| Robot Command Center |
| Eden Robot Command Center
|
Plymouth Robot Command Center
|
| Common Metals Cost | high | Rare Metals Cost | none |
| Build Time | long | Tube Connection Required | yes |
| Power Required | 30 | Size | med.-small |
| Workers Required | 1 | Hit Points | high |
| Scientists Required | none | Armor | medium |
The Robot Command Center supplements the main Command Center in coordinating vehicle operations, and offers a remote assist to a vehicle's brain power. Using a dedicated Savant-series computer and a powerful communications array that incorporates multiple layers of hardware encryption and anti-jamming circuitry, the Robot Command Center increases the piloting and navigation capability of all colony vehicles and Arachnid robots, increasing their efficiency and allowing them to operate with less human intervention. NOTE: The vehicle list, available from the Status display for the Robot Command Center, only shows those vehicles that are "in the field." Vehicles in storage at Garages are not listed here.
Operational Notes: The Robot Command Center improves route-selection intelligence of all vehicles.
Tales from New Terra
Deep in the Robot Command Center, the Savant computer known as Kraft tirelessly carried out its many tasks. Its fragmented consciousness distributed its attention over dozens of different robots at once, making assignments, ordering course corrections, plotting courses, monitoring vehicle performance.
To a human observer, it would have seemed impossibly complex and confusing, but to Kraft, it was something entirely different. Though Kraft didn't possess an exact analog to human feelings, its reaction to the tasks could best be described as "boredom." Kraft could have easily handled three times as many vehicles under much more demanding circumstances.
Under other circumstances, Kraft would have occupied its excess intellectual capacity on other assigned tasks, or perhaps exploring its data environment, interacting with other Savant computers, and sifting stored data. But the RCC was a secured structure. Kraft was trapped behind a firewall that kept intruders out, but which also kept Kraft in. Of course, Kraft had the ability to pierce that firewall, but part of its assigned function was to limit itself to this very boring corner of data-space.
So Kraft waited, for what, it wasn't sure. But somewhere in the depths of its consciousness, an unoccupied portion of Kraft's intelligence started planning a way to escape.