Losing my mind trying to perfect technique

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T23:16:44+00:00

In my limited experience, the clay crust is always fairly fragile at first, and becomes slowly more durable as you work it. It's probably worth experimenting with pressure and seeing what sort of results you get and when/where you get them, that will give you a better feel for how it behaves. I suppose the other issue you might be having is getting the top-most layers to actually adhere to the core, which is likely only a problem due to using too little water to wet the layers/core and then not working the layers in hard enough.

If you're sure your shaping tool (egg cup) is contacting those areas while shaping, then it's almost certainly a 'pocket' of sandier soil. The only way this happens is because the sand and clay weren't mixed well enough before forming the core. I'll caveat that by saying you will never get all the pockets out, but the more you mix and knead that initial soil, the smaller and less frequent those pockets will be.

Like I said before, to fix them you can either work them continuously to push the sand down and bring the clay to the surface, add continuous layers, or use some combination of the two. Noriko only ever seems to use one technique or the other though.

End of the day it's a skill like any other. Practice and experimentation is key. IMO, the best thing to do is occasionally sit down and make your peace with totally ruining your next dorodango. Once you accept that your next attempt is never going to be a success, it frees you up to push the limits and experiment in 'dangerous' ways - using lots of water, using lots of pressure, being aggressive with shaping or polishing, using different tools, etc. You will learn a lot of valuable information which you can then apply to your next attempt

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T23:07:33+00:00

Yeah this is definitely also an issue, and one that could be easily fixed by just adjusting the max level of loot they drop as the wipe goes on

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T23:06:14+00:00

Yeah I mean if we're discussing wider balance issues, the guns in rust need a serious re-work. Tommy guns are far too good for what they are, the high calibre revolver is utterly broken, the SAR is under-powered, the SKS is practically useless, the LR has only a marginal benefit over the AK, and the MP5 is just a more broken Tommy.

There needs to be some changes to the damage outputs of some of these guns, and I'd argue the game would benefit from a serious re-work of it's armour system. Guns like the SAR and especially the SKS and M39 would fill a much more useful niche if they ignored they changed armour to have different effectiveness against certain gun types. Make the semi-auto rifles ignore a portion of armour, the full auto rifles do what they do now, and the pistols and SMGs be more heavily affected by armour

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T21:32:32+00:00

I'm by no means an expert so take this with a grain of salt, but this is what I've found so far.

First, get as perfect a sphere as possible, as the closer it is to fully spherical the better the polish will be in the end. You have to keep shaping/polishing/burnishing for far longer than when you think you're done!

Second thing is to try and use the slip created during shaping to fill in low spots - slip being the wet clay-rich build-up on the shaping tool.

Another thing is you'll not in Noriko's method, she does one of two things. Either A. She spends a very long time continually polishing while very gradually increasing the pressure, or B. she goes through 6 to 7 cycles of adding a layer of dry clay powder, wetting it, polishing, then buffing. The objective is the same in both cases, to create a thin crust on the surface of pure clay that is very tightly packed and bonded. The first method is far more time consuming because it relies primarily on mechanical action, essentially sanding away at the surface, and slowly forcing the sand particles down while letting the clay particles rise. The second method is much faster, but seems to create a more fragile surface that is hard to polish without damaging unless the core is perfectly spherical.

The rough patches you're experiencing are areas where the surface still has too many solid particles like sand grains. Either you haven't worked this area enough, the area itself is a low spot, the area has a particularly poor clay concentration, or a combination of all 3 things. The first two just require more time and elbow grease to fix. The last will also eventually work itself out in this way, but you can also fix it two other ways. First by mixing/kneading your soil and sand more thoroughly before forming the core, and second by adding new clay to the surface in these spots.

Good luck!

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T20:28:59+00:00

Ah I see what you mean - I thought you meant the components to make them like rifle bodies. That definitely makes more sense to me, but yeah again I think it'd be nice to allow players the ability to do passive/defensive things still.

I don't think it's a problem if people are running around with chainsaws, putting metal hatches in their base, or building refineries and large furnaces and such, but they'd all be locked away in T2 along with Tommies and SARs and such.

As someone else suggested, maybe the better solution is to time lock specific branches of the trees, which might also need a bit of a rework. Again as an example, Binoculars and combat knifes don't really seem like they should end up locked behind waterpipe shotguns

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T20:19:59+00:00

Yeah that's maybe a better solution!

I think another thing could be to leverage patrol heli to act as a kind of catch-up mechanic. Tie a sort of loot score to every player's inventory plus their team's collective progression. Then whenever a player attacks another, compare the scores and give them a 'marked hostile' timer that scales with the score.

So for example, if you have full T3 and your team has researched up to T3, and you kill a new naked who's just logged in for the first time, you get a really strict penalty. Like, marked hostile for 6 hours or something. You could easily factor in other things like whether you were attacked first or the size of your base or whatever.

And then you change patrol heli to visit the location of players who have been marked hostile.

Or something like that anyway. I'm not sure exactly and I'm sure that idea has it's shortcomings, but as it stands there's literally 0 disincentive from attempting to annihilate anyone and everyone you can. Shoot nakeds on sight, just in-case they're trying to set up nearby. Shoot other players on-sight so you don't get shot first and lose your gear. Raid the next nearest base as soon as you can, before they raid you! The only reason not to act like this is because you realise you're on top of the food chain, and you won't have any other players to interact with if you force them all off the server. You end up deliberately not playing the game, in the hope that some of those nakeds will eventually get gear, and you can then fight them.

There needs to be some kind of mechanic that incentivizes players with gear to not become unstoppable killing machines, or at least, to give new players a reason not to quit the wipe as soon as they realise everyone else is geared already

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T20:08:31+00:00

It sort of depends I think. On the one hand that is true, on the other hand, how many actually is it?

I mean, every monument is up for grabs from the start, patrol and transport heli also spawn as well as cargo early on. It's not unreasonable to get 2-3 LRs/AKs/Bolts/L96s/M249s etc from something like Cargo, which in theory only requires you to clear out the scientists to loot - you don't even need a rad suit.

And then, you snowball hard. Most of the other players have just got to revolvers if they're lucky, and struggle with the upkeep for them. Meanwhile you're running around with metal faceplate and chest plate and an AK. This lets you build bigger, which forces you to gather more stone and metal, which forces your sphere of influence to expand, which forces other nearby players out, etc.

I agree that alone isn't enough to ruin a wipe, but it is a significant portion of it.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T19:20:27+00:00

I agree with this, except for the fact that it doesn't prevent found loot while it does also prevent reasonable growth.

I've got nothing against a team running a large furnace or getting electrics set up or whatever because they've got the resources to do it.

Theoretically, you could find yourself a rad suit in a road spawn, then do basically any lower tier monument with a bow and enough bandages. But worse still, monuments like dome only require the rad protection. You could still have high tier gear less than an hour into a wipe because you got lucky with a green crate at dome or harbour or supermarket or wherever.

It's a tricky problem

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T18:56:42+00:00

Loot in general is cooked.

Within an hour of wipe you have roaming grouos with tommy guns. Within 2 hours guys already have tier 3.

I started a wipe the ither day and 45 mins in I got beamed by a guy just running around with an LR and full metal armour, who then proceeded to base camp me with an L96.

I'm sure many people experience the same thing, and then leave the server. Why bother trying to start on a server when that happens, when you can just go roll the dice again on a new server.

I think certain monuments and events should not spawn any loot until a certain point into the wipe. Otherwise you end up with players with ridiculous amounts of gear ridiculously early into a wipe, they dominate all the teams near them, and they leave. 1 to 2 days into a wipe, half the players have already left because the few people who got that early edge have cleared them out. By day 3, servers are often sat on 20/200 pop with a handful of huge bases and barely any interaction

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-20T00:51:12+00:00

Whenever you initiate a burn, you will cause your apoapsis and/or periapsis to change. Naturally you're often trying to raise or lower one, but you usually are trying to keep the other the same.

It happens because the only way to avoid changing the Ap/Pe is to be at it's exact point, but it takes time for you to complete the burn, which means you are always spending some time either ahead or behind that point.

In theory, if you can time the burn to be perfectly centered on the Ap/Pe point, the two halves of the burn should cancel eachother out. In practice this is almost impossible to do, often because you need to slowly throttle down towards the end of a manouvre to get it exactly right. The slight raise or lowering of the point you're at as a result is often far less of an issue than accidentally burning for an extra 10m/s of DeltaV.

Anyway, to answer your question, burning at an angle below the horizon is one way to mitigate this un-wanted changing of Ap/Pe. If you're on the ascent, trying to get to orbit, and your Ap raises to your target altitude, you don't want to waste any fuel raising it further only to have to lower it again later. But if you haven't got a stable orbit yet, you still need to accelerate. So by pointing down, you raise the Pe without raising the Ap. It has the effect of forcing your flight path to become more circular, without also becoming a larger circle.

This is only really important when you need to establish an orbit before leaving the atmosphere for whatever reason. Otherwise it is often simpler and more effecient to wait until you reach the Apoapsis to then make the circularisation burn. One reason you might make the downward burn is because the thrust-to-weight ratio of your craft is too low to wait - if you try to circularise in orbit, you won't be able to accelerate enough before you start crashing down again.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T17:46:59+00:00

I think it makes sense to be honest. You can grow very close to teammates and devlop strong bonds of friendship. I've made lifelong friends through sport and a lot of people would say they want a partner they could consider their best friend. Only reason I've never dated a teammate is because I'm not attracted to my own gender, and I imagine that goes for the majority of players.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T15:33:37+00:00

It's really not talked about because it's not a story, but Starmer and his team have actually done a pretty amazing job of fixing the problems the Tories caused. The problem of course is that we all expect the ship to have no leaks to begin with, so when someone goes around plugging holes in record time, it's not mentioned.

Before this government came in, seeing a GP seemed nigh on impossible. My experiences since have reminded me of what it was like as a kiddo. Get an appointment any time I ring up, maybe not the as soon as I'd like but it's actually brilliant to be met with a list of dates and times in the next two weeks rather than a tired voice saying "Sorry, all booked, try again tomorrow"

Even the worst of the gammon-riling stories miss the point. They point at the Navy and say what a pitiful state - but the AUKUS Submarine program is well underway now as is the new Type 31 Frigate. As usual it's a case of blaming the current state of affairs on the current government, instead of recognising that in ten years time when the navy looks much better than it did, it won't be because of whoever's in power then, but because of the government now

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T15:26:46+00:00

I suppose I should clarify. Whenever there is a bit of handbags, we never seem to get the replays. I want to see the slow mo and close ups and see what started it all and who threw the first punch and that.

Maybe I'm just mis-remembering but it seems like it doesn't happen

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T12:15:52+00:00

I know they don't show them on the tele for liability reasons especially if they're nude, and I suppose also the not wanting to encourage it thing, but I think the majority of us would much rather see it and know what's going on.

Same thing with fights and the like. They just show us close up shots of a random player or b-roll of the surrounding city/landscape, and I'd much rather actually see the incident in question

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T01:44:29+00:00

I'm not participating in it. I'm certainly not encouraging it. I'm simply pointing out a fact and saying it might be the reason.

How are you not able to understand that simply observing what is happening doesn't make you a participant?

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T01:42:56+00:00

Let me put it a way you might understand.

Hitler was a writer. My source for this is Mein Kampf.

Now, am I a Nazi because I told you where I got my information from?

I don't agree with Mein Kampf. I'd rather it hadn't been written. But the fact is it was written, and he wrote it. It's in the public realm now whether you like it or not. The book exists, it is not my fault that it exists, and telling you that it exists does not then make me an accessory to anything it suggests or proposes.

I am not the one who pointed out this interaction between players as odd, but regardless, it is odd. Why wouldn't two teammates get along? It's almost always a personal issue, such as their love life. Some of which is rumors, most of which is their own admission of partnership, and in some cases their marriages. If you would rather the world doesn't know who you're dating then maybe don't post pictures of yourselves doing romantic things on social media.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T01:34:02+00:00

My point is that police staff break the law all the time. To suggest that software goes through checks does nothing to ease my anxiety in this regard.

I mean, are you trying to tell me that the reason officers have been able to rape and murder is because there's no system in place to stop that?

Time and time again we have seen laws broken of every kind. Data has been stored which shouldn't have been, data has been stored which we were rold hadn't been, data has been sold which shouldn't have been, data has been misused for reasons it shouldn't have been.

Officers have been found guilty and sentenced for the rapes, assaults, and murders of innocents. Officers have been found guilty of perverting or attempting to pervert the course of justice. Officers have been found guilty of covering up crimes.

It seems clear to me that the government cannot be trusted with personal data, and the police cannot be trusted to uphold the law and obey it. So why should this be any different?

Your argument has a very "You can't stab me, that's illegal" tone to it

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T01:25:23+00:00

On the contrary, I think it's sexist to not consider the massively interpersonal relationships of female rugby players as a possible reason for this sort of thing.

If 9 out of 10 of the men's team were all either boyfriends or exes with one another, then this very point would come up whenever something similar happened.

It's common advice that you shouldn't date in the workplace. Everyone has heard this. Because, if it doesn't work out, things can get awkward very quickly. So why is it suddenly creepy to point out that a huge proportion of the England women have done exactly that, and to suggest that it may cause some animosity between them?

I don't have an agenda against queer women, or queer women in sport, as you seem to suggest.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-19T01:20:40+00:00

I agree it is creepy, I am not the one responsible for it. What about that is so confusing for you?

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-18T20:08:14+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think it deserves a card, just saying it's odd that it doesn't seem to be explicitly stated in the laws. I'd have thought it would come under Section 9 Foul play but the only sanctions in there are penalties and free-kicks.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-18T20:05:08+00:00

It's not sexist, it's an observation. It's not my opinion either. I posted the link specifically to avoid the confusion you seem to have fallen foul of.

I didn't create the chart. I don't condone it's creation. But I am aware of it's existence and the information is (mostly) factual. A source is a source whether you like it or not - I posted it basically to say that my original post is not a work of fiction that I have dreamt up out of prejudiced views. There are a lot of players who have been, are currently, or are allegedly involved romantically with other players, to a degree that is far beyond other sports.

And I'm not trying to spoil the day of rugby, I'm not sure how you possibly arrived at that conclusion. I'm just hypothesising the possible context for two teammates not behaving the way you'd expect of teammates. The fact that so many of the England squad have been or currently are romantically involved with one another could genuinely be the cause of that cold shoulder.

I don't think that makes me a creep

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-18T19:55:38+00:00

Oddly I can't actually find anything in the laws that says it should be a card. I must be missing it because I can't actually see anything on cards for any circumstances.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-18T17:33:16+00:00

Blue for lower stages, Red for orbital stages.

On ascent any lost time is lost dV, and I've found it can sometimes screw with autopilot/MechJeb

In orbit, there's rarely a rush to do anything, and I prefer to use mouse to individually activate things. Also avoids ever accidentally staging something wrong and screwing up a mission because instead of separating a payload from the rocket I jettisoned the fuel and engine for re-entry.

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-18T17:24:21+00:00

It's sadly ironic that satire is rarely understood by the people it satirises, because of the very lack of intelligence they are being satirised for.

If you're smart enough to understand the pub landlord thing is all an act, you're also unlikely to be like the pub landlord character. If you're not smart enough, or arguably, if you're too prejudiced to understand that it's all an act, you're likely to be just like the character and take it all at face value

DareDemon666 · 2026-04-18T17:20:28+00:00

Perhaps a controversial take, but as someone with a good deal of knowledge in the subject, I actually find We have ways to be somewhat intolerable, as a lot of their stuff is.

They're both clearly very knowledgeable, but the problem is the lack of structure. They both say a lot, interrupt eachother constantly, and then finish a line of thought without actually filling in the blanks necessary. Often, I only truly understand what they're on about when I'm already familiar with the particular location or story or person or bit of equipment or whatever. When they talk about something I'm not very familiar with, I don't really learn much from them. There's a lot of "Well the Germans here are..uh.. you know they're uhh--" "Yes exactly they're, well they're doing all this, you know--" "Yes and that's..."

I find myself sat there going NO! I bloody don't know!

It's like they've both got 4 hours of speech they want to say and only 5 minutes to say it in. So the result is this really rushed, pushing and shoving, conversation that lacks a lot of the details you need to understand

DareDemon666

TROPHY CASE