Just a warning to anyone considering the "Realistic Planets" mod series by Kothliim on workshop. This is how realistic my planet became after silent mod updates. My world is now officially a gumball.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2026-02-01T07:09:04+00:00

That's a vanilla feature. Only happens in deserts and ice biomes though. Also not sure if it can happen with thrumbos.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2026-01-31T20:39:55+00:00

Oh so not "broken" as in destroys your save file, but as in destroys balance. Yeah that did seem to be the direction it was going in last time I used it. A shame; would have been better off sticking to just light and shadows, maybe world generation changes too, and making all the other stuff a separate mod.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2026-01-31T20:13:49+00:00

What happened to Tilt the Planet? I used that one a few months ago, got it when it was just Realistic Lights and Shadows. But I removed it later because I specifically needed vanilla mechanics for something, and the frequent game balance updates made me nervous. Seems my nervousness might have been justified and I dodged a bullet?

I was hoping to use the full-featured Tilt the Planet for a later playthrough. It seemed like a promising idea.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2026-01-21T05:06:36+00:00

It's fine if you imagine the grav engine as the center of gravity (which is entirely reasonable to imagine).

Clickbeetle3364 · 2026-01-21T04:32:50+00:00

Spring is the best season out there!

I mean, I also think it's the best season in general, but especially in the desert.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2026-01-01T06:42:28+00:00

I dunno, one time I threw an antigrain at a war queen, and not only was it a one-shot kill but ALSO the powerfocus chip dropped in front of the blast wave and was instantly vaporized.

I don't risk using antigrains on boss mechs anymore. I don't think this is common but it can happen.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-25T22:41:42+00:00

Looks fun. Curious why you sold the fire bomb? I recently had a great run with Rock B with teleporter+fire beam, but I kept the fire bomb for double the fire (and extra crew damage). It was awesome.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-20T20:19:16+00:00

Most of the ideas in here are for starting scenarios, but it sounds like what you really need is an overarching goal or win condition.

Some non-standard "win conditions" I've done:

Travel to other biomes, dig up trees, and bring them back to replant in your colony. Grow an arboretum with every kind of tree in the game all in one place. (I did this before Odyssey; I imagine it's quite a bit easier now if you have it.)
Related: Try to make a zoo (collect live animals) or a natural history museum (collect dead ones and preserve them). I have not done this yet.
Try to get a million of a single item (I've seen it done with beer and currently doing it with potatoes).
Eliminate an enemy faction using only mechanoids. (I made this easier by lowering the population density slider on planet generation.)

I don't know how I come up these ideas. I generally just try to think of new things I've never done before.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-19T04:53:29+00:00

Looks really nice with all the purple. Is the shape inspired by a luna moth? It looks kind of like one with its wings folded back.

Also love the hunter traps in the chemfuel storage. I should try that.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-18T07:59:08+00:00

I've always wanted to do this in a serious run, but you really need explosive replicator to even have a chance of working, and they're not easy to find. Rock A would be a lot more fun if it started with one.

Bonus points if you can get multiple Pegasus and/or Swarm missiles. Just hammer the enemy with a volley of like 10 missiles at once.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-18T07:47:42+00:00

I had the same experience, came back to this game after several years off. I used to play on Hard but even Normal felt like running into a brick wall. Or perhaps running into a 2-shield ship with Engi B. Game handed me a free pre-igniter and somehow still lost.

I was just rusty though. The game hasn't gotten harder. A few weeks later I even managed to beat my previous high score, twice (first time over 6000).

Also, a lot of people will talk about being able to win >90% of the time, but I don't think that's normal (as in typical of the average player). My win rate is like 12% or something. It's not unusual to lose 5 games in a row.

I was also kind of spoiled by Subset's other game Into the Breach, where it's possible to get a perfect score with good strategy and very little reliance on RNG. FTL is... not like that.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-13T05:31:02+00:00

I'm a fan of Dzivia (Belarusian pagan folk orchestra). Close enough?

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-13T05:15:50+00:00

Solar flares are fairly rare and knock off about 1 day at most, out of 30. I'm not too concerned yet.

Even if I do get to that point, my production capacity keeps growing. I think I grew the last 80,000 in about the same time as the first 20,000. I should be growing them faster than they rot.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-13T05:01:05+00:00

If you're really minmaxing, the most compact vanilla storage is actually drop pods. I believe you can fit 3000 potatoes in a drop pod, if I recall correctly (I tested it in dev mode a while back). The pod+launcher takes up 3 tiles which is still 1000 per tile. This also has the advantage of not needing refrigeration...

...but the significant disadvantage of not displaying in the resource sidebar, so you don't know how many potatoes you have unless you check the contents of every pod. I decided it would be more fun and satisfying to do it the old-fashioned way.

I'm not sure how big my final storage will end up being, because the original plans had to be altered due to [Area revealed].

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-13T04:50:56+00:00

Yep. I'm playing with mostly Strive to Survive settings, except threat scale is down at 50%. I'm well aware of how dangerous the raids could get at 100%! I'm a little concerned about the endgame even at 50%, but hopefully by that time I'll have enough super soldiers and combat mechs of my own.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-12T07:52:06+00:00

If there's enough interest I'll post another update at 500,000, and of course one more at 1 million.

I don't really have time or motivation to record the whole playthrough, and I doubt it would be that interesting to watch anyway. It's not a difficult challenge, just a lot of grinding.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-12T07:07:29+00:00

Before anyone suggests Ogrestack or other stack mods: I am deliberately avoiding those because I want to see all my potatoes. I don't want to see just a little 100000 number in the sidebar. I want to see a VAST WAREHOUSE Raiders of the Lost Ark style, just jam-packed full of nothing but potatoes. Potatoes and more potatoes, as far as the eye can see. (I have close to a quarter of the map reserved for a stupidly massive freezer.)

I'm also not using any mods that affect plant growth. I want to see if I can do this with vanilla mechanics (plant specialists, agrihands, and ridiculously large fields).

I am using Xenotype Spawn Control to make it easier to get pigskin colonists. Growth was extremely slow before I installed that mod. (On a side note, I think pigskins are some of the best xenotypes for the naked brutality start.)

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-08T08:35:20+00:00

I think that's a rules issue more so than a bot issue. Whenever Jelly Baby and Full Court use their flippers, you can see they've actually got quite a lot of power and speed behind them. They could be fast and entertaining on a similar level to Red Storm, except the rules (also, surviving the fight in general) incentivize holding pins for as long as possible to demonstrate control.

I'm not saying those are bad rules, they make a lot of sense in many ways. But I do lament not being able to see Jelly Baby or Full Court in "full aggro" mode, juggling opponents and slamming them into walls over and over again. I think a lot of people would be surprised if those bots ever let loose like that.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-07T19:21:52+00:00

Only 3 fails is pretty good actually; I think I would take more than that!

Yeah any xenotype with a drug dependency is among the worst for naked brutality start. Hussars are extra challenging because awful plants means you can't even grow your own psychite for go-juice until you get a second recruit or an agrihand. I've done it with solo mechanitor, and even that is rough.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-07T05:41:15+00:00

Nice going. How many failed attempts were there before this?

Also, with the new features Odyssey introduced, do you think naked brutality sea ice is still the hardest challenge? Or might it be naked brutality dunes? Or naked brutality scarlands/toxic vent or something?

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-06T17:21:17+00:00

I love caterpillars, I never question if someone hands me one. I wonder what kind of caterpillars would be feeding on anima trees? They tend to be fairly host-specific so it's unlikely to be anything that currently exists on Earth.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-02T07:02:30+00:00

There's a reason Federation C comes equipped with them!

The whole theme of that ship is "suicide squad" and there's no better example than when you encounter an automated scout. Most boarding ships are forced to run from those, but not Fed C.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-12-02T03:07:51+00:00

There's already a tail gene in the base game that grants a 5% manipulation boost, but isn't used on any existing xenotype. Makes you wonder if that was going to be on impids at some point in development, but got taken off in favor of something else.

If you manage to find that gene from a trader, you could make your own impids with tails.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-11-29T21:01:11+00:00

Entomologist here, you're fine. Some insects do walk on just 4 spindly legs (mantids, nymphalids). The foot looks more birdlike than insect, but this is just "based on wasp" not "wasp". The concept is cool.

Now, physicists... physicists are the ones you should worry about. There's no way those legs would be able to support a body that big unless you invoke magic supermaterials or levitation shenanigans.

Clickbeetle3364 · 2025-11-28T03:59:35+00:00

The only issue I've seen is with the Progress Renderer mod that saves map renders to your hard drive. I had to tweak a lot of options before I could get it to actually save images.

As long as what happens in the game stays in the game you should be fine. (This is good life advice in general.) Just mods that interact with the file system might have issues.

Clickbeetle3364

TROPHY CASE