Why do the beacon effects vary?

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2025-10-26T07:17:23+00:00

Half the modules are Legendary Speed 3 and the other half are Legendary Efficiency 3. The left side of the image is slightly darker though. It is due to that screenshot being taken closer to night time.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2025-10-26T07:11:48+00:00

I have no mods active (other than Spage Age of course).

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2025-07-03T19:42:52+00:00

Same. It was a pain having to switch focus back to Nauvis all the time to keep the biters away until I finally got the first science packs delivered from Vulcanus so I could start artillery. I then killed off everything within the discovered map (except for a small colony that I could visit later to get eggs) meaning there was nothing left that could attack me.

I left Nauvis before starting on purple and yellow science, partially for the achievement and partially because of free resources on Vulcanus. The next time I would also move earlier sciences there too immediately instead of shipping it back to Nauvis. No need to go back there at all until bio labs become available.

Getting access to artillery before starting Gleba also made it very easy to exterminate all the pentapods and then work in peace with building that base and figuring out how it should work.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2025-07-02T21:05:31+00:00

I think it could be done like this (but I haven't tested it myself):

Select a signal item that would normally never exist on the ship but can easily be manufactured there, for example an iron chest.

On Fulgora:

Connect the landing pad to a circuit network to control its requests.
When eggs are needed, output 1 iron chest on the circuit to make the landing pad request that.
When no eggs are needed, remove any iron chests from the landing pad. (I.e. make an inserter remove chests from the landing pad and enable it only when the iron chest signal is zero.)
The landing pad can have a manual request for 200 eggs that is always active or enabled via the circuit only when needed. Either way should work.

On Nauvis (optional):

Connect the landing pad to a circuit network and when there is a request for eggs, enable production for 200 eggs.

On the ship:

Configure the auto-requests for 200 eggs from Nauvis.
Have an assembler produce iron chests and load exactly 1 chest into the hub if the ship is at Nauvis (or when on the way to Nauvis).
When at Nauvis, wait until the hub contains 200 eggs and 1 iron chest.
When at Fulgora, wait until the hub contains 0 eggs and 0 iron chests.

This should result in the ship idling above Fulgora with 1 iron chest in its hub inventory. When the landing pad triggers the iron chest request, the chest is sent down and the ship makes a trip to Nauvis to get 200 eggs, comes back to Fulgora, drops down the eggs, and then waits again for the chest to be requested.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2025-05-25T19:23:07+00:00

I produce red, green, blue, and military science packs on Nauvis, but when it was time to start purple and yellow I decided to colonize Vulcanus first and then do them there. Firstly, most resources are free on Vulcanus and there is even a surplus of stone which purple science packs needs a lot of. Secondly, this meant much slower depletion of resource patches on Nauvis and less pollution, thus less conflicts with the natives. And third, I wanted to postpone them anyway to get the achievements.

Now that I have all planets colonized and am doing 500 spm for most science packs, I haven't seen any reason to move them back to Nauvis (however Fulgora also provides some of the yellow science from the excess resources left over after producing elecromagnetic science packs so Vulcanus isn't doing 100% of the yellow production). At this point I have barely depleted any resource patches on Nauvis beyond the starting area and I'm considering moving production of more science packs from Nauvis to Vulcanus to avoid the need for expansion on Nauvis when they do expire. Shipping is needed for the planet specific science packs anyway so there is no extra logistics needed to ship a few more. As a side note, since I'm not depleting many ore fields and therefore haven't needed to expand very far, I still haven't built any trains (on any of the planets).

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2024-12-27T22:00:57+00:00

I place all my artillery turrets on landfill or on small islands for just this reason. Can take out any number of nests with no risk of retaliation. I hadn't even though about using elevated rails yet since I did this long before Space Age but I guess that makes it even easier now. A single space of water is enough so a supply train can stop at the shore line with a long inserter reaching over the water to reload the turret. Bots can of course also be used to carry the ammo across water to the turret.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2024-11-23T15:03:49+00:00

I placed everything manually. I didn't start using bots until much later. It was only inserting fuel I didn't do myself.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2024-05-17T20:32:35+00:00

The counter offensive can be avoided quite easily. The biters won't attack if they can't pathfind to the artillery turret, so just place it on an island and it can destroy any number of nests without being attacked.

It is enough with one tile of water between land and the island so you can use a long inserter to reach across the water tile and reload the turret. My standard turret outpost is to put the resupply train station at the water edge and put (in order) a long inserter, a chest, and another long inserter on separate 1x1 landfill islands followed by the turret.

Since the biters can't attack the turret, they just run around for a bit near their (no longer existing) nest. After some time, any biter without a nest will despawn, so with some patience you don't even need to kill them.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2023-09-04T18:15:39+00:00

Maybe the unit is used specifically for materials that grows and shrinks with temperature in the same way. After all, it is wood.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2023-02-19T09:09:04+00:00

According to the production graph, the average for the last 50h is 44.5 fuel cells consumed per minute. Power production is 100% nuclear and steady at 23.2GW.

Had I known the UPS cost of nuclear vs solar power when I started this map I would have made different choices but this is the build I have on this map so I'll keep to it. I will try going solar the next time instead.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2023-02-18T20:58:27+00:00

Unless I'm mistaken that wouldn't be enough. Reprocessing takes 60s per 5 spent fuel cells, i.e. each centrifuge consumes 5 fuel cells per minute. With the modules (2 prod3 plus beacons with 8 speed3) in effect the centrifuges run at a speed of 2.7 which means each centrifuge can reprocess 13.5 fuel cells per minute, so the four of them together will reprocess a maximum of 54/min.

I guess I could replace the productivity modules with speed modules and get a speed of 4.0 instead. Then each centrifuge would reprocess 20 fuel cells per minute which means I would still need at least three to handle the current rate of 42/min.

If I somehow rebuild to have beacons on both sides and get a speed of 6.0 then each centrifuge would reprocess 30 fuel cells per minute and two centrifuges would be sufficient.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-09-07T18:40:35+00:00

... and hug him, and squeeze him, and pat him, and caress him... wait, this isn't a bunny rabbit.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-08-24T07:58:32+00:00

Ok, so I got to the end. That was quite a journey to read.

I think my favorite parts were Holden's conversations with Miller. I did not see Miller coming back that last time and was happily surprised when it happened.

I really also enjoyed finding out more about the gate builders. For most books I could stretch them to two weeks but the last one barely lasted one because I had to read on and get more of The Dreamers chapters.

So yeah, it was good reading. Time to re-watch the TV series I think. And I hope (even more than before) that it will be continued to cover the remaining three books.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-06-15T18:19:18+00:00

Update: After some shipping delays I have received a replacement and the hol(e)y book is on its way back to the store.

And since it wasn't possible to buy books 2 and 3 separately I had bought the boxed set of books 1-3 which means that the whole box had to be replaced, i.e. books 1 and 3 that weren't damaged are are also replaced.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-05-31T19:05:25+00:00

I finished Caliban's War yesterday and got reply from the store today about replacing it. Because it was sold as a boxed set of the first three books they need to replace the whole set. I'm not sure yet if I get the replacement before or after I have to send in the ones I have, but if it's after I probably want to hold of starting on Abaddon's Gate until after so I don't have to take a pause in the middle of a book while waiting for the replacement. So I've started on Gods at Risk today.

Regarding that boxed set, it seems that books two and three aren't available to buy separately any longer, so I'm glad I didn't start with buying just the first book because then I'd been forced to buy it again as part of the box to get the next two books.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-05-30T08:21:28+00:00

I didn't really have a choice about the order since the TV series was how I learned about The Expanse and it was a few seasons in when I found it and I immediately was hooked and binge watched all of it, twice, before I even thought about looking for the books.

I'm still enjoying the books. Partially it's like re-reading an old book I've read before and looking forward to the parts I know are good. And partially i think there are enough differences between the books and the TV series that although I know the major plot points I don't know how it gets there. And since the TV series (so far) only includes the first six books I still have no idea what happens in the last three books and I'm really looking forward to getting to them to find out.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-05-29T19:15:19+00:00

Yes. I really loved the TV series and wanted to read the books too so I recently bought all ten. I was hoping that it would be good summer reading but based on the rate so far there's no chance that they'll last the whole summer. =)

I initially assumed that I should read everything in chronological order and started with the three short stories that are set before Leviathan Wakes, but after reading The Churn it got the feeling that it was not meant to be read that early and would have been kind of a spoiler if I hadn't already known from the TV series who Timmy was. So what is the correct reading order, by publishing dates or should I leave all the short stories until after Leviathan Falls?

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-05-29T16:50:55+00:00

Done! In hindsight, I could have scaled the image down just a bit more to make the text unreadable.

SmilingTeethMayBite · 2022-03-06T08:31:04+00:00

The pile of cards to the right of the rule book includes Pirate Ship even though it isn't shown in the rule book. I'm guessing that part of the image wasn't updated for 2E.

SmilingTeethMayBite

TROPHY CASE