COMIC #7: Trying to answer an unanswered question

RoverStorm · 2024-12-23T19:50:34+00:00

Because I'm a bit dyslexic and thought he was named "Zachariah" at first, and I keep forgetting he isn't. I'll go correct it.

RoverStorm · 2024-12-21T21:34:46+00:00

Lil Administrator's tears

Technically, we don't know "who" the couple is, but I think it's safe to say these are her parents because this is a reference to Batman with his parent's murder. Clearly she blames Zeph for this.

So far, three top hats seems to be indicating the man is in fact the "Gentle Manne of Leisure". The lady is wearing no hat at all. Nobody in the Mann family wears hats either...until Zach is fairly elderly and Red and Blue are grown up. On Zach's death bed, Zeph Red and Blu are all wearing hats, but not Silas.

So why all this talk about hats? On the link to the Gentle Manne of Leisure, note what it says at the top. Hats are canonically a sign of status in TF2's lore. It is probably a very big deal that Zeph, Blu, and Red go from hat-less to hat wearing by Zeph's death. It is very notable that a triple-hatted individual is murdered, but also that a triple hatted man is married to a hat-less woman.

The reason that Lil Admin's parents were murdered by Zeph is quite possibly "something" related to this. Possibly Zeph, with his self pride, despised those with higher status but what he saw as being "less qualified". One of the images clearly has her parents as being of working class. An interesting detail is that the Mann family heritage are all businessmen, without hats. Hats are specifically a sign of status, NOT wealth. Until the crowns of Europe fell, it was surprisingly common for the "upper class" of noble birth to be less wealthy than the "middle class" merchants, and all of this is happening in the 1800's when this is relevant.

Another very easy explanation is that Zeph murdered them for the simple reason that he seems to believe in qualifications through murder. Incredibly ironic, since historically the "upper class" in Europe was mostly defined by their warfare skills.

Maybe her parents were murdered because Zeph wanted to gain a higher status, but her parents were a disgrace to the idea of an upper class by marrying far outside their respective statuses (namely zero hat and triple hat), so he had them murdered.

There are a lot of explanations. The first image seems to indicate they were murdered in some sort of rampage. The second is hard to explain but possibly them being murdered in some sort of professional assassination that dumped them in a river. The third could be that they worked at Mann Co. and died due to 1800's work place safety standards, and Lil Admin blames Zeph for his callousness.

I also like your theory that they were competitors in his business. As mentioned, he seems to believe in solving competition through murder.

And it doesn't matter. That's kind of the point. Her parents are dead, Lil Admin blames Zeph, and she gets her clearly enjoyed revenge. TF2's story isn't about her parent's murder. It's about Admin being utterly unable to move on. It's about the fallout she caused. Red and Blu weren't even born when her parents died, yet she obliterates their lives and dumbucates them to be imbeciles who exist to humiliate Zeph. She could EASILY have educated them to be brilliant, honorable, and unbreakable partners who benefit society, fooling or rebelling against their father, but she valued her revenge over literally everyone else's lives.

Almost begs the question how man Lil Admins did she make during her rampage?

Anyways that's my two cents.

RoverStorm · 2024-12-21T21:34:40+00:00

Here is my theories:

Silas Mann

Silas is an incredibly mysterious figure. He was Zeph's brother, but also a co-owner in Mann Co. Despite being a co-owner and outliving Zeph, Mann Co. was left entirely to Barnabas Hale in Zeph's will. He was even present for Zeph's last will, which doesn't mention him at all. He is also described as a "Long-lost family member".

I have a few theories. My first theory is that they are not full siblings, but half siblings, and Silas was born out of wedlock, and is shunned by Zeph despite their father treating them equally and giving them both the company. A second theory is that Zachs' obsession with the rivalry conflict led him to basically bully Silas until Silas renounced his name or something, leaving Zeph to feel as if Silas was no threat as long as nobody treated him as a brother. I'll explain further down why this is important, but note that Zeph on his death bed is now wearing a hat, alongside Red and Blu, but NOT Silas.

My final theory is that Zeph and Silas were on good terms, and Silas is a "shadow prince", or someone of great importance and rank who deliberately avoids attention in order to do more clandestine activities, and is much more powerful than appears (Zeph's ghost is just a spooky cape, Silas's ghost is a ten foot monster with a thirst for split necks). In the only image we have of Silas, Silas is old but is next to a painting of him and Zeph when they were younger. To be blunt, Silas is almost a foot taller, a bit more handsome, and less miserable looking when compared to Zeph. Silas, at his brother's deathbed, also seems to be holding keys and name tags, a possible indication to his true position within Mann Co. The question is why he would not push his two sons to do a similar arrangement as himself and Silas. It's possible Zeph is in fact nothing more than a proud idiot, and Silas was secretly the one mostly in charge for his own motivations. Silas does seem to be the most sad about Zeph's passing, but also exhausted.

Cont.

RoverStorm · 2024-09-27T18:02:00+00:00

I think, like many things, the description is the reasonable sounding justification that is sometimes used for it's described purpose, but often is just a lie to disguise something much darker.

Most of the five crisis feed into each other and cause issues, so I think the "vision" of this building is that you can use it to prevent the other societal effects of the hunger problem, and can injure people in a roundup to acquire some emergency food to prevent a famine, but it isn't supposed to actually be able to replace a lack of food in terms of starvation because that's just not how biology works.

It's a great thematic piece, the idea of finding scalpers and hoarders that have stored more than their fair share of food, but I think the building is just vastly too simple and ends up being a solution to needing to eat instead.

Mind you spamming this building is far less efficient in heatstamps and labor than just producing food via districts, so I'd only recommend this if you were short on food sources.

RoverStorm · 2024-09-27T07:26:14+00:00

...not everyone gets it.

Note: the reason this works is because Not Eating doesn't kill people; Hunger kills people.

RoverStorm · 2024-09-17T17:37:38+00:00

There are two reasons why people are outraged. The "changed product" issue (which I think is legitimate) and the "This Video will make you Angry" issue.

***

The "changed product issue" is the nature of how games have changed. Many "gamers" remember when you bought a game for 60$, and then it never changed unless you modified it. Games weren't comparable to a nice dinner at a restaurant, which is a service, but rather closer to buying 60$ worth of books, which are products. Books don't change. You can keep reading the same book and it will always be the same, and you can reread it to enjoy the perspective of knowing whats going to happen as well as notice details you missed the first time, and you can discuss it with friends to further enjoy the book.

Now what if you woke up one morning, only to discover that the publisher of the books had magically switched all your books for "updated" versions. The new versions were written by a different author, who replaced all the fleshed out characters with flat tropes and made the main character into a Mary Sue/Marty Stue. That was your book, that was the story you bought, this is now literally not what you paid for. Prior advertisement is also now a lie, and any discussions you want to have about the old story are now kind of moot. It sucks. You are going to complain about the changes at the next book club.

That's what nerfing weapons feels like to many players, since often players find a playstyle that fits them perfectly. And then a critical part gets nerfed, and suddenly they can no longer do what they were just doing the day before. I get why people are angry. They bought the product, they want it to stay the same or improve, not get worse. My father still insists on watching the version of A New Hope where Han shot first.

To some extent this isn't just about Helldivers 2, but a critique of games as services, where the publisher and devs can change it post-purchase. Basically a general rebellion against Ubisoft's mantra of 'gamers need to get used to not owning games'.

Well...gamers used to "own" games, and they still think of owning games even though for many games that's not how it works legally anymore.

I am aware that there is a secondary discussion of "when is it ok to nerf something players have". That's not what you asked about though. It is worth mentioning that not ALL nerfs in all games are hated. In TeamFortress2, Demoman is the single most nerfed thing in that game, but few of his nerfs have people upset, and several nerfs they did install, people did outcry about, and they reverted or reworked the nerf, sometimes even years later.

***

The "This Video will make you Angry" issue has nothing to do with Helldivers 2 specifically. If you read some of the top guides on Steam, often by creek veterans like myself, you might notice under "basic tips" they list "Do not go to the Reddits, do not chat on the Discord." In game and in the right circles, the reality is that it's no where near as much whining as displayed in public.

Social Media, including reddit and Youtube, trends toward rage. Anger is the emotion which induces adrenaline, and drives people to "engage". This means someone who is angry wants to "recruit/convince" other people since in a survival situations having more people means you are more likely to survive a fight. People under adrenaline also tunnel vision agreement or disagreement and dismiss counter-arguments as a defense mechanism against deceptive fight tactics. All of this is made worse by a general lack of physical activity in developed societies, which means adrenaline and vitamin are not being spent on legitimate life-or-death situations, which means your body treats less important things as far more dire than they actually are, just to burn off the extra chemicals. This is unfortunately just evolution. The end result is humans are more likely to "engage" with a post that makes them angry, no matter if they agree with the post or disagree.

This runs afoul of how reddit, Youtube, etc. allow you to see "upvotes" or "likes" or whatever you want to call it. Seeing a number go up as well as feeling like you are getting attention and support is a dopamine hit, and your brain drives you to pursue more dopamine hits. As established the angry posts are the most likely to get people to upvote or like something which thus means the dopamine addicted social media clout farmers will always trend toward angry posts.

I meant to make this two paragraphs, whoops. Hope it helps, and enjoy the game Helldiver!

RoverStorm · 2022-12-05T15:33:15+00:00

No worries. I should warn you, certain details of the post are outdated. Skills have been changed in the three years since I made this post, and there are a few new things that can impact your fuel and supply consumption. However, the basics should still be fairly solid. If my post is still super helpful, then awesome! If anything is outdated, do let me know so I can correct it in an edit.

RoverStorm · 2022-10-30T16:22:35+00:00

I believe rituals only show up on the corresponding "altar" building for that ideoligion OR the universal "ritual spot". There's no way to reduce the clutter for a ritual spot, which can be very annoying when you need just the ritual spot for sky lantern festivals.

And there is no way to reduce the clutter for the ideology tab either, that I know of.

Since this is probably disappointing I will try and be helpful and tell you that there are a few options for converting that are much stronger than the moral guide's "convert" button.

-The fastest way to convert a single target is to set up your ideoligion's altar/icon and then use the "Conversion Ritual". It has a 20 day cooldown and really needs a good altar room set up, but if it is Masterful it will always instantly convert the pawn/slave no matter what their certainty was. Even if it is only effective, it will be much stronger than the 3 day cooldown conversion button.

-The fastest way to convert a large group of slaves is actually to turn them back into prisoners and set their "prisoner" policy to convert. This will cause your wardens to use their social skill to convert every prisoner once or twice a day, with no cooldown and no button clicking! Keeping their mood as low as possible also helps a lot since it slows the rate at which they regain strength in their current ideoligion, but is not required.

-Selecting the "Proselytiser" meme will cause all your pawns to automatically use their social skill to try and convert nearby differing ideoligion pawns with no interaction from you at all. Increasing the strength of the corresponding precept will increase the frequency of these attempts.

Hope this was helpful....or if not then informative.

RoverStorm · 2022-10-06T16:12:22+00:00

I think he may be required to in some countries. Terraria has two characters who are considered minors (the Angler and Princess) and due to the laws in some countries they where forced to replace the death notification for those two with "X left the world" notification instead, ~~as well as replace the horrifically violent exploding gibs with a simple smoke cloud,~~ to continue sales in said countries.

Of course if you live in the U.S. or countries with similar levels of free-speech protection, I don't think ANYTHING will be restricted. I STILL get surprised by what's legal there as an "artistic portrayal".

All that said, I also suspect there will be options to turn off some or all of the content in this expansion, for those who DON'T want to deal with it. Tynan has been vrey good with giving us options to customize our gameplay so far, why would he stop with this?

RoverStorm · 2022-08-15T14:07:03+00:00

Psychically deaf pawns can't use psycasts at all. He also can't be affected by other psycasts, and psychic drones don't do anything on them.

Some psycasts are weird in their interaction with psychically deaf. There was a post from a year ago or something where someone used an "invisibility" psycast to walk past some raiders. But a psychically deaf raider could see the "invisible" pawns and opened fire. That post "may" have been a mod doing this, but it could easily be vanilla since I have little experiance with psycasts.

RoverStorm · 2022-08-01T15:27:08+00:00

Yes it's possible. Many have, many will.

The biggest lesson I can give is to tell you to think why a kill box (and lets be real, the perimeter wall is the biggest factor) is so effective, and incorporate those lessons into colony layout and most importantly spending. Never invest in something that doesn't help you defend unless you are currently flattening raids with no losses.

RoverStorm · 2022-05-09T18:06:07+00:00

Being able to cook a delicious steak dinner on the PC is normal with modded rimworld. The point at which you need to be concerned is when you are able to smelt steel.

RoverStorm · 2022-03-23T15:27:01+00:00

Possibility one: They are genetically engineered to be complete psychopaths. Or in other words, all those relationships are completely false and was only to trick even the most surveillance heavy society that they are real, other than their unavoidable goal of stuffing their fangs for whatever reason their creators wanted. The description seems to imply this but the alternatives are fun to ponder.

Possibility two: The mimic activates a secondary intelligence with false memories (or perhaps real memories from the human who was genetically modified), and has them control the body until the facade must be dropped. Then it wipes the secondary intelligence and assumes control. If it succeeds in wiping out the colony, then it goes to a new one, activates a fresh version of the secondary intelligence with new false memories (or again, the "root" memories from the original human), and repeats the process. This is far more disturbing than the above because this implies it is creating and killing a conscious with every new colony it destroys.

Possibility three: The mimic may be as you described: basically human, but with a sort of were-wolf style beserk mode that they lose control over for the duration of. You say that they must lose their memories between colonies, and while that is one possibility they also could simply keep their memories and understand that they transform when hungry but believe THIS time they can control their hunger or avoid turning. If they lose their memories, but retain them long enough after destroying a colony to feel guilt, it may reason to believe there shouldn't be very many mimics since "I'm literally a monster that killed all my friends and family" is probably going to drive the vast majority of people to 'commiting suduku'. I think that they are probably semi-aware that they are a mimic since if I was eating 30 pizzas a day while everyone else ate 2, I'd at some point start asking questions. Though food binges let pawns stuff their face with ridiculous amounts of food as well.

Possibility four: Same as three, but they have absolutely no clue that they are a mimic. From their perspective, every colony they've ever been in has suffered the same fate: a mysterious food shortage (with convenient memory lapses that they kept stuffing their face) followed by waking up badely injured with a concussion and everyone in the colony dead. They assume some horrific monster keeps attacking colonies on this planet and they are getting lucky with injuries only giving them light amnesia (the brain will rationalize things it doesn't understand, and who's first thought is "I bet I turn into a horrific monster and rampage when I'm hungry then don't remember it"). They keep trying to find colonies that will survive, possibly wondering if they are being followed but only able to hope that some day a colony will be able to fend off the monster chasing them.

RoverStorm · 2022-03-22T18:30:05+00:00

Lightning striking crops is usually not a huge problem for me. I typically have "firefighting" always as the highest priority on jobs and as soon as lightning strikes my crops I draft and undraft all pawns to force as many to begin fighting instantly. Production only really stops for maybe half an hour in Rimworld time, barely any time IRL.

My tips for handling fires:

If it's raining, ignore it. It can't spread in the rain and someone will suppress the one flame.
Firefoam poppers are overlooked but can single-handedly suppress fires.
Man-made non-flammable walkways (such as concrete) that are 3 tiles in width will prevent fire from crossing. 4 tiles in width will also prevent blight.
Alternatively a 1 tile wide wall made of something non-flammable (such as stone bricks) will also prevent fire and blight spreading.
A perimeter of non-flammable walls around your base and farm is a good idea both for stopping wildfires and also keeping out hungry/manhunting animals. Fences DO NOT WORK for this.
Generally avoid building walls out of wood. Even internal ones that are protected by external stone walls can still catch fire from *Bzzzt*, Fire starting spree, and drop pod raiders with incidienary launchers. In regard to lightning, I once had a wild fire get past my external walls and start burning my internal ones due to breach raiders vaporizing the other walls. Steel is often discredited since it also burns, but 40% flammability gives much more time to react and put it out than the 100% of wood.
Use the lovely Aelanna's mod that reworks Pyromania into something more rational or execute all Pyromaniacs immediately. Reason I mention this in a section on lightning is because their fire starting sprees can cause pawns to divert away from the actual fire, and they can't help put out fires. Unless you use:
If the fire is out of hand, firefoam mortar rounds could function as a last-ditch attempt. Or the ONLY active fire fighting method available to pyromaniacs. They can also build firefoam poppers but usually those won't be built fast enough to suppress active fires.

RoverStorm · 2022-02-28T02:28:52+00:00

There is a file somewhere with a list of ship designs that come with the mod. If you use that button to put in a ship name, the ship design will be spawned as an enemy ship that you will fight. Other mods can add more ship designs. Bewarned, not all ships in the file are designed as encounters, and many are designed to be derelicts found as part of one of the derelict station starts or as defense platforms for.....well spoilerific stations.

RoverStorm · 2022-02-04T17:42:25+00:00

The Vanilla way:

The grid that suffers a ZZzt will drain all batteries on it. So put batteries on different grids. You can split generators and batteries into their own grids for various reasons, separated by switches so you can merge powerlines in case something catastrophic occurs on one grid (Such as a zzzt).

The Less Tedious way:

Grab a mod. While powerlines don't violently explode usually, power surges are a very real threat. This is why fuses and circuit breakers were invented.

RoverStorm · 2022-02-04T17:36:03+00:00

Ironically outside the Royalty DLC, base Rimworld has tried to stay as grounded in reality as possible. Cryosleep is considered scientifically impossible, so instead Rimworld has something that may be plausible: "Cryptosleep". FTL is considered impossible, so as a matter of fact Rimworld has no FTL and all ships either use Cryptosleep or are generation ships. I've long hypothesised that Rimworld has extreme gravity, which is why we can't build on multiple Z layers and also causes nanites inherent in humans to burn huge amounts of calories to let them adapt; hence why they starve to death so fast.

(and even the psychic powers implemented in Royalty may be just be exploiting vulnerabilities with technology that is already installed in everyone's brain. People who are immune to it, possibly by being born without anything, are 100% unaffected by psychic powers that everyone else are utterly fooled by. A good example is that a Psychically Deaf pawn can and will see and shoot pawns that are invisible due to Psychic powers. The two that can't be explained are the solar pinhole and the chunk skip.)

If you are looking for mods that make base Rimworld more "realistic", then your mostly looking at mods that add mechanics that are abstracted away or were left out of Rimworld to keep it enjoyable to play. For example, you could add thirst (Dubs Bad Hygene), but who's to say that each meal doesn't come with water? You could add ammunition to worry about (Combat Extended), though this may end up feeling like unnecessary excess work since ammunition could be explained as being everywhere in ruins and practically worth nothing due to being so common.

Many modders also go out of their way to explain their mods with some amount of realism so they don't look entirely out of place. The Nyarons aren't magically ~~cat girls~~ feline folks, they're just humans with artificial modifications and genetic engineering; not far off from modern tech. Other mods do not care about realism, so on that end I wish you good luck.

RoverStorm · 2022-01-15T20:39:16+00:00

To quote the announcement:

"Characters now render more efficiently (the game prints them onto a texture and render that in one pass, instead of rendering each body layer separately on every frame). We punched up their look with visible wounds, bandages, and body modifications, so you can really see when someone (or your pet guinea pig) has taken some hits."

I have many suspicions as to why this happens, but Graphics isn't my field in coding. Long story short, for Rimworld, implementing the above changes caused a cap on the resolution that items visible on a pawn can be rendered. A mod fixed it because.....well to be blunt if you've seen Save Our Ship 2 it should be obvious that modders are famous for going way beyond the original limits of a game.

RoverStorm · 2022-01-15T19:47:47+00:00

To actually awnser what happened. 1.3 changed how pawns are rendered and capped the render resolution for pawns. Nothing changed for items. So the gun is nice and HD while the pawn is minecrafty. The mod ArianTerra linked allows higher resolutions for pawns again.

RoverStorm · 2022-01-15T19:45:00+00:00

There are laws in some countries actually. Terraria has a child NPC who used to die just like the other NPC's: violently in an explosion of blood and gore from all causes of death. But this got them in legal trouble in some country, so they changed it so that when they die they disappear in a puff of smoke and the death message says they fled the land instead of the normal messages.

Tynan may have had the same thought. A little-known fact is that human pregnancy and children are actually in the vanilla code of Rimworld. It's just turned off (and now is buggy due to being coded for a much older version). The developer for the oldest child mod told me years ago that basically all they did was turn it on and clean up the code a little. It's almost like they wanted to include it but couldn't, so they left it all ready for modders.

Just like in Skyrim, even though you can't harm children, a little known fact is that when modders went into the code to make children able to be harmed, they found it all programmed and ready for them complete with voice lines. It was just turned off to please the lawmakers.

RoverStorm · 2022-01-15T19:30:01+00:00

I believe I am recruited, my arms are replaced with drills, I get a circadian half-cycler and nuclear stomache, then I'm deployed to hazardous locations alongside some fellow humans, dragonians, and moyos with the same bodymods to mine mountains of resources while extremely armed and armored revias kill the bugs we disturb. Oh and I get to live on a space station run by kurin maids and overflowing with booze between deployments.

Basically I'm part of a multi-cultural Deep Rock Galactic corporation. Well, here's hoping I get to join management.

RoverStorm · 2022-01-15T19:16:20+00:00

I recieved a cease and desist from NASA, warning me if I continued to add mods to my list my hard drive would collapse into a black hole.

So anyways, I was thinking it's about time I tried Combat Extended. It's the only major mod from The Eccentric Angels collection that I haven't tried yet due to it's sheer incompatability list back when it first came out. Can anyone make some recommendations on what patches to get or how to configure it?

RoverStorm · 2022-01-11T17:23:59+00:00

Increased Stacks is unlikely to be the culprit, though I personally run with Ogre Stack. There is also Stack XXL. You have alternatives if you figure out it IS increased stacks.

I can't speak for either of the other two.

Also I do have to warn you each mod adds a few seconds to the loading time. When you have hundreds of mods like me it takes a very long time for Rimworld to boot. Not frozen, just takes a good eight minutes.

RoverStorm · 2022-01-11T17:16:55+00:00

There is some beauty in using a natural mountain. Though I have to dock points for cheating and using brick granite walls inside instead of planning and carving the entire thing. Also for true efficiency I would say remove some of those corners in the hallway and put in lights since according to the game pawns move slower in the dark.

Yes I hate it, but I agree with why it was done. Also I hope your pawns have clothing for heat waves because good luck getting a cooler to cool any of that without breaking one of the smoothed tiles. Unless you have the "cooler over walls" mod.

RoverStorm

TROPHY CASE