All in-game footage in this blog post is from an alpha build and may differ from the final game.
Welcome back to base camp, Vagabond!
A lot has happened since we last saw you. Whilst giving you and the other aspirants your essential training, me and some of the other veterans have been working on maintaining and repairing the old Cloud Cruiser over at the island to the East. Combining this with your training actually proved to be a good idea, since much of the scrap you and your comrades brought in could be used for mending the sky colossus!
Before we parted last time I urged you to seek out squad mates. I sincerely hope you’ve done so, or at least have the intention of doing it soon. As you’ve probably guessed by now, today’s training will consist of all the base systems and functions of the Cloud Cruiser. Sure, it is technically possible to pilot, build and manage the massive vessel on your own, but it is not something I would recommend for a relatively new Vagabond. The Cloud Cruiser consists of a range of intricate systems and mechanisms, all dependent and connected to each other, like an eco system. If you don’t know what you’re doing, changing something seemingly small can easily alter the most basic functions of the entire craft. On top of maintaining and understanding a highly complex system, you also have the freedom to assemble and stylize it all according to your taste, plans and preference!
It is thus of the utmost importance that you understand all mechanisms, but also that you know how to alter, expand and maximize them. A task like this can be quite overwhelming for a new pilot, and there’s no shame in that! When I first sat at the helm in a Cloud Cruiser I was so nervous I didn’t even know my own name. It was quite obvious that it didn’t work out with the little to none training we got beforehand, which is why we decided to change the training to make it more thorough. But even with thorough training, it is quite the challenge and responsibility to take on to pilot a Cloud Cruiser, which is why I would advice you to team up with some of your comrades. You are of course free to do it on your own, but know that it might take you a while to get completely comfortable behind the helm.
The heart of the Cloud Cruiser
The most foundational machine or mechanic of the Cloud Cruiser is the nuclear reactor. The best way to describe it is to compare it to the heart in any living organism. Just like a heart, the nuclear reactor distributes the necessary power to all other units in within the vessel to keep them functional and working. There are a few modules within the Cloud Cruiser that run on fuel rather than electricity, but nevertheless, without a nuclear reactor, you won’t get far.
“But, where does the nuclear reactor get its power from?” you might ask. Splendid question! Inside the reactor, we have what we call the core, or the nuclear reactor core. This is essentially working in the same way as nuclear power plants on Earth: The core contains fuel rods filled with uranium or plutonium. Inside the core, nuclear fission occurs — atoms of the fuel split when hit by neutrons, releasing a large amount of heat energy. This heat is used to convert water into steam, which then drives turbines connected to generators to produce electricity. Control rods are inserted or withdrawn from the core to manage the fission rate and keep the reaction stable.
Just like with most vehicles and materials here on Tycos, the number of nuclear cores is limited. PACE assembled them long time ago, mainly in order to power the Cloud Cruisers. We have found more cores than we have Cloud Cruisers, so it is possible that PACE intended to use the cores to power something else as well. Nevertheless, we do not currently have an exact estimate on how many nuclear cores are left on Tycos. What I can say, is that these required a lot of time and resources for PACE to build. When spending that much supplies and materials it would only make sense to hide them if you weren’t to use them straight away. Not all cores are intentionally hidden though, some of them have disappeared into cracks and other hard to reach areas due to malfunctioning or crashing Cloud Cruisers. We had to work pretty hard to get our hands on this one, we found it among the remains of a crashed Cloud Cruiser. Scout Wasps usually come in handy when on the lookout for these cores, as they are equipped with Geiger counters.
Finding the core is just half the job. Getting it to your own vessel is the tricky part! Even though all of us are equipped with suits to protect us from radiation due to Tycos weak magnetic field, the cores emit such a strong amount of radiation that even the suits can’t withstand it. It is not deadly, at least not for a shorter period of time, but subjecting yourself to more radiation than necessary is a pretty bad idea. Remember that every second counts.
So, you want to handle the core fast and efficient when you’ve found it. Don’t rush too much, as stress often results in recklessness and jolty movement. To state the obvious, you do not want to risk dropping or damaging the core. It may result in an explosion, and a quite big one that is. The cores are not only dangerous to be around, they’re also impossible to lift by yourself, as a single core weighs several hundreds of kilos. By now, you should know what to use in order to move an object like this. That’s right, a Cargo Wasp! With regards to the risk for devastating consequences, I urge you to make sure that you know how to pilot a Cargo Wasp properly and safely before heading out for nuclear core-hunting.
Cargo Lift
Alright, let’s say that you get lucky enough and find a nuclear reactor core, and that you also have a Cargo Wasp at hand to transport it. You know that you want to get it into the Cloud Cruiser, but it doesn’t exactly fit through the door.
To solve this problem, the Cloud Cruiser needs to be equipped with what’s called a cargo lift. The cargo lift is at its very essence, just like the name implies, a large lift covered by an aperture located on the top of the Cloud Cruiser. It is closed by default, but opens up automatically when a Cargo Wasp gets close too it. Situated below the aperture are conveyor belts, ready to transport whatever dropped scrap or cargo to their designated storage space. The Cargo Lift can also be used to eject things from the Cloud Cruiser. The process is the same, simply in reverse.
So, when you’ve gathered big large pieces of scrap or other items that won’t fit through the doors, make sure to use the cargo lift.
Fuel or electricity?
All Wasp classes, as well as your jet pack, are running on fuel. As we’ve already gone through, what we refer to as fuel here on Tycos is actually liquid hydrogen, and not fossil fuels as on planet Earth.
Almost all systems within the Cloud Cruiser are powered by electricity. For the time being, there is in fact only one mechanism that is powered by fuel, and that is the thrust system. The thrust system is what gives the Cloud Cruiser power to move forward. Higher thrust equals higher speed, and vice versa. The higher the speed, the more fuel is being consumed, so if you would want to preserve your fuel you’d have to fly at a lower speed.
You do not need to preserve your fuel at all costs, the Cloud Cruiser allows for built in systems that allows for fuel generation. You can build hydrogen refineries within the ship, however, this solution requires you to gather hydrogen crystals from the islands of Tycos by using the Cargo Wasp. The refinery then transforms the crystals into liquid hydrogen which is stored in fuel tanks. This process requires quite a lot of planning and work, but gives of a high yield of fuel.
The other solution is to build what’s called a Hydrogen siphon. These are attached to the Cloud Cruiser’s exterior and siphons hydrogen from the air, and transfers it into liquid hydrogen, stored in the same kind of tanks as the fuel from the refineries.
Both siphons and refineries requires electricity to work, in fact, the fuel tanks do too. As we’ve talked about before, liquid hydrogen needs to be kept at a very low temperature, below -253°C (-423°F) in order to not evaporate into gas. It is thus the cooling system of the fuel tanks that consume electricity, rather than the tanks themselves, meaning that if you run out of power, your fuel will evaporate.
Balancing the power usage
To keep all systems up and running, you need to make sure that you have enough electricity to power everything. To be fair, the nuclear reactors are quite small compared to ordinary reactors on Earth. The total amount of power a single nuclear core can generate is thus limited. As stated, most systems on the Cloud Cruiser run on power rather than fuel, which makes is obvious that power management is critical for keeping the giant ship up and running. To oversee and refer to the power usage more easily, we’ve created a system based around the notion of Power Units (PU).
PUs are brokered (i.e. produced and consumed) on a per-seconds basis. For example, let’s say that a nuclear reactor produces 25 PUs (per second), and that a hydrogen refinery uses 1 PU. That would mean that a single nuclear reactor would be able to sustain 25 hydrogen refineries at once, given that nothing else on the Cloud Cruiser required power. But as previously stated, everything on the Cloud Cruiser makes use of PUs, except for the thrust system, which would mean that you need to make sure that a single module does not eat up too much of the total generated PUs. It is possible to upgrade the Cloud Cruiser’s PU production by using multiple nuclear reactors at once. Two reactors would for example give you 50 PUs. Expanding your PU production does however require you to have the right building materials to make additional nuclear reactors, as well as finding additional nuclear cores, of course.
Managing a Cloud Cruiser is thus not equivalent to just piloting it or to build useful machines. Managing a Cloud Cruiser takes a lot of planning, trial and error, maintenance and sometimes even calculations to get everything right. Don’t worry, the more time you spend on a Cloud Cruiser, the better sense you’ll get of how many PUs are generated and consumed. Before you know it, you’ll be able to plan it in your sleep!
Staying afloat
It’s easy and quite tempting to take the aerial buoyancy of Tycos for granted, but as we’ve gone over, the islands floating mid air is not due to the lack of gravity, but rather to the high amounts of hydrogen found around Tycos. A Cloud Cruiser is made out of various types of metals and plastics, and does not contain any hydrogen in itself. So how do we keep it in air?
The answer is surprisingly simple: With balloons! That’s right, balloons!
The balloons are filled with hydrogen that’s collected from the air. This means that in order to keep your Cloud Cruiser afloat, you’ll need to have a hydrogen siphon that can direct the hydrogen into the balloons. To make the Cloud Cruiser float at a higher altitude, simply add more balloons!
The lift of the Cloud Cruiser is thus directly affected by the relation between its total weight and the number of balloons. While we’re at it, I might also add that the lift is not the only thing that’s being affected by the vessel’s total weight. The thrust system also impacted by the weight: Instinctively, a heavier weight requires a higher impact of thrust to be set in motion.
A Cloud Cruiser packed with heavy cargo, or filled with hefty machines, would require more balloons to stay afloat. If you ever override the maximum weight capacity, you will be aware. An alarm will start blaring and will not go quiet until you’ve balanced the weight by either adding more balloons or removing weight from the Cloud Cruiser.
Piloting the beast
Well, now we’ve finally reached the part you probably thought we were going to start with: Piloting the darn thing!
All form of navigation is done via the helm of the Cloud Cruiser, which is commonly placed at the top or in the front of the ship, allowing for as good a view as possible. At the helm, you can thrust, reverse and turn the ship. Since the vessel requires much maintenance and planning, being bound to the control panel at all times would just not be feasible. To solve this problem, the Cloud Cruiser is equipped with cruise control, similar to an auto pilot feature, allowing the pilot to continue their journey without being present at the helm.
To engage cruise control, use a periscope and simply mark which navigation point you’d like to travel to. Navigation points are most commonly marked on different kinds of maps or air cards. It’s quite uncommon with maps that contain all points of Tycos, so you’ll have to do a bit of scavenging and mark them out yourself as you go. If your Cloud Cruiser is not equipped with a periscope from the beginning, you can always build one yourself.
The technology behind the cruise control system is fairly advanced. The Cloud Cruiser is usually smart enough to calculate the voyage to the navigation point on its own. The only time you might need to lend an extra hand is when the path is heavily obstructed by pieces of islands, for example. Then you would need to reposition the Cloud Cruiser to a site with less obstacles in the way.
Another thing to keep in mind is that due to the size of the Cloud Cruiser, it has quite a bit of inertia, making it require more momentum to make a proper turn.
More to come
Now that you know the basics of maneuvering the Cloud Cruiser, it’s time for the fun part - to make it your home!
Believe me, I’m as excited as you are, but it will have to wait for another day. The sun is already setting and it has been a long brief on all systems today. I’d suggest you get some rest and familiarize yourself with the base functions of the Cloud Cruiser. The more time you spend in the vessel, the faster you’re going to learn.
I’ll contact you on the radio when it’s time for your next lesson. Good luck, Vagabond!
// Apog Labs