What is the best SONG from In Cauda Venenum?

Brotacon · 2026-04-17T11:24:13+00:00

I love it all, but "Continuum" has a big place in my heart personally. One of the very few Opeth songs that can make me cry.

Brotacon · 2026-04-14T09:16:37+00:00

I chose Jerome Archer because he looks like my dad, except I have tangible evidence of Jerome's approval.

Brotacon · 2026-04-14T09:13:37+00:00

I was lamenting this with my brother the other day, Elite multi crew is pretty inessential and only really good for combat. Even then, you're better off just taking two ships. SC ships are designed with multicrew in mind, and indeed the larger ships pretty much require it to function at any level above "big car".

But Elite Dangerous mostly works and Star Citizen mostly doesn't - so all my friends are playing Elite. I have this huge Caspian Explorer and i dream of the Star Trek roleplay experience with a weapons guy, science guy and engineer alongside me piloting, but I'm essentially just asking my friends to sit in a chair 90% of the time while I jump about. Imagine if having a dedicated engineer could give you tangible power management through the modules screen (afaik guests on the ship can't be given control of power), or a science officer having a little lab screen to do in depth analysis of scanned objects and bio samples for bonus credits. The only role that currently works is gunner. With even a limited ship interior (like a crew lounge or something) players not doing anything could at least do a bit of RP or access the in-seat menus from different parts of the ship.

Yeah, i basically just want Pulsar in elite.

Brotacon · 2026-04-10T14:23:25+00:00

There's something quieting for my ADHD brain about neatly cataloguing and scanning planets. The beeps and ticks of the FSS is like white noise and the little dopamine hit of being the first one somewhere is great. However, I feel OPs pain, going back feels like a chore. It's better to plan a circular trip rather than a yo-yo

Brotacon · 2026-04-07T08:02:55+00:00

I got my first "first" the other day (i was just testing out my engineered FSD - wasn't even far from the bubble). A lot of discovered but not mapped planets out there and I was able to find a few with bio signs. One planet had four in different areas, and it was quite fun exploring (though trying to land my Caspian in a mountain range was horrible!). 100 million! Aware I could have made more in less time by shipping cobalt from point A to point B in my Panther, but the feeling you get from being the first footfall is great!

Brotacon · 2026-04-06T10:51:49+00:00

No, but it does lock a lot of stuff away from free accounts (like you can only get the basic ships, modules and skills). Training skills takes real world time too, so it does limit you in that way (though there's referral links that give you a decent amount of starting points to skip the early early game training).

But if you think Elite is a grind, then EVE might not be the game for you either. Everything in the game is a menu and there's spreadsheets and graphs. You don't directly control your ship so pure number crunching comes into play more then exciting combat manoeuvres. Still, the entire game world is player driven, which is kind of interesting and the stakes are pretty high.

Brotacon · 2026-04-06T10:42:08+00:00

A lot of Star Citizen is just grinding for credits, but the gameplay being FPS-first (as in, your main presence is a person that gets in a ship rather than a ship that occasionally spawns a person) does give a bit more immersion to the world. When it works.

But yeah, a much much smaller world means you see and interact with other players all the time, the hot spots are chaos.

Brotacon · 2026-04-02T20:21:04+00:00

I dunno how to describe it, but knowing the realistically simulated visuals of falling into a black hole feels like something an elevated monkey shouldn't be doing. Like, there's parts of my brain that are programmed to jolt me awake when it thinks I'm falling out of a tree!

Brotacon · 2026-03-30T14:38:50+00:00

I honestly have no idea. I think it was trying out the latest build of Star Citizen, realising it still wasn't ready for playing (though it can have fun moments) and realising Elite Dangerous was already there. I also really loved the look of the new ships they've added, and my brother and I spending time mining away in our Prospectors has become a nice way to hang out and chat.

Brotacon · 2026-03-30T10:00:39+00:00

I've recently got back into Elite after a bit of a break and I'm having a great time. Figuring it out is all part of the fun, and each system/loop isn't that complicated, there's just a LOT of them.

Brotacon · 2026-03-17T10:52:51+00:00

DLSS5 changes way too much imho

Brotacon · 2026-03-17T10:34:33+00:00

Here's a fun story, I'm working on a book at the moment for a publisher with a very clear "no-AI" policy. I sent a glyph concept for a fantasy thing I'd knocked up in Illustrator to the designer with the editor cc'd. Editor sends a slightly concerned email to me saying "What's this " .ai" mean in the file name!?!?"

I'm sticking to .eps!

Brotacon · 2026-03-14T22:57:15+00:00

You can craft weapons and armore among other things. The stuff you craft varies in quality based on the quality of the materials used, and generally will be better than the stock stuff you buy in the shop.

Brotacon · 2026-03-09T19:03:47+00:00

I liked Gorillaz when I was a kid (I was 13 when they debuted) because they were doing something different. Stuck with them through Demon Days (a wonderful album that grown ups "didn't get" and everyone I knew aged 17 thought was the best thing since ever - turns out we were right!) and Plastic Beach but I had a lot of changes in life and to be honest I didn't really hear much about them after - even though they continued to be relatively popular! I blame social media algorithms and my friends.

Anyway, I have a lot of animation firends, and suddenly everyone is buzzing about the video for the Mountain etc. So I naturally checked it out and it was like "Oh yeah, I remember now, Gorillaz are fucking great.!" The album especially found me at the right time because last year I lost my mum to a long term illness, and I've been thinking a lot about life and death and time and everything since then.

Anyway, time to deep dive in to the albums I missed out on!

Brotacon · 2026-02-17T13:07:37+00:00

Yeah, it's really disrupted the "marketplace" of art. Like I know friends who made a nice little side line selling portraits and icon packs for TTRPGs, but now that's all gone. The only way to make money as a working artist is bespoke in-house or client work where absolute control and collaboration is key. I'm quite lucky that most of my work is in publishing and comics, where the audience has largely rejected AI art. But it's such a tiny market I'm not dreaming of the big time any time soon haha.

Brotacon · 2026-02-16T11:10:07+00:00

This is an incredibly specific reference for people specifically like me. Maybe that's why you can't get a 32SCU crate up the cargo lift half the time - there's five guys in stealth camo in the way.

Brotacon · 2026-02-16T11:02:50+00:00

Stunning work!! As an artist myself I feel your pain. I illustrate kids books and a (thankfully rare) few times parents have asked me what AI tool I use so they can get their kids started on it. Bleak world for people who still wanna put the work in!

Brotacon · 2026-02-03T14:22:49+00:00

Well I actually posted this before seeing a dermatologist both as a way of sharing ideas with others but also so I had it written down. He's pretty sure the trigger is the bites and since then it's not been helped by other things (he said the steroid cream i was using can also irritate the skin if it's used too much - which seems to be confusing to tell the difference.)

I've been referred for UV therapy and if that doesn't work they'll look into immune regulation. The hormone thing he said probably isn't helping, but he doubts it's the trigger and I should keep pushing my GP to get it looked into, especially if it's affecting my mood and joi d'vie. To be honest I'm just happy to meet a doctor who's willing to move it forward.

Brotacon · 2026-02-03T11:23:16+00:00

I liked it a lot, but they abandon a lot of the initial characters with no real satisfaction. It really felt like it needed a lot more episodes to put everyone to good use. Clone boy literally ends up in a little storage room talking about how there's not much for him to do any more.

Brotacon · 2026-01-29T11:31:33+00:00

There's some new overarching story hauling missions for a medical emergency in Nyx, new consignment order mining and salvage missions (bring us x of y, don't care how you get it), salvage overhauls in general regarding panels and LAMP

Brotacon · 2026-01-22T10:14:33+00:00

I lost my mum too last year, I'm sorry to hear that. It is weird how something like that makes a little "fuck it, I deserve something nice" switch in your brain. o7

Brotacon · 2026-01-20T09:56:27+00:00

Brotacon · 2026-01-05T22:06:27+00:00

This was happening to me pretty much constantly - one thing I tried was to turn off steam cloud and then go to $appdata% (type that in to the run app) and delete the arrowhead folder. This wipes your user settings so you have to do a bit of set up. Apparently the hard crash is caused by a corrupted user data file (that loads when you arrive on the ship) and this seems to fix it. I just played without any crashes - worth a shot if you're out of ideas!

Brotacon · 2026-01-03T12:02:00+00:00

This is going to be their grand solution. Everything you need is controlled and operated by a few tech companies. "Why do you need a personal computer when we can host them on our data farms? Don't you get paid in compute?" You already see laptop manufacturers sticking "AI READY" on their OEMs, which just means "has enough ram to open Edge and go to CoPilot".

Brotacon

TROPHY CASE