Apocalypse Survival: Starting with a Shelter

"The 6th level doesn't need major changes. We can refine the planned four functional areas: the livestock farm, multi-level parking garage, large equipment assembly center, and mechanical laboratory."

"Construction can proceed while in use."

Excavating and reinforcing the vast underground space is only the first step. The subsequent interior work, including various installations and facilities, is a massive project.

The 6th level, with its 12-meter ceiling and 3,000 square meters of space, could be considered a plaza, a residential area, or even a small underground city.

Maximizing its potential requires an enormous investment of resources and time. However, given its size, there's no need to complete it all at once.

Instead, Su Wu decided to develop only a portion to meet immediate needs, leaving the rest for gradual expansion. This phased approach made daily workloads more manageable and minimized the need for a dedicated construction crew.

A few construction robots, supported by their machine-dog assistants, could handle the tasks during downtime, ensuring steady progress.

The multi-level parking garage dominated the 6th level, occupying 2,000 square meters—two-thirds of the space.

It wasn't just a parking lot but effectively a barracks and drone nest, serving as the centerpiece of the 6th level.

When fully built, the parking garage would consist of eight levels.

The bottom four levels, each with a height of two meters, could collectively house 520 vehicles such as the standard-sized ore transporters. Larger spaces could be temporarily allocated for larger vehicles like battery transporters or cargo trucks.

The upper four levels, each one meter tall, were designed for compact drones and machine dogs. These mechanical units could contract most of their components in storage, occupying no more than 0.75 cubic meters each.

At full capacity, these upper levels could accommodate 10,500 units of machine dogs or drones.

This would effectively allow Su Wu to field a fully equipped mechanized armored division, securing his dominance over Jianghe City.

Of course, reaching that goal was a distant prospect.

Apart from the few machine dogs Su Wu brought back, the shelter had yet to produce even a single new unit.

The military's combat units currently consisted of three drone squadrons and five crawler-robot squads, with many of these forces stationed at Zhou Xiwu's and Jingyuan shelters, limiting their availability.

Progress on the parking garage was directly tied to Su Wu's strength and influence. The closer it came to completion, the more secure his position among Jianghe City's shelters.

Conversely, until the garage reached a critical level of readiness, Su Wu's actions would be constrained.

Adjacent to the parking garage was the large equipment assembly center, one of the four core areas of the 6th level.

This space, however, served mainly as a support facility for the parking garage.

Its primary role was to maintain and repair the vehicles and robots stored there, as well as to equip them with additional combat modules and ammunition during emergencies.

At only 200 square meters, the assembly center was a modest but vital component.

The mechanical laboratory shared a similar scale and was equipped with a large scanner capable of analyzing the internal structures of devices.

This allowed Su Wu to reverse-engineer manufacturing blueprints, making the laboratory a strategic asset with increasing importance over time.

The livestock farm, the final component of the 6th level, occupied 600 square meters.

It was divided into a 500-square-meter vertical pasture for growing fodder and a 100-square-meter multi-story building designated for raising pigs and cattle.

With this addition, Su Wu's shelter addressed its last major vulnerability, achieving complete self-sufficiency. From now on, the shelter could sustain a pre-apocalypse standard of living without relying on external resources.

"As for the 7th level," Su Wu mused, "it's ready to begin its transformation."

Unlike the 6th level, which required careful, incremental development, the 7th level needed to be operational immediately.

The 7th level was designated as a basic components processing factory, specializing in the mass production of standard parts with minimal precision requirements.

This would alleviate the burden on the numerical control machines in the 2nd-level manufacturing center.

During Su Wu's absence, the manufacturing center had been dedicated to producing large processing machines.

These standard machines didn't require survival-point enhancements and cost little beyond the raw materials used. Once connected to a power source, they could start producing components immediately.

According to the AI's calculations, one standard large processing machine had about 20% of the efficiency of a numerical control machine but could handle around 80% of a device's standard components.

In other words, by adding just 20 processing machines, Su Wu could fully unlock the manufacturing center's potential without compromising production quality.

"The 7th level processing factory exists to boost the manufacturing center's output by up to five times without consuming survival points," Su Wu observed.

Checking the inventory, Su Wu saw that the planned 20 machines had already been produced and transported to the 7th level, awaiting connection to power and materials.

Wasting no time, Su Wu dispatched an engineering robot and a construction robot to oversee the factory's operations.

The factory's first task would be to retrofit the two crawler-robot squads currently stationed at the farmhouse shelter into machine dogs and arm them with the new Federation-standard weapons.

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