Portions of the tank are finally starting to take shape after another month of work. The second ship of dwarves that arrived had significantly fewer than the first ship, only a few hundred in total, so they've actually nearly finished constructing all their housing. With so many individuals working on mining, they've drastically expanded the tunnels under the mountain, having completed the main tunnels on the first floor that we planned on digging.

Between Zeb and a handful of the dwarves, they actually came up with a pretty good plan for how to go up and down layers in the mine. I had planned for a few sets of spiral stairs to go between floors, but that wouldn't provide nearly enough material transport as would be needed. The idea that is instead being implemented is for a third ring to go around the outside of the central area. That ring will be composed of ramps going up and down with cart rails laid between them, and cables used to help pull carts up and down, just like we'd done on the mountain. To handle the gentle curve though, there will be additional pulleys installed along the curve to keep the cable traveling correctly. All in all, there will be two pairs going up, and two pairs spiraling downward.

The central lines for trams were also completed, so in earnest the first floor under the mountain is done. The only things left to do are to actually build the tram power stations to allow those to be operated, and to extract the three ore deposits and the mana crystal deposit that they found.

The extra Iron that they'll need to implement the tram system will have to come out of the shipbuilding budget for the time being, since we're still constructing the next facility for processing basalt. Since the trams will speed up the excavation process for resources, it should be worth it. We've also started expanding the sulfide ore processing area to add in more ore roasting and smelting areas. I hadn't been over there in quite a long time, so I was quite shocked when I went there and saw that for a few hundred yards in every direction, the soil was completely dead and crumbly. Of course, with the amount of sulfur, arsenic, and lead that are probably leaking into the environment here, I shouldn't be surprised, but this poses some serious problems.

I've informed Zeb that the area is a high priority to reinforce and cover the dirt with stone supports in the dead area. Without any roots, even if we've redirected the water in the area, eventually, a landslide will happen here, the risk gets even higher as we put more surface weight into the area with more smelters and ore getting transported here.

As for the portions of the tank that I've been working on, I've managed to get most of the design for the full steam engine worked out. Because of the confined space, it took some hard design work to make it all fit. What I've settled on is actually a set of four compound steam engines powered by the one steam boiler. Each compound engine consists of 2 steam pistons in series to extract power. The reason for four engines is for both redundancy and space.

The steam enters into the engine through a valve, goes through two decompression cycles, then goes into a fan cooled condenser before going back to the boiler. The plan is for two condensers on the top of the rear of the tank, and two on the direct rear, each with their own fans to further cool them. An additional benefit is that the tank should be able to move and operate on a single engine in low mana environment, but in higher mana environments like our island, we can have all four engines going at once, reducing the steam load that an engine would have to individually handle.

Over the course of the next month, quite a few things happened. First, the new iron facility began operations, though we need to expand the steel ball bearing production now to compensate. The old facility making the ball bearings overproduced them in the past, so we have some stockpile, but we'll be going through a lot more of them, not only for iron production, but also for the tanks and ships we produce.

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Some of the dwarves are starting to voice concerns that they're not seeing how we're actually going to help at the rate we're going. While I previously had some concerns, I think we'll make it. The prototype tank should be up and running in another month, as long as I don't run into any major problems. In that time, we can already start some parts of production for the tanks, so that we aren't waiting on the parts. Things like the treads, armor plates, and drive gears and wheels can all be built in advance, as their use in the final product shouldn't be impacted by the design changes I make in the near future.

In order for the tanks to actually be useful though, a few things need to remain true on the dwarven mainland. First, they need to continue to hold Ostark. We do not have proper landing craft for the tanks, and developing and producing them would take additional time that we don't have. As such, they also need to build out a strong dock at Ostark capable of handling a tank that will likely weigh close to 100 tons. So, we've been giving Kao information that he can use as propaganda to keep the defenders in high morale so that they can hold out until the time arrives.

We're close to launching our fourth ship now as well, which is a good sign for us. Each ship we launch represents a faster delivery for tanks to the mainland. Our ships are only going to be able to haul one tank at a time, given their overall bulk, so having more ships is a must. Though there is another rate limit for us on tank production. Each tank requires a large fluorite crystal, and we only produce one a month. Increasing that rate requires more methanol, which we've now added into our production queue. First and foremost is the metal processing facilities for making components for the tanks, but after that comes methanol.

Tiberius has been making a fuss about the fact we have a handful of large fluorite crystals stockpiled now, and he wants to use them, but they're reserved for tanks. I've told him that if he wants to use them he needs to come up with a better weapon for us to use instead of them, then he can have them. He wasn't amused by my statement.

We pulled construction crews off of the air liquefaction facility for the time being, since we've now hit two mana crystal deposits in the mountain. They aren't large deposits, but they represent enough mana crystals to integrate into a few dozen tanks, so our priorities have shifted for the time being.

Given the way the situation has been developing on the mainland, we've also started only sinking the larger ships and canoes, rather than including the dinghies. The elves don't seem to be considering helping directly anymore on the dwarven continent, so we're preserving our ammo for use in the tanks. They can fight on their own continent for all I care at this point. It might make them more upset with us, but honestly, it's their own fault. We're still sinking the biggest threats, but we're not really being paid to help them, we're being paid to help the dwarves.

The prototype tank, while clunky, is functional a little ahead of schedule. After only 22 days, rather than the full month, we had assembled and began testing the full prototype. There were a few minor corrections to components that I've laid out in the final design as a result of those tests. While I'd normally want to do a major revision, we don't really have the time for that right now. We're going to begin a full production line for this version with those minor corrections included.

We'll see how many we produce while I begin designing the first major revision. I expect within the next month, we'll have the ability to start producing one tank about every ten days, at least until the large fluorite crystals run out. I've really started to shift my schedule around a lot to handle all this, and have been doing a lot of walking. During the day I'm assisting in the design of new facilities and prototyping, and at night, half asleep, I walk over to the fluorite mine, do two runs in total extracting material, then walk back to repeat the cycle.

As such, I haven't actually had much time to work on the major revision for the tank, but that's probably for the best. I imagine field data we collect will contain far more corrections and changes than anything I've thought of. To raise morale here on the island, I gave a demonstration with the prototype tank for a bunch of the dwarves who have become leaders within various communities of workers. They seemed impressed, so I'm hoping that increased morale will result in higher productivity overall. I'm personally a little disappointed by some of the performance of the weapon systems I've implemented, but again, there will be time for revisions in the future, and the current implementation is still impressive in its own right.

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