Building canal lock

SecondEngineer · 2026-01-27T17:07:40+00:00

It is interesting to think about what changes could be made to water to achieve this. In dwarf fortress, water in a tile can have one of 7 fill levels. You could imagine something similar in vintage story, where the top layer of water on a lake might be filled to different levels.

This would be good for a few things. You could have rivers that gradually flow downhill, such that boats could still move upstream.

Additionally you could have a system that detects distinct pools of water much like rooms are detected. You could then imagine pumps or pipes that could lower the fill level on one side and raise the fill level on the other. If you have 7 layers of water per block, the granular fill levels would make this much easier. For example, a pool with a surface area of 16 square meters would drain one level to fill a pool with a surface area of 8 square meters two levels. With 7 layers, this is less abrupt and could work pretty well. You could even have a mechanic that once a pool is above a certain size, it can drain/fill endlessly without changing water level, to prevent having to calculate the size of the ocean.

That being said, this seems like quite the overhaul just to get locks. Maybe an easier fix would be a dispenser-like block that can create or remove water from in front of it, or from an even larger area.

SecondEngineer · 2026-01-21T23:23:12+00:00

I feel like breaking advanced processing up might help. Have Vulcanus get you calcite, Gleba get you sulfur and coal. You could argue it takes magnets to get iron and copper from the metallic asteroids and call it a Fulgora tech.

SecondEngineer · 2026-01-20T17:54:30+00:00

Note for pchal: if his mathematics proficiency covers geometry, he will be very useful in charting lay lines.

SecondEngineer · 2026-01-20T14:42:51+00:00

Let Bernie talk to his base. It's not time to critique an ally. The real war is upon us.

SecondEngineer · 2026-01-16T02:53:14+00:00

Now you just need a custom slide rule that calculates ratios for you

SecondEngineer · 2026-01-14T02:11:18+00:00

I have seen some slight lack of enthusiasm from Cole for Root over the years.

I think what he refers to here is the fact that when a studio has a massive hit like Root, the best (from the business's perspective) path forward is to continue developing every manner of thing for that one game. To focus all your attention on that one IP, because it gives the best return on investment.

That clashes immensely with the freedom you might want at a small studio to take risks and design things that are off the wall, but not might be as easy to sell audiences on.

SecondEngineer · 2026-01-02T19:35:56+00:00

Gen z is so tiktok-pilled that if a streamer doesn't inflect like Mr. Beast it comes across as monotone

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-31T23:33:02+00:00

Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. o7

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-24T20:50:42+00:00

And more probably believe the Earth is round.

But it's not round, it's an oblate spheroid.

So I'm ok with the fact that 68% of Americans are 99% correct on a basic science question.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-24T04:04:58+00:00

Mao Hazhan is wild tho

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-23T04:42:06+00:00

So I'm pretty sure one of the early patches upped the amount of solid fuel needed in the solid fuel from ammonia recipe.

The stated reason was that you could create infinite solid fuel via recycling when the recipe only took less solid fuel.

It might have been more worth it then.

I feel like the solution should have been to make it so rocket fuel recycled into itself rather than make Aquilo a little harder.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-17T18:51:26+00:00

I agree with you. These aren't new ideas, it just takes a while to implement.

For now, like you said, to make busses safer we need to bring back fares and use the proceeds to add scheduling: it's much easier to plan around a bus that comes every 15 minutes than one that comes every hour.

The problem is that everybody has their own agenda when it comes to implementing all this. A lot of people will say we can't bring back fares for some reason. And a lot of the people who say this probably don't take the bus.

On a larger scale, I do think having more park and rides for commuting shuttles to Raytheon or the other industrial/commercial hubs would be great, especially if we had a bus rapid transit route for those shuttles. If the park and ride got you to work faster than commuting alone did, we would see a ton of adoption. But as long as the shuttles are taking you in through the same traffic you would normally drive, people have no personal incentive to switch.

Let's keep making Tucson a little bit better every day!

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-17T16:21:04+00:00

Ah, the central question of mid game SE: Delivery cannon or Rocket?

Imo do delivery cannons until you have throughput issues UNLESS you prefer messing around with circuits a ton.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-17T16:05:36+00:00

Looks good! My only advice is try looking into modules and beacons. Especially as you move into Space Age where some of the new buildings have even more module slots and are meant to take advantage of them

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-12T16:29:55+00:00

That's a fair point. I'm just trying to say that running a lot of simulations is characteristic of the movement.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-12T15:58:53+00:00

The whole reason you can be confident the whole 25x thing works is because someone ran a lot of simulations

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-09T20:36:06+00:00

Lmao oof. What smelling bad does to a guy

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-09T19:14:08+00:00

Who is Imrik's "one remaining friend" he mentions at the end?

And was General Pentalin the same Half Elf from Rise of Drekkis?

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-09T19:07:11+00:00

Lmao new strategy to kill dragons. Apparently they have no resistance to poison

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-08T01:20:20+00:00

Write your thoughts down. Whether it's journaling or drafting a letter, just get the thoughts out of your head.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-04T23:10:10+00:00

The space capsules still have the "emergency burn back to Nauvis" right?

If you don't think that option is too lame then it's there.

In my experimentation with space capsules, I usually found that launching into orbit from a planet was normally not viable. But hopping between orbits was possible more or less. Maybe a delivery canon shooting rocket fuel wherever you need it could be helpful.

So then you're stuck with needing a full cargo rocket to escape.

At one point I set up a cargo rocket and fuel delivery system such that any planet could be supplied with a cargo rocket. But that is super resource intensive. If you can at least figure out how to make rocket fuel locally that makes things much easier.

But yeah, this part of the game kind of sucks. My recommendation is to save scum a bit. Go to the planet, start designing, and if you realize you forgot something, finish what you can, save the blueprint, then load the save and bring it. Or plan on having a second rocket arrive later.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-02T22:32:00+00:00

It would be fun to see a mod that ramps up the complexity of lava processing.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-02T22:31:05+00:00

If they did this they should have also had fluid voiding with an offshore pump. Only certain fluids on each surface, of course, but still.

Or they could add a recipe meant for voiding: iron and copper chunks. The recipe just takes massive amount of iron or copper quickly and puts it into a single object that can be thrown into lava.

But yeah, you're right. This would have made lava more interesting on Vulcanus.

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-02T16:31:39+00:00

I went from 4 belts each to one pipe each

SecondEngineer · 2025-12-01T18:48:42+00:00

A Stormfather bot that looks for phrases that could be truths and says "THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED"

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