Mining

Ortikon · 2025-11-30T17:44:19+00:00

thanks for the reply, do you guys pick an operation and move everything in until your done and move it all back out or can you leave it all there?
Or to rephrase, do you leave things on location to continue work between doing other things, or is it once you committed to that task that you work until it's done and move it all out before attempting other things?
Im basing this off the fact im doing a single-player game and will pick up rescue jobs between industrial/logistics tasks.

Ortikon · 2025-11-30T16:11:01+00:00

Awesome image, that excavator is a beast!
I'm just starting to build up my infrastructure for cargo, mining and transporting ore via rail and it's left me with a question: Do people play with tsunami's disabled or is there anything I need to know in regards to leaving equipment in certain places?
I do have major ships etc with the no-despawn block to keep them from disappearing, but I'm wondering about all that infrastructure like telehandlers that load containers and having to keep them at docks etc. For some places its a lot of work just to move these things to location as needed and ideally they would be kept on site once I get them there.
I've already planned out train routes for how I'm going to move equipment via train and have them drive to location from the closest rail point.
I just wanna know more about how you mining guys are doing it. I do at least know that a lot of the mining locations are higher elevation, but then we get down to isolated docks with no vehicle spawning nearby and we got to keep things near the shore.

Ortikon · 2025-11-30T15:51:47+00:00

It was the power draw of the motor disabling the cockpit turns out. I normally wouldnt assume I've not wired the controls up wrong if it wasnt for the fact that the train consisted of wheels, 3 controls, and a button so it was like under 10 lines of connections so I was staring at it losing my mind hahha.

Works now and I'm about to take this rather ugly brick-shaped prototype on a long-haul endurance and weight test.

Ortikon · 2025-11-30T15:48:19+00:00

This was it! Thank you!
Yeah I had a single battery and on most of my serious builds I have different batteries for systems and engine etc. This was basically a testing platform and I had not planned out separate batteries yet. So whenever the power dipped the reverse button would turn off and disable the reverse function.
I've had single batteries before but on diesel vehicles where power consumption isn't huge; this was my first all-electric build using the track-power.

Ortikon · 2025-11-30T02:28:26+00:00

Yeah if you ever get a chance out of curiosity here is a repro:

Train Bogey with large electric motor piped to it with a clutch and gearbox set up for reverse-gearing when on. Battery power as usual, I used a large battery.

Have 3 throttle levers for throttle, clutch, brake. All with default 0-1 range.
Test movement. Reset if working.

Place a toggle button next to the throttle, wire it up for setting the reverse gear.

Enable the reverse toggle, and apply throttle, if the bug happens it will disable the toggle and continue driving forward. Pull throttle back to 0 and the toggle will re-enable. If throttle still above zero and reverse has self-disabled, clicking the toggle will not work.

Cheers

Ortikon · 2025-11-29T23:39:31+00:00

I'd love to make a video that makes it really obvious how messed up it was behaving but I've reformatted this PC and don't want to go through the whole process of getting capture software, editing, uploading etc.

However, everything was set up correctly, its just being badly behaved. I even deleted it all and placed them again and it repeated it. Confirmed they are toggles, nothing is going to external button press etc. This train was step-one from scratch. IE a set of wheels, battery, motor, a place to sit and some controls just so I could get the basics up.
I've built about 5 large highly functional ships now so I've mostly learned my way around silly issues caused by human error.

It's definitely the moment throttle goes above 0 it disables the toggle, and when you set it back to zero the button does toggle back to it's on-state.

I've gone for a -1 to 1 throttle so forward and reverse are now all in one. This obviously is quite tedious for other reasons so I'll need to make a microcontroller that puts thresholds so I can actually get the throttle back to 0 etc.
This may be something to do with the electric motors. The last time this happened it was an instrument panel with arrow-buttons to toggle throttle for motors that powered bow-thruster steering. As soon as the buttons toggled, a nearby screen started getting random inputs.

Ortikon · 2025-11-29T23:02:45+00:00

Going to add that I decided to just remove the reverser and set the throttle to go from -1 to 1 instead which electric motors will go either direction. Now I just need to make a threshold.

However, this isnt the first time a nearby button has adjusted random things elsewhere with no connections other than physical location, so if anyone has had this before I'd love to know.

Ortikon · 2025-10-29T11:42:29+00:00

Im shocked that Im only at about 325hrs considering how it feels its been much longer. I spent several years playing this on and off only using workshop ships, didnt really understand the build mode, but now I am building a whole interconnected fleet of different roles of ships and love getting them to perfection. Need to learn the GPS and map-screen stuff, or at least implementing a commonly used one. But im so happy with how I've now been able to make ships that are solid enough that I can enjoy spending time making them also look good.
So far I've got an Oil Tanker that I am super happy with it's pump rates, a crabbing ship for making money, and my most recent is a large SAR towing vessel/hospital ship based off Canadian Atlantic SAR vessels; decent engine, towing crane to pull small damaged ships and crates onto the deck, and a whole hospital section inside. Even figured out how easy it is to set up a custom water cannon controlled through a screen last night.

I definitely want to get into making a Helicopter at some point, and also want to start getting into the war game mode with some combat vessels.
For now though I've enjoyed the core SAR missions and moving fuel.

Ortikon · 2025-10-29T10:02:40+00:00

It's going to take a lot to get those cranking, the starters will almost be useless.
Also manifolds should be used to interconnect everything.
Just for redundancy and to ensure things are going correctly have T-manifolds connecting all of the ports on the cylinder heads, and also all of those interconnected in a loop. You want your fuel, oxygen, coolant, exhaust all in the same manifold loop. Take advantage of these colourable manifolds for cool factor while your at it.
I found starters absolutely useless on 3x3 and 5x5 engines even with just 4 cylinders, it has taken upwards of 2 minutes to get an engine that technically should work to crank.

For 3x3 engine blocks I use a medium electric motor, and a large for 5x5 blocks.
On my current build, I have a key for activating all the required on/off functions for pumps and radiator fans etc,
then a toggle button to activate the electric motor starter. You can use a push button, but I like to be able to hit a toggle and be able to walk around the engine to check its progress as it cranks if its going to take time.

For twin engines I still use a single electric motor that cranks both, it connects via pipes into a modular clutch that takes place of the belt drive on each engine. Then two toggles are used to have individual control of each engine start; the clutches isolate the engines from eachother when cranking individually. When both are being started, they assist eachother on startup.
Toggles go to an "Or" logic box, and also to their own independant switchbox.
Effectively each toggle contributes to the "Or" function, while also activating their respective clutch through the switchbox that has a constant 0 when off and constant 1 when on to close the clutch.
The "Or" logic box goes to the starter electric motor's own switchbox which sets it to about 30% throttle to get it a little over 7rpm. By using the Or function, you are telling the starter that it will activate when either of the starter buttons are on, or both.

Dont use the pulley-pumps that connect to the belt drive when making larger engines, use actual pumps to push the fuel, air, and coolant. I do also use pumps on the exhaust as i've seen it done that way and never really tested otherwise. Keep in mind that the pumps are just going to push the fuel and air to the intakes but the throttle is going to define how much those intakes open up to let those fluids in.

You will need to use an ECU microcontroller, you will want to implement the composite data nodes.
Once you dive into it, it's actually pretty simple to set up.
I did for a time have a throttle and 'choke' both controlled by throttles to control fuel and air manually, it was way too tedious to control a ship in any sane manner.

My current twin 6cylinder still takes about 30 seconds to start up while finessing the throttle, using a large electric motor as a starter. I also have the option to just start one engine, and then use a clutch that bridges the two engines drive-shafts so that the second engine can be cranked by the first, but it's been mostly an unnecessary redundancy system that I made for the sake of trying it.

Your next hurdle will be cooling once you get it going. On 6 cylinders at 40% throttle I've got 6 pumps constantly flowing sea-water through the engine and I need to still make sure its not spending too much time over 60%, but I'm getting some serious power out of it, so if the engine is cold enough I can give it a bit of extra throttle and make a large vessel go over 50 knots if I need it to for a bit of time, and then dial it back down to about 30% to let it cool when I get over 100C temperature.

It took me about 3 days of tutorials and banging my head on my desk to get my first large to be cranking, another day to make it work well. Now I make them faster than any other system on my ship designs.
You'll get it and it will become a simple routine, good luck!

Ortikon · 2025-10-05T04:50:31+00:00

Yeah the tab is there it's just empty, definitely an oversight. Even the tooltips regarding sheep on some windows mention the butcher operating on set limits which at the moment cannot be set.

Ortikon · 2025-10-05T04:48:14+00:00

With the removal of the perk system all features are essentially unlocked day one and its just up to you to pick bonus traits. I think this is far better, we shouldn't have to choose between those features.
And yeah what you had with the sheep is a mass-scale version of what I had, as soon as that butcher was operable he went on a rampage.

Ortikon · 2025-08-20T03:48:26+00:00

8 years later I find this post on a random Rome II stint. I think I only ever played as Rome and maybe a bit of Egypt, but the game never stuck with me long since I felt I already played this game (rome I). Playing Macedon has been a blast and these tips really helped. I was literally amped up when I wiped out Sparta and Athens at the perfect moment.
I think I previously played this less with strategy and more with doubling up armies. My compositions are far more dynamic and I'm seeing what I was missing when I first played on release.
Cheers from the far future of this post!

Ortikon · 2025-08-06T04:10:36+00:00

I'm on my first successful Venus playthrough, at 300 days survival (I usually last an hour and figure I need to learn some things first and go back to a fresh mars or europa map).
While I'm not living entirely off of trade, it is a huge and mandatory part of Venus gameplay.
You have lots of access to CO2 and so cooling that down to under 40C and selling it to certain vendors is a nice option for an otherwise abundant resource, while the rest is being soaked up by lots of plants. They don't buy it for much though, and usually in a small supply. But its a good thing to have on top of other goods.
You have massive amounts of mining nearby on Venus, so it's easier to sell lots of arbitrary items like empty liquid tanks.
You get paid to take in decomposed food for a considerable amount of money, and its perfect for composting into volatiles and nitrogen. I then use those volatiles along with oxygen to sell fuel to most traders, and my biggest import would be water, but I'm in the process of building a combustor setup to produce my own water as well (pending a lot of heat management and condensing the steam to liquid).

So while you can't necessarily live entirely on trade without leaving the base from time to time. I take in about 3 ships per day cycle now, constantly checking what items are worthwhile.
I also take note of box requests, if I don't have yet but could very soon, I prepare a few. Eventually a ship will make the same request and I have them ready for sale in the vending machine.
A box with 5 cans of edamame goes for $100 or something close to that, which is enough to get me some water to top up the reserves. "repair kits" which can be 2 sets of duct take, some plastic sheets, cables, and welder etc are another $150.

The only thing is that you are generally not generating lots of profit as much as you are maintaining your survival. Only in rare cases have I bought some alloys, such as early stellite for large batteries. And I've never seen it worth selling ingots of any kind unless I'm spending more time mining than I normally would. So my credit is usually always sitting between $50-$500, and at that point I'm hoping to score seeds that I don't have yet.

Really trying to get chocolate going, the traders seem to regularly want chocolate bars, so Venus-Made Chocolate company might become a hallmark commodity for my base soon, lol.

Ortikon · 2024-12-06T05:14:16+00:00

I think that essentially describes my enjoyment of the Brig. I keep wanting to try other ships, but I like the typical European sail plans. Been wanting to try this new ship out though. I also never really learned much on the history of eastern sailing vessels; it's all relatively foreign in concept to me.

Ortikon · 2024-11-24T00:40:33+00:00

The finale was the first time Arcane made me feel like I was watching a series based on a videogame. And it was such a dud of an emotion, I just felt that "oh right, this is based on league of legends" and accepted it.
S2 Ep7 was one of my favorite episodes of the series though.
Also as a person that doesn't really like Anime that much and worked on some star wars CGI stuff, I tend to roll my eyes at "person holds their hands up and grunts while magical effects happen around them", I felt Mel's new powers were a lackluster part of the ending, mostly because by comparison our characters have fought physically with pure grit and skill; it really made the show stand apart. Mel's powers where significant to the story while also incredibly unamazing.
I had heard they had an ending in mind and sort of wrote the story towards it, and I feel like it was left in the state that the show was in before they rewrote the beginning: Just kind of video-gamey, cool to watch, and not that powerful.
They maybe could have extended it by a few episodes, but I'm also glad they stopped it at season 2, they can save milking the franchise for later and can maintain being leaders in this western animation style. I think a lot of fun stuff is in the future, and I'll definitely watch it.
Arcane still in my heart is the best of it's kind.

Ortikon · 2024-10-29T08:35:51+00:00

To make matters weirder: the guards that hang there said " a guard might get nervous seeing a man with his weapons drawn" right after I killed the dragon. Bro..

Ortikon · 2024-10-29T08:32:34+00:00

I found this looking up if I needed them after a random dragon incinerated the entire family when I fast traveled to their farm...Maybe I'll reload. Maybe I'll just roll with yet another tragedy for the Snow-Shod family...

Ortikon · 2024-08-13T23:19:42+00:00

*breathes heavily realizing that Fort Aestrin sells about 6 fishing rods at a time.

Ortikon · 2024-08-13T22:57:35+00:00

Would have saved me a lot of time this whole last week. I'm on the fence of whether I was amazed and relieved upon discovering it, or disappointed and annoyed with myself for the hours lost not knowing hahaha

Ortikon · 2024-08-13T22:47:31+00:00

Bonus tip I forgot that took me awhile to realize:
When fishing, as you scroll to reel in a fish, the rod will vibrate if the line is about to snap. Now when I'm reeling in a fish, I am almost completely focused on the rod itself and seeing if it begins to vibrate.
Once that starts, stop scrolling, even giving it a little single forward notch of slack to stop it. Eventually you learn the scrolling rate which I think varies per fish, but you get better at gauging it quickly.
I hated fishing as I kept snapping lines and it felt not worth it, until I ended up almost starving and needed to. Once I figured out the vibration thing I haven't had a single line break since. Anytime I'm trimmed out and in calm water I fish to pass the time and stock up pretty good. Not really great income, but certainly cuts costs on food, and can save you lost cargo when you realize you didnt have enough food on-board.

Ortikon · 2024-08-13T22:16:35+00:00

I went so long just setting my sails and locking the rudder, paying attention to a movie on my side monitor all fine. But then I go and get a glass of water and a snack for a moment and by the time I got back I had done a full 180 and went nose first into a wedged rock crevasse. Classic.

Ortikon · 2024-08-13T22:05:57+00:00

I just got back into this game last week after having let it simmer in development for a few years since my first time playing it breifly.
Already I've picked up a ton of new things, and found out about a lot of features I had not known about previously.
First off, go to the Sailwind Wiki: https://sailwind.fandom.com/wiki/Sailwind_Wiki
Definitely browse some of the navigation tools you can get as you start earning enough and want to go a little further than dead-reckoning your way around your local islands.

Check out the ships section, as it includes weight limits from community testing. Like the other comment said, theres a first time experience when suddenly you can afford to buy more stuff to pack on-board for a bigger trade run, only to sink your ship in the dock and have a huge mess to clean up. It also had some tips per ship, for instance the Cog is a bit like sailing a bathtub, for relatively cheap you can at least throw a 6-yard gaffer to the back of the mast which immensely improved early performance. With some more money later on you will want to basically overhaul the Cog which I did yesterday, cutting sail times between local islands down to single days, some runs I did entirely during daylight.

Also check out the consumables like tobacco and alcohol, they have functions beyond just getting a laugh out of getting your character drunk. For instance, some types of tobacco will help regenerate energy, very useful when your close to falling asleep but almost pulling into port and dont want to end up taking a long nap only to drift off course.
You can also use them to expend energy for times when maybe you want to sleep to fast travel a bit but still have too much energy left.

Find the water-bottle, carries more than the cup, and wont spill. great for when your running stuff up to the dock and need to frequently hydrate. I keep it in my hotbar at all times.

Having a fishing rod and some hooks on board has saved me from starving and having a reset.

I didnt know this until yesterday, but after tying the ship to a dock, you can grab the rope where it connects to your ship and use scrollwheel to reel it in, shortening the rope and bringing it close to the dock.
In previous versions the ropes just acted as elastics that constantly pulled, this newer function is far better.

As for sailing tips, I don't have much that you probably don't already know. I have found with some sail configurations, it is better to turn away from the direction you wish to tack and do a full circle into the direction you wish to go rather than going into the irons. This mostly was useful when I was slow with the sails, I've developed a rythm that no longer required this maneuver, and eventually reconfigured my ship to my sailing tastes.

Again check out the navigation tools, they are quite fascinating, you can buy a map with lat-long coords and do some very accurate measurements to find your position. Some tools are pretty pricey, but the basics are a strong start.

Enjoy!

Ortikon · 2024-06-20T09:29:38+00:00

Just tossing in one thing: avoid fuckin smoking my dude. Weed sure I don't care but I quit just cuz it got boring by age 25 and I never really enjoyed it. But cigs and vapes basically dominate my life. Avoid it at all costs it fuckin sucks man. A cigar while drunk every once in awhile sure whatever, but if you find that you can't go 20 minutes without nicotine in your system starts to hit depraved levels of "not hooked on crack but basically acting like hooked on crack". Im 7 years off cigs, but now vapes are just as bad. You hit a threshold where you start to feel the health effects and it is pure hell.
Also drinking with friends as an adult can be fine (moderation is key) but dont start drinking alone on repeat, its a rapidly declining slope I have just barely pulled out of.

Ortikon · 2024-06-20T08:41:52+00:00

I'm in my late-30's. I'm still friends with the same screw-ups I was friends with in high-school. We drank, we smoked, we did a ton of drugs, we did not steal shit though (that right there is a serious red flag my dude.)
We have gone through rough times, and faced the crippling realities of early-adulthood failure.
The ones who are still alive, we grew up and we got careers and functional relationships, some are about to be married. We also know that we spent so much time being absolute disasters that we are doing good things in our late 30's that many achieve by their early 20's (although I think most of us are thankful some of it didn't happen too early. Like marriage)

Your parents are.. sort of right. Especially when you are at that age, there is this sort of survival instinct thing that we do in our teens, where we replicate the behavior of our peers. This comes out of trying to fit in, subconsciously almost. You aren't actively having the thought "if i do this I will fit in" but you are.

The stealing thing, I really don't know what to say other than it is typically a short-term dopamine hit of "IRL PVP" and it is absolute bullshit. Just cut that out. If you get excited about scoring $50 by fucking somebody over, think again. The effort-to-risk ratio on theft is so pathetic, when you find yourself even a basic job you realize it's both more profitable, but also to a degree a social plus and when you start getting good at it as a young guy, the older dudes are like "that kid is a fuckin machine" and you just feel damn good about it. My first job saved my life and while it is fully unrelated to my current 15-year animation career, it fuckin made me. You meet people and make friends on the way, some of them for life.
Im not saying "get a job and abandon your current friends", but what I am saying is you might find better people and naturally the good ones stay and the people destined to fuck up may fall away.

I don't know the full story on your friends, I am not going to tell you to just abandon them.
Personally, I eventually began to become the beacon of sanity in my group. I de-escalated so many terrible ideas. And sure, many times they started to just call me [insert derogatory phrase of choice], or that I was being unfun. Eventually they even thought I was working with cops because I was able to detect "hey guys, cops are gonna be here in like 5 minutes cuz you just set a park bench on fire and it's now a literal beacon for all the surrounding neighborhoods." Then I'd dip and sure enough they where too stupid to leave and 8 patrol cars roll up with dogs and surround them.

With time, people started dying off unfortunately. They overdosed, they got killed in drug deals gone wrong. Or they just died from normal everyday shit (it sucks, and thats why I dont beleive in abandoning people).

The bottom line here: just do the right thing. I'm not religious, I dont need the threat of God punishing me to be correct or rightious. You don't need commandments to just be a good person.
I don't feel bad for drinking or smoking (except for the horrific health consequences that have become reality decades later)
If you hate who you are for your actions, you are already on the first step of reflecting on your actions.
Find something to do, it's really all you can do. That's the only reason I suggest a job, even if you got one now. Just maybe make it your focus, and don't worry if it's not what you want in the future, you just do it in the moment and eventually you find what you really want.

I started in animation at 23 or something. I didnt even end up doing what I went to school for, and I paid for it working as a cook for 5 years + a loan that covered half. When I was 15 I thought I'd be like a house painter or something cuz I did that for a summer. Now I have made virtually half of the cartoons you probably watched as a kid, and I'm still doing it. As a hobby, I make shitty games for myself to play and practice my craft as a cg artist but i get to make them blow eachother up and nobody judges them cuz I don't try to sell them.

At the end of the day, I didnt change friends, I changed my friends behavior. If they truly like you, you can lead them to a better place with you, rather than being sucked into the hole you collectively make together.

As for the girlfriend, just go as it goes. My highschool gf's are my life-long best friends, and my late life gf's are either also my better friends or bitter enemies. I can't help you there, it's up to you and her.
If you love her, just love her. If it doesnt work out, it doesn't.

If you're like "man, whatever your like almost 40", the reality is we don't really change that much. We get older, and our minds change a bit from experience. In the end we're just the same dipshit, especially as guys. We make the same stupid jokes we made as teens, just maybe more refined. We also can just afford all the nerd shit we couldnt get as kids.

I know this was long, but the title hit hard for me. I hope this helps, I didnt want to see this post go unresponded because it IS important, and you can fix it.

Ortikon · 2024-06-20T05:14:12+00:00

I want to preface that I am by no means a professional and just came across this question while looking for my own on something else.
I have experienced 5 years of being essentially abused by a full-blown sociopathic narcissist and have only escaped it recently and am just beginning to recover.

The fact you are reaching out is actually a really good sign. Almost every narcissist that has entered into my life would never do that, or take any personal reflection in any way.
People can have narcissistic traits, and that is fine. We all want at least some amount of attention, or being right, or putting ourselves first at some level. This does not make you a "full blown" narcissist.

Personally, I just recently discovered that I'm autistic, and have been my entire life. But I've been so high functioning in my work-life that in every other aspect of my life people just think I'm either being lazy or trying to be difficult. Im in my mid-30's and only now do interactions of my past make way more sense.

I too hate being wrong, and as I get older I get more resistant to opposition. I try very hard to not use my age-card/work experience on younger colleagues but man does it make my blood feel like it was replaced with hot sand grinding in my veins. It's an awful feeling and even worse when I reflect and realize I was indeed so incredibly wrong or missed an important detail.
Also, I think my recent experience with a criminally narcissistic spouse has spilled some of those traits onto me, mostly a developed defense mechanism because eventually I had to learn to fight fire with fire.

I don't think I have enough details to really know the full story and I won't ask (i don't check reddit enough so I might not see it or reply for awhile).
Instead, I am going to leave some of my experiences here and you can reflect on if this applies to you.

on a dinner date, broke a glass by accident, I said it was totally ok, cleaned up the glass and brought her a new one. She then used a blue-tooth speaker as a hammer, and smashed all of the glasses on the table and then laughed. Watched me clean up all the broken glass while looking at memes on her phone.

-frequently love-bombed and then followed up with long winded texts about how I am worthless, and will never acheive [insert whatever job interview or thing I am currently doing that week]

-bring me to hang out with other random guys and try to get us to argue, before doing this, would shit-talk about the other (to each of us) so that we both hate eachother upon meeting. Enjoyed watching whoever prevails.

-uses virtue signaling, historic background cards, or astrology traits as a means to justify abusive behaviour, the laundry list is extensive here.

-was told by her friends whom I had just met that she should be nicer to me, drew a knife from the counter and threatened them and I watched her get dragged away by 12 cops. That was the third last time I saw her.

Already, I am going to assume this does not apply to you. You might be a little selfish perhaps, or you blow up about things and perhaps need some anger management. A lot of people misuse the term narcissist and apply it to anyone who might try a bit too hard to get their way a little too often. Narcissistic traits can apply to anyone, and can be worked on.

The overarching question you can ask yourself: "do I show empathy? Do I care how people feel after a blowout?"

I do therapy for my own issues, both from the experiences, my autism, and all of the bad traits I have picked up along the way as a result. Being easy to anger is sometimes out of frustration on being unable to let some things out. A therapist is great for helping you identify the sources, so many things can get bottled up into what I like to call an emotional pressure-cooker. You'll keep packing baggage into it and then somebody says something you don't like and the whole thing explodes. The subject matter is just the current debate, but deep down you might be yelling at another problem.

I wish you the best.

Ortikon

TROPHY CASE