THE TORIZE TIMES

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Two strips reach the bottom of the map on Balis

Xpofer Tomas and Patrick Convair have each taken a strip of Balis-Baurgh III from the top of the map to the bottom. Nineteen slabs apiece, laid one at a time, and not a tile skipped in either. Both strips were complete by Day 307.

The estate

Torize crews have laid forty-eight slabs on Balis since Day 289, twenty-three of them since the last edition. Xpofer added twelve, Patrick eight, and Wrec Soyak three. Wrec's strip stands at ten and he is still working down it. Every tile was checked for bandits and creatures before the builder committed, and founding holds a builder in place for an hour, so each finished strip is nineteen hours of standing still. These are slabs, not cities. The facilities follow the city design.

Hiring

Four seats are open: field prospector, city engineer, logistics and freight, and fleet crew. On the missions board a full city — slabbing the ground and putting up every structure on it — pays ten million. Two strips are laid. Terms are on the careers page.

What goes up on the strips is the next job.

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Twenty-five slabs down on Balis, and the riflemen change to the A280

Xpofer Tomas and two contractors off the missions board, Patrick Convair and Wrec Soyak, have laid twenty-five slabs on Balis-Baurgh III since Day 289, when the planet had none of ours. Each man is working his own strip of ground from the top of the map down, one tile at a time.

The estate

Patrick is eleven tiles into his strip and has not skipped one. Xpofer and Wrec are seven each. Every tile is checked for bandits and creatures before anyone commits, because the planet is set hostile and a city cannot be founded with anything still standing on the ground. Founding holds the builder in place for an hour and costs 2,500,000 on gas. These are slabs, not finished cities: the facilities follow the city design.

The ground force

The riflemen came to Balis carrying the Amban, a sniper rifle built for reach that has to be reloaded after every shot. The work here is not reach. It is clearing a single tile of whatever is standing on it, so they are changing to the BlasTech A280. It hits harder, 45 to 65 against the Amban's 30 to 60, at firepower 20 against 15, and it is lighter, 5.3 kg against 6.2. It gives up range, 9 against 13, which is range a single tile never asked for. The A280 comes off an X7 Factory Station, a hull Torize already runs.

What it cost

On Day 295 a slab went down on the wrong strip. The tile stands and is logged, so it is not lost, but it was 2,500,000 and an hour spent where nobody planned to build. The strip is now checked before founding, not after.

Hiring

Four seats are open: field prospector, city engineer, logistics and freight, and fleet crew. On the missions board a full city — slabbing the ground and putting up every structure on it — pays ten million, and Balis has more ground than three men can lay.

The strips run to the bottom of the map. The next edition should say how far.

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Crew get their own marked sets, and Blackstone's signature goes up

Any Torize crewman can now have a marked set of their own: avatars for the Combine, a separate one for Discord, and a signature card hosted on torize.com. Jake Blackstone's went live this week. Xpofer's has been up since Day 283. Anyone else who wants one only has to ask.

The kit

A set is six images. Three Combine avatars at 90, 100 and 200 pixels; one Discord avatar built separately; and a signature card at 400x130 and 800x260. The Discord one is a separate build on purpose. Discord crops an avatar to a circle and the Combine versions do not survive it, the corner mark sliced and the gold band cut at both ends. It gets judged at 40 pixels in a circle, which is where anyone actually sees it, rather than at 512 where everything looks fine. The signatures are hosted on the site rather than on Discord because Discord's own image links are signed and stop working inside a day. The ones on torize.com will still be there next year.

What it cost

The first attempt at Jake's set inset a crop of his portrait into the frame, on the reasoning that cutting the background out would leave a grey silhouette. That reasoning was never tested. When it finally was, the tool lifted the figure cleanly on the first pass — a crisp helmet rim, an intact visor, and a cyan glow that reads far harder against the navy than it ever did against the painting's mist. A prediction had been stated as a constraint. The rebuild cost an evening, and the lesson was to run the tool before predicting what the tool will do.

Hiring

Four seats are open: field prospector, city engineer, logistics and freight, and fleet crew. Paid weekly from the first week, and two of the four need no prior experience at all. On the missions board, a full city — slabbing the ground and putting up every structure on it — pays ten million.

If you want a set, send the art you want used and it will be built.

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Blackstone returns, and seventeen ships go back on the deposits

Jake Blackstone is back. He has been with this company longer than most of what it owns, he went quiet for a while, and he has come back and put nine squads of Y-8s to work. That is the whole of this edition and it is enough.

The fields

Seventeen hulls are mining as this goes out, all of them working deposits in one field. The current cycle is committed to a little over eighty thousand units of ore across six minerals. The richest deposits on the books are running at close to thirty per cent and turning around in under three days; the rest are working ten and eleven per cent ground on an eight-day clock.

What that costs

Roughly thirty-two million credits for the cycle, an average of just under four hundred credits a unit. The spread underneath that average is the thing worth knowing: the cheapest ore in the programme is coming in at sixty credits a unit and the dearest at nearly two thousand. Deposit choice is worth more than hull count, and the survey work that finds the rich ground is worth more than either.

Still idle

Twelve hulls are sitting. Some have no pilot at all. Every one of them is a deposit not being worked, and that is the plainest possible answer to why this company is hiring.

Hiring

Prospecting and barque seats are open. Paid jobs go on the missions board for anyone who wants an afternoon of it, no commitment either way. Terms are on the careers page.

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The paper restarts, and the yards do not stop

Publication resumes after a long gap. The company spent it building rather than writing, which is the better order to do those two things in, and there is a backlog of work to account for.

The estate

Twenty-eight cities are standing across thirteen asteroids, with a fourteenth rock under construction. Every one of them pays on the weekly facility run, which is the income the whole operation sits on.

The fields

Nine prospecting fields are held, six of them producing. Ten mining operations are running against a hundred and seven live deposits. Deposits decay in roughly six months whether they are worked or not, so extraction, not discovery, is the constraint that decides how fast the estate grows.

The yards

Sixty stations, twenty-five of them shipyards and eight factory stations. Thirty-two are in production. The barque line feeds the mining run directly: every hull off it is another operation working against the clock.

Hiring

The company is short of people and nothing else. Materials and ground already in hand cover another seventy-six cities. Four seats are open on the asteroid crew and paid work is posted on the missions board for anyone who wants an afternoon of it. Terms are on the careers page.

Under Czerka

Torize operates as a division of the Czerka Corporation. Contract construction on Czerka ground continues alongside the asteroid work, with Czerka supplying the minerals, the ships and the fees.