I had mined plenty of fluorite in the eight days that I had spent that I wasn't ed about running out for a little while, so I turned my focus on pnning out this research base's yout. I only had a few days until the first stru crew would show up to start building the residences, so I quickly started pnning where some of the buildings should go. There are a few design straints that I o work around in the design.

  First, I wahe resideo be clustered in one pce, and have them in the safest location possible. Even if the industries here are usually safe, I think it's a good idea to pn for the eventualities that some future expansions might end up being less so. Ultimately, that led me to wanting to pce the residences on an edge, away from the hillside. Ultimately, I actually want there to be two entrances into this fort, ohat goes directly to the residences, and ohat avoids them. It's a fairly on practice, and should limit actal exposure to materials being transported to and from the facility as a whole.

  As for other buildings that we pn on having, I'm ed about a few of them. The cryogenics facility could be dangerous if kept too close to the residences, but there are mitigations we take to prevent failures from spreading very far, so it's not that dangerous. However, the facility where I pn on having hydrogen produced, and where we'll make stirling engines, is a bit higher risk, sihe hydrogen has the potential to explode.

  So, the way I'm currently thinking of designing things, we'll build a small raised reservoir for water between the residences and the cryogenics facility. The cryogenics separations and ste will go on the side of that building that is furthest from the residences as well. Should any liquid gas happen to be released, it should i with the reservoir first, and safely evaporate, rather than freezing any potential bystanders.

  Over closer to the b, we'll build the stirling engine facility where they'll be manufactured. Sihe crystal pting has to be installed deep underground anyway, that should help lower the amount of hauling the rge metal pieeed to gh. We'll also need our own food supply area, and we should probably have a general ste for tools or other non-hazardous supplies he residences.

  I think I want there to be between 60 and 100 residences here, to help aodate any future buildings for a while. By building the residences on the edge of the facility, it should also make expanding the number of people retively simple iure. Ultimately, for what I have pnned out, this area will take up about 25% more space than our innermost walled se of our city, which was the inal goblin vilge's area.

  I just barely finished marking off all the areas as the stru team arrived four days ter. I ultimately decided on mostly goblin sized apartments, with a single building dedicated to potentially rger demons. This work doesn't cause any accelerated leveling, so most of the demons who work here will be goblins for decades if they choose to prestige only.

  There is still quite a few days left until the rge fluorite crystal is potentially ready. We do have a few 12-inch crystals that we've grown of the pure iron doped fluorite, and those crystals should be big enough to power the casting facility that I want to make for various parts of stirling engines.

  While many steel items are created via regur bcksmithihods, on many occasions, we've created molds using stoneshaping to create the desired final shape. While that has performed retively well, especially when using specially heated lightstoo remove any water that might be in the mold, I think we'd be better served by using a wet sand mold process. Which means they'll need fine sands, and a det source of water.

  For the sand, I'd still like to use lightstone as the source material. The lightstone will be crushed then ground to a fine size, then tumbled to round out some of the jagged edges. Ohe sand is made, it be shaped using pre-designed pieces that match most of the design specs for specific stirling engines.

  The cast pieces will theo be filed and smoothed in order to be pleted, and then the engines will o be assembled from those parts. Thankfully, there aren't that many parts that go into a stirling engine. Though some parts, like the steel wool, will o be drawn through dies rather than cast.

  As far as sizing the facility goes, we currently grow a 36-inch crystal in 20 days, and a 12-inch crystal every 5 days. From the 12-inch crystal, I currently have us make two slightly different stirling engines, and I haven't yet determined how many engines of what shape I want to make from the 36-inch crystal.

  I think that moving forward, the idea of making the pos into repceable parts is probably wise. So I'll be ging the design of the two 12-inch crystal pte stirling eo be a single eype that has two different crystal pte carriers. Since I'd rather have the rger engihe most effit one, I'm going to make the four pte carrier engine suffer the efficy loss of fitting into the other form factor.

  However, when it es to the 36-inch crystal, with repceable parts in mind, I want to make three different ehat use up the crystal. Ara rge ehat uses a 2-inch thick cut from the very ter of the crystal. Then, we'll cut three 1-inch thick ptes from either side of the crystal. Giving us six rge ptes to use for anine design. , we'll cut more ptes down until we're at 14-io a side. Those ptes be cut into quarters, and used in the previous smaller engine size that we're already designing. Then we'll cut another handful of ptes out, making a third engine size. Finally, a handful of ptes agai to the 12-inch crystal size, providing us with dozens of those stirling engines per 36-inch crystal.

  Which means that to keep up with even the current crystal growth rates, we o be produg multiple small stirling engines a day, as well as at least e engine per day. Nevermind the fact I also want to have space to do other casting projects, like making more cryocoolers here.

  We already have a problem when we're making molten iron in other locations. In essehe temperatures involved are hot enough that they damage our furnaces over time. So every few cycles, we have to have a stoneshaping goblin repair them. Likewise here, we'll probably need multiple furnaces for melting iron in, and a full time stoneshaping goblin to repair the inactive furnaces.

  This facility will also get very hot. So, simir to the fluorite facility, I pn on installing many rge fans in the facility walls to keep air flowing and temperatures bearable inside. The floor pn is going to end up quite rge, so I'll probably be quite busy for a while. I'll once again be hiring a handful of goblins to help haul materials for me, so that I focus on building out this manufacturing facility.

  After another fifteen days, I went to che the new 36-inch crystal. This time, it came out as a fully funal single crystal. Even with the low mana underground, it was incredibly hot initially. However, over the course of an hour, the temperature fell to a muanageable level. The ambient mana level also fell quite a lot in the main room. Which I discovered while trying to figure out why the crystal was getting cooler.

  It seems to be rge enough that it verts more mana to heat than the room gains in new mana. After ing most of the ambient mana, it fell to the level of rept, which was still very hot. Since I'm nowhere near ready to design the stirling eo use this crystal, but I at least know what sort of ptes I want to use, I took a day cutting the crystal down to the shapes and sizes that I want, while also showing the goblins who work down here how I want not only these heat crystals cut, but also the 12-inch crystals.

  Sihe excess heat is starting to be a down here, I've decided to dig out a e room down here for all the crystal pting before I resume stru oirling engine facility, which I've only just finished getting the fl built in. Hopefully, by having the crystal ptes all be in a single room which is closed off via a hallway with two doors, the ambient mana in that room will be low enough that heat shouldn't be a problem. If it is, we could always try installing copper heat sinks to hold the crystal pting, and drive the heat into the ground, rather than the air.