of the volcano and reaching the base on 14% charge.

Right. Well, there’s nothing for it.

As we reach the base of the volcano, our suit gurgles and runs out of power, which is a message we’ve seen many times at this point. This time, however, we’re actually doing something worthwhile for once, which means it's a problem.

Our temperature drops to 35 degrees as we make our way to the elevator platform. Prior experimentation has revealed that 32 is the point of no return.

The 34 degree mark comes and goes…

There’s the door…

All right, we made it. Even with the improved suit, that was cutting it damn close. It’s all worth it, though, because after a bit of tinkering:

There it is.

That’s right, we can power everything, and with plenty of juice to spare. You'll observe that the thermal insulation is doing work here as well, by lessening the amount of heat needing to be generated. Sure, we might not make the methane shipment in time, but our power needs are well and truly taken care of for the time being. And that’s the most important thing, after all: being able to keep hydroponics and research on at the same time ensures sustainability and growth. Against that, what’s some shitty methane?

It’s not like they can evict us.



...maybe we’d better start researching some heavy plasma. Just in case.

 

[ValeVelKal]

This looks like what Subnautica would have been if Subnautica had been on Titan, done by one person, with top view.

Interesting, but it better get Alien or Dark Twist or it will become boring soon. But yeah, I know that filling when you escape death narrowly and upgrade.

 

[baud]

We learned from his suicide note, which command very wisely allowed us to read (Werther effect, what’s that?)

The Werther effect not only predicts an increase in suicide, but the majority of the suicides will take place in the same or a similar way as the one publicized. The more similar the person in the publicized suicide is to the people exposed to the information about it, the more likely the age group or demographic is to die by suicide.

How many times have we died so far?

 

[Strange Fellow]

How many times have we died so far?

Not that many, honestly. I've gone out of my way to showcase all the ways we can die that I've found so far, but staying alive isn't really a problem. Of course, we've already copied William's method of just walking off and letting the suit run out of battery several times, including once in this very update.

We've caught all the generic ones (such as starvation and freezing) at this point, I think, but my sources inform me that there are some rather spectacular ones still to come.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It’s fairly dark and hard to see, but he’s standing there with his hand raised in front of his helmet

Spoiler

 

[Azira]

 

[Strange Fellow]

Oh, I completely forgot to mention that we also levelled up after our volcano escapade.

We get 1 skill point. I'd just put it in Construction or something, but you're welcome to fuck up our character even more if you like.

 

[Azira]

Construction or exploration. I'm good either way.

 

[Sranchammer]

More sexual tension, please.

 

[baud]

I'd say exploration, could be useful

 

[Strange Fellow]

exploration

I'd say exploration, could be useful

The trouble with doing this is that all the exploration checks we've seen so far have been for skill levels 2 and 4, meaning that 1 point is unlikely to help much.
2 points, and we're talking about a substantial investment, which would spread our skill points out even further than they already are. I think a jack of all trades should be viable, but it's bound to be less fun than specializing.

Anyway, it's a moot point, because in the spirit of modern ahrpeegee gameplay I've decided to ignore your input and railroad us into Hacking 3 instead.
You'll see why, I had a good reason.

 

[Azira]

Tease

 

[Strange Fellow]

You have it easy this time, ratboy

LOG 7: SPELUNKING

Spoiler

First thing on the agenda: call Karl. He tells us that Karen is sleeping, but that he can wake her up for us:

Nah, I just wanted to hear your voice.

<<Disconnect.>>







Okay, time for the real shit. Last time on Titan Outpost, we levelled up and got a skill point. Our lovely audience whom I adore greatly voted to put that point into Exploration.

Anyway:

There we go, Hacking has been increased to 3. What this achieves is that it lets us do a thing with William's wallet. We can hack it and get to its contents:

Look, when it comes down to it, my vision of how the story should unfold is simply more important than whatever you morons want to do. Ask any DM and he will confirm.

So, the wallet. We get a shitload of Spacebucks because apparently bank accounts and inheritance are outdated concepts in the year 2077. But the really interesting thing is the personal data:

Wait, Karl? It was Karl all along! Who woulda thunk the sympathetic guy would turn out to be the real baddie. I am shaken to my very core.

We absolutely must confront Karl with this incriminating evidence at once.

I found William in a trench not far from the Outpost. Very cold. And very dead.

Poor Will. I can only imagine what it must feel like to die like that.
I found his wallet and unlocked it.

So you know. Thanks for not telling Karen. You deserve the full truth.
What truth?

Yes, the truth. You see... Val is alive and well and I've known all along. By now you may have learned that IASA is not to be trusted. We're working on a secret project to undermine them.


Val is alive! Space terrorists!

IASA is not to be trusted? Did I miss something?

They never told you about Will, they greenlit the launch before all the redundancies were online... you weren't even told the real reason you're down there.
So what is the real reason I'm down here?

It's legal mumbo jumbo. They need a citizen on the surface to claim ownership because it says so in the charter all those nations came up with when they formed IASA. They're not entirely above the law.


The plot thickens.

I see your point.

You know what, Val can tell you all about this. She's in a cave north of where the lander crashed. I'll let her know you're coming, she'll open the entry for you.
Let her come to me. I'm not going to look for some cave.

You've met Val. Zero chance.
True. I'll go see her.


Right, so Val is alive and hiding in a cave. That's nice. What's more, it seems the whole methane shipping operation is nothing more than a front, and the real reason we're here is so the IASA can make a legal bid for the entire moon.

SPACE FACT: Ownership of space things is actually a cool topic, which goes back a fairly long way. The man who made the first well-known claim to extra-terrestrial territory was Dean Lindsey back in 1937. Being the first, he must have figured there was no point in being modest, and ended up claiming literally every single celestial body except Earth as his own private property. About a decade later, someone else had the bright idea to also claim literally everything except every celestial body except Earth, thus making the entire universe outside Earth's atmosphere the combined legal property of two people. It goes without saying that both of them were American.

Obviously such silliness wasn't allowed to stand for long, and both claims were eventually made void by the UN's Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which declared extra-terrestrial territory to be the "province of all mankind" and not subject to private ownership. This treaty is still in effect, probably only because there's nothing out there to sell yet, so nobody's pushing to cancel it. In the year 2077 this has apparently changed.

Let's go and pay Val the space terrorist a visit, then.

Karl said the cave was north of the outpost, but it's actually more west-ish. Here we are:

Inside the cave, as advertised, we encounter Val, hard at work just outside her little pod.

Val? You have a lot of explaining to do.

I suppose I do. What do you want to know?
Did you cause the crash?

No. I damn nearly died myself. The plan was to fake my death after a couple of days in the Outpost but I guess I fucked up on entry. I made sure you were safe, for what it's worth.


Hold on, I thought the parachutes were detached manually from Kronos station? Just how many layers of intrigue are there?

Made sure I was safe? The construction bot had to pull me out!

No, that thing just opened the hatch for us. It can't very well get inside the lander, can it? I switched on your suit, unclasped your seat and shoved you out.
Thanks, I guess. But what are you doing here? Why would you want to fake your own death?


That's a good question. What could possibly be accomplished from a makeshift hidey-hole that couldn't be done from the outpost?

Before I tell you more, I need to know whose side you're on.
I don't even know what sides we're talking about. Until a couple of minutes ago I thought you were on my side, and dead.

Space hippies. We've got space hippies.

Do you really believe you're saving earth? Maybe you're dooming everyone with your actions.

Those two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, culling humanity may be a vital part of saving Earth.


Not only do we have space hippies, we've got space hippies who are also space Nazis, apparently. Or at least space Unabombers.

Are human lives worth that little to you?

Maybe. Ecological thought shows us a pathway back to an understanding of the natural world - an understanding that is imperative if we are to avoid a total collapse of the global ecosystem.
So what do you want from me?

For now, silence. Let me do my job, and I'll let you run the Outpost as you see fit. My only concern is hydrocarbons not making it back to earth.
I can't do that. People on Earth are counting on us.


Yeah lady, stick a VW van in it.

I'm sorry to hear that. Know that I rigged your suit to open on my command. The cold will kill you in a few seconds.

Ruh roh.

Lunge at her. [Physical]


It's common knowledge that offence is the best defence against a person who can kill you in an instant.

Right.

Spoiler

We try again, of course. I'm sure it'll work THIS time!

Try again.

Right.

Let us instead

Remain still.

Nice try. Now come to your senses and play along.
Very well. Let's agree to disagree and live to fight another day.

I may not agree with your opinion that mass starvation is a good thing, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it

Wise choice.


Maybe we can try to lure her back to the Outpost, where our compromised suit doesn't matter?

Why don't you just come to the Outpost with me so we can talk about this? I'll just say I found you alive somehow. I could use the help.

Maybe later. I have work to do here.


No dice.

Fine.


That's the end of the conversation, and trying to talk to her again just gives us this:

What is it? I told you I'd let you know when I'm ready to say more. Wait until the fourth methane shipment has arrived I'll probably be ready by then.
Very well. We'll talk later.

We can't get into Val's house...

...but we can nick her stuff. Sadly it's nothing spectacular, just some seeds and spent battery packs.

Back at the outpost, we ring up Karl again and inform him of our little conversation, but he doesn't have much to say, other than that he's happy we're making nice.

He also gives us another exploration mission, which for lack of anything better to do we accept. This one's a bit further away than the last one, and we won't make it on one rover charge - fortunately the batteries are self-charging, so we're not stuck. Even so, it'll take long enough that we'll be out roving at the time that our first methane shipment is due.

And sure enough, as we're on our way, we get interrupted by a cutscene:

Fancy stuff. Fortunately we have plenty of methane in store, and so we're rewarded with a raise for excellent performance. We won't be able to make direct contact with the Hesiod until we return to the outpost, though.

The second exploration mission is more or less as boring as the first, except that we get more minerals, and the scenery and its accompanying flavour text are a bit nicer:

Nice.

However, while on our way back, disaster strikes:

Oh dear. We're stuck, and no amount of waiting will help. We call IPMS for advice.

The rover broke down. Any suggestions?

You are out of range for LTAM1 to conduct repairs.


Wall-E can't help us here.

Can't we extend its range somehow?

No. Yes. No. Yes.
What?

Not a number.
Ehr... reset.

I ran a simulation that ran out of bounds. The stack overflowed into my speech registers. Calculation complete. It works. LTAM1 can get there on trickle mode. It will take six days if nothing goes wrong.


Computer scientists will confirm that a stack overflow often causes calculations to magically complete.

Six days?

Don't worry, you are likely to survive.
Isn't there something else we can try?

You could broadcast a distress signal.
Who would respond?

Unknown. The Chinese, perhaps.


The Chinese, eh?

Might as well hedge my bets. Do both.

Very well. Distress signal is active and LTAM1 is on its way.


We don't have to wait for more than hour until something happens:

Someone knocks on the door. The distress signal has been heard.

We exit the rover, and are greeted by:

CHYNA

I like how we're given the option of just straight up attacking him on sight :D

Thank you. Is that gun really necessary?

Yes. I respond to signal against orders. Could be trap.
Aren't guns illegal?


Damn libruls taking away our right to bear arms in space

I know nothing of such things.


That definitely holds up in court.

Well, I'm glad you're here. Can you help me fix this?

We have tools.
So, what's the catch?

No catch. I help you. Maybe you help me later. My boss is against this.

After he tells us that he's doing us this favour out of the goodness of his heart, no strings attached, we're once again given the option of attacking him :D

OK. Let's do this.

<<He points at the drive train coupling and gives you a thumbs up.>>
Looks good. Thank you. What's your name?

I will not say. We are not allowed contact with gwailou westcaps.

wow racist

You can tell me. My lips are sealed.

No. Please respect that.
Well, I'm glad you ignored that rule. Thanks again, whoever you are.

May we meet again in peace.
I hope I can return the favor sometime.

Goodbye.

And we gain 15 XP for our multicultural experience.

Next time on Titan Outpost: more talking, more subterfuge, more exhilarating resource management. Stay tuned!

But before that, there's a decision to be made, and it's this: do we tell Karen about the space hippies?
On the one hand, she's a huge bitch, and if the space hippies find out we told her we'll be in big trouble. On the other hand, she might be able to help with the vice grip Val currently has on our balls in the form of the hacked spacesuit. I promise to take your answer seriously this time.



Unless of course you pick the wrong option again.

Spoiler

Goddamn chinks, even in space they're stealing our jerbs

Taste this you commie bastard!

[Attack him]

Oh well.

 

[Azira]

Tell Karen. Never cared much about space hippies.

 

[Darth Roxor]

You have it easy this time, ratboy

culling humanity may be a vital part of saving Earth.

Spoiler

Also, tell Karen. If there's one thing that's worse than hippies, it's space hippies. And if there's one thing that's worse than space hippies, it's space hippies who blackmail you with a hacked space suit.