@Anabel @Martin @Myrm @Col_Mustard_Ret @jboimler @krakentoa - you successfully salvaged some more union (or probably more appropriately: unioned some salvage).
On entering the Wild Hills, you did the Contour mech convey a favour by pulling them out of the mud, only to betray them by siding with the locals when they got to the lake and filled up on water. Through a coordinated ambush that used a sonic attack, a scramble pulse and some suicidal outriders, you were able to quickly pick off the Hussar and Dropbear guards, forcing the Tech 5 Carrier to surrender to you (before being loaded with the damaged but repairable carcasses of its guards). During the scramble, it did however damage its own Plasma Cannon.
Taking your new mech (and mech shells) with you, you explored the Rainmaker repeater station, where beyond not catching any oversized mutant frogs, you did find an automated message pointing you towards the subway system in the Drowned City. With that in mind you: 1) of course stripped the place for Tech 3 scrap, but then 2) went back to the Ceres to start your week long journey to The Terraces.
The requisitioned Carrier is too big to fit on your fledgling Ceres Crawler, but its systems and modules can be unloaded and used elsewhere or scrapped for scrap. It has the following details:
Rallier Pattern Carrier (worth 9 Tech 5 scrap if chassis is scrapped):
Systems: Plasma Cannon (damaged), Mole Torpedo, Escape Hatch, Locomotion System, Multi-Phase Shield
Modules: Mech Scrambler, Multi-Optics, Neuralink, Communicator
In total, you gathered 27 Tech 1 scrap, 1 Tech 2 scrap, 28 Tech 3 scrap and 4 Tech 4 scrap. To pay upkeep (3 Tech 2) and upgrade to Tech 3, you spend 1 Tech 2 and 16 Tech 3 scrap, leaving you with: 27 T1, 12 T3, 4 T4.
While your crawler cannot automatically repair the Dropbear, you could used 3 T4 scrap to repair it if you wish.
You should all gain an ability using the skills file provided above and can also request any 1 system or module of your choice up to Tech 3 (by paying its tech level scrap value, the third number on systems and modules). These are all listed now here.
Looking forward to next time!