Customer Edwin Pennybrooke wants his 78 year old Bretonian Liner to operate at full efficiency. The issue? It's 78 years old and probably on the verge of exploding. The engine has totally gone kaput, which is to be expected from an engine that's been trying to produce power for almost 80 years.
To be honest, I'm surprised it actually lasted this long. You see, the Pennybrooke was made during a large scale industrial boom in which BMM attempted to manufacture transports and other large vessels at a 150% efficiency increase. Naturally, many of the ships built during the boom were simply faulty and had to be recalled as early as 745 A.S. The Pennybrooke, just caught the end of this industrial boom, which explains it's ability to remain strong over this period of time.
Basically, I don't wanna touch this thing, but I fear I may have to. I'll be getting the chance to have a look inside and poke around with the controls and garbage soon. Wish me luck.
To be completely honest, everything I was expecting was as anticipated. To note, she's simply stunning. Look at that hull colour, the internal decoration, the old Bretonian culture, it's all eye candy.
As expected, the hull will need a refit, that's obvious from the first sight of the machine. I suspect that we won't be able to tap into the supplies that are being used for capital ships, so we'll have to import ablative from Rheinland. I'll get George onto that, since all he does is lounge around all day. A fresh coat of paint or something to liven the outside would help too. Hopefully, we'll only need to redo the insides.
After have a look at the engine, it's apparent that power distribution matrix simply went bust after so long. Not only will that need to be replaced, but we'll also need to rewire the wires that extend to the engine, bridge and cargo bay. That should take an entire day, if we're lucky. According to resource management, we'll have enough fiber wiring to cover this machine.
Those appear to be the main 2 issues. The sooner we can get the ablative plates from Rheinland, the better. We'll start with the wiring, as we'll have to strip back some of the internal hull anyway to replace the fried wires. Then, we'll just replace the walls and coat them with a fresh coat of paint. No problem, right?
Since the Ablative finally arrived to my department, I can begin refitting the insides with the practically bulletproof armour.
Taking off the hull was a breeze with the hull simply falling off with the touch of a screwdriver, hammer, dissembler and a whole lot of patience. After we managed to peel off the hull of a giant a ship, we started to apply the ablative.
Naturally, this took far longer than anticipated.
With my team of 3, we quickly realized how slow the process is. We began with the shaping of the the plates, which took multiple measurements and visits to the shaping facilities on Southampton. After we were content with the shapes, we began the tedious process of drilling, nailing and bolstering the plates to the hull.
Finally we managed to get the hull completed, which ended up looking quite nice:
The Pennybrooke post internal reconstruction
With a fresh coat, this baby will be ready to hit the town!
...that's if we can get it off the ground first...
With the hull done, we can finally crack open the top of the Pennybrooke and get into the veins and arteries: the wiring complex.
Starting from the engine, we were able to bust open a few panels to start digging around in the wiring. To our surprise, the wiring was still intact, but could barely be classified as wiring.
Evidence of frayed wiring
After lifting the panels off of the main wiring vein, we began tearing them out. We weren't exactly worried about being electrocuted as the ship had been totally shut down earlier and the wires couldn't even support their own weight yet alone an electrical current.
We basically plowed through the wires at this stage, it was kinda fun to lift them from their bindings and such, since they snapped so easily. We were totally ignorant to the fact that these might have killed someone someday, but it was still enjoyable.
Naturally, the Niobium-Titanium alloy wiring of yesterday years were totally redundant, so after a few checkins and requests, we were able to receive 250 meters of Fibre Optic Wiring, with non conductive covering to follow.
Applying the new wiring was a tedious project, with us having to be extremely careful with the expensive wiring. A contrast to our previous endeavors where we tore through the wires with unrelenting force.
Either way, we got the job done there. Naturally, we had to then move onto the Energy Distribution Matrix next (EDM for short).
BMM generally keeps a supply of these on Southampton, to our luck. We'll be using the standard Bretonian Civilian Matrix.
BRE - XC112 EDM
We tore open the engine distributor to see that all was in generally good condition, barring the EDM, of course. It had been totally fried, with it not even responding to a test input later on. Thank goodness we got the Pennybrooke now and not when that thing went kaboom, otherwise we'd be in trouble.
It was simple to remove, since the thing literally fell out after we shifted it a few centimeters. We fixed up a few of the inputs, outputs and wiring then plugged the new EDM in.
We booted up the engine from the bridge and to our suprise, we were greeted with a happy Bretonian hum of the engines.
Checking the energy levels revealed the matrix and wiring were working in harmony to bring the Pennybrooke back to a 99% efficiency rate. I marked the project done and headed down to the pub for a long drink.