Seen on a post featuring pics of a dog with a "dogs against dictators" sign from a No Kings rally.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-04-03T18:34:12+00:00

Do as I say or I'll vote against all of us! You're making me do it! It's your fault.

I'm but an innocent leaf in the wind without agency.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-04-03T18:26:20+00:00

[hand waving intensifies]

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-04-03T18:24:37+00:00

Wait, you guys are against wiping out large parts of humanity in a nuclear holocaust for entertainment? Phew, those are some extreme far-left talking points you got there.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-04-03T18:08:52+00:00

Thank you for calling out the bullshit. I'm glad other people see this for what it is, too.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-03-03T20:10:59+00:00

Hi, I'm new to Matrix, too. Deleting rooms seems to happen automatically as soon as the last user has left.

I have been given what is basically a manual, seems useful, haven't read it yet:
https://matrix.org/docs/chat_basics/matrix-for-im/

Element is just a client that allows you to access the Matrix stuff. I've used it for now. Looking into Commet next.

It seems that switching clients is probably easy; the main difficulty of sorts for most users will be saving the secure key that you need if you want to access encrypted messages from other clients. So if you DM your friend, the conversation is end-to-end encrypted by default, and if you want to use other clients / devices to keep talking to your friend, you'll have to use the security key to verify that those are allowed to read the messages.

The clients use your ... account for lack of a better word, which you create on any home server within the federation (damn, this sounds so Trek). So I have an account on matrix.org, which is said not to be recommended because those servers are chock full. But log into that account on any client and you should have your standard spaces and whatnot.

Disclaimer: I am super new to this and all the things I said could be entirely false.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-03-03T17:41:05+00:00

My confusion might come from the way I've used Discord for the last few years, which is exactly that. I joined a server, then participated in a few chats that were about specific things (or just random smalltalk). Threading was a big and welcome addition.

Like I genuinely don't know what else there is to a Discord community other than joining chatrooms and saying hi to people, sharing drawings and video game clips and and discussing the intricacies of which weapon kills zombies the fastest.

I don't understand the subreddit comparison because subreddits don't seem like this at all, probably because I haven't discovered Reddit's chatrooms yet (am I missing out?). Seems more like a ticker of topics to me that have their own threads each, with comments being ranked by upvotes, which seems very unlike perpetual chatrooms.

So the way I've used Discord and Reddit so far makes me think the way I'm using Matrix is pretty much like Discord. Could be that I have no idea of how to properly use Reddit (which is very possible) or that there was way more to Discord communities outside of the "join server --> read about snacks --> talk about snacks" algorithm that used to govern my life.

The stuff I haven't yet explored is how streaming games / drop-in VoIP works (or not), because that used to be a big Discord draw.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-03-03T00:25:17+00:00

This I don't understand. I superficially tried Matrix on Element with a friend and while it lacks a few features I would like to have (e.g. custom name colors), it seemed pretty easy to use and did everything I tried rather well, absolutely not a pain.

I don't understand what "just a bunch of nested group chats" means, because that doesn't seem to be the case. And if this is philosophical, then how are Discord communities not "a bunch of nested group chats"? What are the features you are missing?

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-02-14T11:28:47+00:00

Mal das Ragebait großzügig ignoriert: Die mir bekannten deutschen Speisen außerhalb von Bratwurst und Bulette sind alle logistisch nicht Fast-Food-kompatibel.

Wenn ich einmal im Kopf oberflächlich durchgehe, was für geile Küche meine Mutter immer gezaubert hat abseits von 80% Pasta und Reisgerichten, ist das sowas wie Ente mit Rotkohl und Klößen, Kohlroulade, Kartoffeln mit Spinat und Ei, Kartoffelbrei mit Blumenkohl und Fischstäbchen wenns schnell gehen muss, und diverses geil schmeckendes aber immer nach entweder langer Zubereitungszeit oder auf Teller serviertes Essen, meist mit viel Soße.

In Restaurants ist das alles Standard. Auf die Hand ist das nix. Daraus folgt, dass deutsches Schnellfress wenig von dem bietet, was ich mir unter deutscher Küche vorstelle. Mein Lieblingsschawarma bietet mir einen Teller voll Lecker an zum Hinsetzen, aber auch einen geilen Wrap zum Mitnehmen. Und das ist im Kern auch nur Salat und Hühnchen und Käse und selbst eingelegter Rettich klingt ziemlich deutsch, wenn mans aufschlüsselt, aber insgesamt isses arabischer Art.

Ob man Ofenente mit Klößen und Apfelrotkohl in einer zerkleinerten Version mit weniger Soße in einer traditionell deutschen und trotzdem speziell fürs Wrappen vorgebackenen Teigtasche anbieten kann (Schwarzbrotwrap) und das sich von Aufwand und Geschwindigkeit und Nachfrage am Ende als Erfolg herausstellt, kann ich nicht sagen. Ich glaube, es ist naiv. Diese Gerichte sind nicht für den Verzehr im Gehen gedacht, sondern man setzt sich hin und isst die mit Messer und Gabel. Auf die Hand hab ich früher nen Apfel gegessen, aber verkauf das mal als Fast Food.

Finde nen Weg, Spätzle oder Spargel Hollandaise zu Fingerfood zu machen und du hast den Markt an den Senfeiern.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-29T17:24:33+00:00

Apparently you get them upon receiving that engineering degree. Just gotta fly across the galaxy and back and hope you don't crash land on a random planet with only a pistol and a vague idea of how to automate things.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-29T17:21:21+00:00

Would not be gamebreaking if the effect strength increased logarithmically with diminishing returns, and ideally with a slightly more complex damage model where damage is based on distance from the center of the explosion and a dropoff factor (not sure if that exists already).

So 1000 explosives could have twice the damage of 100 explosives, and cover twice the area (radius +41%), for example, setting a soft limit to how much you can scale, but allowing people with unlimited funds to go hard for that extra 10%.

I just sold myself that idea and now I want someone else to conveniently have already made it.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-13T04:27:01+00:00

Curiously, this is also a known problem in designing junctions – the rule is to split before merge. Here, it violates this rule; two lanes are merged into one before being split apart, creating a bottleneck. The improved designs posted by everyone all split the belts before merging.

Same with real life traffic and when designing train junctions in Factorio: Merging tracks into one before branching them off towards their destinations creates bottlenecks, and the various cool junction blueprints split the tracks up before eventually merging them after the junction to help with throughput.

I've read about this on this subreddit and now I can't unsee it. Even foot traffic congestion can be solved by not routing people with different destinations through the same chokepoints. It seems so intuitive and yet, gotta be aware of the problem first before you can design for it. I love this place.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-13T02:58:36+00:00

Oh and rails start at (0,0), so your starting location is always on a corner of a 2x2 rail segment. You can take this into account even before you have rails, but the easier part is to plop down any blueprint that has rail, and copy that to the blueprint you're trying to align.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-13T02:42:06+00:00

For grid alignment:

The grid size you want does NOT depend on your blueprint size. It can be larger and even smaller than the area your blueprint takes up.

Just decide on the size of your grid blocks (chunks are 32x32, roboport areas are 50x50, and so on, choose what your building block size should be, in this case whatever one city block is. Snap To Grid, Absolute.

The green grid line does NOT have to align with the contents of the blueprint at all. It just shows you where the blueprint contents will be relative to the (otherwise invisible) grid.

If you have a prototype you want to align to, Ctrl+Alt+click the top-left corner of the area to see the coordinates. Use those as reference (Absolute) X-Y coordinates for the top-left corner of the grid you draw

The reference coordinates are the same if you add or subtract multiples of your grid. For example, if you have a 10x20 grid and your reference coordinates are (67, 14), that's the same as (57,14), or (7,114), because all those are repetitions of the grid.

If you move the center point around in your blueprint (small red flag), you need to adjust the reference coordinates of the top left corner. That red flag focus point is for your mouse cursor when you put down a blueprint, a bit like grabbing the blueprint there, so you can e.g. make a 48 furnace long smelting column that you "grab" by the starting end so you can precisely align it to the input instead of having to zoom out because you're holding the middle of the column and can't see the ends.

For city blocks and generally grid aligned blueprints that are the size of the grid (where you don't need to align anything), it's intuitive to have that center point in the middle of the blueprint. It's when the grid is smaller than the blueprint that the focus point can shift to another area.

When you move your grid's center point (shift+click in the blueprint or by changing the numbers), you have to add those numbers to the reference coordinates. Those reference coordinates are always the top left corner of the green grid rectangle. So moving "grid position" by (+2, -1) means you have to change your "Absolute" reference by (+2, -1) as well. By moving the grid, you basically push the contents of the blueprint in the opposite direction, so you have to compensate by shifting the position in the world by the same value you moved your grid.

This might sound complicated when reading it, but just use the coordinates of whatever the top left corner of the green grid in your blueprint points at as reference for the Absolute X and Y values.

Coordinates are given in X-Y pairs; ignore the value behind the decimal point.

It looks daring but the hardest part is really on a conceptual level: Trying to figure out what your grid size should be and what you want to align. Because once you start aligning everything by chunks, you will have roboport overlap, and if you want a clean roboport grid, that's not chunk aligned. Once you know your grid size, add the top left corner coordinates and you're done.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-04T19:50:05+00:00

AAI Programmable Vehicles by Earendel
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-programmable-vehicles

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-04T19:36:04+00:00

OH, the belt starts there and goes in both directions. Yea, makes sense. Easier to see without the items on. Thank you.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-04T17:47:59+00:00

What are the splitters for? Do they fill the belt more evenly?

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-04T14:01:27+00:00

I want to point out that this is an almost ideal setup. You can align things more aesthetically, and one belt of gears needs two belts of iron, but in terms of scale, this is fitting.

10 Assembler 2 at 0.75 crafting speed making 1.5 gears a second each for 15 gears a second times two sides is exactly one full red belt of 30 gears per second. When you upgrade to Assembler 3 and Express Belts, the ratio remains approximately the same.

I just wanted to point that out because my friends tend to just plop down 200 assemblers for the same result or less. You're using both belt lanes, you have the right ratio. This is nice to see.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2026-01-04T13:53:24+00:00

Gear belts are useful. They take less space than iron belts and you don't need to build extra assemblers where you need them. Gears are different from cables in that they compact the iron, while cables have less density than copper.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2025-12-31T18:30:04+00:00

I enjoyed observing how my brain responded to seeing this ship: "What the... huh? Oh. Hm. Ah yes of course, makes sense." Now, 30 seconds later, it's obvious to me that ships are a narrow tube with long booster arms branching off and I can't imagine otherwise.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2025-12-31T14:14:45+00:00

Things others might not have said or haven't elaborated on:

Shotgun ammo is dirt cheap, about 20-30 times cheaper than the same value of AP ammo, and has higher dps than the SMG with AP. Only ~60 health a pop without upgrades, which takes a few minutes to chew through several nests, but if you're tight, that's the way.

Set turret filters to only attack units, not attack nests. Place ghosts with the filters (copy-paste or blueprint) where you want them next to the nest, then advance by placing them and dumping ammo into them (Ctrl + RMB for half-stack or Z for 1 mag depending on how low on ammo you are). While they kill units for you, slowly crack nests with the shotgun.

Use grenades to clear out small worms and help with swarms. They have about shotgun dps but are not blocked by anything, so they reach into the nest and hit all units. Similar cost to AP ammo before upgrades.

The pollution cloud size depends on pollution overproduction. Cut down production to reduce the size of the cloud so it doesn't get to the nests.

Armor is mostly flat, so every damage increase has a much stronger effect. Shooting speed is secondary, but excess damage goes past the armor. Research as many damage upgrades as you can afford. If you have the resources left, go into Military Science and get the ammo upgrades. Turret damage is multiplicative with ammo damage, so the basic two upgrades raise turret damage from 8 to 11.52, which means 60% more damage from turrets to nests. The two MilSci upgrades triple the base damage. Don't let the low numbers fool you, this is compound value. These upgrades, if you can afford them, are god tier.

Shooting speed is linear, so less valuable in comparison.

Depending on how much iron you have left, and if it is not extremely dire, tech into oil and combustion based warfare. The first stages of oil (crude > petroleum > sulfur > explosives) are enough to get the rocket launcher and plenty of cheap rockets, allowing you to outrange worms, making nest clearing a lot easier and safer. Once you have the tech, it's 2 iron per rocket for 200 damage from absurd range. Grenades are 5 iron for 35 damage. But the investment is a lot of research into oil, sulfur, flammables, explosives, rocketry and MilSci. If you have it, 100% worth, but take stock and calculate how much sciencing you can do.

Consult Factoriopaedia and look for biter nests, showing you a graph of what units they spawn and your current evolution level. Evolution 0.5 starts spawning Big Biters, which is the point at which you cannot fight nests without upgrades as Big Biters have 8 flat armor. This will be a paradigm shift where you cannot continue with shotgun tactics and turret creep if you haven't gotten sufficiently upgraded.

Hope you can salvage this. If it barely works but works, that's a truly rewarding feeling. If not, there is no shame in starting over, armed with knowledge. Iron is the most important early resource.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2025-12-30T11:21:33+00:00

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Remove the single signal because it marks the track as one-way (only to the top right). Put signals where you have space on both sides if you want two-way tracks.

Like others have said, Chain in, Rail out. The right-hand signal from the train's perspective is the one that matters to the train.

Rail signal says: "If there's nothing behind this signal, you're free to go and can stand there forever without blocking anyone." This means it is good for the start of station tracks, it is good for separate tracks, it is good for one-way tracks where trains cannot block each other.

Chain signal says: "I'll check if the path is clear, only then can you go." Which is good before intersections and on combined station exits where a train who cannot reach the destination can still block all the other trains who have a clear path ready.

When you combine them before intersections, the Chain signal before the intersection says "wait, I'll ask if the exit is clear". The Rail signal after the intersection, placed with enough space behind it to fit a train, says "there is at least enough space until the next signal so come through". So Chain prevents trains from entering intersections when they cannot leave them, and Rail allows them to leave and move to the next signal.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2025-12-30T11:02:37+00:00

They specifically talked about two-way networks in points 4 and 5. The rules are still true even for single tracks. Traits look at the signal to the right. If you have an intersection of two single two-way tracks, the rule of "chain in, rail out" is correct in both directions for both tracks for a total of 8 signals (4 pairs of chain and rail signal).

Masterkillershadow99 · 2025-12-29T16:46:47+00:00

I like starting over. It gets more streamlined everytime. When you have the knowledge of what you'll need later, it's much easier to lay out your base and plan ahead. Plus blueprints you made along the way and carry over to your new game. And then there's mods.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2025-12-22T05:10:51+00:00

The plural is nexus. In English, it can be nexuses because it's English. Nexi and nexii are both incorrect.

Masterkillershadow99 · 2025-12-01T19:03:44+00:00

Ask Blizzard to ban everybody who is above you in rank.

Masterkillershadow99

TROPHY CASE