As part of my future research objectives, I built a facility to perform
all my necessary ballistics tests and the like. Of course, being who I
am, I felt compelled to expand upon this simple idea and build an
entire functional asteroid base: the Avernus Cove Testing Facility,
a.k.a. the Lighthouse. While not all areas of the facility are complete (interior lights
have not yet been installed), and some have not yet been constructed
(namely the lack of a central control room or an armory storage) I think
it's time to provide a basic tour of the facilities. I found an asteroid with a good number of tunnels which were well concealed and began sealing them up. Where needed I excavated new rooms.
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| The Lighthouse |
The base's nickname comes from this tower, which holds the facility's Nav Beacon. As
you can see, the beacon is mounted on a rotor and has two solar panels
to provide it with an independent power source from the base. The Lighthouse itself also contains the base's emergency back-up reactor which is connected via conveyor to the rest of the base through a tunnel which was excavated down to the main caverns.
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| The Cove |
The facility earns its official name from the "C" shaped asteroid it is
built on. The open space in the middle is the cove, and provides docking for large
ships as seen by the Rescue Ship pictured here. A control console inside the arm operates the docking
clamp (landing gear), and this corridor provides airlocked access to the
rest of the facility. Once inside, the stairs lead up to
Medical and
the
main corridor extends to the rest of the facility.
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| Manufacturing Center |
The first major room reached upon entering the facility is the Manufacturing Center. Excavated with the use of a single large warhead and some selective drilling, this cavern contains six refineries, six assemblers, and two large cargo containers for storage of finished materials. The conveyor system seen in this picture connects throughout the facility to all other critical systems.
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| Propulsion Lab |
Continuing through the asteroid, the Propulsion Lab can be reached. This room permits the testing of small and large ship thrusters in a controlled environment. Again the lab was excavated with the use of a single large warhead, after which a tunnel was excavated out the back of the room via drilling ship to reach the exterior of the asteroid where a live fire testing range could be constructed.
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| The Mine |
However... during excavation, a vein of uranium was encountered. To remove the radiation risk to staff it was deemed necessary to excavate the deposit before completing the tunnel. This proved problematic, and some 400,000 kg of uranium ore later the tunnel was sealed and a mining facility constructed inside the asteroid with the drilling ship inside. A wealth of uranium remains to be extracted. The mine possesses its own refinery, which has a convenient
drop-off location for the driller.
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| Live-Fire Ballistics Range |
This brings us to the Ballistics Range, where all armor and weapons experiments will be conducted. As the image shows, the range has two firing assemblies used to mount small and large ship weapons for testing. Each weapons platform has six firing lanes to allow for rapid testing. As shown in this picture, I am able to test the effects of weapons on light and heavy armor in 1, 2, or 3 layers simultaneously. The targets themselves are mounted on Target Ships, which can be copy/pasted quickly or piloted and swapped out for different tests.
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| Resupply Platform |
Back to the asteroid's exterior, a small landing pad atop the rock holds a collector which delivers supplies directly into the facility's
store room, a corridor containing three large storage containers. This allows for quick resupply of the base without any security risks like allowing unauthorized personnel aboard the station. Additionally, the platform holds one of the base's two radio antennas.
Back to the cove, opposite the Docking Arm is the Hangar Bay which provides landing and maintenance areas for small ships. The Hangar was constructed from a naturally-occurring cavern, with only minor modifications such as leveling the floor. It is constructed entirely out of heavy armor to reduce wear and tear from small ship thrusters. Directly inside the bay doors to the right is the
Flight Control Tower. Whether or not the hangar will have a door has yet to be decided, but should one be added it would be controlled from here.
That concludes the tour for now, though I will likely upload a video of the full installation to Youtube at a later date. With the semester almost over, I should be able to put this facility to good use soon and begin proper testing on armor designs within a few weeks.
