Several days passed before Hans spent another full morning in Ironford.
By then, the western freight yard no longer looked like a temporary position put together immediately after the Hive operation.
The first FOB occupied the route back toward Westgate, using the surviving warehouses around the original PCV as storage and recovery space. Permanent defenses covered the main approaches, while veteran squads rotated through the surrounding blocks and the remaining underground entrances marked during the cleanup. Recovery vehicles still used the yard throughout the day, although most of the larger Ironford stock had already been sorted and processed.
Two areas remained outside the general recovery work.
The collapsed building where the Broodmother had been destroyed was still treated as an evidence site, while the former Hive position farther inside Ironford remained under a wider restricted perimeter. Engineers had spent the last several days clearing safe approaches into both areas and marking anything that looked worth preserving instead of feeding it into the recovery chain.
Hans had already asked Tyrus and Cell 12 to inspect both sites once the Engineers released them. Kimmy would accompany them as well. She had been the only person during the battle who could separate the Broodmother’s local connection from the pressure belonging to the Hive, and Hans wanted to know whether anything recognizable remained now that both were dead.
Yunera was going with her. Hans had no reason to argue with that part.
The second FOB farther north was larger.
Hans had planned it that way from the beginning.
Its construction radius covered several old manufacturing lots and enough open ground to separate vehicle movement from the buildings used by the garrison. A Barracks and War Factory now operated inside the secured area, supported by the additional Power Plants and the other infrastructure needed to keep them running.
Existing industrial buildings around the System structures had been repaired where useful instead of being replaced simply because Hans could build something new.
The result looked less like Site Three and more like an extension of the Main Base.
Soldiers and squads could be trained there. Vehicles could be produced there.
Unlike in-game, Hans didn’t need to assign a single primary structure for production. If several Barracks or War Factories were available, he could distribute the queue between them and produce several units at once.
But he could also force every order through one particular structure if he needed the units deployed at that location. It would take longer, obviously, but sometimes location mattered more than production speed.
Supply traffic from Westgate could stop in Ironford instead of continuing all the way back northwest whenever a unit needed to be reorganized or replaced.
The permanent garrison reflected that difference as well.
Several of the max-promoted squads removed from the active platoons had been reassigned between the two Ironford positions, with the larger share staying at the northern FOB. The mobile formations kept their Guardian APCs wherever Matilda still needed them; the soldiers assigned to the bases instead took over checkpoints, patrol routes, facility security, and the sections of Ironford that no longer needed an entire platoon sitting on them.
Fresh squads remained with the formations still earning promotions.
Hans sat inside one of the repaired offices overlooking the northern yard.
The window had been replaced two days earlier. Outside, a newly produced Guardian APC crossed between the War Factory and the vehicle lane while another waited beside the maintenance area for its crew inspection.
Farther beyond it, the older industrial skyline remained uneven from the battle.
Some buildings were intact. Others were missing walls or entire upper floors.
The largest difference came from the ones operating again.
Three additional Industrial Refinery Complexes had joined the two already under Hans’s control, bringing their combined base output to one thousand Gold every day. The Industrial Logistics Center increased that income further, while the recovered Storage Yard pushed his conversion bonus to sixty percent.
The Heavy Manufacturing Complex had changed another part of the System.
Structures and mechanical units now received a ten-percent reduction in both cost and production time. Ground vehicles benefited even more once the Machinery Workshop applied its own reduction.
Hans had started using those discounts before Ironford’s main recovery stock was converted.
The first additional Power Plant cost only 7,200 Gold. By the time the third Storage Yard finished restoration, the recovery teams had already separated usable machinery, fuel, tools, construction material, and civilian supplies from everything intended for conversion.
What remained was still considerable.
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[ Industrial Storage Yards Bonus: +60% ]
[ Gold: 64,082 (+1,200,000) => 1,264,082 ]
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That reserve had paid for the northern expansion now operating around him. More Power Plants followed as the northern FOB, second Airfield, and permanent defenses came online.
Ironford had already returned far more than the Gold spent taking it.
He moved through the current Strategic Facility list.
Five Industrial Refinery Complexes, three Industrial Storage Yards, the Machinery Workshop, Fuel Storage Facility, Chemical Processing Plant, Industrial Logistics Center, and Heavy Manufacturing Complex now appeared in the network. The Military Medicine Wing and Vehicle Maintenance Depot remained farther west at the captured military position.
It was becoming difficult to remember when his economy consisted of waiting for soldiers to gather watches and rings from dead infected.
Hans leaned back against the chair and looked through the window again.
A truck convoy entered through the southern checkpoint. The guards checked the route, the vehicles continued toward storage, and the yard carried on around them.
Ironford had become his territory now. The northern FOB also gave Hans something the western freight yard could not. It extended the army’s fixed Radar coverage.
A Physical Radar Facility stood near the northern side of the base, positioned far enough from the production structures that the rotating array had an open view over the surrounding industrial blocks.
Hans opened its interface.
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[ Physical Radar Facility ]
[ Fixed Detection Radius: 25 kilometers ]
[ Energy Consumption: 100 Energy Units ]
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The new coverage circle spread far beyond Ironford.
Part of it overlapped the Main Base’s existing Radar coverage toward Westgate, but the rest reached deeper into the northern and eastern parts of Grefort where Hans previously depended on aircraft, Scouts, or his own presence to obtain anything more detailed than reports.
The new coverage enclosed the Nuclear Power Station to the north, while the northeastern district and several eastern routes also fell within it.
That gave Matilda and the northern garrisons a fixed picture of the surrounding terrain and movement without depending on aircraft reports or waiting for Hans to bring his own Radar closer.
He shifted to the Strategic Facility network.
The two newest entries were still unfamiliar enough that he had checked them several times during the expansion.
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[ Industrial Logistics Center ]
[ Strategic Throughput Coordination ]
Optimizes resource movement and distribution between Gold-producing Strategic Facilities.
[ Effects ]
Gold output from Gold-producing Strategic Facilities: +10%
Direct resource conversion is unaffected.
[ Energy Consumption ]
80 Energy Units
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Below it, the five refinery complexes appeared together.
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[ Industrial Refinery Complex Network ]
Operational Facilities: 5
Base Gold Output: +1,000 Gold / day
Industrial Logistics Center Bonus: +10%
Effective Gold Output: +1,100 Gold / day
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Eleven hundred Gold every day would not replace Ironford-sized recovery operations, although it was enough that Hans no longer needed to think of passive income as spare change.
The other new facility affected nearly everything he built.
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[ Heavy Manufacturing Complex ]
[ Integrated Industrial Fabrication ]
Links heavy manufacturing capacity with System production infrastructure.
[ Effects ]
System Structures:
-10% construction cost
-10% construction time
Mechanical Units:
-10% production cost
-10% production time
Applies to ground vehicles, aircraft, and naval units. Infantry training is unaffected.
[ Energy Consumption ]
100 Energy Units
[ Note ]
Cost reductions are applied first. Construction or production time is recalculated from the reduced cost before the facility’s separate time reduction is applied.
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The Machinery Workshop still applied its own vehicle-production discount separately, while the Industrial Storage Yards now provided sixty percent additional value whenever Hans converted eligible resources.
Three Storage Yards also raised the Ore Refinery bonus to fifteen percent, though most of that value would wait until Hans expanded the mining side of the economy.
Hans closed the facility list.
The door opened behind him. Matilda entered with a folder and placed it on the desk.
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