Prime Base

[dragoon500ly]

Things have been a bit slow so I thought to get a debate started about Prime Base; specifically the various problem areas that are present throughout the module. The basic starting point is an old MP Guns & Gear List article "Unauthorized Prime Base Repairman", I have no idea who the author was, my hard copy was water damaged during a hurricane, but kudos to the original author!

"A) I changed the cover of the base. Instead of a ranch, placed in a very nontypical location I made this a location for one of the major charities of Morrow Industries, a children's hospital and hospice. This had several advantages: it allowed personnel to come and go in large numbers, with their families; since it was a real facility, the real patients, families, and staff provided good cover for Project personnel; it gave a good reason for large quantities of material to be brought up to the ridge; construction, enlargement and renovation of the many buildings at the hospital gave cover for Prime Bases' construction; the locals knew this to be a hospital for terminally ill children, they quickly learned not to get close to any of the patients or their families or to be surprised when they suddenly disappeared, this was put down to a death or recovery of a child, with the parents simply returning home; the facility could provide the core of a colony after the war; its mission would, possibly, shield it from the worst of the war, targeting a children's hospital is pretty low; it was good cover for shipping high tech equipment into Prime Base."

Not a bad idea. The hospice would also explain a small airstrip being built to handle mid-sized aircraft (one less thing to worry about when the Project goes operational).

"B) No one can pilot a helicopter through a few hundred meters of tunnel. I got around this by changing the natural cavern into a quarry entrance. A set of disused mining rails are on the cavern floor. The helo launch pad actually rides on these once the doors to the hanger have been opened. The pad moves out of the cavern, with the helo on it, then the helo is launched."

Have to admit, this is a very telling point, flying a helo through tunnels certainly qualifies as "an incredibly stupid idea". Don't know about the pad, I would simply have the helo moved out onto the quarry floor and launched from there.

"C) The cyclotron in Support needs to be put in its own bunker, far from anything you want to be alive later. Cyclotrons emit neutrons when in operation. These are bad to be around. I put all of the industrial stuff in its own cylinder, off the annex tunnel. This prevents an accident from rendering the entire base unusable."

Agree with this completely, I don't know about another cylinder, but certainly an additional tunnel with rooms opening off for such things as the forge (especially when conducting any sort of pours), the chemical weapons research facility, the cyclotron, and nice thick doors to cut off the area in case of an accident.

"D) The Decon Area is not very good. Where do the baskets go? No place, they just stay there until somebody walks through all the contamination to go get them and take them where? Here is my fix. Decon is a circular corridor around a central core. Dumbwaiters, with airlock doors, are at each check point. Baskets are placed in the dumbwaiters and automatically sent to a BIOLEVEL 4 containment facility. Using remote manipulators the items are sorted and undergo decon. Items too contaminated for reuse are incinerated. The operators work from the center of the core. The entire facility can be sealed off from the base by a smaller contamination reduction corridor."

This was one of the weakest areas of the modules. The module Decon Area, well, it can best be described as an accident waiting to happen.