Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!

Chapter 69 The raw resources are on!

"First," Theo allowed a wide smile to appear on his lips, "let's bring the scale up to speed!"

Before, he was limited by the number of workpoints he could assign between his machines. Workpoints he had to distribute between miners, smelters, and then all the constructors and combiners, just in hopes of getting a minimal trickle of the items he required.

But now?

Sure, he was nowhere near the true scale of things that he wanted to, one day, reach, but...

With nearly four hundred megawatts of power, and up to fifteen hundred megawatts if he were to fully unlock the potential of his engine... all the limits that constrained him before were now gone.

Which forced him to face another issue.

The problem of a goal.

'What do I actually need this factory to produce?' Theo thought as he casually walked down his mineshafts, making his way all the way back to the iron ore vein that he had already tapped into.

'On one hand, I need to make sure I produce all the ammunition I might need for my turrets to work efficiently during the invasion, even if they were only to rely on what's produced live rather than tapping into the stockpile.'

This was a reasonable thought. For if his guns were to consume more ammunition than he could produce, then his defenses, from permanent, would turn to just temporary. And that would mean it would no longer be the question of whether or not those gun emplacements did enough damage to stop the attacks... but whether or not the invaders could either dodge, block, or just soak enough bullets for Theo's supply to end.

That, however, forced him to face yet another issue, one that he, quite regretfully, noticed a bit too late.

Thanks to all of this, by the time Theo was finally done, the twelve miners would have their output combined onto just six belts, each of which would then feed directly into a smelter, turning a belt full of ore into a belt full of iron ingots. Then, despite his great desire to go and replicate the whole process over at the copper vein, Theo ended up taking his time to drag the iron-full belts all the way over to the production floor, leaving them unfinished right where the passage met with the massive cave.

"With this, I can now use what..." the young man took a moment to calculate, "three hundred and sixty iron ingots per minute," he muttered, only for his smile to then widen, "in other words, six ingots per second!"

Taking a deep breath, Theo dropped his hands down on his hips before taking in a deep breath as he looked up to the cave's natural, now reinforced roof dotted with ventilation holes. "Not bad for how quickly I made it!"

Still, the work wasn't over yet. In fact, Theo was merely making the very first few steps necessary for his factory to properly grow. No matter how much work was left, however, he could now enjoy the fruits of his labor in the form of the orderly stacks of ingots now slowly advancing over the belts, moving quite a bit slower than Theo's speed at which he laid those belts down.

"Anywho, with this, I've got all the iron I might need. All that's left is to replicate it with copper and then the richstone, and I should be ready to move on to the next step."

Shaking his head before even going as far as to clasp his hands against his cheeks, Theo took another deep breath before casting one last glance at the now six full belts stacked to the brim with iron ingots.

'Six of those per second,' Theo smirked while giggling in his thoughts. 'And all of that for a small price of what...?'

This time, rather than calculating, Theo simply touched the shaft of the nearest power pole.

'A measly eighty-four megawatts of power?'

At this point, Theo's inner laugh grew to the point he could no longer keep it on the inside, leading to his laughter reverberating through the massive, open space of his production-center-to-be.

"Doesn't that mean that even with all the other basic resources added to the play, I will still fall short of making use of all the energy just a fourth of my engine can provide?!"