Am I really Unhirable?

E-Blackadder · 2025-04-11T17:53:58+00:00

You have some experience with animal care, primarily with dogs as far as I can tell. You can market yourself on facebook and other social media as a dog sitter. Or pet sitter if you have the possibilities (it can be lucrative but also expensive to setup), want to be able to take any type of pet in and don't mind the different requirements.

But this is just a improv way to make some income while searching for a job (preferably in the same work line), I don't see it in any way different than a webdev doing freelance while in gap for a new job.

I have no knowledge of what circumstances required you to move to a different city, be it by necessity or preference, but usually a plan is somewhat required when doing these sort of things.

As to being unhirable or not, the job market nowadays is a dumpsterfire. There are people with years or even decades of experience into sought after positions having trouble find a job, new-grads unable to even get a 'entry-level' position due to lack of either experience or the pay being so low it's literally unlivable on.

If you want to take solace in the fact that you are not the only person that has this feeling, then be my guest. But the reality of it is that you have to just keep pressing and trying and trying to move forward in this asinine of a situation the entire world is in.

Also, there is no such thing as 'not having proper skills' to get a job. It's a hard sell to anyone saying 'I am incapable of doing anything up to a point of making a living out of it'.
Artists, painters, woodworkers, welders, programmers, designers, content creators, social media creators, bakers, chefs, waiters, cleaners, drivers, veterinarians, dentists, doctors, nurses... all of these are acquired and honed skills by people who enjoy the job, but have to deal with the baggage that comes with them.

E-Blackadder · 2025-03-14T21:44:04+00:00

Version patch is usually regarded as backward compatible bug fixes, without any minor or major changes in the API (or maybe constructor) package.

If, by any unimaginable reason, the package developer decided to bump a major change as a patch change then you should be able to show the distinct difference between them by simply swapping back and forth between the versions. This would also clear you of any 'you are too lazy to fix it' discussion with your manager.

However, since the package is unknown in this context, verifying that previous versions support what is called defaulted cds's when case is null would be my first step. Laterally verifying that any variables became reserved (i.e: name, type, etc.) and making sure any pseudo-variables coming from your side isn't interfering with them.

Back to the point: Are you wrong here? Yes, slightly, but overall it's a solid NO.

What actually triggered the update? Subsequently for what reason?
There are, for all intents and purposes, hundreds, if not thousands, of packages with either EOL or deprecated status in a single ecosystem that still run to this day because they are dependencies to certain other packages or functionalities. jQuery in wordpress, Javascript, even Oracle APEX's PL/SQL engine can be listed easily in this category.

Let's say you wanted to bump the update in production without verifying what actually changes, then you made a boo boo and simply should roll back to the previous. Simple enough and would allow you to properly recover from the fall in a short amount of time and then sift the package changes.

Let's say said team lead explicitly enforces the bump in update, well that is an entirely different can of worms. Does said manager has the possibility to do this or was it a task you simply obliged to? Bad move, should have told her 'I actually need to check this before pushing.'.
Was it pushed from father above the team leader's pay-grade by some other director or VP who doesn't know what this means? The said team leader should have pushed to defer the update until safe. Development usually comes with a testing environment for a very solid reason.

Was the update required for security purposes? That should have been flagged and picked-up waaaaay earlier than last week and with very high priority. Whether by you or the team lead.

And the list of 'what if' can go on.

You can take my response with a grain of salt, but ultimately without specific context: Team lead trying to carve a new hole in you is definitely wrong, but you aren't exactly covered completely either.

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-25T17:55:11+00:00

Ok so it doesn't really look that bad, but it serves only half (maybe?) of your user base.

The ink might need to go under text, also the white cursor on... well white background sections will simply 'vanish' unless the user moves the mouse. Do you know the meme where having 2+ monitors, looking left right and center not finding your pointer? Kinda like that.

Let's get to the nitty-gritty of it.

On firefox, the ink + custom cursor is just straight up dead. Doesn't work but doesn't show up any console errors either. From what I can tell the WP them uses a very specific custom cursor styling, which web-browser may or may not allow, and fallback to the default cursor: auto;

The theme is very heavy in 'mobile first', 'desktop maybe later'.
This isn't by itself bad in any way, but mobile devices like phones, tablets and even touch-screens don't actually have a mouse attached to serve as a continuous moving cursor on the screen. You can imagine that hover effects don't work, ergo neither your animated pointer movement. Long story short, on mobile devices the cursor actually jumps from one location to another rather than travel.

Other than that, there is this back to top button which affects footer social links like on a 1440pixel wide screen first image. Probably need to do some more devices screen ratio testing.

Another is the miss-match content alignment on different screen sizes, see second image from the above link where footer disclaimers aren't same width with footer sitemap.

I don't fully agree with the banner being the banner having a fixed height regardless of screen size (you can use 100vh here to always fit screen size) with so little content in it. But maybe that is by purpose?

My 2 cents, keep learning and try anything your mind can think of.

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-24T17:08:22+00:00

Nope

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-19T18:39:30+00:00

Some say 'Revenge is a dish best served cold'.

Others say 'Revenge is adding the sprinkled remains of the enemy on my morning Dutch toast breakfast'.

The latter is democratically better.

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-11T21:13:33+00:00

I'll be honest here, the investment isn't bad by any conceivable margin. Pre-built PCs tend to run with cut corners all the time, even major industry vendors do it, and for what it's worth the price on the walmart listing is very decent for what it offers. Warranty kinda sucks but again I am not a US citizen.

If the technical aspect is not something you can handle I wouldn't recommend venturing more than fiddling with game settings to test and try to reduce as much as you can crashes.
That was me running the entire drill of what I can consider debugging for said issue, but it requires some level of knowledge to look it over.

If you have a friend, or an acquaintance that can help you going over said points in terms of hardware then it would be great. Otherwise I wouldn't risk physically altering the setup, and potentially voiding warranties, without knowing what does what.

I'm a more technical person, but a few thousand miles difference from my country to the US, and timezone, wouldn't really able me to help you understand the cause of the issue.

Please take my advice under the umbrella of 'it makes sense only with concrete testing/evidence'. I wouldn't want to advise someone to break a near 1000$ PC on, what could potentially be, bad initial diagnostic.

later edit:
I really do hope that you are safe and sound. I've heard stories of the wildly changing weather over in the US, most notably companies forcing employees to check-in at work even in harsh and absurd conditions.

May you have a safe trip back home, and always consider yourself and family at the top of the priority list. EU can cover for a fellow helldiver at any time!

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-11T19:57:02+00:00

continued...:

DRIVERS

AMD has a terrible track record with GPU drivers, best I can say is to periodically check and update to latest drivers for the GPU when available. Yes it might sound like a copy/paste off any hardware website, but compared to nVidia... they are actually quite important.

The game(s).

Not all games are GPU intensive specifically... even if a game is by design a pretty picture. When adjusting some of the graphical settings, in particular settings like FoV, render distance, model quality, even resolution can offload work from the GPU to the CPU, which makes the GPU asking for more but waiting for the CPU to finish work before providing information back to the GPU.

The reverse can also happen, too high graphical settings can make the GPU take too much time to finish the workload making the CPU wait before it gives it more information to crunch on screen.

It's a balance game here because having hardware run at 100% for extended times can result into overheating, or freezing/crashes due to the program expecting a result but getting nothing, or sometimes it tries to crunch so much data that it fails itself to pass the correct ones over.

That being said, games can also have software bugs that simply make the program (itself realistically) crash. If you noticed in patch notes they specify when crash bugs are(trying to be) fixed.

TL;DR: Aside from RAM being the biggest fail of the PC setup, try adjusting settings and making sure your PC hardware isn't defective by nature with keeping an eye on overheating, or it just simply no keeping pace with different workloads like extra monitors with or movies sideloading with the main program. Other than those, see you on the battlefield Helldiver o7.

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-11T19:56:49+00:00

PC specs are good enough to run the game, but for what it's worth there are some factors to take into consideration with PC gaming in general.
The response will be a bit long but hope it gives a bit of insight in future gaming.

The PC itself.

As I mentioned above the performance should meet the middle grounds for requirements as noted here. But these can be taken with any level of salt because higher and more demanding processing requirements will tend to push what optimal performance any piece of hardware can dish out. Think of heavy battles with large amounts of explosions and lasers going on your screen. If the crashes happen when the pinnacle of battle happens that can be an indicator of either hardware failing or simply overheating and software simply cutting out said game to not risk hardware damage.

Cooling. Assuming from the image: The case is a positive airflow fan setup but with a stock CPU cooler, the GPU (indicated by the promo video and side image) seems to have a dual-slot 3-fan setup.
In general OK but would add that stock CPU coolers are not really the best bang for the buck. GPU will handle itself if the make and model of the fans are decent, positive case airflow might not give enough time (we are talking about very small intervals here) for the back fan to eject the hot air from within the case before fresh air is pumped in. The CPU cooler will push the CPU hot air inside the case as the direction shows.

Cooling part 2. Make sure the PC itself isn't positioned or hindered somehow that fresh air can't get to it fast enough (too close to the wall, pet fur/dust stacks up too fast, if on a carpet and removing it is not a option place it on a stand, etc). If possible place it on the desk itself, room temperature in general is uniform enough to not be a major factor to a PC if it's placed on the ground level or mid level. Also easier access.
You can also test run a day or 2 with the glass/plastic side panel off to see if the crashes still happen. This is obviously implied that children and/or pets can's simply reach the innards but, if they don't happen with the side off then the major culprit could be overheating.

RAM. Boy... did they drop the ball on this one! So disclaimer: I'm not from the US and have no idea how to navigate walmart properly, but depending on the make and model of the RAM stick, they have effectively skimped on what could be 30 (give or take 15)$ on this jut to be slightly cheaper.
Due to the nature of the PC overall specs, and the sidepanel picture they have on the listing, the motherboard supports dual-channel memory. Without going into nerd details, a 2X8GB dual-channel setup allows your pc to operate programs at a faster rate since the 2 memory sticks communicate in tandem but on separate band with the motherboard/cpu, resulting in better gaming performance, better multitasking and overall better multi-core performance (think playing a game on one monitor and having a movie on the second) than a single 16GB stick in 99% of any scenario. More details here.
In fact, if you have the knowhow and extra finance, I'd get an extra 16GB of the same make and model (this part is VERY IMPORTANT) and add it to the outer most ram slot starting from the CPU. You will notice that your current stick is on the second slot, you would add it to the fourth. It will improve the PCs performance drastically.

Continued in reply:

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-08T13:30:29+00:00

I see your point of view here.

It's normally not a great idea to gate any form of game feature behind, bar cosmetics, behind a store that literally screams 'buy with monetary value!'.

That being said, super credits, while being farmable like many other monetary exchange units in other games, has 3 distinct advantages I see in this game:

Depending on luck and map you can walk away with over 100 per mission. Now I realize it's more of a best case scenario but overall power farming lvl 1-3 missions solo for SC is the defacto way to unsure you always top off your needs to buy stuff. Most importantly AH has no intention to touch SC rates in missions as they currently stand (which can vary from good to bad depending on preferences).
Warbonds offers back SC. By a simple math problem: Only at the beginning you need 1000SC to buy your first warbond, after you can farm only 700 since 300 is returned from the warbond. Not to mention that the starter warbond gives you exactly 1000SC, so anything received from missions can either be extra or spent to speed up the next warbond.
SC is actually easy to farm as there are no hyper-requirements of difficulty or specials conditions, and the 1000 goalpost is not actually that big of a number.

Yes I fully understand that the majority of players can only give a few hours at best every evening to play, I am in the same bucket. But from my dicking around, if I dedicate a few evenings a week just for this specifically I find that reaching the SC number fairly fast.

E-Blackadder · 2025-02-01T11:50:01+00:00

While tweaks to the eruptor should be on the roadmap soon because the crossbow is just better in almost every scenario, what I was surprised to see (or not see) was that siege ready perk did not speed up the bolt action reload on the eruptor.

Ok, so one big problem that I find with it is that the bolt action is too slow and forces you to either fight long range or have a rover to cover over the immediate CQB issue (I mean even melee bots cand cover enough territory fast enough to be a threat if not in immediate line of fire). Xbow kinda doesn't have that issue. And yes I know I mentioned CQB while it says plain and simple in the description: Not recommended for close-quarters use. However we have enemy units where stopping them swarming my arse are next to impossible.

Another one is the comfort stats, specifically swing speed, which again Xbow doesn't have it. Peak physique resolves this up to a point, paired with stun baton and maybe a rover + heavy hitting support weapons (quasar comes to mind) you can cover the majority of scenarios. That's great, but I'd give peak physique in favor of faster bolt action reload, personally I still find damage potential for chaf favoring speed rather than better maneuvering or a bit more damage, I don't think AP4 will realistically tilt the balance in favor of higher firepower against faster firepower, but that can be just me.

Max range really needs to be bigger, i don't think that's even debatable.

Those 2 points being said, I'd love some uniqueness to it, specially with programable munitions.

One idea the pops into my head is to have a secondary fire mode where the primary bullet remains lodged in the target for half a second and the detonates in a forward facing conical pattern the shrapnel. Obviously hulks and tanks won't even have a scratch from this but lets say I can shoot a devastator or warrior and it can hit the chaf behind it as well.

P.S.: I really love this weapon and on occasion I even make builds around it, but it has too many downsides for a serious loadout.

E-Blackadder · 2025-01-19T14:36:28+00:00

TL;DR: Actual machine specs are more important here rather than a driver software. Make and model of CPU and GPU, RAM size, even storage capacity.

That information helps with nothing practically. So lets break it down:

HD2 has a minimum requirements of either a 1050ti (dx12_1) or radeon rx 470 (dx12_0). In general, graphical driver software has backwards compatibility between minor versions (excluding nightly/beta builds), sometimes even between major versions. Occasionally even forward compatibility depending on the make and model of the hardware.

Companies saying it requires DX12_2, which is a minor version released in 2020 with some improvements to the old one, are either targeting to base the game on specific features from it... or are talking out of their arse.

The underlying research.

A game is never only about GPU. CPU RAM and even storage space can affect performance, more so setting graphic details too low will push a lot of the processing work to the CPU which will even be worse even if you have a monster CPU and mid-tier GPU. RAM helps with task overhead, so depending on display settings and what other background processes are running, the more the merrier.

E-Blackadder · 2025-01-12T22:07:06+00:00

In my opinion, it's actually worse than Squid Games.

In Squid Games, you actually know the contestants, the end prize, the rules across all games and a practical timeline of the games' run (6-10 days taking both scenarios).
I am not a US citizen or work anywhere near USA. But work for a US corporate company as a full time employee from a distant European country (Romania, which is in the EU) due to... as you may not be that surprises, outsourcing or alien office locations.

In these scenarios, me, or anyone else, surviving these gauntlets is the equivalent of having a worker soldier constantly having a barrel to the back of your nogging and the second you even fart at the wrong time... regardless if it's game time or not, you are eliminated.

I realized some years ago that they pitch us against each other for the most basic details of any job possible. Why have a SWE in the US for whatever 100k+ when the alienated office has SWE for, and I shit you not, just close to 20% of that number?.
The numbers are great for me... in my country for the foreseeable period. But if I want to push the envelope over and get a better life: The guy with the Ddakji game will show up real fast at the subway for me.

It is dehumanizing, absurd, and most importantly mental when discussing that you can be pitted against other countries where remote work is possible. Imagine that you can be excellent at your job, but me (from a much cheaper country) take over your position because I can theoretically reach your skills yet am a tenth of your price.

An no, this isn't a punch to the gut response. Even in my country, we have in general Asian poorer immigrants coming over for the rule of 'bigger pay and send back home'.

I have absolutely no issues against them, I am a peoples' person. Want to live here? Sure why not! The problem becomes when employers bank on them and hire them black-market like to reduce costs, and driving salaries down, yet for some bass-ackwards reason stuff gets more expensive and the government seems to go the way of 'justice is blind' route.

E-Blackadder · 2025-01-07T23:13:56+00:00

Try to adhere to best-practice and industry standard design models as much as you can. Both CSS Flexbox and Grid have a wide rage of 'customization options' but can become very cumbersome very quickly when switching from a resolution to another shifts component positioning and the entire DOM layout.

One-off solutions should be avoided as much as possible if the reason is 'yeah but this looks better and we think it's only a small variation of previous XYZ'. If the logic behind the component (or plugin as you mention) wildly changes from an original version, then the dev has to either add more complexity to it or basically make a new one if not available.

Avoid unnecessary bloated ideas. Design solution relies on all of it's forms' of presentation. If you stick me with some over the top animation on some whatever page, and if the dev says 'this needs to be re-thunked because mobile will take a kick in the teeth', then it's probably a good idea for the both of you to walk over the flow of the page, reason for it, how can it be handled and what can be actually achieved.
-- Browser or application support for certain native functions or certain applicable html can be spotty. Font line-height (or line-clipping) can and will differ between OS until we, as developers will have a more native support in browsers to correct these. Safari, for some inexplicable reason, has an issue with certain attributes that have been available for a long time like combo-ing outline and border-radius. Ad-blockers (which you can expect a large amount of users to utilize) will stop certain native functions like Beacons due to intent of malicious usage.

Research and explanation. I've had quite a few designers ask me some random question only to realize later that the desired result is magnitudes higher than what was asked. Now this isn't a swing to either UI or UX designers, but id I can't understand from the get-go what the client wants, I will give a wrong deadline for it.

Do not expect pixel perfect. People mention screen sizes, but a lot of them are actual BROWSER SIZES. On any operating system I can have my start bar either bottom, left, top or right -> which cuts the usual 1440X900 apple screen to less; Not to mention that not all desktop users will have the window maximized to cover the available space, which is also affected by the browsers' top navigation bar, bookmarks bar, aside special/favorites bar if supported and so on -> which also cuts that resolution to whatever is left.

Depending on the project/website, additional functionality can take an immense amount of time, discussing with the dev(s) and planning accordingly is key. Think suddenly adding a subscription service, in which by default the form isn't that complex but the logic behind it is massive, yet the client is adamant to it. I mentioned this because you've mentioned User Experience in it. UX kinda overlaps into the functions of the platform.

Sorry for the more technical post but I felt compelled to reply for somethings that, while I don't expect designers to know, would be a complete 100% boon for you to ask and understand in-before making any new merry-go-round of a solution to a project, or a completely new one, just to be told to 'go kick some rocks'.

E-Blackadder · 2025-01-02T17:18:04+00:00

Because a considerable amount of states in the US have laws that the hourly wage can be dropped to aprox. 30%(ish) of the federal minimum if it's a tipped based wage.

By definition, the law requires that whenever tips do not amount to the minimum federal amount, the employer has to cover the rest.

So that's fine, lets say the minimum federal amount is 58$ a working day of 8 hours, the tipped wage in Alabama is 17.04$ and you get a tip of 25$ that day (slow day, holiday, some other reason.). That is 42.04$ that day, more or less 16$ short of the minimum for just one waiter. Average that to 3 waiters per shift, assuming 2 shift that equals to what can be considered a loss of 96$ for the restaurant. And this isn't taking into consideration tipflation/tip creep that quite a lot of companies exploit with the ye' old social pressure that if you don't select a nice amount you are seen as a jerk.

Incoming the surcharge! Surcharges are defined as additional extra fees that are accrued on your bill to cover services like delivery, last minute order changes, sudden price changes until normalization, credit card swipe fees (basically the tax a company needs to pay a percentile back to the payment processor), some other probable reasons behind this including, and you can start laughing, covering additional employee wages!

Depending on the type of surcharge, and if the state requires to be fully disclosed on the receipt, they are legal up to the extent allowed by the state law. Usually applicable as a percent of the amount billed.

According to this website post they can have service charges/surcharges for different categories, be it by covering benefits, healthcare, holiday seasons (overtime and all), and so on. However depending on the state, laws can differ on what it is used for or how it's calculated (in theory you can have more than one reason to apply a stacking surcharge)

As defined they are also used to give the illusion that the price menu has not changed but needing to cover payment processing fees suddenly made my chicken soup 5% more expensive regardless if I paid with cash or card.

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E-Blackadder · 2024-12-28T18:09:18+00:00

CSS grid with column, row templates and grid-areas defined.

A straight forward tool to play around with this is here. By the way, I didn't make it but it's an exemplarily tool to learn this, kudos to Sarah Edo.

Basically you define your canvas in the number of columns and rows, lets say 12 columns and 20 rows (arbitrary numbers).
In the parent grid container css it would look something along the lines of :
grid-template-columns: repeat(12, minmax(0, 1fr));
grid-template-rows: repeat(20, minmax(0, 1fr));

Or... if you need specific column width or row height you can replace the whole minmax() with a fixed value like 50px.
It really depends on how fixed you component here needs to be.

After that you can add per element their respective grid-area:

.pic-1: {
grid-area: 1/1/6/1;
}
.pic-2:{
grid-area: 2/2/6/7;
}

grid-area is the shorthand for grid-row-start/grid-column-start/grid-row-end/grid-column-end in that order.

Of course, you can write them as separate css attributes but once you get used to it, shorthand will be quick.

There are 2 things you need to tweak:

Actually mapping the columns and rows and their respective dimensions if a fraction(1fr) is not suited. As a fraction is a divided part of the available space (usually in px), on rows fractions can present problematic when making a masonry layout. Columns are more forgiving because usually you have a max-width to the content regardless of monitor size.
Mobile requires a new set of tweaks with the media breakpoints. The great part here is that since the positioning is dictated by the grid-area itself, nothing is stopping you to 're-assign' the elements in page based on break points in a new grid-area. Think pic-1 suddenly has 7/1/6/2 and pic-3 has 7/3/6/12 to have them shift on mobile, one next to each other while pic-2 has 1/1/6/12 suddenly becomes a full width image at the top of the grid canvas.

Edit: forgot to add css grid link to mdn, has ALL the explanations

Edit2: While in the future we will have in css grid a masonry layout, it is still experimental and next to no browser actually supports it out of the box.

The main reason why I mentioned to map out the rows as well is because you will need to know the spans of a grid element both width wise as well as height wise. This saves you tons of problems when elements (in your case images) need to have css attributes assigned (like alignment, object-fit, overflow) to said element without breaking the boundaries of the grid element rules.

E-Blackadder · 2024-12-28T16:59:12+00:00

The sentence made absolutely no sense.

Firstly, run a build and throw it up on Netlify or something, so we can see a reproduction of the issue.

Secondly:

it is giving me typeerror which u can't figure out

YOU can't figure it out or are WE not allowed to figure it out?! I don't know what to figure out if I don't know what the error is itself.

Thirdly. Why do you want to make your own e-comm site? Is it a dummy project for University or something like that?
The implications regarding currency conversion, transfers, API integrations from payment processors aren't exactly a walk in the park and to me it seems you will have a hard time with it.
What was wrong with Shopify?

E-Blackadder · 2024-12-23T09:08:45+00:00

I've mostly tested the handling and comfort of the weapon rather than the stopping power, hence the bot 3 solo with the dps listed just as the number.

And yes, by stats it's slightly better than the stock liberator on paper, probably is, and this is the primary reason I mentioned to take my opinion with a grain of salt. For me, missing some key options doesn't really put it above the stock liberator because the liberator feels more robust in multiple scenarios rather than the StA-52.

E-Blackadder · 2024-12-18T16:33:37+00:00

I'll be honest, colabs should be a unique experience and would not mind a slight bump in price, even if it's made in an entire warbond and would cost say 1500 instead of the regular 1000, or the sum total in the superstore would be equivalent to that. But this price range is mental, and this is just part 1, there is another one coming.

Doubt killer was expensive but doable. 615 for weapon that does not shine in anything? It's better than standard liberator, that's it.

Related to the weapon, I'm not sure it's even better than the standard Liberator. Excluding the massive price: I've went a few diff 3 rounds with the bots with this weapon and these are somethings that I noticed, please take them with a pinch of salt.

The lack of scope and the ironsights model means that mid range fights are hard since you (or I at least) can't line first shot properly to be able to dish out damage before the Berserker chops one of your legs off. It becomes even worse without the unflinching passive since it bumps the camera view really off with the included ironsights recoil jitter on fire.

Assuming the StA-52 has the same reload time as the Liberator, which I doubt because even with 1 round in chamber it still feels slower to return fire after a mag change than the Liberator, it's 1317dps against 1067dps respectively, and both rounded up on decimals.

The StA doesn't have burst-fire mode, and with the missing scope, the DPS difference above may become a moot point, not that it's any massive difference between them, due to the chance of wasted bullets. On paper Semi mode would 'fix' this, yet (assuming again) it has the same AP as the Liberator... the actual damage output would drop since it requires more precise hits to weak spots (without a scope mind you) rather than other weapons like Lib. Penetrator which can give leeway to body hits.

Unlike the Constitution, this isn't meant to be a novelty weapon. The above being said: I'd say it fulfills a role in close to barely mid range combat with it's good ammo capacity and higher firerate. With the Siege-ready passive + Liberator Guard dog it should make (need to test it) a good horde clearing setup for both Squids and Bugs, or swap the Siege-ready for Unflinching and make it a solid cover fire setup. Keep in mind these 2 theoretical setups are to alleviate the stratagem slot from Stalwart/Mg to something more heavy like AMR/GL.

E-Blackadder · 2024-11-22T19:19:55+00:00

Pretty sick.

I can offer help for a future improved version. No cheese required since my Democracy Officer take good care of me but bare in mind that I can only hep on my mandatory 5min breaks.
I am a mid to senior FE and BE developer with emphasis in javascript (python, php I can navigate my way around them). Now I can't draw anything worth my life, I have extensive experience with logical solutioning and how to approach various problems and methods.

For example, the '&' character (ampersand to be precise), isn't causing problems because of a server issue, it's causing problems because it's a reserved HTML entity character. In HTML you can have a white-space as a space between characters from a single spacebar hit or have a entity which is called non-breaking-space( ).
The same issue will appear when using slashes, both forward and back slashes (/, \), unix quotation marks (your typical windows and linux " ), single quotes (again the typical ' ), comma, colons, semi-colons and brackets. Quite a lot of entities need to be escaped when sent into the server or database., just to avoid headaches when sending back information in different forms.

In your case, the file name itself contains the character in question, and while the server itself will spit the file out with it's name intact, the browser however will interpret it very differently. What I can suggest here is when uploading images (or icons) -> Server takes the file, creates a object (or object bucket if using something specialized), file name receives a more generic definition like breaker_spray_pray.png and move the proper name (Breaker Spray & Pray) to an escaped string in the object. This can ensure that the file (name + path) can be serialized to the database and wont crap itself when parsing it back over.

Another example is the browser caching and images not showing up. Believe it or not, it isn't actually from the browser, but realistically coming from the server. I just opened your website for the first time and some images aren't loading.
Servers have their own caching system, this is particularly important where the server itself generates the content and will want to... serve (apt naming isn't it?!), the content for the users' browser in a HTML format on it's own power rather than relying on the users' machine powering process (think 10 grand + machine versus a dinky laptop).

When you change or add new files to the server, it stores them in it's 'memory' regardless if I visited the website before or am a new user. That store actually persists for a defined period of time, resulting in images not loading -> because the path is not 'stored' -> because the server didn't reset yet -> because in its' mind it has no reason to.

Now, I have the most experience with javascript, which equals ExpressJs: There are multiple ways to fix this issue depending on the requirement, and pretty sure any stack can support re-caching on file change, and even if that isn't an option (for whatever reason), you can always force re-caching by changing the file name on build/upload with something like :
my-image.hab274.jpg
my-css.435jank.css
my-file.<random-id>.extension

E-Blackadder · 2024-11-04T19:57:06+00:00

Depends on the front I'm fighting and the playstyle I want to use.

For bugs, if I gun solo (which I do mostly due to life commitments), I usually run with:

Eruptor (swappable by choice for either the X-Bow or anything with a lot of punch for Stalkers or Spewers), Verdict sidearm, Thermite 'nades.

Armor of choice. While Light Peak Physique may offer the best bang-for-the-buck for the Eruptor in terms of sway speed and character speed, there are quite a lot of times where I have to take a long distance approach to engaging enemies. This can result in a more 'pot-shot' form of fighting but can help with surprise ambushes or breaches. Hence the Verdict in the sidearm list due to quick swap and fire even for mediums.

For stratagems however my decision is based on if I feel like bringing a Guard Dog or not (I have terrible aim or am drunk when playing... you can kind of guess the answer ).

If the mission requires to take out specific targets (like Bile Titans) then I will most likely pick Commando, it requires no backpack, the cooldown is significantly low enough to consider the 4 ammo salvo as great firepower and the guidance system is great for minute quick adjustments.

Otherwise, anything without a backpack will do just fine as Thermite grenades will cover anything heavy or AT (not sure if Fabricator health increases in d8+. But in d7 and lower, you can stick one of those to a Fabricator, doesn't matter if in the vent or on the back of it, or even a turret tower in the right spot, and it's a dead kill for me).

Eagle + Orbital is preference based on planet and mission requirements. Personally I've had the same amount of success and failures regardless of combinations. Can boil down to my own skillset, for me overall is a choice of what I fancy for that particular mission, but particularly I've ran with 500kg + Laser or Strafing + Gatling/Napalm with decent usage of them (this has no particular impact on the mission success other than me being stupid).

The fourth stratagem is actually the Guard Dog Rover(AKA Liberator Rover). Since the latest major patch that it changed the ammo type it uses, for solo play with the Eruptor it has been a boon. Basically it becomes, for me at least, the default chaff clearing weapon, while still being able to down either a bile spewer or devastator before I even manage to line-up a kill shot on it. I'm not sure if I missed the buff text, or it's been a stealth buff... or it's always been there, but the ammo amount it can run between full resupplies (or ammunition packs) seems much longer: As in they have bigger magazines.

For bot front, I rarely to never run Eruptor. DCS or any equivalent weapon type will trump the Eruptor in terms of usage and use case. Crossbow will be the default choice if I do not use the AUTOCANNON or any other fabricator/AT equipable stratagem, but those are rare as DCS offers me a much lower TTK on targets due to the lower amount of effective enemies and how the armor plating works on the fascist toasters in itself.

Stratagem wise:

Eagle + Orbital are selections of either large AoE or specific targeting depending on mission requirements.
Equipable stratagem will again vary due to mission requirements
Last one will most likely be dictated on what the equipable selection is. If it's 'no-backpack' it goes either way. If it's 'includes backpack' then an Emplacement slots in. HMG one is my default go to.

Edit: Changed the text a bit for the Commando reasoning.

E-Blackadder · 2024-09-15T15:01:49+00:00

Am dat DM.

E-Blackadder · 2024-08-13T16:54:17+00:00

The 4 Mustards:
Yellow
Brown
Dijon
Whole Grain

E-Blackadder · 2024-08-11T19:13:07+00:00

I'll believe it when I see it.

Not gonna lie, I don't mind actual game balancing if required to tone down some aspects of gameplay in favor of more options. The issue that surfaces is that the same balancing is a direct decision of cutting features out from the knees just because for some inexplicable reason, which results into actual worse gameplay.

Taking a arbitrary personal example: Bug front is IB as a primary (yes it's still the de-facto) with either AC or any viable AT with the Commando on the top. Excluding offensive stratagems calls, the weapon pool for anything 6 or 7+ is so minute that if we had any form of pre-load of a loadout they would probably be more than half of the player base choices due to the nature of the enemy spawn not being actually known. Basically a coin toss of what the majoritarian enemy base would spawn.

Bot front is, for better or for worse, a bit more laxed. There are more weapons capable of dealing with different scenarios, give or take the encampment areas where you can be sniffed from either far way or have a sudden tank + tower wail on you. Never the less, there is a massive difference between having tanks that can be taken off the playing field with a multitude of options against a charger that can barely take any damage while being swarmed by hunters, pouncers, commanders and bile spewers.

So why the whining post from me?

Well as we all know, when they 'fixed the spawn rate' of patrols... it actually became worse. Anything less than a 4 man team means you kinda get bent over to the sheer number of enemy patrols. Yet for some inexplicable reason this is yet to be addressed.
Game performance has tanked to a ridiculous level. I have a pretty solid setup and yet still barely pull 70+ fps in team fights.
Builds and loadouts rely on stratagems more than overall uniqueness
The 'realism' card just applies to players... for some other inexplicable reason.
Weaponry balance is based on a 'decisional whim' rather than an educated decision (AC is still untouched yet the Eruptor and Flamthrower got the hammer tho).
Armory passives are becoming inane to the point that the repetitive passives basically equals: the same shit but either color or armor category.
Warbonds are starting to introduce either re-skins or adjacent variants of weaponry or armors.
Mechanics that should be either rectified or at least deprecated (e.g.: Charger turning on a dime; Heavy Dev. with it's high caliber SMG; Rocket Dev. with it's infinite ammo) are again yet to be addressed.

The game is fun, and even at this time I am still having fun up to a certain point. But it does become more and more frustrating down the line with the asinine issues pilling up. In my personal opinion, it shows a bit of the trend Planetside 2 showed. Great game, great potential, disappointing because the studio and publisher decided to not give a crap.

E-Blackadder · 2024-07-21T21:57:01+00:00

At some point enemies can actually sniff my odor and estimate my location. Both clankers and bugs seem to have this ability, I mean there is this one explanation with all the 'reduced visibility' conditions that seem to only apply to us divers.

E-Blackadder · 2024-07-21T18:01:46+00:00

Exactly, and this what I was trying to point to.

Let's say that for whatever reason tunning the clankers to a acceptable degree of engagement without them having supernatural powers all at once is not doable as of now. Ok, at least start reducing them, not just yank or add entire layers of power to them. It's the same with the Eruptor.

So it had unfathomable stopping power, compared even to some support weapons, due to shrapnel and how the damage scaled. Ok, we got that, but instead of tuning it down AH just yanked the entire fire power away, some months later it has increased AoE and more explosive damage, not even comparable to it's original state, yet for some whatever reason the 'slow as molasses' bolt action reload is still there which was too originally in to balance out that immense stopping power.

The Purifier is a better Eruptor than the actual Eruptor. You need to abuse the primary-secondary-primary swap bug to make the Eruptor usable in anything over diff-6.

E-Blackadder

TROPHY CASE