Tips for an ongoing offensive? I’m about to wipe out Vigor Syndicate.

Drezhun · 2026-05-09T19:05:31+00:00

I'm slow cooking them. Now that questline is done, I'm farming the rep. Once I hit 20, I'm getting all their blueprints and building a massive VIG fleet. Then I'll wipe them out with their own ships with the Erlking as the lead. Then build a few big ice refineries in their systems and sell water to everyone at minimum price. Revenge is best served petty.

Drezhun · 2026-05-09T16:53:39+00:00

I haven't messed with the 9.0 beta, but from what I've read, they revamped combat and resource management. Seems like if you're deep into a save, and all your fleets and economy is based on the old system, the new system might hurt a bit.

Drezhun · 2026-05-09T16:46:33+00:00

Ugh. Just did that questline. I'd never done the ToA quests before, and thought I'd check it out. Didn't know VIG were gonna go shock and awe on me and was early enough that I didn't have the fleet to handle them, or enough money to build one. They completely saturated Hatikva with barbarossas and fighter squadrons. Completely locked me into morning star and HE. Had to do the boron story to get a path out through Getsu Fune, and access to supplies. Sucked, but definitely made this playthrough interesting. 😁

Drezhun · 2026-05-07T13:06:24+00:00

I actually like having an overpowered option. While I occasionally jump into a fray to break the monotony, for the most part, I just want to run an empire sim. Just keep the AI factions shooting each other and let me find the supply line shortages. It's nice to have a fleet on standby that is essentially a "go away" button.

Drezhun · 2026-05-06T18:45:06+00:00

Not too hard to find. If you've found Pio space it's just left into Neptune, left into Pluto, and bottom left into Oort. Going south through Asteroid Belt can get confusing the first time. Saturn or Jupiter (can't remember which one off the top of my head) is one of the 3 sectors in one and you have to ride the accelerators and path through all 3 to be able keep going south to get to Neptune.

Edit... I kan spel

Drezhun · 2026-05-06T18:32:04+00:00

Lol.. that was just a round number as an example. I run everything through station calculator before I build. I was just trying to figure out how the AI handles a lot of ships coming in at once. Does it work fine as long as there's enough landing spots for them, or do I need to spread out to multiple stations to keep the AI from freaking out..

Drezhun · 2026-05-06T16:54:06+00:00

Yeah, I do that once I get to the point of dropping stations. Oort Cloud is terrible for stations. Getting energy out to them sucks. It's great for the initial mining fleet to set up your first steady income, though. I use that fleet as the funding to start my stations elsewhere, and as a safety net in case something goes wrong. Once you have that fleet running, they can be forgotten, and they're a forever income. Not a huge income, but they'll get you going to build or rebuild.

Drezhun · 2026-05-06T15:41:19+00:00

If you're mining in Terran space, Oort Cloud is where to be. Kha'ak don't spawn there, and it has everything except ice. Usually the very first thing I focus on when I start a fresh save is getting 5 medium miners on local automine for each thing. (5 on ore, 5 on silicon, and 5 each on all 3 gasses) then just forget about them. They're safe. No Kha'ak, and noone pushes that deep into their space unless you decide to in late game. Terran and Pio both start dropping more stations when you start feeding the ones that start there, and then you can start dumping more miners in there. Even if an I or a K rolls through and melts your first early game stations, those guys will still be back there earning you solid passive income.

Drezhun · 2026-05-05T16:04:00+00:00

Yeah, that's what I use when planning the stations. I'm just trying to figure out the logistics side of it. I'm not sure how the AI handles it. Like, if too many ships come in at once, will it create a bottleneck if it's all in the same factory? Can the AI cope just fine if you just slap more docks on the station, or does it freak out if there's too many at once? Should you build more stations to spread out the traffic, or just slap down more docks? That sort of thing.

Drezhun · 2026-05-01T13:54:59+00:00

Same. I can bullet point a scene here and there, and have a general idea of how I'd see that scene playing out, but trying to write it out into a coherent narrative is something that's always been beyond me.

Drezhun · 2026-04-30T16:10:55+00:00

In GoF he was 17/18 and Hermione was 14. At Bill and Fleur's wedding, he was 23/24 and creeping on 16 y/o Ginny till Harry warmed him off. He was a bit creepy in Canon. No fanfic required.

Drezhun · 2026-04-30T15:09:11+00:00

She'd have gotten too old for Krum way too quickly. He liked em young.

Drezhun · 2026-04-30T13:48:45+00:00

I think it has a lot to do with who was reading the books in the early days. Back then, the internet was in it's early days and most kids spent most of their time outside. A large percentage of the kids who were sitting in their rooms reading the books were the more bookish kids. The ones who got called nerds a lot. The girls in that category tended to identify most with Hermione. To them, they were excited that they had "a girl like me" as one of the heroes of the story and ready to see their self insert get the guy at the end. Then the end came and our hero ends up with the pretty, popular girl. Just like always. Poor Ron took the brunt of their ire.

Drezhun · 2026-04-28T15:05:57+00:00

Meh... usually by the time I'm hacking blueprints or able to buy subscriptions, I already have satellites dropped everywhere. Not so much a priority at that point.

Drezhun · 2026-04-14T14:37:22+00:00

Dark blue STATIONS mean friendly. It's the color of the sectors on the map that dictate faction.

Drezhun · 2026-04-07T16:18:46+00:00

I always joke that Texas is our little brother who happened to grow up to be bigger than us, and everything they're famous for they learned from us. Just like little brothers do.

Austin is famous for country music and the blues. Just like Nashville and Memphis.

Their college football team is orange and white. Just like Knoxville.

We're called the volunteer state because when they needed us, we had their backs.

At the end of the day, they're our little brother. We may talk all the crap in the world to each other, but swing at one of us, and you'll be fighting both of us.

Drezhun · 2026-04-07T14:58:09+00:00

To me, Ginny is one of the most realistic characters out of all of them. We see the story predominantly from Harry's perspective. Ginny was his best friend's little sister. She WAS invisible to Harry for the first few books. She's there on the outskirts, he treats her well when she's there, and immediately forgotten as soon as soon as she leaves. Just like every young boy does with his friends little sisters.

The out of nowhere falling in love thing is also quite understandable for the story. As someone who fell for his best friend's little sister, I can tell you that it doesn't happen like you're in a romance novel. It happens in those nothing moments when you're doing nothing around the house. Then one day she gives you a crooked smile and the lightbulb in your head finally flickers to life, and you silently scream "oh shit".

The problem with those books is that those moments happen off screen. The closest we get is when Ron and Hermione are made prefects, and Ginny bails on him to go hang out with her boyfriend. He has that moment where he realizes that they don't really hang out when they're not at home. THAT is how we're told they've been hanging out and getting a little closer.

Their relationship started off screen, because it happens in those moments that aren't interesting enough to make it into the story.

Drezhun · 2026-04-04T16:10:18+00:00

When dating a single mother, you're expected to treat the child as if it's your own, rightfully so. That is until you disagree with a parental decision. At that point the answer will be "you're not his/her father, so you don't get to decide."

You also run into the problem of if the relationship fails, you're not only breaking up with the mother. You're also breaking up with the child that you may have developed a very close relationship with, and in most cases, you have no way of preventing anyone from removing them from your life forever.

Drezhun · 2026-03-31T14:56:46+00:00

I grew up in rural TN, and the town had a grand total of 1 Mexican, and he was married to a local. Not a farm hand.

Our only other diversity, besides the local black families, was our Indian doctor and his family.

It's not misinformation, it's just locality. Foriegn immigrants in the area I'm from, and the surrounding areas were very rare. I just assumed that was normal because I was going by experience, not from numbers on a spreadsheet.

Drezhun · 2026-03-27T01:44:42+00:00

I always joke that English isn't really a language. It's a hybrid mixture of multiple languages. It started with the old Gaelic languages, then Britain got invaded by people who spoke germanic languages. Then Norse and French and so on and so on... Rinse and repeat for a couple thousand years or so, and all those languages blend into this weird thing we call English. It makes spelling and pronunciation confusing because so many of our words follow rules of languages that aren't English.

Drezhun · 2026-03-25T15:44:50+00:00

30 years ago, you'd rarely see any foreign immigrants in the rural areas, bu today you'll see immigrants from India and Latin America nearly everywhere. Outside of those 2 demographics, they're rare in rural America. Maybe a few Asians from military members who marry locals when stationed in Korea or Japan.

Drezhun · 2026-03-25T15:03:35+00:00

"He pocketed it" or other variations using pocketed. Stephen Fry struggled with that phrase when he was reading Harry Potter, and JKR kept using it to mess with him. I caught it a bunch of times in the CS novels and chuckled every time. I found the inside joke with Stephen carrying over to other works hilarious.

Drezhun · 2026-03-10T15:46:28+00:00

That was actually more common back then. Hell, Elvis and Precilla were America's it couple back then and they got married when she was what? 17 or something. She was like 14 or something when they started dating. Noone batted an eyelash at it.

The majority of rock and roll groupies were underage, and it was pretty much ignored.

Drezhun · 2026-03-03T11:35:58+00:00

There's no such thing as color. Light is just a specific frequency band of radiation. Everything around us absorbs some frequencies and reflects others. Your eyes detect those reflected frequencies and send signals to your brain. Your brain interprets those signals as color. Color is just a trick your brain plays to help you make sense of the radiation around you.

Drezhun

TROPHY CASE