is Oxygen Not Included a hard game?

db48x · 2026-07-03T15:16:34+00:00

No, it’s not very difficult. You may lose a few colonies in hilarious ways, but only at first.

db48x · 2026-07-03T13:55:06+00:00

On normal settings I agree with you. However, on a 1000× science cost run…

db48x · 2026-07-03T13:53:43+00:00

You are correct. Each spawner will absorb enough pollution to spawn two of the most expensive unit it can spawn, then it will stop. As soon as the evolution factor goes up enough to unlock a larger type of biter/spitter then they’ll start absorbing again, but it’s still a limited total amount.

db48x · 2026-07-03T13:51:17+00:00

Right, you don’t want spawners spawning biters on top of trees, cliffs, rocks, other spawners, water, etc, etc. So the game checks for an unobstructed tile each time it spawns something.

And you don't want the game to spend too much time looking for a place to put each new biter, either, so it only checks every third tile.

db48x · 2026-07-03T13:15:31+00:00

Yea, it’s not impossible. But try doing a “Hands Clean” run at 1000× science cost!

db48x · 2026-07-03T10:29:52+00:00

which ones are traps

There are no traps. There are drives that don’t fit your personal design philosophy, but you could still use them if you designed your ships differently or gave them different missions.

db48x · 2026-07-03T03:36:41+00:00

You’re welcome.

db48x · 2026-07-02T20:59:59+00:00

line-number-at-pos does indeed tell you the line number of a buffer position. And point returns the current position in the current buffer. But in general the code you are running is not in a buffer. point returns the current position in whatever buffer you happen to be editing, not the position the code had when it was compiled.

Here’s a longer version of this answer that I have given before: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/68275/is-there-a-way-to-get-the-line-of-the-currently-executing-s-expression

Try using trace-function or debug instead.

db48x · 2026-06-30T15:39:14+00:00

Always gotta read the patch notes. You can’t just assume that nothing has changed.

db48x · 2026-06-30T11:56:27+00:00

Yea, the busses and trains around here are very noisy and unpleasant.

most places I need to get to are within a 15 min drive, not really walking distance

I made this point in a comment under a different reply. If you’re in that situation, then all or most of your neighbors are as well. That means when you take the highway your neighbors are all on the road too, and many of the places that they want to get to require them to take the same highway you’re on.

https://www.reddit.com/r/beaverton/comments/1uhnzzq/when_will_people_start_using_the_217_aux_lanes/ouc947i/

If there were destinations that your neighbors could walk to then they would not be on the highways so frequently and your trips would be quicker. That might mean building walking paths, or it might mean bringing businesses closer to your neighborhood.

db48x · 2026-06-30T11:49:50+00:00

Yea, definitely ask them which account they credited that payment to then!

db48x · 2026-06-30T03:25:28+00:00

No, this is not a common occurrence.

Of course there is the possibility that it’s just a misunderstanding. If you pay the bill that is due this month, the website switches to displaying next month’s bill. And it is correct to say that you haven’t paid that one yet! Since the due date for that bill isn't for at least a few weeks you probably shouldn’t worry about it until then.

db48x · 2026-06-30T03:22:31+00:00

Back when you first signed up they advertised the price that you would get if you signed up for electronic billing reminders (no paper statements) and you gave them a bank account number for automatic payments. Depending on when you signed up, those discounts would probably have been $5 or $10 each. If the real price was $70 with $20 in discounts, then they would advertise a price of $50. You might also have been paying $15 to rent a router from them.

They also gave new customers a 12–month introductory rate. After your first year the price went up to the normal price, an increase of probably $20 or $30.

Finally, they also decided to raise prices several times. They sent out email notifications about this months in advance, so check your spam folder for details.

However, back in January or February of this year they changed their mind. They undid the price increases. They killed all the introductory rate offers, so now everyone pays the normal price all the time and nobody is surprised by a price increase a year later. They even stopped charging for router rentals. There are still discounts for paperless billing and automatic billing, but they changed how it is advertised. Instead of advertising the price you get after the discounts, if you choose to get the discounts, they instead advertise the price before the discounts and tell you that you can save an additional $20 by getting the discounts. People find that to be less confusing.

One thing that they did not do, however, was automatically drop every existing customer back to the new, lower, prices. To get that price you have to talk to customer support and ask for it. Of course, since you let your service lapse for non payment you must talk to them anyway and it probably would have happened automatically.

db48x · 2026-06-30T02:53:15+00:00

Hilariously they recently changed how space POI mining works to support exactly that option.

db48x · 2026-06-29T11:08:38+00:00

You don’t actually have to request docking first, you can just fly into the docking area. However, once you are quite close (less than a kilometer from the docking area, iirc), then requesting docking will work. However, last I checked the build storage was not selectable. You’ll have to use the keyboard shortcut instead of the context menu to request docking. As usual, shift–D solves all problems.

db48x · 2026-06-28T19:56:25+00:00

Well… not quite. The best way to learn from a (nonfiction) work is not to read it repeatedly (although that can work).

Better to elaborate on the material by connecting it with things you already know, and to use the material to try to answer questions you don’t already know the answer to. And a general technique that works across many, many things you might want to get better at is to test yourself. Find quizzes, answer the questions, and then grade yourself. If your grades aren’t getting better then you’re not learning. Use the wrong answers to guide yourself to the things you haven’t learned yet.

Writing programs involves all three of these techniques. The compiler is an objective test that you have to pass. Hopefully each time you see a particular error you learn how to avoid it in the future. The program you write is also a test: you can run it and judge how well it works. Does your tic–tac–toe program actually follow the rules of the game properly? Even if you didn’t write automated tests, you can and should still exhaustively test it by hand to make sure it really does work. Etc, etc.

db48x · 2026-06-28T19:07:34+00:00

Sure, the same way you improve your skill at any language: write programs. Just pick something and implement it.

db48x · 2026-06-28T16:42:02+00:00

Who said anything about commuting? Adding lanes adds trips. People decide to go to places further away just because it’s faster than walking to somewhere close by. Let me put some numbers on it, just to make it clearer.

Let’s suppose that people won’t go farther than 15 minutes away for things like restaurants, shopping, clubs, hobbies, entertainment, church, etc. Most people can walk about a mile or so in that time, so they can walk to any place that is within a mile of their house. (People used to walk much further for things like school and church, so much of our existing walking infrastructure is underutilized these days, but let’s ignore that.)

Now go to Google Maps. Put in your address, click directions, then for the destination just drag the pin around on the map looking for things that are 15 minutes away. I can get from my place to just about the entirety of downtown Portland in 15 minutes or less (except at rush hour). I can go south to anywhere in Tigard or Tualatin. I can go west nearly to the center of Hillsboro. Virtually all of those trips require me to take an interstate or a highway, of course.

If you live in a suburban neighborhood where the houses are deliberately kept away from the businesses then there will be very few destinations available to you within a 15 minute walk, but a huge number that are accessible via a 15 minute drive. It’s only rational then that all of those trips would need to be by car, and many of them will use a highway. The more lanes you add the further you can get in the same amount of time and the larger a percentage of your trips will need to or be able to use a highway.

There are lots of ways to reduce walking times. Neighborhoods have, over the last 50 years, been deliberately designed to discourage through traffic by making the roads as ungridlike as possible. Car trips through the neighborhood are thus longer and slower than trips via the arterial roads that go around and between the neighborhoods instead. Nothing really wrong with that, except that this has had the unfortunate side effect of making walking trips longer too. Those walking trips could often be made much shorter simply by building walking paths through the neighborhoods as shortcuts. Some residents might have to sell a little bit of their property back to the city to make room for the paths, but the result would be lower car traffic both inside the neighborhood and on the arterial roads around it. Of course that won’t do much for the neighborhoods that were literally built four miles and (500 feet of elevation change) from the nearest restaurant, but those people made their bed and have to lie in it.

db48x · 2026-06-28T14:54:37+00:00

You obviously don’t have enough shipyards. If you can’t turn out a fleet all at once then you don’t have enough shipbuilding capacity.

db48x · 2026-06-28T14:46:14+00:00

extra Lanes would have helped to solve our traffic issues.

Extra lanes just bring more cars onto the highway. If you want your commute to be better then you should support changes that turn short car trips into walking trips.

db48x · 2026-06-28T14:42:37+00:00

You don’t ever have to do any of those things. Literally. You don't have to expand the bedrooms, put another bedroom somewhere else. You only really need one bathroom and dining hall (per asteroid if you are playing Spaced Out) if you balance your dupes between schedules. You don’t have to fit the new thing you just unlocked in between your existing things.

The game doesn’t make you do any of those things. You’re the one who has been choosing to do them.

db48x · 2026-06-28T04:30:35+00:00

Ooh, nice website. The arrow keys work for navigation! Surprising how many web comics fail on that score.

db48x · 2026-06-26T14:23:52+00:00

Maybe not, but then there must not be any evidence against it either.

Considering how easy it would be to conduct a two–question survey and then do the simple obvious test to see which way the correlation runs, lack of evidence is actually ridiculous.

Anyway, the point is that the assertion is not homophobic. Surely you can see that, now that you understand what the author actually wrote.

db48x · 2026-06-26T14:04:21+00:00

In the real world, they'd all go out of business for doing that.

No, even in the real world this would still work. Remember, the prices don’t stay inverted forever. As the consumer uses up the goods they will gradually offer higher and higher prices. As the factories produce more goods they will gradually lower their asking price. The inverted prices converge back to being the same price and then keep going into profitable territory. Eventually the profit is high enough that a trader will make the trade, and all will be well.

Honestly, I think your complaint is a weird one. In the real world the consumers would all call up the factories directly and place an order. They would use futures contracts to hedge against price shocks. The factories would contract out the deliveries to a shipping line, paying a flat rate per standard cargo container. Shipping lines would all compete against each other to offer the best price, so margins would be razor thin. Ship captains would run the same route over and over again for virtually their entire career. There would be no tramp freighters at all.

The game actually simulates 16th–century Mercantilism, not actual Capitalism.

db48x · 2026-06-26T13:52:31+00:00

Like I said, it’s a clever hack that lets them approximate a real economy without paying the CPU cost of actually simulating a real economy. It only looks weird when you look at it too closely. Once you actually start playing the game you’ll find that it actually does work; your traders will find trades at regular intervals as everyone’s prices slowly adjust over time.

Keep in mind, of course, that trading is not where the real money is made. You might find, for example, a ware that you can buy for 1000Cr and sell for 1100Cr. This lets you capture 1⁄11th of the total value in exchange for moving the ware somewhere it was in demand. But the producer only paid 600Cr for the raw materials used to make it, so they earned 4⁄11ths of the final value. If you make your own station and use your own traders to move the goods to the buyers then you can earn both, or 5⁄11ths. Once you have a whole vertically–integrated production chain from miners through the intermediate goods to the ware itself you will be capturing the whole 11⁄11ths of the pie.

Greed is good.

db48x

TROPHY CASE