The Strider

Development update. Everything here is in the current test build, 0.1.363. Details will change.

A rover from the hold

Sixteen kilometres is a long way to walk. Later in the colony's story, once the sawmill is running, the Meridian sends down something the expedition brought all the way from Earth: SMV-1, the Strider, a six-wheeled surface vehicle. It comes down the way the buildings do, in a cargo aeroshell under parachutes, and opens on the grass beside the colony.

The rover in side view: the cab with its door in grey primer, the alloy frame and bracing under the deck, the battery bay with its warning sign, six wheels under carbon fenders. — Built light: a sealed composite cab, then an alloy frame round the battery bay.

Everything aboard the Meridian was lifted to orbit and carried for decades, so the Strider is built light. The cab is a sealed, moulded composite shell, with the joints of its mouldings and rows of flush fasteners along them. Behind it there is no hull at all: a battery bay inside an alloy frame, carbon fenders over the wheels, an aluminium deck. The breathing bottles are wrapped in carbon, cargo travels in aluminium transit cases, and the solar wing's transit pin is still clipped on with its red "remove before drive" flag.

The rover from behind and above: two seats back to back on the deck, carbon-wrapped breathing bottles, blue water cans, aluminium transit cases under orange straps, a solar wing of two panels, a ladder and the spare wheel at the back. — The deck: two outside seats, breathing gas, transit cases and the solar wing.

There are two seats in the sealed cab and two more out on the deck, so a crew of four can ride together. Every wheel hangs on long-travel double wishbones and leans to sit flat on the ground beneath it, so it climbs banks and crosses broken ground without losing its footing. The front wheels steer one way and the back wheels the other, which lets it turn tightly for something nearly six metres long.

The rover crossing mounds of grass and dry earth beside a stand of conifers, each wheel at a different height. — Over rough ground, each wheel finding its own.

Electric

There is no engine. When someone takes the wheel, the contactors close, the inverter wakes with a rising chirp and a soft chime says it is ready. On the move it is all but silent. You will only hear the motors whine when it reverses.

One screen in the middle of the dash shows everything: the speed and drive, the battery and how far it will go, the rover from above with whatever its sensors see around it, and a map of the land, north up, with the way home.

From the driver's seat: the steering wheel, and in the middle of the dash a single screen showing the speed, the battery, the rover from above and a map; grassland through the windscreen. — From the driver's seat.

The rover's dash screen as the game draws it, driving: D, 22 km/h, the battery and its range, the rover from above with what its sensors see, the power to the motors, the map of the land and coast north up with the heading, and along the foot the cell charger, the solar charge and the cab air. — The screen, driving along the coast: speed, battery and range, the sensors, power and the map.

Driving drains the battery. Park in daylight and the solar wing turns to face the sun and fills it again. If you run it flat, it slows to a crawl but never strands you.

Its side holds a cell charger. When a torch's power cell runs down, it now leaves a flat cell in your pack instead of vanishing. Put flat cells in the charger and the rover brings them back to full from its own battery. The transit cases on the deck carry cargo.

The game's store window over the rover: three flat power cells and two charged ones in the charger, and the player's pack beside it. — Flat cells go in, charged ones come out.

Scroll the mouse wheel at the wheel for a view from outside, and again to go back to the cab.

Another sky, now in the test build

What was coming last time has arrived. On a clear night the stars are the real ones, moved to where they stand seen from Epsilon Eridani, with the two moons and the Meridian crossing overhead after dusk. The compass will not settle until Melanie sets it from the sun. And the whole land is on one map, north up, from sixteen kilometres across down to a hundred metres.