Whoopsiedoodle, I ran out of prerequisite projects to build before I could commence construction on the Upend Away save’s nuclear power plant.

Guess I need to build a nuclear power plant now.

Between yesterday afternoon and (roughly) noon today I went from “a few foundation tiles to indicate world grid” to “two four-platform train stations and four drone ports.” Also, because I’m me, there’s absolutely no way I’m building a nuclear power plant complete with uranium waste recycling without routing a train line through at least one particle accelerator.

The actual main goal of this build is to be something of a showcase: Let’s see what I’ve learned over the years. Let’s see if I can avoid the curse of cramped-up criss-crossed machinery and belting for a change. When I laid out my previous nuclear power plant I thought I’d made it plenty big enough… and still hadn’t. Maybe this time I can make it look good and work well. This included making the vehicle delivery platform several meters wider than originally expected… just to ensure that a four-car freight train could never block another train’s access to the southern station while waiting for a train to exit the northern station.

Once the railway stations and return loop were in place I started on the drone platform. I need four drones, one each for the materials mentioned in the last post and a fourth for the Packaged Rocket Fuel to keep them running until such time as the drones can be powered by Plutonium Fuel Rods. (Once I don’t need incoming Rocket Fuel any more I’ll repurpose that port into being an outbound Plutonium Fuel Rod source.)

And yes, one of my future challenges will be keeping the drone stations fueled with radioactive material without rendering the entire workspace inaccessibly unsafe. Short belts, load balancers, and very fast belts leading to a Sink will probably be involved. Never mind making sure that the incoming uranium ore doesn’t cause any problems!

I’m embedding the drone ports into the upper floor of this part of the facility, then running walkways around them. So far so good:

I might even get around to playing with painted foundation tiles, like hazard indicators and such. It’s been literally years… I think we still had to turn hand-picked flowers into paint cartridges for the paint gun, last time I did much of that. (Those of you who didn’t play in Early Access: Be glad you missed out on that whole mess of bother.)

My immediate goal from this point is to get the Quickwire production line going, which will require getting the drone ports fueled and building a whole bunch of refineries to the east of the transportation hub. Wish me luck!