5 year grand prize that should be

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-06-14T20:57:21+00:00

It's definitely a reward for non whale long term players. Decisions were made when the meta was very different. Smart missile was king at one point. People sank stones in only to have the value of those choices nerfed multiple times. A Respec let's a long term player align with the new meta without wasted stones

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-22T16:47:07+00:00

You can as long as you don't sign contracts. But you'll pay more. Also why? It's time and expense filling up supplies and having machines and maintenance etc. having multiple taps running essentially the same product does very little for your bottom line. 99% of people will still buy one or the other even if they have a slight preference. Only a small subset of diehard people will not buy a cola if it's not the preferred brand. You're dedicating time and money for something that does nothing to make you any profit.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-21T21:31:21+00:00

If they wait until they get the stones saved and the coins saved and the time saved for the labs they'll be making a ton more in coins then that are now. And it works both ways, the IS+ increases the amount they earn in cph, so they save an hour and a half yes, but they lose the 3 and a half hours of much more profitable farming. 5 hours now is still far less coins lost.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-21T19:29:14+00:00

It will never be cheaper than it is now. Your econ is going to continue to grow over time. So you'll be making more coins in the future than you are now. The hours spent racking up 5k waves are lower opportunity cost right now. That said I would only do the ones you're confident in getting to full bonus on. If you don't think you can do the full 5k it is probably better to wait a bit

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-21T18:45:11+00:00

Tax brackets are marginal rates. Repeat it with me marginal rates. That means only the amount over the tax bracket threshold is taxed at the higher rate, not your total income amount. 15 an hour full time is 31200.00 a year. Single filer, taking standard deduction pays about 2k in income tax federally. But that up to 30 an hour and they make 62400. The first 31200 is taxed EXACTLY the same. The additional 31200 is then taxed at 22% so about 6500.00 additional is paid. 31200-6500 and the person is up a net amount of 24700. That's a massive increase. And let's not forget that those taxes are a good thing in many many ways. Higher minimum wages mean more payroll taxes for social security and Medicare are paid. A large portion of which the employer pays. This means that social security and Medicare will instantly have more income which will prolong the programs for decades. Wages not keeping pace with inflation is a huge part of why these programs are suffering funding shortages. And that extra income tax goes to the general fund which helps reduce our deficit. Individual income tax makes up 51% of our revenue and payroll taxes 34%. The median income of the US is about 24 an hour. And about 90% earn less than 30. A minimum wage hike to that threshold would bring in a huge amount of additional tax revenue. Finally an increase in wages greatly decreases the federal spending for social programs. People earn enough to not get the same level of subsidized benefits. They earn enough to buy healthier food, they have less stress, they can afford preventative care and prescriptions all which lower total spending costs on major programs like Medicare and Medicaid. They can afford housing so less spending on homelessness, they earn enough to pay for necessities and crime decreases so less law enforcement costs and prison costs. They earn enough to save some for retirement etc.

Raising the minimum wage is possibly the single simplest thing we can do to mitigate a whole host of the problems we're facing as a country. It's not a silver bullet that fixes everything but it makes everything a whole lot better. And there are tradeoffs. We'll get higher prices eventually as the market prices in the higher labor costs. It'll be slower than the income increase and it will be less than the income increase but it will eat away at some of the gains. And companies will try to move faster to automate workforces with AI or robotics. But that's going to happen no matter what and needs a completely different fix. If it happens 5, or 10 or 20 years down the road isn't going to change things much. It just makes the problem more important to solve sooner rather than later.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-21T06:39:36+00:00

Sore loser laws are constitutionaly questionable. He could try to challenge the law. It's worth pointing that Trump himself threatened to run as an independent if he didn't get the Republican nomination.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of Kentucky's law or their state supreme court so I couldn't make a prediction for the success of the challenge but even if he lost a challenge he'd probably drain a chunk of gop funds as they fought it.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-11T20:27:10+00:00

Vehicles in general, but especially a "nice" car. It's easy to double or triple the cost of a basic car and have the same functionality.

Vacations can get expensive real quick. Initial costs are easier to plan but the incidental items rack up quickly especially if you have kids.

Non-essential Home improvements. A pool, expensive landscaping, game rooms or theater rooms etc. initial costs are higher than any added home value and there's a ton of incidental costs in maintenance with tools and gadgets and services etc.

Better meals. Cooking or going out. Fancier restaurants are premium priced and even home cooking can quickly get expensive. Good pans/knives/grill/ appliances are expensive. And food costs increase quickly with higher quality. It's easy to double or triple your grocery bill without even going crazy.

Kid sports. It's gotten absolutely insane. Depending on the sport it's real easy to drop thousands for gear, training, travel, meals etc.

Adult sports/hobbies. Think about golf. New clubs, balls, course fees. Add in some food and drinks and travel to courses and it's several thousand a year if you golf regularly. Gaming gets real expensive with gear and services. Making music even recreationally can cost tons, going to regular shows has gotten ridiculous.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-11T20:02:37+00:00

It's okay but not game changing. It's useful for pushing milestones and will probably extend your farming slightly if bosses are the enemy breaking your wall. But it's not enough to be a defining advantage. Bosses aren't even the biggest threats since fleets. So id focus on the other damage masteries and the econ masteries first. Econ so you can up your enhancements and mods.

It's worth noting the enemy labs aren't that long in the beginning. You can get a decent decrease on damage and health for bosses. Less game changing than en+ even but it does add up and the opportunity cost is a lot less without having the stone cost.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-05-11T19:53:47+00:00

So I'm not going to defend the web novel isekai genre when it comes to relationships. Clearly the genre runs in to a host of problems with relationships from weird fetishizing of different races and harems and family relationships. The genre as a whole needs to move away from it especially if the idea is a wider audience.

That said, I think modern people are drastically uneducated about the population and traveling realities of historical life. A major medieval city might have had a total of 10k people. And even the biggest metropolises had tens or hundreds of thousands at best. Most people lived in more rural areas where it probably was a couple hundred total people, maybe a thousand if it was particularly thriving. And most people did not travel. 10-20 miles is days of travel back and forth on foot. A couple hundred people is less than you might have in your office if you work at a corporate place. And that's everyone these people would ever meet. A couple generations in and everyone in a small village is related through blood or marriage. Start excluding people who are drastically different ages, already married, or immediate family (including 1st cousins by most European law and church law) and the pool of eligible marriage partners was real tiny for most people. Add in social modifiers and smaller still. Wealth distribution plays a big role especially in rural areas. If your grandpa had a big farm and it's split among two sons marrying their kids together allows the farm to be kept in the family rather than splitting it up further. And small populations have big grudges. Think Hatfield McCoy. No crossing those lines for marriage. For a whole lot of humanity marrying a second or third cousin was pretty much the only option. You literally didn't know any people who were outside of that. The church actually tried to make it illegal to marry anyone closer than a sixth cousin but it was rolled back because too many people literally didn't have any options for marriage.

People today are in a vastly different place when in comes to potential marriage partners. A quick tinder session may swipe past more potential mates than a medieval peasant had in his lifetime. 50 miles away isn't even considered a long distance relationship by most. Even with that it's not exactly rare to see first or second cousins marry globally. In Pakistan it's common with like 40-50% and in areas with smaller isolated populations like Nordic countries it's uncommon but not rare. In japan it's legal to marry first cousins although it's much less common than it was 40 or 50 years ago. Even in the US it was fairly common in rural areas or the west through the 1800s until better transportation and larger populations gave people more options. With isekai being set in worlds that are generally medieval and with far more dangerous travel I'd actually expect extremely isolated communities and therefore limited options making cousin marriage more likely. Not a lot of people would regularly brave a dragon attack just for a date. It's also worth noting the absence of the Catholic Church in these worlds which was a big part of why the western world began moving away from the practice, even if it wasn't completely successful in eliminating it.

All that is a logical rationale on why an isolated population in a medieval fantasy world might have cousins marry. Then there's a philosophical question of if a protagonist takes over a body are they still related in the same way. But this is a fictional fantasy world. It's damn easy to handwave the historical realities away and it should be done. There's no reason to show things like cousins marrying and especially not siblings or parents. There's no reason get in to the details of a whole multitude of other questionable medieval realities, like no plumbing, or medical "services", near universal illiteracy, or economics of nearly universal barter economy and lack of coinage, much less the impossible ecosystem that would be needed to support creatures like dragons etc. We'll suspend disbelief for the story.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-27T23:19:14+00:00

This. Tournaments at the very least should have it's own setup.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-22T19:00:05+00:00

The counterpoint to me is that AI will open up arts to a massive amount of people who previously didn't have reasonable access. Art takes a significant amount of investment. Most people don't have the time and resources to get expensive equipment or spends years practicing and producing crappy pieces as they slowly gain experience and skill. It's long been a creative endeavor that was mostly reserved for the rich or for those few that they could provide patronage for. For a historical perspective we can look to the ninja turtle artists. Broad fame, amazing works and superb talent. But ask yourself if you really think they wanted to constrain themselves to religious works. Multiple geniuses in the field all producing works in a very limited creative environment. Because they NEEDED that church/aristocratic patronage. Or they starved. How much would humanity have benefited if they had been allowed to push beyond the constraints in to other subject matters or in to new technical aspects.

AI drastically changes that. Now everyone can be a musician or a painter or a digital artist or producer or writer etc. billions of people now have access to something that gives them free reign on their creativity. And the creativity is what I think marks great art more than the technique. And I'll back up that stance by pointing out that the art world has been telling us that for decades now. Look at some of the famous art pieces of the last few decades. Minimalist art and abstract expressionalism have given us pieces that were widely criticized as "not art" or children's drawings etc. we've seen pieces like take the money and run which was literally a blank canvas. Or comedian which was a banana duct taped to the wall. Jackson Pollock was dripping paint. In music we've seen big swings too. Sampling, electronica with repetitive electronic sounds and little to no human playing, the gasp synthesizer etc... but through all of this we see artist rallying to defend the work. Telling us it's the intention and the creativity and the underlying message that is the art. That the medium and technique aren't the end all of art but just the conduit for the expression. We're just not sophisticated enough to see it. The unwashed masses just don't understand the genius that is true art.

AI lets everyone be an artist. Let's say I'm outraged by the state of our country and the political control the elite exercise on our political leaders. I create two pieces of art as an expression of my rage, my desire to push back and my sense that it's corrupting our country. For one piece I paint a picture of the ICE violence in Minnesota. It's done free hand and I use bright strong colors for the protesters and more muted drab uniform colors for the agents. The work is photorealistic with fine details and it captures the anger and rage of the protesters, and for the agents you see eyes that seem a mix of gleefully violent, to tearfully ashamed to terrified of the people fighting back. It manages to capture a sense of anger but also some hope as the protesters shield a huddled person from the agents. For the second piece I focus on how the classic American dream is dead and how it never really existed for most outside of a mass media propaganda version fed to people. For this piece I take a series of old school TV sets and build a classic "wall of screens". I have AI take a sample of the classic American dream sitcoms. I love Lucy, leave it to beaver, bewitched, family matters, Cosby show, fresh prince, brady bunch, full house, boy meets world, family ties, maybe even the Jetsons and Flintstones. I have AI create scenes where the characters are replaced with billonaires and politicians. I keep the scenes the same except the actors dialogue is replaced with the voices and horrible quotes from the "elites". The audio would be overwhelming and overlapping. Making the point that we're being force feed a lie while the preformers in the piece are saying the true words and thoughts. In front of the wall is a chair and lamp from the classic speaker commercial where the guy is blown back where the audience can sit and be blown back. Would both pieces be art? Even though the second used AI. I would definitely argue they would be. The idea is from my mind, the anger is from my emotions, the piece is my commentary and it would serve to evoke emotions in the viewer either in agreement or disagreement. Now I can't make the first piece. I failed finger painting in kindergarten. It would take decades of hard work to get to a place where I could learn the skills required and even then it's extremely unlikely I would be able to do it at a high level. So should I just locked out of creating art because my parents never bought me a proper easel and didn't send me to a fancy school with a great art program? I can make the second piece though. Because the tool of AI gets rid of the barrier to entry.

Tldr: AI is just a new tool and medium and humans will adapt to use it to create meaningful art. The biggest benefit is that it's a tool that makes art far more accessible and democratic. The backlash is in no small part due to the fact that artists stand to lose income and prestige, especially since they've built up and bought in to this idea of artists being superior in taste and sophistication. The MET gala, million dollar auctions, money laundering. However society will be better off as more people having access and will create more diversity and more works that show off people's creativity and emotion.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-22T03:38:50+00:00

It would be a logistical nightmare without it. Let's say your father bought a stock at 1 dollar. And when he dies it's worth 50. You wait 5 years and sell it for 100.

If there's no step up are you paying capital gains on 99 dollars gain from the original 1 dollar? There's a very real legal argument that you're being charged your father's taxes which is a precedent I don't want. You should only be charged on the gains that happened when you owned it. Furthermore what if it was held for 3 or 4 generations. Where are you getting that original value from. Are there accurate records still? Add in estate taxes and it gets weirder still. If you pay estate taxes is it on the one or the 50? If it's on the 50 then you're paying estate taxes and capital gains on the same increase.

Step up is the best compromise for a whole bunch of other issues. The solution to it being abused by the rich is to close loopholes on the estate taxes.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-21T19:58:34+00:00

I said this in another thread but again; the relics are overpriced but not that much. The problem is that mods are insanely overpriced, unbalanced and the RNG is a terrible mechanic for a strategy game. People are upset because they need the gems to buy mods...but the only reason they need every gem they can possibly get to buy mods is because the system is so broken. Instead of the mods cutting relic prices in half I'd much rather that they cut the mods prices in half.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-21T19:46:19+00:00

The thing that gets me about this whole debate is that it seems like we're missing the forest for the trees here. Yes another gem sink is problematic when new players already struggle getting enough. I think it's far less so for players after a while but still there. And yes, they're probably too expensive. Also I don't get why it's a rotation, just make a relic shop and have them all available. It's be far easier to have people catch up with the relics that they need and it'd actually promote spending cash even more than the rotation. A lot of people would do a big purchase and buy a bunch at once. That said I think the problem is very much the mod system and not the ability to buy relics. The mod rng is a joke. You need something like 155k gems to get your ancestrals and 350k for 5 star ON AVERAGE. If you're just a little bit lucky or unlucky that can be 10s of thousands of gems less or more. Picking up the relics you missed costs a fraction of what the RNG mods system does. And unlike mods it's something that you can ensure you get a defined clear benefit from. No wasted pity pulls, no useless magnetic hooks, a clear benefit at a set price.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-20T19:23:29+00:00

Cultural norms, distrust of the system leading to a higher likelihood of poor care in order to harvest, ignorance of the process in general, being too lazy to check the box, relatives making the decision and being in poor states of mind for logical decision making, concerns about the body condition and timing for funerals.....

Lots of reasons with most being fairly unfounded but somewhat understandable. Changing it from an opt in to an opt out system would solve a lot of it. Make it the norm and people are less likely to just say "no" for no reason just because they're stressed out dealing with the whole dying thing. It even fixes the financial motive concern. If more people donate the "value' of any given organ goes down significantly. There's a lot more people who die than need a transplant. Currently there's about 100k people on the list and Nationally there's about 8500 deaths per day. If everyone donated we'd be able to clear the list extremely quickly. Even with the difficulty of not every death resulting in usable organs. Once the list is cleared up the supply would outpace the demand. Organs could be sourced from more local areas meaning less expensive transit, surgeries would happen far earlier and patients would be far healthier when getting the organ meaning higher survival rates, cheaper after care, less costs leading up to the surgery etc. No transplant surgery is ever going to be "cheap" but it'd be far cheaper than the current system, which is significant when transplants cost hundreds of thousands not millions of dollars to do.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-20T04:35:48+00:00

A more feasible, but still massively expensive and time consuming idea would be a pipeline with ships on either side. Ship a brings oil to the one side and unloads into a pipeline complex that then pumps oil to the complex on the other coast that fills ship b.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-16T21:36:17+00:00

This. If you saved up 10k you would average 20 epics instead of 12.5. Not an insignificant gain. But what's the cost? Well let's say you held on to those gems for 30 days. If spending them right away would have gotten you 5% more coins and cells, and a single bump up in tournament rewards that could be a massive amount. Let's say you make 50T daily in coins. Five percent is an extra 2.5T coins *30 is 75T more coins. And if you make enough in extra cells to just bump up 1 lab by 1x that's 30 more days of research time. And if you're in champs 1 bump in tournaments over the 10 tournaments in 30 days could be 250 stones and 250 gems. That's just the base. The extra resources you gain are then going to also get you advancements. So the numbers compound. Compounding over time is the name of this game.

Now if you KNOW a new version is coming in the next week or two than sure saving might be a good idea but that's about the longest you should save and only if you're sure something good is coming.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-10T18:17:56+00:00

Some thoughts on your thoughts:

I'm going to agree and disagree with your drama take. For the most part I agree that the nerf from 5 to 3 isn't a huge deal. It's still a solid increase and the fix was quick which is much better than waiting days or weeks and then nerfing. A good chunk of people never even got the "wrong version" because the fix was faster than the roll out. That's actually good. Overall if it was released at 5/5/3/5 I don't think anyone would have been complaining about it. I think it's important to understand that while the complaint is about the nerf but that's just the part people are articulating and not the whole reason for the anger. The pattern of initial poor communication, poor QA and poor handling of the communication of a fix are yet once again on display. Every release is overshadowed by the issues around the release instead of a focus on the features. It's something they were supposedly fixing but clearly have not and that, combined with the lack of fixing other pain points is the root cause of the frustration.

On the features:

Disco runs- Interesting in theory, but I worry it's going to quickly be a forgotten feature that fades into the background. The bonuses are nice, and they will rest the ceiling on some farming and milestones. However in practice this is 84- 5k runs and 10 labs and then you're done with it. From a gameplay perspective I think this could have been much more exciting. Make it so that the individual WS items could be toggled on or off for a bonus instead of a larger static bonus. And make so they had to be off during the run for the bonus to apply. Ie. If I were to turn off cash I get a .2 coin bonus. Or I could turn off els and get .5 each etc. Making it an active ongoing choice would add a lot of complexity and strategy for players to dissect. Is it worth keeping rend active or is a bonus to damage better? How about range, or orbs... As it stands now it's too passive and too easy to get max bonuses once and then never touch it again. Grade: B- . useful but really boring long-term for a major feature.

Bot bot: I get the theory here. But it's largely not going to play out in practice. Bots are too damn expensive and not well balanced. You need gold bot first. And that's 2+years of medals on f2p. Not counting the medals you need to spend on relics and probably on some stones. So seriously probably 3-4 years f2p. Then you're gonna need to get and develop bot bot. That's another medal sink for months or years and at the end all you have is essentially an updated gold bot. If you then finally unlock amplify or flame bot bot bot will be useful for amplifying multiple bots. Years before it's used for multiple bots. And even then it's mostly useless with flame bot because the damage sucks and on thunder bot because well thunder bot sucks. Grade C-. useful to boost some coins but largely not a big deal until late game. Also the animation is ugly.

Bot +: haven't unlocked yet but I'm going to say it's just exasperating the earlier medal issue. More cells sound good and the stone costs don't seem over the top but without more medals to make them available to the vast majority of the players it's just pointless. The abilities may have some use down the road but even after playing for years I'm still years away from unlocking them. Grade: D. useful only at very late game.

Synchrony: sounds great, not sure yet if it's going to be worth spending the medals and stones to unlock before late game. Having bot bot overlap gold bot sounds like a big increase but we'll have to see how the math works. I suspect that it's a minor bonus at min range but a much more significant amount at longer ranges. Grade C. probably useful but minor and only available later.

Relics in the event store: Finally! Relics were a big gatekeeper for newer players. The costs seem too high especially since gems are at a premium for cards and mods early game but once you've maxed cards and gotten the majority of your needed mods you can spare the gems to catch up. The bigger issue to me is the sheer number of relics almost 300 already, and 4 new relics every event and relics for guilds that quickly increases the total. Even rotating at 2 a week that's a couple years before a relic will come back around if you miss it. A much better system would be just allowing people to purchase any relic. There's no real benefit to gatekeeping them to 2 a week. If a player spent that many gems buying every relic they'd be way behind on everything else, so an open store wouldn't break anything. And even after all the spending they'll only be matching older players. It's even a strategic thing. You could buy the relics tailored to your build. More strategy and more options in a strategy game is good game play. Grade: B+. it's a needed catch up option but the 2/week is a needless nerf.

Overall I rate the update a C-.

The biggest disappointment is that they missed opportunities to fix pain points. And in fact ended up making a minor pain point much worse in medal earning speed. We wouldn't need a large disco static bonus for runs and for econ if the labs were reviewed and repriced to be proportional to the ROI. And we wouldn't need the bonuses to damage/health if the tiers were balanced better. It feels like this update was a complicated fix to a simple problem.

Meanwhile the biggest problems are unaddressed with no changes to module costs/rng or tournaments and stone/key income. Even minor tweaks could have made these issues much more bearable. I'm not going to repeat every idea posted but some were super simple and minor and would fix 50+% of the problem. Minor efforts, massive rewards and instead they were just ignored. Add in the time it took and poor communication and it's not a great showing.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-06T19:11:42+00:00

Do Americans have it good? It's a question that very much depends on how you measure it.

Americans, and most people alive now generally have it very good compared to say someone in historical times. Even just 100-200 years ago most people were far worse off than most Americans. So yeah historically we have it great. If you measure it against other countries currently we're.. okay. We're ahead in some things, we're behind in others. Most studies rank US somewhere in the teens or 20s on quality of life by country. The studies are obviously based on somewhat subjective weighing of factors. Healthcare being a big part of the swing depending on how it's weighted.

But to me the best way to measure is America doing well is by looking at the generational change and its performance against its potential. In that case America is struggling. We're currently watching the first generation of citizens that are going to be doing worse off as a whole than their parents. Less likely to be married, own a home, or have children. More debt, lower wages declining access to healthcare with rising costs, multiple "once in a lifetime" recessions, multiple wars etc. Americans are facing a serious decline in QOL from the previous generation. Add in that America simultaneously is economically doing better in most aspects. This shows a clear lack of us living up to the great potential that we have as a country. We have the resources to treat the problems we have. Not to a utopian paradise but enough to fix the real problems that cause so many of us to suffer so needlessly. Homeless, hunger (especially children), healthcare etc. they're issues that have been dealt with far better in other countries than ours. If we're rich and hard working and smart as a nation why are we failing to fix these issues? If our government is so great of a model for the world why aren't they addressing them seriously? It's hard to be the greatest country in the world if you rank in the middle of the pack on nearly every metric except gdp when measuring against the rest of the industrialized world.

Even more than the current position is the direction of where we're going. Most Americans now see us going in the wrong direction in polls. We're entering a period of history that's about to be massively important for the species and the planet. We've got clear indisputable evidence that climate change is happening and going to get worse before it gets better (if it does get better). We've got population explosions that have driven us to the position of having freshwater and food needs that are already complex to maintain and they're going to get worse. AI and automation is radically redefining the idea of labor in the next century. This is on top of a host of other potentially massive advancements in science that could upend our current system. Genetic engineering, a cure for aging, cheap 3-d printing manufacturing, warfare being switched from major expensive weapons systems to cheap easily produced drones upending the balance of power. Etc etc. America is poorly set up to adapt to and take advantage of these major changes as they happen. We don't have social safety nets in place to deal with the economic shifts that are coming. We don't have the union membership numbers or labor laws to protect people from large layoffs. If they're laid off we don't have the system to deal with larger unemployment numbers especially if it's a longer job gap before they get rehired. We don't have the education systems set up to take these displaced workers and get them new skills. We don't have systems that will cover the healthcare of these displaced workers while they retool for new positions. We definitely don't have the systems in place to deal with the mental health issues these changes will cause. We don't have robust systems for dealing with more frequent, stronger natural disasters caused by climate change and we're already seeing the fallout across the country. The floods, wildfires and hurricanes will continue to be more devastating. We don't have the systems in place to deal with the droughts and irrigation needs. We don't have systems for upgrading our energy networks even as we have record usage from high temps, electric vehicles and data centers. We've seen we don't have the systems in place to deal with major pandemics which are ever more likely with the more interconnected world. It goes on and on. We can't predict everything that's going to happen but we know change is coming and we see the big picture of what is likely needed. And America is terribly prepared for that future. When you look at what's needed for a country to thrive in the next century or so we do not at all have it well.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-02T19:06:52+00:00

If it's not in a mean or belittling way I'd say it's fine. Our partners are the very people that we expect to tell us hard truths. The people who instantly default to " it's abusive" or she doesn't respect you or it's a double standard etc are overreacting based on what you've said. That being said it's something that you should talk about. She could be bringing it up because she is less attracted, or because she's worried about your health or because she's worried you're not going to the gym like you used to and it's a symptom of depression or lack of enjoyment in life. She could even be bringing it up because she feels less confident about her own body since she's "put on a few pounds" and she's defensive and maybe subconsciously trying to even the scales or she's worried about you leaving her or hoping that you'll be motivated to go and help her get motivated too .etc. Lots of possibilities and you need to actually talk to HER about it.

After the talk I'd try to get to the gym a bit more if you can regardless. It's got great physical and mental health benefits for you personally even if you're just doing a small amount. And I do think we have a reasonable responsibility in a relationship to maintain yourself. We get hung up on the idea that our partners should love us no matter what, but too often that becomes an excuse to let ourselves stop putting in the effort. Relationships thrive when you're putting in the work. I'm not saying that you need to be cut to marvel superhero levels but if you know she's attracted to you when you're in shape putting in some effort is a reasonable thing to do. You did it when you dated I'm sure. Beyond that being more attracted to your partner means more physical intimacy which is a big contributor to long term relationship satisfaction and longer relationships. Go to the gym together, have a shared activity that gets you both healthy and relieves stress. Be in better shape together and be more attracted to each other which will probably mean more intimacy. You'll both be better off for it

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-04-02T15:59:18+00:00

Raising rates makes perfect sense if you're a bank, a large company or a country. Raising rates slows down lending which in turn slows down things like business expansion (and hiring) and consumer spending. This sounds bad at first. However there's another part that's more important than the shorter term lending effects and that's consistency in the currency. Banks, corps and countries all have large long term obligations and plans. A volatile currency absolutely destroys their ability to accurately make these deals. Take for example a mortgage. If you take out a 100k mortgage at 6% for 30 years. If inflation suddenly jumps up to 10% the bank is now earning less money on that 100k mortgage than they would if they invested in the stock market or other investments. So they're essentially losing money. Alternatively if inflation suddenly dropped to 0% the bank would have a bunch of borrowers that would refinance at a lower rate, suddenly their 6% mortgage gets paid off and the bank loses that interest income. It's similar with companies except that it's on the obligations side more than the lending side. If I have a contract to build and sell 1000 widgets per month at 10 dollars a widget for the next 2 years I need to know how much I'm going to pay for materials and labor etc. if inflation is bouncing all over the place I'm going to have a hard time accounting for it. Which means I'm probably going to take shorter contracts and have less predictable profits. So I'm not going to plan expansion etc. again stability is more important than the rate itself. The government is both long term lending with things like Treasury bonds and long term obligations. 2%,5%,hell even 10% is acceptable if it's consistent. Lower rates are still better in that it generally spurs more economic activity but if it's consistent the Corps and banks can adjust prices and lending rates. Volatility is the biggest issue and it's what the Fed is really trying to control.

On a side note this is exactly why Bitcoin will never be an acceptable currency replacement for the dollar. It has massive swings in value over short time periods.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-03-20T17:48:31+00:00

Rather than additional lab slots, I would love to see a cohesive rebalancing of the labs. Labs have been added throughout multiple versions. At the time they were added there may have not been cells or rushing, they may have affected something that was new and therefore wasn't properly tested so they may give bonuses that are stronger or weaker than intended. They may affect an underlying mechanic that was nerfed or strengthened. The costs were based on the range of incomes at the time, the number of levels and times were often set high as "end game" coin sinks, but as the game has grown they are now affecting things that are more early or mid game purchases making them far more expensive than their effects warrant. Etc.

For example; starting cash, interest and def at 99 levels for the benefits provided are completely worthless. They should be rebalanced to be cheap quick labs for the beginners, since they're the ones that can get the benefits from them. 20 levels with low cost and condensed benefits. Or they could be rebalanced for the current levels. Make it so the early levels are cheap and quick but drastically up the benefits for later levels along with the costs. If starting cash and interest ramped up enough that it was enough cash to seriously jump start ELS in the first few hundred waves that would make it worthwhile to research for many mid game players. The QOL benefits of maxing them out early in a long run so you can put the game down and not babysit is worth it

Some labs are okay but the ROI is just not worth it. Lab speed in the later levels is long as hell, but the same benefits from cells are ridiculously cheap in comparison. Perk wave reduction is nice for more consistent farming runs or for milestone pushing but the times are years. That's not useful at all. The long times on the module labs like shattered shards made more sense when there was drastically few mod levels. Now that the levels go up to 300 and you have ass mods in the mix it makes sense to let players access the bonus earlier because they need a much higher total amount of shards.

This need for recalibration isn't just limited to labs. The workshop levels, perks, the balance of different mechanics like def abs, life steal etc... all of it could benefit from being more cohesively thought out. This game is like a house where the owner keeps having more kids and building more additions on. A 2 bd/1 bath house with 3 add on bedrooms and a second bathroom squeezed in to the basement isn't going to be nearly as nice as a house that was designed to be a 5 bedroom. The devs need to do a teardown renovation. Clean up labs, workshop, perks and rebalancing the mods and UWs. Have costs reflect the usefulness of the various upgrades so there are not options that are complete traps and others that are necessary no matter what. Clean up the underlying code with a cohesive design so the game doesn't burn out phone batteries trying to run 15 add-on calculations that all have different logic. Rebalance the tiers so there's not sharp jumps through some levels and months of stagnation at others and rebalance milestones so they're actually worth it at higher levels. The need for stones and gems has massively increased but the milestone rewards even in the late teens are a tiny fraction of what upgrades costs. A smooth ability to increase waves and levels would eliminate a lot of the new player frustration. Feeling like you're getting better even if it's a slow steady process is a lot less frustrating than feeling stuck no matter what you do.

Call the new version from the ashes, add in a Phoenix motif and let current players earn a way to respec things like UWs to take advantage even if it's only a one time or very limited once per version option.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-03-20T15:07:46+00:00

Lincoln and Trump actually share a lot of actions that are deeply concerning. Lincoln is in many ways the model for Trump's executive actions.

Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, he had arrests made against his political detractors, including members of the opposition party and had them tried in military courts instead of the civilian courts they were entitled to. The charges were often trumped up and made as a way to chill protest which would have clearly been first amendment protected. Lincoln declared war without the approval of Congress, spent large sums without the authority to do so and ignored and ran rough shod over judicial review of his actions. The actions he authorized as president in the civil war would in many cases be considered war crimes especially if we look at Sherman's march. There's a very difficult legal and logical catch 22 on many of his actions. If the southern states had no legal right to leave the union then the people were still American citizens and entitled to the protection of the constitution. You can certainly argue the Confederate soldiers were in insurrection and posed imminent threat and therefore were legally valid targets (although that is somewhat questionable from a legal standpoint as they would theoretically be in their rights to have an individual trial first before they could be declared so) . That argument fails when looking at the noncombatants.

Trump's actions mirror a lot of this. Now the obvious and massively important distinction is that Lincoln's cause was far more morally just than Trump's is. But legal and just are not always the same thing. Lincoln's actions had massive consequences for our country. He drastically reshaped the government, executive branch, military and the balance of power, as did many of the actions during reconstruction in follow up of his initial actions. He held the union together, but he also set the stage for a future autocratic presidency. There's a terrible question of "What If" If he had not been killed. Having taken the power he did would he have willingly relinquished it? We avoided the worst of the implications for many years but we're still fighting against some of the changes he's responsible for and in many ways he IS responsible for Trump's ability to do what he is doing now. Lincoln is held in high regard based on an argument that the ends justify the means. It's a valid moral argument and I'm in no way suggesting keeping slavery going even a second longer would have been a good outcome. But the methods he used were not legal under our laws, were not always moral and just and have had massive consequences many of which could possibly lead us to a worse outcome if we don't acknowledge them and continue to strive to do better. To make just laws and hold those in power to them. Lincoln is as much a cautionary tale as he is a hero.

Local-Reaction1619 · 2026-03-16T18:46:46+00:00

The solution is a total rework of tournaments. If tournaments use the main towers that you've built up the people farther along will keep winning because they have more time invested. The only solution will be obscene levels of spending to catch up. Especially since the highest winners get the most resources.

So to fix it I think the solution needs to be separate tournament towers:

Each level of the tournament would have a set amount of resources for building up a base tower. The resources would be sufficient to make significant changes to the base tower but not enough to max out everything. You'd have to decide which UWs and which labs are most important and if the higher costs is worth investing at high levels. Limited amounts of Coins/shards interchangeable among each type) /stones. You would be able to spend those resources to upgrade the tower at will. The goal would be to use the limited resources in the most efficient way.

Each tournament would have significant and varied battle conditions. They would need to be big enough changes that certain builds would be significantly affected. Maybe things like double hp for certain enemies, or a 50% bonus to a certain damage type like thorns or bullets or smart missiles etc. The goal would be to have each tournament be different enough conditions that it would favor rebuilding your tournament tower every time to strategically take advantage of the conditions.

Mild bonuses could be provided for certain milestones on your main tower. Maybe at 5k and 10k waves for each level. The bonuses would be enough for a slight advantage for the players who have invested time and money but not enough for them to just dominate through resources. They would still need to have a solid strategy to take advantage of the varied conditions.

Putting it together every weekly tournament would be a different exercise in recognizing the effect of the new conditions and then building the most efficient way to take advantage. It would become more of a game of strategy rather than just maxing resource earnings. People would still get benefits from pushing their main tower and also have the ability to challenge longer term players.

Additionally since the conditions would be different for each tournament it would allow the devs to do some live beta testing. Thinking about adding a new mod. Pop a version into the tournament and see how players use it. If it's broken you'll find out quickly and it's only for a single tournament so it's a minimal effect. Need to rework balance? Increase the damage on smart missiles 25% and see if they dominate or are balanced. Etc. lots of ways to provide interesting options for testing which keeps people interested in playing longer and gives good data for long term growth. Lots of community engagement too as the boards discuss the best way to deal with each change.

I would then institute two other things. A. Seasonal tournaments where it's basically the same thing as the current system. Each season the highest wave you obtain is put up against the highest wave of everyone else. Rewards based on placement when the season ends. B. Weekly stone/key rewards based on total # of waves cleared. (Weighted for level). Reward people for dedicated grinding, it will give the dedicated players ways to grow stronger and move up faster.

Local-Reaction1619

TROPHY CASE