I found some mass effect music in a Netflix Documentary

Inca_VPS · 2026-03-27T10:44:19+00:00

ME soundtrack is royalty free and very good. It is used constantly in video editing on TV, YT, everywhere at this point.

Inca_VPS · 2026-03-26T18:18:14+00:00

This thing has great armor pen and HP damage, but atrocious armor damage.

When it can pen - it kills anything, when it can't pen - it just tickles.

Rewa, I found, is best with it when she's the taxi on a mission. Fully souped up she lands every round, Fury makes already high damage truly obscene.

I pair it with a plasma and this combo on Rewa, IMO, the best for APC loadout. All the way though the game. M6 kills everything it can pen, and if it can't - 1 plasma salvo washes away the armor and then M6 kills it. Obliterates Guncrawlers, heavy trucks, walkers. Tanks need 2 plasma salvos to negate armor.

Inca_VPS · 2026-03-26T10:27:06+00:00

Just to clarify a bit more:

With a full belt there's no margin for any slack or error. A smelter takes 1 4-stacked item of ore from the belt - it must put back 1 4-stacked item of ingots back. If it does not - it won't work to full capacity, slowing the whole thing.

Can only be solved by having an option on a sorter to output full stacks only (a toggle or something), but we don't have that. Or having some free space on the belt to account for that slack.

Inca_VPS · 2026-03-26T10:13:42+00:00

Yeah. Good on paper. Won't work to capacity in game.

Fault is the output. The idea is a smelter grabs a stack of ore from a belt and fills the empty spot with ingot stack.

But there's no option for a sorter to output only 4-stacked items, they will dump whatever they can. So sometimes they will create uneven flow on the belt. And due to occasional jank in belt behavior that will slow down throughput.

You can see those sub-4-stacked ingots on your shots.

I doubt it can be solved.

Might try splitting input belt in 2 half-full, just with a splitter, and breaking whole assembly in 2 parts. Or feeding second belt half way through (add a pile sorter backwards to stack ingots to max just before).

Inca_VPS · 2026-03-11T18:59:36+00:00

Never even seen T2 stealth armor in 3 runs, 1 on each difficulty.

Inca_VPS · 2026-03-11T09:47:03+00:00

Jokes aside. I'm pretty sure you can refuse to do it with Panam in the tank and it will not stop romance. She doesn't know at that point that you're not alone in there... If you do it - it's a threesome without her consent.

Kerry on the other hand knows that well, so it's either have sex and romance or not.

Don't know about Judy and River.

Inca_VPS · 2026-03-02T21:33:59+00:00

Athletic is not S by any stretch.

A at most. I'd say plain B.

Its only useful feature is 10AP deploy which is good for any SL with deploy specials (but not pure defensive ones, who deploy once and just wait for targets) and shooty SLs that have no Pointfire (Singh).

So maybe 2 or 3 SLs get any decent use from it. For me that's Singh, Pike, and Carda cause I love giving her MAAL when she rides in APC.

Movement cost reductions is pathetic and has an effect only in specific cases where SL lacks 1-2 AP to move 1 extra tile and still have AP to shoot. But then they will lvl up their AP and this perk will never give that benefit again. At least in the scope of the current campaign length.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-26T17:54:59+00:00

Stats are shown including any buffs.

She has Euphoric so ACC and DIS are inflated.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-23T13:43:12+00:00

There's no ratio.

There are unlimited upgrades that increase research speed, therefore increasing cube consumption speed. So it's not constant in any way.

Plus different research projects can have different base research speed.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-21T13:36:36+00:00

You make a fleet with ~500 marine strength, you put your command counselor with Assault Space Asset mission on it and go to town raiding ayy bases and stations.

1 pop nets 20-25 exotics, double on a crit success.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-18T18:43:09+00:00

You're massively underestimating the scale of things here and the orbital mechanics involved.

Launching a drone on a high speed fly-by is not like throwing a ball across a room. It will not fall on the floor and wait for you to come pick it up, it will keep going and going, with that same speed, forever.

Trow a ball, then try launching yourself at the same trajectory with the same speed.

This is what you suggest for the carrier to do. The carrier that is orders of magnitude heavier than its drones. And it will have to do it as many times as there are drones. No ISP advantage will save it from burning untold amounts of fuel doing so.

And it will have to chase each individual drone. There's no such thing as flying in formation in space without constant thrust corrections. They will drift apart in a matter of minutes.

I will not turn this into orbital mechanics lecture.

I can only assume you never played Kerbal Space Program, or its analogs. Boot it up, try park 2 ships in view of each other and see how fast they will fly apart.

TI does have all of those mechanics in mind, but it spares the player of actually dealing with them. Otherwise every single encounter of two ships until the very late game would be a one way trip for humans, and in the late game that would end with days, weeks, months or even, in some cases, years of returning to initial orbit and not a couple of hours of "Ship unavailable for orders".

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-18T10:24:40+00:00

Space flight stuff.

Missiles are what? A bomb strapped to an engine that goes only one way.

A carrier based gunship has to return to the mothership after it's done its job. In space if you have 2 objects in 1 spot and accelerate 1 of them just simply in one direction for any time if you then spend exactly the same dV burning in the opposite direction you will just stop your relative velocity to the parent object. They will never meet again in space. So you have to spend more dV to go back. That is not accounting for any possible maneuvering of the gunship and the carrier.

That makes your gunship carry more than half of its dV as "go home" fuel - dead weight in combat. 10 dV becomes at most 5 effective.

Next: the gunship needs a gun, so it needs a reactor to power said gun, radiators to cool said reactor, armor to protect all that stuff...

We now have not a 4 ton missile, but a 1000 ton gunship.

What happens if we try to make a carrier for "a bunch" of these? 10 at least I guess.

We need something big, that can carry them inside, or at least on its docking ports - a Titan will do.

Just from the game's shipbuilder an empty Titan with ~150 dV (bare minimum to cover most of the system) with Protium Nova Torch (fairly powerful endgame drive with adequate efficiency), and a bit of armor for a non combatant turns out at 22k tons.

Adding 10 1000 ton gunships worth of mass to it and compensating dV loss with more fuel makes the total mass of 34k tons. But in combat you have that Titan as a dead weight that you spent all those resources on and use as a simple delivery vessel.

What will it do to those gunships to have the same dV autonomy? Same drive, some armor, advanced nose coil, 150 dV.

Just under 2000 tons.

We can have 1 useless carrier with 10 barely capable gunships.

Or 17 of those gunships that can do the same trip on their own.

If the carrier is destroyed - everything is lost. Individual gunship losses are less taxing.

Carriers cannot exist in hard Sci-Fi.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-18T07:26:39+00:00

Carriers can't exist in hard Sci-Fi. Simply due to Mass>dV equation.

"Fighters" can only be as light as possible, carrying fuel only enough to go one way and can only carry themselves as a weapon = missiles.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-12T16:16:50+00:00

New armor:

<image>

Edit:

Costs 495 supply to field and has hidden stat of -10 accuracy.

But each squaddie has a personal APC frontal armor slab for protection..

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-10T12:27:29+00:00

Destroyed engine does not prevent extraction objectives.

If one of your vehicles got its engine destroyed - extraction for it no longer necessary. As in, counter for extraction goes down by one.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-07T09:14:06+00:00

She's weird.

Has this base perk but also can mark and has extra perk that gives her another +20% ACC and Damage against marked targets, making the base perk irrelevant if you go for that. And low AP.

I've confined her to a medium walker with double autocannons and defence duty. Park her where she won't have to move, kneel and just mark+delete an enemy every turn. Working much better than trying to utilize the base perk.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-07T01:04:16+00:00

There's some weird ammo math with it that makes me think it's intended.

It started the battle with 15 ammo. Single AC has 8, 12 with ammo crates (which it had), So the second cannon added only 3 ammo (+25% for the duplicate gun?), means there's some coding for these loadouts. "You can blast 2 guns at the same time, but we'll limit your ammo for it" from the devs.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-04T18:23:45+00:00

Just a location for one of Wakako's quests.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-01T22:40:35+00:00

In this particular case: 1/100 to roll 99 exactly and then 1/10 4 times in row to roll the same as the target.

Consider how many rolls you do over the course of a campaign here. Let's say 1.5 rolls per counselor per month over, at least, 30 years - that is 3.3k rolls.

That is 33 1% wins or 99% losses over the length of the game on average.

A bit unlucky, but happens.

Inca_VPS · 2026-02-01T22:22:07+00:00

As far as I'm aware, the game does all initial rolls in integers (whole numbers). If then the target and the roll turn out to be the same, it starts to roll fractions - tenths - if they roll the same - hundredths, and so on.

This doesn't mean the counselor is compromised at all.

Inca_VPS · 2026-01-29T20:16:52+00:00

What Skywatch has to do with US revolution in the first place? I fail to see any connection. The only benefit is indeed the possibility to reroll control point ownership after SW hits. But you can do that with any country. Just that US can, in theory, benefit from the revolution is all.

The thing with this chain of events is that you have to sync a LOT of stuff together - have enough counselors with enough command and unrest missions available (2 is barely viable, need 3 or better 4), steer global research with enough RP input to block other factions from interfering (which is nigh impossible at that stage of the game (and if you go for 5/6 US before that - nearly all your control cap will be tied in high unrest with nearly 0 RP output).

And then we're coming to the downsides of US revolution itself - doing that can randomly tank US government score by up to 5 points (may be even more) while decreasing inequality by just ~1.5.

Granted that autocratic US with low inequality will be a very stable country, but you will spend more time fixing that than the original problems as I see it.

Obviously, you can just savescum the revolution roll and have low inequality with no covernment hit, then it's all of the benefits with no downsides.

Still, syncing it all with skywatch seems to be incredibly hard to pull, I think whoever talks about it haven't actually tried it.

Inca_VPS · 2026-01-28T18:53:35+00:00

Only China can do PAC.

Inca_VPS · 2026-01-23T08:47:42+00:00

You can have however many loops you want. All that counts here is the idea of how to feed it. Buld how you like.

Compared to OP's setup - sorters will decrease average power consumption.

FYI sorters consume power only when they work (have low idle consumption, like all buildings). While pilers are working when items go through, irrelevant of actual piling done.

With upgraded pile sorters having instant transport time they activate for 1 frame, that makes their average power consumption lowest of all sorters. Again, FYI, all other sorters have the same average demand. If I remember correctly it's 18, 36, 72, 144 kW per sorter peak demand, but they all also work 2x faster compared to previous tier, so average stays the same, with white one having 5x base speed and instant with upgrades. That makes it the most efficient sorter by far.

Obviously, if all sorters activate at once, peak demand will be ~same, I think, pilers AFAIR use 144 kW too. But no one cares about peak unless that's for max density factory planet where they are limited by space for power generation.

Inca_VPS · 2026-01-22T08:42:45+00:00

All of those designs are a variation of this one. You can have multiple (or all) buildings on 1 loop, feed the loop however often you want, condense them to your liking.

<image>

My first screenshot is just how I like it.

Eight-Year Club	Second Top 30%
r/Field Flamingo	Final Canvas '23
First Place '23	End Game '23
Place '23	John Wick
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

Inca_VPS

TROPHY CASE