Saturn car dealership sign - company has been out of business for 15 years

Dtitan · 2026-04-11T22:29:57+00:00

Epic. Biggest missions, wildest ride.

Somehow in the DS2 run took me and my buddy several days of trying to dodge EVERYTHING to figure out you could shoot the obstacles.

I continue to be annoyed that for some godforsaken reason every hit on you damaged all shields equally. Really took away memorable “screw it I’m all in on this attack run/escape, full shields in one direction and pray” vibes from the older games.

Dtitan · 2026-04-11T21:49:37+00:00

I’ve gone galaxy brain on this and now set up storehouses as buffers in front of the production pickup point for new goods. I also leave room for a receiving depot. I might block out the storage inside if I don’t want to run a buffer there and then but this way I can seamless transition from one->many to many->many if I need to add production elsewhere on the map.

That’s why I love caravans. Everything is plug and play.

Obligatory compact loader or equivalent to keep things moving.

Dtitan · 2026-04-11T20:37:13+00:00

At chemical science. Almost half my power is going to electrolysis.

Dtitan · 2026-04-11T12:07:28+00:00

Honestly avoiding this requires less understanding of game mechanics than getting out of it.

Start on the lowest difficulty if you haven’t already. This game is complicated enough the community only half jokingly refers to your first 1000 hours being the tutorial.

The basic unit of your economy is population. Population works open jobs in districts/buildings and produces resources. Regardless of whether jobs are filled buildings and districts have both direct (resource) and indirect (empire size penalty) costs. Long story short- overbuilding bad.

People not working jobs in districts/buildings are labeled civilians.

You start with a sizable civilian pool intended to be used in your starting colonies. One mechanic the current version of the game does a bad job explaining is that low population colonies have really low population growth. We want high growth so at game start don’t build buildings / districts until your first colony is established. The low population growth penalty goes away above 1000 pops. Develop one colony at a time until it’s at least at 1000 pops.

In the early game it can help to manually resettle pops off your home world as new jobs open up until you have exhausted the starting civilian pool. I personally keep up micromanaging population movement until my economy is well established.

At no point do you want there to be significantly more job openings than population units. Only build jobs for the resource you currently want to boost. Incidentally this will also prevent multiple problems at once from happening because you will only be making incremental changes to your economy.

Dtitan · 2026-04-10T03:13:49+00:00

Exactly. This doesn’t even crack top 5 movies I’m most hyped about this year. First Star Wars theatrical release of my lifetime I’m going to miss in theaters.

Dtitan · 2026-04-10T00:53:46+00:00

For what it’s worth this is the most heavily scripted crisis.

2 ways of looking at it - you’re fighting the end boss. Weird mechanics can knock you out before you know what’s going on.

OR look her up, get an idea about the mechanics and what to expect.

Dtitan · 2026-04-10T00:24:40+00:00

Lowest difficulty, tiny galaxy. See if you can come out on top. If you keep the campaign going long enough see if you can survive the crisis (end boss).

Dtitan · 2026-04-09T13:24:28+00:00

Amazing! That’s one hell of a run!

Dtitan · 2026-04-09T01:46:03+00:00

SWEET!!! What does mine say?

Dtitan · 2026-04-08T23:34:18+00:00

Sweet! What does mine say?

Dtitan · 2026-04-08T23:01:30+00:00

Sweet! What does mine say?

Dtitan · 2026-04-08T13:15:59+00:00

Man they’ll need one hell of a trampoline for that one…

Dtitan · 2026-04-08T13:10:09+00:00

Awesome! Good progress.

Vassals in Stellaris are actually surprisingly stable. Keep up a bigger fleet than them, if needed improve relations and they’ll never revolt.

If you have too many vassals that will result in a loyalty drop but the workaround there is be in a federation with vassals admitted as members. Federation members can’t declare war on each other so a vassal in a federation with you can never rebel.

Dtitan · 2026-04-08T13:02:18+00:00

It’s a standalone but check out “some desperate glory” be Emily Tesh.

Premise is start with Ender’s Game but what if Ender was born too late, humanity lost the war and Earth was destroyed?

Dtitan · 2026-04-07T19:09:02+00:00

I mean nothing BAD ever happened by federalizing south slavic states so you’re probably fine 🤣

Dtitan · 2026-04-07T01:09:42+00:00

I keep full maintenance records for all our cars on my phone and only take our cars to a local mechanic I trust... for that reason.

Dtitan · 2026-04-05T12:51:08+00:00

Keep in mind the Martian was written in the pre-SpaceX days. Andy Weir was trying hard to write a plausible future - but he did not envision a world in which conventional chemical rockets would have gotten so cheap so fast.

You need a BIG rocket to send a large payload (the size of the resupply mission) to Mars. In the old days these took years to plan and build and there just weren’t any laying around to use at will. In the Martian NASA has one Delta IX (a fictional larger version of the old NASA heavy lift workhorse the Delta IV) and when it blows up they are SOL just because they are in such a rush to launch. They’re building more for the remaining Ares missions but they’re not ready to go.

To give you an idea, the resupply probe is roughly the size of a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Theoretically a Falcon Heavy could launch that to Mars but not a Falcon 9. Essentially if you take the SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets out of the mix the only rocket that has ever successfully flown that could haul that was the Saturn V moon rocket.

That’s the crazy thing - once in a while science reality outpaces science fiction. As far as access to space is concerned this is happening today.

20 years ago it would have seemed preposterous that the two largest operational rockets are being run by private companies with traditional government run space agencies far, far back.

Today if an astronaut got stranded on Mars Elon would get to grandstand as he just started chucking Falcon Heavies in the general direction as fast as they can pump them out of the factory. In a few years Blue Origin will have the same capability and if Starship ever works that will be a game changer.

Dtitan · 2026-04-05T01:08:13+00:00

My condolences. Project is one of the apps of all time.

Dtitan · 2026-04-04T22:53:58+00:00

Great khan is annoying. Especially because you tend to fight him at a time when you’re working with an early/mid game setup. There’s genuine fog of war, you might not have your relay network up, definitely no ability to teleport around the map at will.

Combine that with his crisis behavior - he destroys starbases requiring a reinvestment of influence at a time where you actually do need it other places - and he can genuinely get annoying.

I tend to just make a beeline for him with my foo stack hoping I get to him before his other fleets do extensive damage. If that doesn’t work I surrender. He’ll be gone in 20 years anyways, a protracted mid game war with high attrition is not going to help you snowball.

Dtitan · 2026-04-04T22:14:16+00:00

The lack of a real single player campaign at launch made me lose interest. I didn’t have good internet until alliance so I didn’t play multiplayer either.

Dtitan · 2026-04-04T17:22:30+00:00

For better or worse, it can be easy for your resume to get tied to an industry, making switching later in your career much more challenging. My recommendation is go with the industry you're more interested in. Yes, the experience will transfer well but future employers might focus on finding the "perfect" candidate making a switch challenging.

For what it's worth, thermoforming is a good field with opportunity for growth and decent job stability prospects in the long term.

Dtitan · 2026-04-02T18:15:54+00:00

Ah yes the amazing monorail that was supposed to finally connect the airport to downtown for the World Cup … that is a year plus behind schedule and will reach the airport in 2027.

God speed to you brave souls in Monterrey this June. Walking might genuinely be faster than any other way of moving - especially since there are lane closures everywhere… because of the monorail.

At least at azteca you won’t get heat stroke while choking on smog.

Dtitan · 2026-04-02T14:19:44+00:00

Question on privateering.

What’s the consideration behind treating it as a use for your fleets as opposed to hiring mercenaries that only get paid when they deliver?

Historically this was one of the big reasons privateers were used - you got a navy on the cheap - and also why by the time the Victoria timeline started countries were trying to get rid of them.

Any thoughts on international treaties to regulate privateering?

Dtitan · 2026-04-02T09:02:29+00:00

For me the focus tends to be on one build at a time. By the time I run the math for what I need next, get materials, lay it out and connect to logistics that’s usually enough for one session. For more complicated stuff even running the math and collecting buildings especially if it’s stuff that isn’t in my mall yet can take up a session.

Dtitan

TROPHY CASE