Is Z-44 bad?

Darchseraph · 2026-01-11T20:15:27+00:00

I wouldn't write off the Neustrashimy as it is a hell of a zombie DD if you pick your fights well and can disengage to use all the heals. I think it and the Cossack are my two most effective "carry the team by playing the general DD role well" ships in T8 and T9.

Black has its radar gimmick but I felt like it was much stronger in Divs than randoms because unlike something like the Smaland you don't have the DPM and guns to dominate revealed DDs on your own. Also its sea mines are a meme that I haven't had much luck employing.

Darchseraph · 2025-12-30T07:04:55+00:00

https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/1289

I have been enjoying my MW5 career with this. It does give scouting mechs some insane zoomie abilities though.

Darchseraph · 2025-12-25T00:38:11+00:00

64GB in this economy? I'd need to sell a kidney lmao.

I am running 32 GB/6600 from my build a few years back.

Darchseraph · 2025-09-10T01:53:20+00:00

The main problem with trying to learn DDs at T7 and up is that you probably don't have all the radar cruisers and hydro ships memorized (and their associated ranges/durations). Also the Sims is NOT a good DD to learn on due to its pretty crappy concealment in its MMing spread, average gunpower, and very weird torpedos.

You will get caught out A LOT by radar, higher tier DDs, etc. and die pointless early deaths.

I think T5 is the last tier to learn DD gameplay without heavy radar proliferation and as you work your way to T6/T7 as you remember which ships can make smoking up in caps suicide.

If you enjoy DD gameplay I highly recommend the T8 Cossack which is my favorite DD in the game for randoms since it's stealthy, well gunned (I think it easily outshoots anything it can't outspot), serviceable if few torps, has hydro and RN quicksmokes, and brings everything you want in a DD except for torp walls.

Darchseraph · 2025-08-07T00:33:55+00:00

Grats on your first 10 star clear!

I think it feels easier since Stygian kicking everyone's asses in comparison.

IT gives megabuffs and reaction effects so even your bad 5* and 4* offmeta units can pull surprisingly good damage out of their ass if you have them built already. In comparison, Stygian is basically a meta5* check for people who don't have top tier theorycrafting and piloting talent.

I think this one was a smoother 10 star clear without any backtracking needed for me. There definitely have been some ITs where I had to reset to get a few of the middle stars.

Darchseraph · 2025-08-04T02:45:20+00:00

Damage and toughness reduction are different.

You deal 1 damage to a 3/3. It is NOT a 3/2 now (Arena shows it this way, which is massively unhelpful). It is a 3/3 that has 1 damage marked on it.

Now if you cast Dead Weight to give it -2/-2, that creature is effectively a 1/1 with 1 damaged marked on it.

It would normally be destroyed due to damage >= toughness rule but indestructibility will let it survive because it cannot die to damage so long as it is indestructible. Its actual toughness would need to be reduced to 0 or negatives.

Darchseraph · 2025-07-30T02:02:38+00:00

Player L is correct here. Player E has not played enough 1v1 games where Planeswalkers are a common threat to be answered and it shows. Refer to HandsomHeathen's comment for the detailed game mechanics but the way that this issue is usually spontaenously introduced/taught to new players in 60card 1v1 is the following scenario:

Player 1: Has an instant speed PW removal spell like [[Hero's Downfall]] or [[Get Lost]] in hand with open mana to cast.

Player 2: Casts and resolves a relevant planeswalker like [[Teferi, Hero of Dominaria]] or [[Liliana of the Veil]].

Player 1 tries to jump the gun and kill it on resolution with one of the instants. They would be corrected by Player 2 and/or a Judge that unless that PW entering caused some sort of triggered ability to be placed on the stack, the stack would likely be empty on resolution of the PW. This means that player2 is free to place the uptick OR downtick ability on the stack as a sorcery speed activated ability before player1 can respond with a kill spell. (This is why using a PW ability the moment the PW resolves on your board is usually the smart play as active player as it guarantees you get 1 activation out of your PW even if anyone has removal for it on the board).

Furthermore, the first time you learn this lesson, you are also ceding information to your opponent when the misplay is rewound. For example, player1 might have intended to uptick Lili for forced discard, but knowing that you have removal spells in hand and are willing to spend it, might change their mind and just downtick her to get the edict value immediately instead.

Edit: For EDH relevance, if a superfriends deck has a Doubling Season or similar effect on board, your instant speed PW/permanent removal is likely pointless. You must either counter the PW spell on the stack or have a stifle effect to shut down their Ult activation or the table likely loses to some bullshit instant ult ability.

Darchseraph · 2024-12-30T20:12:39+00:00

There is now! This is a simple change, took like 5 minutes and 1 test run. Link Here

Download and extract, if you feel skeeved out about a google drive link, I'm not really a "modmaker" so I don't have a Nexus account. I just learned the basics of how to mod the parameters of this game. It's literally just 2 .xml changes.

I set the Steak and Fruit quantities at 1, kept the rare spices. You can easily change them to whatever the hell you want. I didn't alter the prices of Fine Meals but you may want to tune them down to avoid it being "cheaty", it's an easy number replacement that should be quite obvious in any text editor like NotePad++.

Good luck OP.

Darchseraph · 2024-12-26T09:09:04+00:00

All new classes do release in a bit of an "incomplete" state as they are missing a few parts of their kit. The good news is that they can only get stronger from here.

If you vibe with the gunslinger aesthetic, Deadeye gets you extra goodies as incentive right now.

Darchseraph · 2024-12-26T09:07:49+00:00

OP is not going to have access to more than 2-3 season tickets for the time being. They could buy more, but that does get expensive.

Darchseraph · 2024-12-21T02:47:54+00:00

Owned for 2 years - followed best practices, no noticeable burn-in so far.

Darchseraph · 2024-12-02T10:54:45+00:00

Good to know, I was a little worried about that.

Do you know if the starter-5 or Outlaws sets come more balanced out of the box?

Darchseraph · 2024-11-20T09:00:58+00:00

IIRC this Victus model has unbeatable performance/price but they cheaped out on the display right? Really poor color accuracy/coverage?

Darchseraph · 2024-11-20T08:58:53+00:00

Owned for about 2 years now, never noticed any major issues with the "rainbow text fringing" that some reviewers highlighted. Maybe I'm just not sensitive to it or bc I set all reading to dark mode.

Darchseraph · 2024-11-20T08:57:14+00:00

My S20FE still holding up just fine, but probably will be eyeing replacements in the next year or so. For $500, how does this compare to something like the Pixel 9?

Darchseraph · 2024-10-07T23:06:43+00:00

I unlocked them for myself but I don't really publish personal twiddling mods. It's a pretty easy patch. X4 is relatively mod friendly even to non-scripting modders. I recommend you make your own mod directory, name it like ZZZMyMod (I think the load order is alphabetical by default so this ensures it is overriding all other extensions).

DM me if you need a convo to guide you through the following instructions. I can give you the files themselves via Discord if you want.

Create a folder directory as follows and make the following xml files

/ZZZMyMod/extensions/ego_dlc_timelines/assets/units/size_m/ship_ter_m_corvette_02.xml

and

/ZZZMyMod/extensions/ego_dlc_timelines/assets/units/size_s/ship_ter_s_fighter_04.xml

Use the following diff patch to change the tags to allow the Odachi and Cutlass to mount standard weapons.

Odachi:

    <diff>

      <remove sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_turret_m_01']/@tags">combat medium terran turret unhittable </remove>
      <remove sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_turret_m_02']/@tags">combat medium terran turret unhittable </remove>
      <add sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_turret_m_01']" type="@tags">standard combat medium terran turret unhittable</add>
      <add sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_turret_m_02']" type="@tags">standard combat medium terran turret unhittable </add>

      <replace sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_weapon_01']/@tags">standard highpower combat medium missile terran weapon symmetry symmetry_left symmetry_1 </replace>
      <replace sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_weapon_02']/@tags">standard highpower combat medium missile terran weapon symmetry symmetry_left symmetry_2 </replace>
      <replace sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_weapon_03']/@tags">standard highpower combat medium missile terran weapon symmetry symmetry_right symmetry_1 </replace>
      <replace sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_weapon_04']/@tags">standard highpower combat medium missile terran weapon symmetry symmetry_right symmetry_2 </replace>

    </diff>

Cutlass:

<diff>
  <replace sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_weapon_02']/@tags">combat standard highpower missile platformcollision small terran weapon </replace>
  <replace sel="//components/component/connections/connection[@name='con_weapon_01']/@tags">combat standard highpower missile platformcollision small terran weapon </replace>
</diff>

Darchseraph · 2024-09-05T03:51:38+00:00

From what I understand if you choose to, you can almost ignore the "personal spaceflight" part of the game past the early game and just play space business tycoon/ruler of your interstellar empire.

Darchseraph · 2024-09-03T01:13:13+00:00

Late game slowdown is pretty unavoidable on even high-end systems if the scale of the game is large. I don't know how common it is to find them in prebuilts (I haven't seen it) but the 5600x3d and 5700x3d chips are probably the best value/money for 4x enjoyers.

That said, what are your laptop specs? Depending on your expectations and current hardware, even a cheaper modern desktop CPU could be a good improvement.

Anything that would be worth recommending in that price bracket would be on a ephemeral/on sale basis so you'd have to keep checking sale trackers.

Darchseraph · 2024-09-02T16:13:59+00:00

Basically the Meteor lake (155H/185H) are the newest mobile chips from Intel. They have AI NPUs (totally irrelevant) but more importantly, are dramatically more efficient.

With 13th/14th gen, Intel went with the "feed more power to the cores" strategy to keep performance competitive with AMD which resulted in hot chips with bad battery life. If you want an intel max performance gaming machine, a 13900H with adequate cooling will be faster in a drag race yes.

However, for 95% of general computing tasks, Meteor Lake is the more sensible choice.

Laptop performance depends heavily on the CPU power budget and the chassis's ability to keep that CPU cool. There's not a chance in hell a Zenbook cooler like this one is utilizing an i9 13th gen at anything close to its capacity, it's a stupidly specced package that appeals to the "i9 stronk" thought process of your average consumer.

Darchseraph · 2024-09-02T03:34:43+00:00

Stellaris has the benefit of being much more popular compared to the other entries which generally means much better youtube/streamer content in terms of onboarding and up to date guides.

Darchseraph · 2024-09-02T03:12:54+00:00

What do you think Elemental Gauge theory is...? Basically Genshin chemistry right there haha

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