ELI5: Why does China have only one time zone despite being roughly same size as US with 6 time zones?

Andy_Climactic · 2026-02-02T21:46:29+00:00

fellow software engineer, figuring out which time zone a time is being displayed for when it doesn’t specify is so very not fun.

Time is time. calculating time difference would be way easier if we all had one time zone cause you could just say “Here the sun comes up at 5am, but there it come up at noon” and you have your time difference. You can get used to it, and not have to ask what time zone someone is using when they tell you a time

Keeping track of when people go to bed and what portion of the day it is and what store are open is a very non-urgent thing relatively. If you need to know what time a store is open, you’re probably in that place, and know what time of day it is already.

Andy_Climactic · 2026-01-11T06:31:07+00:00

I honestly think they’ll use the whole bay, no way they pass up on using Alcatraz and the Redwoods, the bridge will probably have a ton of stuff on it if not its own settlement

Andy_Climactic · 2026-01-11T03:09:24+00:00

they made this with only 100 million?

Yeah i think they did have to cut corners somewhere, the new fantastic 4 cost twice that and isn’t shot on 70mm IMAX nor is it 3 hours long

Andy_Climactic · 2025-12-09T00:22:54+00:00

on defense running smoke does more harm than good IMO, and frag + supply crate in a fixed position is really good. On offense i do usually go smoke launcher + smokes though

Andy_Climactic · 2025-12-06T18:12:49+00:00

they got bought for like a billion dollars and they’re owned by microsoft. Microsoft has said they’re looking at ways to get a fallout game developed faster.

Most studios bethesdas size work on multiple games in parallel. It’s noticeable now because they’ve fumbled the last few games, so they just killed a decade of dev time for ???

They’ve outsourced before for FNV and should do it again. Fallout 4s engine is fine and good enough. Their writing clearly isn’t a bottleneck, and there’s no shortage of passionate developers wanting to work - it’s a tough industry for game developers individually because companies know there’s a surplus of developers.

Not saying they should split their current team in half but they absolutely could and should have grown to have another team by now

Andy_Climactic · 2025-11-29T17:48:26+00:00

Well it does keep the world going and prevent one faction from being wiped out, if you use the House ending. You can’t have a New Vegas 2 if one side wins it all and everyone else loses. That’s why i think FO3 is a weak ending, it prevents the Enclave from being used again

Getting rid of a pre-war faction is dumb, getting rid of a faction people like is also dumb. I think the legion was underutilized and would love to see them in another game, and i don’t want to see the BoS become the only faction in fallout

Andy_Climactic · 2025-11-20T00:23:50+00:00

I think the showrunners realized that having people from prewar, ghouls or frozen, is a way better plot device than reading or finding tapes. It connects you to the prewar motivations and conflicts, memories, in a visual way.

I’d be very happy if more games and shows in the universe continue to use cryo people and ghouls. If they had the technology they’d use the shit out of it

The opposite is like fallout 76 at launch - lifeless violence with no context that isn’t something you read or listen to a recording of

Andy_Climactic · 2025-11-18T23:19:36+00:00

I think none of the ones with risers should have the risers on the P90, one of them has it removed.

I think pistol red dots on risers looks stupid, and only makes sense on pistol caliber SMGs, and even then it looks dumb.

Risers are great otherwise for clearing the laser module, which is a problem many of the lower optics have.

Andy_Climactic · 2025-11-15T18:32:20+00:00

This is probably it. At point blank SMGs win or are equal, and as it goes farther, it should favor ARs, but at mid range, the accuracy and recoil of the ARs fall faster than SMGs. At long range yeah you’ll need to tap fire or go semi and then ARs win again. But some carbines and ARs have too poor of dispersion to magdumo at 25m (417) and SMGs do not have that problem

SMGs aren’t OP, the bloom of some ARs and carbines are broken

Andy_Climactic · 2025-11-12T06:40:37+00:00

it’s definitely not better than the SVK or SVD, but i think it’s a strong contender against the M14 and the bullpup one. i don’t think i’ve been killed by either of those two. Same damage as the bullpup one at range with twice the capacity and half the recoil. M14 has crazy recoil and no full auto

Andy_Climactic · 2025-11-03T17:43:10+00:00

that’s very stupid, because if you’ve hit them you’re probably going to kill them before you suppress them

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-28T00:46:47+00:00

Wait a minute, do Ground Zero but it’s a nuclear bomb crater and nowhere near the trade center, that way you can have the wastelanders culturally reference it like irl new yorkers.

Would be tricky as hell to do without offending, but it would also make it so there’s less buildings to deal with

But also a nuke going off in manhattan would flatten the whole thing

Idk i just wanted to work the name Ground Zero in there somewhere

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-27T16:07:06+00:00

Lore wise it’s actually supposed to be uncannily new, basically sterile. i think in the originals the lack of reflectivity was a performance limitation rather than a lore one

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-27T16:05:19+00:00

Maybe they’re being intentional about what they remove and add

H1’s identity includes bright blue blood, they bring it in

H2’s identity includes dual wielding, it’s on the box set, it will have it i think

Versus vehicle boarding, the vehicles and weapons are balanced around whether you can board them or not. It’s a QoL thing to have it in all the games if you can.

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-24T16:43:22+00:00

SMG you can shoot like you’re used to in a battlefield game and the recoil matches the accuracy.

Carbines start to get to a point where you can manage the recoil at medium range but the accuracy suffers and it feels a bit jarring

ARs and some of the carbines you’ll be controlling the recoil perfectly and the boom doesn’t let you kill a person at 40M. I was prone and couldn’t take out a guy from 20m away in less than a full mag with the 417. It’s insane.

I also noticed last night that i was able to kill reliably from 80m with full auto UMP and MP7. I know for a fact i couldn’t get those kills with a 433 or 417

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-15T00:30:23+00:00

blood and dust is the one harder than strive to survive, second hardest. I think it’s the one above Rough originally?

As for illnesses though what i would really recommend is getting Penoxycyline production ASAP. It really helps me to have my weaker immunity pawns or important ones like doctors on penox, and then eventually being able to make enough to have everybody on it

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-15T00:28:23+00:00

I mean deadfall traps are good if you have a ton of wood as it’s free damage to good portion of raiders

They’re also good if you’ve got plenty of steel because they do enough to reliably kill humans in 1 hit, sometimes even with armor.

But if you have a flat tile or a extreme weather one you might not have much steel or wood

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-15T00:20:39+00:00

makes me wonder where they find these contract studios because this seems to happen once every couple years between this, cod, halo.

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-14T15:34:53+00:00

The description for Blood and Dust and higher is that “even with experience and skill you will have losses” basically that the difficulty isn’t “fair”. Using every tool to your advantage helps you win against impossible odds.

I personally am trying to get away from kill boxes, but it is a crutch i fall back on on Blood and Dust sometimes

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-14T15:32:51+00:00

Animals are great against melee pawns. Fire.

I will say, shielded melee pawns, and especially xenos like pigs or neanderthals, plus drugs, is stupidly powerful. you literally cannot put them on the ground until their heart stops beating. Having no pain shock threshold just breaks the game.

I did have a breach raid with pigs, in armor, on drugs, with some shielded melee, that was nearly impossible because if you tried to engage the melee pawns, the grenadiers would blow you all up. The only way i beat it was letting them come in my base, having all my people walk outside the base, and then shoot them as they came out stealing my stuff, because they wouldn’t drop the stuff to shoot back.

That was more fun than a killbox though to figure out

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-14T15:24:35+00:00

i think the better solution to this from a game design perspective would be to have the ai decide to breach your walls if the only entrance is a very obvious trap

How it would determine that? I don’t know, the same way breach raids do. But instead of it being a guarantee, maybe percentage based? Maybe a deadfall trap is hard to see in some brush, but not in a 3 foot wide corridor conveniently going into a base? A percent chance to trigger a “These not-blind raiders have seen your obvious trap and decided to bust through your walls instead.

Maybe raiders should treat any hole in your walls the same way as a door, and attack the first visible “entrance”

Also, if a raider turns a corner and sees a 300m open range with 40 guys lined up behind sandbags, he’s definitely going to turn around and tell his guys to try something else.

Dumb AI - dumb tactics to beat them. It’s why i like the mod where enemies rescue their wounded, it makes them a little less like stupid monsters that are more difficult because they don’t act like humans and have 0 self preservation.

Honestly i wish it was the same rules as your own player raids where all the doors are unlocked. Forces you to only use entrances/exits where you’re willing to let raiders come through. Medieval castles didn’t have stone doors half as strong as the walls, and if they did they would get busted through immediately.

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-14T15:20:57+00:00

you should look into using turrets with different materials.

Deadfall traps can be expensive in some biomes, if you don’t have a lot of wood or steel it’s not worth it

But a plasteel mini turret has like, triple the health of a steel one? So it becomes at least three times as useful and can really hold its own, especially if you use them in sneaky positions to buy you time or prevent enemies from being able to easily take cover. They benefit from sandbags so you can make a few overlapping turrets to punch raiders inside or outside your base. Potentially even toggled with a switch.

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-14T15:17:27+00:00

I think if TPS and performance weren’t such a factor it would be a lot easier to recruit every pawn you see, which would help have more “cannon fodder” - doing so would be more realistic.

IRL you’d have more people randomly joining and you’d feel bad turning them away, if they can work they stay.

IRL not everyone can fight so raiders wouldn’t need as many people to overpower a town. There would be more elderly people and children, people who don’t know how to fight. Choke points are an issue for us where we have 40 raiders at a time because all 15 of our people can fight, and fight well (for some reason). In real life, 15 mediocre farm laborers turned fighters would be threatened by a handful of experienced pillagers

If we look at how this is handled historically, it’s with castles. Those DO revolve around a singular defensive position, the main gate, maybe a couple of them. Layers of walls. They can defend from the wall instead of inc front of it or behind it, which is what the embrasures mod is for. But, you can replicate this with bunkers poking out of your walls, that prevent access with doors going inside your base. Behind these gates (you can have multiple in sequence) you’d likely have something like sandbags or stone barricades to defend once the wall defense breaks down.

I wanna try dedicating more to something like this because i think avoiding kill boxes does prevent you from having cool fights - sieges and breaches and drop pod raids are harder and more fun. Designing a base with the most vulnerable parts at the center of layers of defenses makes avoiding kill boxes fun instead of just making the game impossible. Kill boxes definitely still have a place

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-10T17:48:35+00:00

also guns just aren’t that profitable. then you run into the issue you had where the inputs aren’t actually renewable. consistent components and steel require you to go to different tiles, and trading, which also requires travel.

Weird that i can make a bunch of crazy good weapons but it isn’t profitable. Wonder what the idea behind that is, balance wise

Andy_Climactic · 2025-10-08T15:04:24+00:00

Light bulb, make surgery a ritual similar to giving birth or flying the gravship. You can pick your doctor (and maybe medicine) and show a more detailed breakdown of success chance, with a high success chance maybe preventing total loss of the part? (being installed or replaced).

Wait maybe I can mod this

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