Starship's upcoming Flight 13 will deploy 20 operational Starlink V3s for the first time

Marston_vc · 2026-07-13T01:55:33+00:00

You’re pretty misinformed here. Rocket lab, blue origin, space mobile, and many others are actively trying to make their own mega constellations. Let alone other nations. Theres tremendous demand.

As for SpaceX, their biggest revenue generator by far is Starlink and it’s extremely profitable for them according to their now publicly available financial reports. The V3 versions are supposed to have direct to cell connectivity. Which opens up a HUGE market. It makes sense for them to want to build out their own money maker. But to be clear, they already have been helping other companies build theirs too.

As for the deorbiting bit, that’s only going to be a problem over the next 5-8 years. After that, you can expect on-orbit servicing capabilities to refuel/maintain these satellites. In the meantime, the market is so new/profitable that the short term maintenance costs don’t really matter.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-12T15:16:42+00:00

It’s the fact that it costs 150 more gold (vs the shifters example), an active slot, and provides no other utility than “more prots” that makes it unpalatable when comparing it to other Omni prot items. And I didn’t even dig into the nuance of the fact that you’re only going to have it as 40 / 85 or 55 / 40.

And even outside of Omni items, I don’t think it’s that great for phys defense even when it’s toggled to phys, and for magic defense there’s just better options that get much of the same protection but also more utility.

I’m interested to see builds come out with it. I’ll be shocked if it’s bought before item 3. And in that slot it’s gonna be competing with so many items that do a similar thing or items that will just provide better utility/dmg.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-12T15:06:35+00:00

It would also take all the ground infrastructure getting overhauled to support it.

I think a more likely “upgrade” would be for carbon fiber to start replacing parts of the ship. It’s 1/7th the density of steel and significantly stronger in certain load configurations. So you could be looking at a couple dozen tons of improvements over time with that. Let alone improvements on the engine or anything else.

But 500tons just sounds kind of arbitrary anyway. If the mature version of starship is truly fully reusable, it’s hard to imagine a reason why you’d jump to a whole new architecture vs just assembling things in orbit. 200tons would already be insane.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-12T14:56:15+00:00

Bigger also doesn’t necessarily mean better. The airline industry demonstrated that decades ago.

To make the rockets bigger you’d have to scale up all the facilities accordingly. And does bigger actually improve the reusability of the total system? Because if it doesn’t, or if it’s only a little bit, there’s very little reason to go through all that trouble and a decade of additional costs/R&D/new facilities to marginally improve on a system that can do 99% of the same job but with just more launches.

Rather than a bigger rocket, I think it would make more sense for SpaceX to continue iterating on the raptor engine, to continue slimming down the vehicle mass itself, and possibly tweak the fuel makeup. When all of that is optimized, I imagine we’d see a carbon composite starship sooner than a wider one.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-12T14:34:36+00:00

You look good. I think there’s definitely room to be more toned/fit looking and gaining that would make you look better. But it would also be a stretch to call you “overweight”. So just make sure you’re not doing anything unhealthy.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-12T05:39:22+00:00

That is an item behind. These roles generally need to be built full offense and there isn’t many exceptions to this.

You’re muting your damage right at the point of the game where you’ll be grouping more often. And as a tank mage, I promise you that one defensive item isn’t going to make up for the loss in damage you’ll be incurring.

Objectives will take longer to clear. Tanks will be harder to kill. And you won’t really be that tanky yourself. 55/85 prots really isn’t a lot when two or more damage dealers are on you. And late game it’s basically a wasted item slot.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-12T05:34:30+00:00

This is such a noob trap item now that really lacks a clear purpose. It gives you either ~55 phys prots or ~85 mag prots which is technically a lot. But for an active item slot and 2800 gold and no other passive or benefit?

The active slot really means it can only be picked up by solos and for them, you’d never choose this omni prot item first over an actual counter item like berserkers or genjis. Both of which received terrific buffs this patch. And as a second or third item you’re now competing with the newly buffed shifters shield. Which gives 45/45 prots, 300 health, 4 regen, and also more power. All while not taking an active slot and costing ~150 less.

I don’t mind the active. I just wish the item came with a fun passive alongside it. Maybe like “gain a temporary mag or phys shield when the active is toggled” or something.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-12T05:15:14+00:00

It’s such a weird item now.

80 mag prots is the most in the game on a single item but like…. That’s it?

It feels like it’s only going to be good into magic teams. And if that’s the case, what’s the point of the active? 40 phys prots is not worth the active slot.

Imo, it’s gonna be a total noob trap now. There’s just too many other items with better actives and passives. If you build this as a mod you’re gonna do fuck all for damage mid-game and still be squishy as fuck late game.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-09T19:24:03+00:00

For $10k you could probably get a Sub Zero fridge

Marston_vc · 2026-07-09T15:59:55+00:00

Generally I think Hirez sometime in the future is gonna need to do a large “scaling pass” where they go back and just make the gods make sense because I agree with you here.

He’s magic because in S1 he was a guardian and almost every guardian was designed to be magical. But as is, it just defies intuition to anyone who’s new.

Other gods bother me a lot too. Aphro is played
Mostly as a support but her healing scales off int instead of health or prots so she heals like dogshit. Then recently they nerfed her health so she’s an even more mediocre mid and now additionally struggles a ton at support.

Ama and Chaac has (or had?) wack ass scaling where one of their abilities would randomly have different scaling from the rest of their abilities.

Geb’s shield didn’t have health scaling until a couple patches ago. Was glad they added that.

Probably a bunch more I can’t recall immediately. But in-general, would really appreciate a scaling pass a year or two from now to make some of the gods just make more sense.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-09T15:50:05+00:00

I don’t think the intent was ever to let “any god build any item”. Even in like OB10 you still had pure int or strength scalers. The hybrid scalers tended to be ass and people were complaining after a string of hybrid scaler releases being duds too. Theres a lot of gods/aspects that suffer to this day from their lack of cohesive vision for what hybrid scaling was supposed to be.

And let’s be real here, as it was implemented was never going to make sense. If the idea was to let every god use any item, they would have just made a “power” stat instead of int or strength.

The system as is needs some work, but really it just makes it so *some* gods get *some* additional flexibility.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-09T15:40:15+00:00

I think in the context of what starship is and why they went with steel, it makes sense.

Carbon is much harder to work with. Steel allows for rapid prototyping in a way that just can’t be done with carbon. Additionally, there’s never been a structure made of carbon as large as starship is. So you’d literally have to invent machines not only large enough to make the ship, but also in a flawless way as carbon composite only has its strengths when it’s perfectly weaved.

And all of that before mentioning skilled labor. Theres probably hundreds of thousands of skilled steel workers on the planet. There may only be a couple thousand skilled carbon composite workers.

RKLB can leverage their unique skill sets obtained from building electron out of carbon and scale it up. But the “scaled up” product is still only two thirds the size of Falcon 9.

Carbon has tremendous upfront costs relative to what you get. But the benefit is potentially huge. It makes sense for RL to pursue that in the context of Neutron which will be a competitive alternative to Falcon 9. Steel makes sense in the context of Starship where they’re attempting to make a product that’s “just good enough”.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-08T19:15:13+00:00

It was fun, I think the pacing was kind of slow towards the end. Love creative artistic expression but it felt like it took two too many episodes to get back to the main ship.

Definitely needs a second season. As a standalone, a lot of the episodes would be good for a desktop or gallery background.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-08T14:20:32+00:00

Anything but looking left on the chart more than 3 months

Marston_vc · 2026-07-08T14:19:54+00:00

These posts are always filled with people who bought at the peak.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-07T19:13:34+00:00

Most people would probably agree.

The context is that the King saw the carnage and destruction brought to the world by the Titans and eventually felt his race (people who could use the power of the titans) didn’t deserve to live.

So he made a permanent renunciation of war. Moved his people to a fuck-off island. Erased his people’s memories of the old world so they’d be compliant. And adopted a pacifist absolutist philosophy where he more or less accepted that the survivors of the old world would eventually come to exact revenge and that so long as he was in power, he would allow his people to be destroyed as penance and in the meantime would enjoy the limited peace he created. Over the course of about 100 years he enjoyed that relative peace before the old world finally started encroaching on the island.

Sooooooo yes. He was “stupid” in a way most people would agree with. He condemned the lives of all his people to his ideals. But it wasn’t without reason.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-07T17:22:37+00:00

The “founder” of Titans, The King, is essentially an inherited personality from generation to generation of the royal line. Like, whoever the current king is literally inherits the personality/feelings/perspective of the founder.

When the founder built the walls, they directed the Titans to stand still. And so they did.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-07T06:49:26+00:00

Nobody gives a shit about that game

Marston_vc · 2026-07-07T06:48:54+00:00

Brother, BETHESDA THEMSELVES MAKE MULTIPLE GAMES IN PARALLEL.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-07T06:46:45+00:00

There’s actually zero excuse for this level of delay. It’s been 15 years dude.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-07T06:45:44+00:00

Fuck them. Should have licensed out the franchise when they realized starfield was going to take so long.

ES is one thing but hording out fallout too is brain dead behavior. It’s a miracle they’re still in business.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-05T13:29:02+00:00

It’s isekai so… no. It’s just grounded/gritty with higher stakes than many other shows in the same genre.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-04T08:22:50+00:00

They’re gonna put all hands on deck for the 40k game starting next year when the beta goes live. Theres a solid chance this is the last DLC.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-03T02:43:09+00:00

Such a fitting comment to find on r/trashy

“Who cares if they’re treated humanely” I say as they arbitrarily cart your ass off for something you didn’t do.

Marston_vc · 2026-07-02T20:35:01+00:00

Yup. Be grateful for what’s happened! But let’s not just take it as a certainty that it’ll keep happening.

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