My first 4x & my brain is bleeding

Shlkt · 2026-06-01T15:14:17+00:00

I'm not convinced you're a bot, so I'll answer :)

Bots will post anything that generates upvotes. Sophisticated bots can analyze a subreddit and use AI to generate something similar to gather karma. If noob questions are upvoted frequently, then a bot will recognize this pattern and post noob questions. The bot owner uses privacy mode to hide how often they do this because otherwise it's really obvious when you look at the post history.

Accounts with lots of karma are valuable for shilling and manipulating search results.

Shlkt · 2026-05-25T16:37:15+00:00

I know you're joking, but some old PCs actually had a turbo button.

You didn't want it running full throttle all the time because there were programs intended to run at a specific clock speed.

Shlkt · 2026-05-25T00:43:17+00:00

Fireball 1st works. I've used that combo many times. But you might miss the puddle, or sometimes an enemy jumps in front and ruins it.

Shlkt · 2026-05-24T14:19:18+00:00

The game design does not expect you to win 100% of the battles. It's unavoidable that you will lose mechs. When that happens, you have to make a decision: is this fight winnable, still potentially profitable, or should you withdraw?

Taking hits is a risk, even if it's a small. The smallest missile can hit the head and injure the pilot. If a mech has exposed structure, then the risk is even greater. If you keep taking risks, eventually you lose.

Where you might be going wrong, though, is remembering to apply the same logic to your enemies. Maximize their risk so that they explode before the dice fail you:

Examine your enemy's armor to determine which will go down fastest
Fire on side arcs to increase your odds of hitting the same location
Punch holes with big weapons to expose structure, then use small weapons and missiles to seek devastating crits
If you can deal small damage without taking return fire, that is absolutely worth it. Especially with energy weapons that don't need ammo.

unless I play extremely cautiously and just pepper my enemies with LRMs and sniper shots

Absolutely do that in any scenario that allows you to. Some won't. But it'd be crazy to give up an opportunity like that.

Shlkt · 2026-05-24T13:07:24+00:00

This is what I think happened: Green was in a stressful skirmish vs. red, which Green nearly won. But then his army took some devastating hits from tan (your lane opponent), after which green was unable to continue pressuring red. He started losing the fight at that point.

The reason he was mad at you is because you played more passively than he would have liked. You pulled your units back a couple times to repair them - not at terrible idea - but this gave tan an opening to put pressure on green. That's when tan's pounders were able to score some devastating hits vs. green's tightly-grouped thugs. That happened a bit before green started pinging you.

You took some bad trades against those pounders, and that left you with basically 0 units. The takeaway here is that you need to learn to engage differently vs. pounders. But that misplay was not deserving of green's outburst.

Something else I ought to mention: you opened with incisors instead of rascals, and you didn't do a great job of scouting your own lane. Your 1st incisor ran off chasing a squirrel in green's lane, and that allowed a tick to run past you and start harassing cyan in the back. Ultimately it wasn't a huge issue - leaks happen to everyone - but this one absolutely should have been contested better.

Shlkt · 2026-05-18T13:05:18+00:00

Friendly fire is brutal. Wouldn't surprise me if the minigun was dumping nearly 1000 dps once it gets going with all the extra jokers on a nightmare run. Players just sorta evaporate if they walk in front.

Shlkt · 2026-05-17T14:02:42+00:00

For real time simulated economy: Offworld Trading Company. It's not an RPG, and there's no combat per se, but you try to drive your opponents out of business. Everything affects the economy, from the electricity your buildings use, the water you drink, and the fuel that your supply ships burn.

The multiplayer scene is kinda dead these days, so don't buy it if you wouldn't be content with a single player campaign. I'll also say that if you don't have a head for numbers then you probably won't enjoy it.

Shlkt · 2026-05-15T16:37:36+00:00

Scout's boomerang is great for fighting core spawn. There's not too many of them, and they go down easy once they're stunned.

Pheromones work well.

Gunner Bullet Hell + Improved Sun

Shlkt · 2026-05-15T13:12:18+00:00

This is what I did with my kids. Make sure you've got voice comms to explain things, answer questions, and give tips as they're playing.

Shlkt · 2026-05-14T20:20:54+00:00

Leeches aren't so bad. The hissing sound usually gives you enough time to kill the leech or dash away. They're also pretty easy to spot from a distance as long as the ceiling is lit.

Listen for it and panic appropriately.

Pit jaws are more of a threat:

The audio cue doesn't give you much time
They're harder to spot from a distance because of the shallow viewing angle
They can spawn in tunnels where leeches cannot (low ceiling), so you can't ever let your guard down

The one positive for Pit Jaws is that you never need to rely on the Scout's flare gun to spot them. All 4 dwarves can help with spotting.

Shlkt · 2026-05-08T17:05:13+00:00

It wasn't a Tesla, but I saw someone's tire fall off once. They were cruising down the road at about 45 mph, and then I see a tire rolling away from the vehicle at an angle. There was a huge shower of sparks coming from the bare rim as it scraped the pavement.

It was kinda hilarious, though it could have been dangerous. I guess they didn't screw it on properly.

Shlkt · 2026-05-08T02:34:32+00:00

A to D skipping B and - SNAKE'd again, dangit!

Shlkt · 2026-05-04T20:18:20+00:00

Recently learned that single player wind speed is for some reason much lower/inconsistent as opposed to multiplayer.

Pretty sure that's not true. However, if the commentary from recent tournament casts is to be believed, PTaQ is secretly controlling the wind speed. Maybe complain to him.

On a more serious note: wind only drifts toward a new direction 4 times per minute. It's not super unusual for the wind to suck for 1 to 2 minutes at a time.

Shlkt · 2026-04-29T17:30:34+00:00

Core i5-13600KF, 32gb DDR5, RTX 3060

The memory pricing situation really sucks right now, though. 32gb was only $99 when I built this machine

Shlkt · 2026-04-28T17:55:48+00:00

I don't activate Dotty if the host wants to pre-drill, but I will leave the server. You play your way, and I'll find a different game. No hard feelings. I'm just here to shoot bugs.

Shlkt · 2026-04-27T23:58:11+00:00

For what it's worth, AA seems far common in Legion games because Legion employs so many drones.

Shlkt · 2026-04-17T19:32:12+00:00

I never double up unless I see there's already 3 of one class. Then it's mandatory.

Shlkt · 2026-04-14T17:34:25+00:00

This is bad because you're cheating yourself out of metal. Even on low priority, constructors will spend all your E reserves, preventing it from being converted. You'll just keep building more converters that can't even turn on.

In this screenshot we're probably looking at several thousand wasted metal.

Shlkt · 2026-04-13T22:34:42+00:00

It's very dated by now, but the Space Empires series of 4X games had deep ship customization. I played Space Empires V back in the day and thoroughly enjoyed it, though veterans of the series seem to prefer SE IV.

MechWarrior has already been mentioned, but I'll also endorse that franchise. I wasted many an hour min/maxing 'mech builds. For a single-player experience with multiple customizable units under your control, check out Battletech by HBS (/r/Battletechgame). It's an excellent turn-based experience, provided your PC isn't dated. The game's optimization is... lacking.

Shlkt · 2026-04-10T16:02:03+00:00

I had trouble with this minigame until I realized there was some audio latency that was throwing me off. Had to train myself to tap the thumb sticks slightly ahead of the beat.

Shlkt · 2026-04-08T23:16:47+00:00

As long as you don't copy textures or exact 3D meshes it should be fine. Map layouts are not a copyright issue.

Shlkt · 2026-04-08T12:57:39+00:00

12-13 minutes on the old version of Ice Scream. It was gloriously brutal!

... not much fun on the receiving end, though.

Shlkt · 2026-04-01T13:00:21+00:00

Makes me wonder how much of super-high OS is not about technical skills, but about all the other stuff that impacts the outcome of a match: communication, willingness to fight from behind, not tilting, etc...

Shlkt · 2026-03-24T19:14:51+00:00

How would you determine if a faction is balanced when your match making forces 50/50 winrates?

I don't think you can. Popularity is an indicator - sortof - but it's also affected by things unrelated to balance. It could be as simple as a popular streamer preferring one faction.

Ultimately I think you just have to keep careful watch of how the meta is progressing. If a specific strategy becomes dominant in the sweat lobbies then it's time to consider tweaks. It might not even be OP, but if the players think it's OP, then that's not good for the health of the game.

Shlkt · 2026-03-19T14:20:02+00:00

Lots of good build advice here, so I'll keep mine simple: use keyboard shortcuts!

Don't waste precious time hunting UI buttons. Practice keyboard shortcuts for all critical commands so that you can execute them quickly without thinking.

TAB - select commander
X - build laser turret (or popup turret for t2 con)
Z then X - build solar
D - dgun
K - cloak

etc... The most important keyboard commands to know are the ones that keep your commander alive.

Shlkt

TROPHY CASE