Chapter 16: Planning

The second I pulled up my Pip-Boy, I saw that I still had several minutes to spare before she would show up.

Since she won't be arriving for a bit, I might as well go over my near-future plans and goals. I got nothing else to do right now, so might as well. Where should I begin... I suppose I can start with drug synthesis.

I believe getting a fully automated drug synthesis machine built early on will be quite helpful to me in the long run since I'll be able to start accumulating all sorts of chems ranging from performance enhancing compounds to super stimpaks and everything else in between.

Plus, if I'm ever in need of a specific resource or piece of equipment for a project I can use the chems for trade to acquire what I need here in the vault. They also hold a lot of value out in the wasteland, so I'll be able to use them there as well for bartering with the various merchants and traders spread throughout the wastes.

The next thing I'm planning to work on is creating a sort of radio or communication device that can either penetrate the ground and reach the vault with the waves it'll produce. If that isn't viable or doesn't work, I'll build a receiver on the outside of the vault so I can stay in touch with everyone here.

Adding on to that further, I'll need the communication device to be encrypted. Because there is no way I'm leaving my communication channel open to be intercepted and listened in on, when that could easily come back to bite me in the ass later. 

Even with those precautions, there are the Zetans roaming about the planet, so I will keep whatever conversations are had over it to casual and nonsensitive information just in case someone or something breaks the encryption. The devices made should play a major role in helping me convince the overseer into letting me leave the vault to explore the wasteland. So getting these devices made is of the utmost importance.

As soon as that's taken care of, the next thing I'll be focusing my attention on will be producing robots. The robots will help me with getting myself set up at the RobCo Facility so that once I arrive there in 5 years' time, I can almost immediately start building a robot workforce upon reaching the place and later a robot army.

When I reach a satisfactory number of robots produced here in Vault 101, I'll begin fabricating a decent amount of extra parts that might be necessary for bringing the manufacturing machinery at the facility back online. The spare part may be unnecessary in the end, depending on the state of the equipment there, but I'd rather be overly prepared than not prepared at all.

Another thing that will require a bit of my attention is what am I going to do for food out there... I don't particularly want to eat the radioactive garbage that's consumed by most wastelanders. Therefore, I'll have to bring a large stockpile of food with me for my upcoming venture. Continuing along that same vein, not having a way to resupply my food other than going back to restock at the vault seems like a pretty big weakness that could be exploited. Thus, it'll be wise to bring a variety of seeds with me to grow my own food along with the required equipment so I can be self-sufficient over there.

Realistically, it shouldn't take that long to get something like that up and running, since the plants we have in the vault are modified to the point that they will start to produce an abundant amount of food within a month. So food shouldn't really be an issue after I have it all set up at the RobCo Facility and collect the first harvest. And once I have a sizable stockpile of food, I can look into animal husbandry. I have no desire of subsisting off of plants alone, hence getting meat production up and running will be near the top of my priority list.

Aside from making my future headquarters self sufficient, I can probably make some decent amount of caps off of my extra by trading it to the local populace and by making trade deals with the local settlements and towns. I'm sure the nearby Tenpenny Tower residents will be more than a little bit interested in good tasting meat and vegetables that aren't irradiated.

Moving on from that, I also want to increase the number of my automated manufacturing machines and produce several nuclear reactors for the RobCo Facility. Though in a more modular configuration so they can be easily moved and set up. But even with making those modifications to their designs, they'll still be quite hefty. Therefore, I'll need to design some kind of transportation to accommodate moving them to the facility. Which shouldn't be that difficult since I already have a few ideas for this application in mind that could handle the job while being relatively simple to produce and assemble.

For a longer-term goal, when I get myself decently set up at the facility, it probably wouldn't be such a bad idea to expand underground and link up with all the metros at some point for a few reasons. First off, it would make expansion a hell of a lot easier when I inevitably require more space. 

And secondly, having control of the rails would grant me the ability to move large amounts of material and resources through the metro tunnels. However, that is dependent on when I obtain a train or some other kind of transport that can move materials in bulk. I'll probably just find a bunch of old busted up trains to repair... or I could design a robot specifically for hauling large quantities of material.

Lastly, having control over the metro system would allow me to perform larger movements with my forces hidden underground in the extensive network of metro tunnels. And seeing how I plan on building a robot army that would attract a ton of attention if they were to travel on the surface, it would be good to have a way of masking and keeping their movements hidden. You never know who's watching, thus it would be in my best interest to stay as low key as possible.

But honestly, I'm more concerned about the Zetan aliens than anything else due to them likely having a hand in why the earth is currently in its radioactive wasteland state. Not to mention them having ships armed with massive death rays that basically have the equivalent firepower of a massive nuke at the push of a button. On top of that, they've been flying around the planet in their ships for the last couple thousand years abducting people and placing them in cryostasis to be experimented upon at a later time or for some other reason that I'm not aware of... yet.

After finishing that thought, I began getting sidetracked by the Zetan subject and started playing out many different scenarios and possibilities in my head and what I would in said scenarios. Eventually, I came back to the metro takeover and restoration plan.

I went a bit off track for a minute there so returning to what I was thinking about, to get those previously covered benefits I'll need to clear out any rubble blocking the tunnels, rebuild collapsed tunnel sections, repair any damaged tracks, and eliminate all hostile life lurking within the tunnels. Which will probably be mostly composed of Ghouls, Mirelurks, Mole Rats, Raiders, and Super Mutants.

I'm not sure how long it'll take to accomplish all that, but if I was to guestimate, I would say it would take several months to a year at the very least to get all that work completed. Though that time frame can be sped up dramatically depending on how many robots I'm able to churn out at the RobCo Facility and however many of those I can dedicate to those specific tasks.

For my physical training, I plan on directing my attention and effort to my strength till it reaches 11 before then swapping my focus over to agility till that reaches 11 too. Once that's up to par, I'll refocus back on strength because it seems to accelerate the development of my body the most and I would like to reach full body maturity by the age of 15 or 15 and a half, if possible.

That way, I'll have enough time left to run a cycle and make some serious strength, endurance, and agility gains in the gym. But if my body doesn't reach full maturity by that age, I'll just have to hold off on my cycle until I'm set up at the RobCo Facility and get a gym thrown together.

On to gear now. I plan on making a whole new set of kit in preparation for when my strength reaches 11 and I can properly use heavy weapons such as anti-material rifles, gatling lasers, miniguns, and tesla cannons without tiring myself out too much when wielding them. What I have in mind for my main weapon is a 7.62x51mm minigun.

That sort of caliber would have enough power behind it to deal with most hostiles from the fallout world. It is certainly better than this world's standard 5mm, that round never did a whole lot of damage, although it did possess decent armor penetration. And in the event that the minigun I make ends up being too heavy for me, I'll redesign it for 5.56x45mm which is still a pretty decent round, it just doesn't pack the punch that 7.62 has.

But with how my strength is progressing, I'll probably stick with 7.62 in the end since it can handle the more fearsome enemies better like Deathclaws, Giant Radscorpions, higher tier Super Mutants, Outcasts, and Enclave potentially. But I may need to use armor-piercing rounds to penetrate their power armor and even that may not work necessarily... So I'll probably build an Anti-Material Rifle as well specifically to deal with any enemies that can shrug off 7.62.

After that, I'll design and craft a whole new suit of armor to accommodate my future height. I've already gained a few inches in the last nine months and with the way things are going, I should reach my max height by the time I'm ready to set out into the wasteland in five years.

Proceeding to the armor's design, I'm thinking of making several upgrades from my last set, such as replacing the existing steel plates with larger and thicker steel alloy plates for a significant portion of the suit. In addition to that, I'll add a set of spiked pauldrons that will provide extra protection around the head, neck, and shoulders areas while also doubling as a weapon that I can use in certain situations if the need ever arises. Getting rammed or shoved by a spiked pauldron doesn't sound all that pleasant to me, at least.

The neck of the armor will also be getting an upgrade in the way of a couple of pieces of steel alloy that will follow around the neck similar to Jorge-052's upper left armor from Halo Reach to provide as much additional armor for my head and neck area as possible. All it takes is one round with enough penetration to my head and neck and it's game over.

As for the more technical upgrades, I plan on having the armor's gauntlets electrified so I can use them like a stun gun if I just want to incapacitate someone for a bit. Nevertheless, the gauntlets will have the ability to have their amperage cranked up to lethal levels on the fly, so they can be used for both lethal and non-lethal activities.

Finally, onto the helmet. I'm going to throw out the old altyn helmet design and replace it with a whole new helmet of my own design that fully encapsulates the head for full protection. It will look similar to a human skull with demonic elements for the added intimidation factor, though I doubt I'll be needing the extra intimidation factor when I reach full maturity.

Besides my aesthetic choice, I'll be implementing turret targeting modules into the visor this time around to alert me to targets I may not have noticed. On top of that, I'll build in a rangefinder function into the helm as well to assist me with my long-distance shots. I know that feature will be very useful for my future Anti-Material-Rifle's accuracy.

Other than those two upgrades, I'll be adding a voice modulation module so I won't have to take off my helmet when I want to speak to others. That'll reduce the risk to my life a smidge whenever I'm talking to wastelanders. Lastly, the new helmet design will get an air, gas filter, which will give me the ability to travel through areas with contaminated and or comprised air.

...

Hmm, that should be good enough for now. Amata should be showing up any minute now.

While I was finishing up going over the progress I've made recently as well as my plans for the future I detected Amata through the walls walking down the grayish vault hallway towards my home's front door to attempt to wake me up or climb into my bed, most likely the latter.

Well, I guess it's time to get up and return to work.

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If you want something else to read, that's similar to this, check out my other webnovel Wasteland Conqueror. It has a lot more chapters released.