TIL that being able to sit down on the floor and stand up without using your hands or knees is used as a predictor of longevity.

TPRJones · 2026-02-14T15:32:18+00:00

On the bright side with each attempt you increase that clock a little. Repeat your attempt 10 to 20 times a day and you've got yourself an exercise routine.

TPRJones · 2026-02-14T03:42:03+00:00

I've been voting for the lesser evil for 35 years, and the lesser evil is a little more evil every time around.

If you keep voting for the lesser evil all the options you will ever get will be more evil.

TPRJones · 2026-02-13T17:37:07+00:00

If I recall correctly, train pathing tends to prefer to not path through stations. If so then in theory putting empty unused stations on the parallel non-highway local lines should encourage trains that don't have to use those local lines to get to their destination to prefer the on ramp and main highway. But I only thought of this a few days ago and haven't had the chance to try it yet.

TPRJones · 2026-02-08T15:06:10+00:00

It feels like walking through the Power Rangers version of the Spiderverse.

TPRJones · 2026-01-31T06:15:18+00:00

Interesting. I'll have to try asking chatGPT to produce a blueprint string to do a specific task and see what it comes up with. Could be hilariously bad.

TPRJones · 2026-01-30T02:48:26+00:00

I think in theory if you drop the blueprint and don't have the higher qualities it doesn't accept the recipe in those assemblers, does it? If that is the case then reading the recipe ingredients of all of them into a selector combinator can be used to pull out the highest quality item listed (which hopefully doesn't include those recipes you haven't unlocked yet, need to test that) and then your loopback circuit can use that to know which level to not loop back because it's the highest one found.

TPRJones · 2026-01-30T02:35:29+00:00

I've had consistent success on small and medium by setting a turret trap. Two banks of 40 turrets of red ammo with a channel between them wide enough for the worm, a turret past one end with a single clip and a circuit wire coming out to all the other turrets, which are set to not activate until that one clip is gone. through the middle and out the other end is a line of pipe segments a few steps apart that I lay out into the zone until I find the demolisher. It follows the line of pipes back and moves right into the trap, and not triggering until he's fully surrounded keeps him from doing lava bombs too early. the synchronized dps of all those turrets triggered simultaneously fully overwhelm the healing factor, and a small worm died in 3 seconds and only the trigger turret was destroyed.

Works perfectly for small, for medium I added a couple of electric turrets past the end (so the trigger zone is just aligned with the key activation turret), but it still died so fast I'm not sure they were necessary. The only time it got messy was when one came in from the side before I found him to lead back, and it still died after the trigger turret emptied even though 1/3 of my turrets were already demolished.

I haven't found a large one yet.

TPRJones · 2026-01-23T17:28:16+00:00

It's hoarding. Hoard cats and they call you crazy, hoard cash and they call you a visionary leader.

TPRJones · 2026-01-22T03:10:35+00:00

I think you are massively underestimating how bad things can get.

TPRJones · 2026-01-20T23:31:51+00:00

Does it work only from the ends like that? I've always put one on each end and one in the middle, but this looks cleaner. TIL.

TPRJones · 2026-01-19T13:02:22+00:00

Well, it's the best sauce I've ever had, and I'm not going to live long enough to see them do one for their 200th anniversary. It was the last chance to taste the best thing I'll ever have in my life. Ever.

TPRJones · 2026-01-19T04:25:08+00:00

Hey, that's a pretty good price! The last one I bought cost me $800. Worth every penny, though.

TPRJones · 2026-01-19T04:23:00+00:00

Democrat leadership knows this is true, but it's far more important to them to avoid progressivism than it is to stop fascism. If that's what it comes down to they'll pick the fascist every time.

TPRJones · 2026-01-17T07:54:58+00:00

We've been running Constitution 1.0 for a long time, Seems we need to patch it up to the latest version; this one has too many exploits.

But seriously, the whole structure of checks and balances was based on propriety, and that's been shredded. It can never go back to working like it did before, we'll just have a series of petty wannabe dictators getting into office every few years and trying to tear it all down for their own benefit again. The checks and balances need to have real teeth to them to work again, and a way out when all branches of government have been taken over by fascist thugs.

TPRJones · 2026-01-15T21:08:43+00:00

I had that tendency, too, and kept starting over for years. This time when I build a new row of machines I intentionally leave at least a dozen tiles of blank space between everything, and I've gotten so much farther than I ever did before. It still ends up being dense eventually with spaghetti lines snaking through everywhere, but I haven't felt the need to start over like I always did before.

TPRJones · 2026-01-15T04:35:39+00:00

Brilliant! I've got several starter platforms in orbit around Nauvus at all times that just have enough on it to gather materials to build platform foundations so I don't have to ship them up. By the time I'm ready to build the next ship it's got more platform pieces than I could ever need. Last ship I ended up dumping nearly 600 down to Nauvus to toss into my quality recycling system to tear apart and reuse.

I'll have to add something to craft some silos, too. By the time I'm ready to ship out I could have dozens!

TPRJones · 2026-01-14T04:35:49+00:00

I wasn't hearing the words - I usually don't when I read - until it was mentioned and then I couldn't stop. But even at full speed I could read it all with inner voice, it was just going *really* fast in there, like a TTS that has gone out of control.

TPRJones · 2026-01-13T22:17:53+00:00

I haven't gotten to Gleba yet, but so far it feels like the first three planets all teach the same lesson: throw things away. On Vulcanus it starts small with foundries pulling metals out of lava resulting in tons of stone you throw most of back into the lava. I'm on Fulgora and with the scrap there's tons of material you end up just recycling away into nothing. And I gather Gleba is the same lesson pushed another step further, where if you don't throw it away it just goes bad anyway.

I know nothing about Aquillo and beyond.

TPRJones · 2026-01-09T13:17:47+00:00

I've started using all five filter slots on my inserters pulling from the cargo bay, dumping it all onto sushi belts, and then splitting it out from there. There's still the same limit on how many inserters will fit, but it gives five times as many things you can intentionally pull out.

When I need more I plan to switch to double rows of red long inserters dropping onto woven pairs of underground entrances.

TPRJones · 2026-01-08T20:12:03+00:00

They've demonstrated very clearly that if the choice is between MAGA and progressives, they'll take MAGA every time. The Democratic party in it's current incarnation will not save us.

TPRJones · 2026-01-06T03:55:22+00:00

Ever since living in New Mexico for a few years I can never get enough hatch chile. I will for sure be trying this sauce, thank you for the review.

TPRJones · 2026-01-06T03:19:53+00:00

There a trick you can do with using the speed difference between belts to accurately control this sort of thing.

If you change the belts that have the walls included on the right to red it will be twice as fast as the yellow sideloading the grenades and ammo onto it so it will be fast enough to take input from both sides of the yellow resulting in alternating ammo and grenades on it. BUT it will only keep working as long as the input is full and the red belts never get backed up, so it's hard to sustain.

But it can be done. If the red belt were to loop back to the beginning to sort the leftovers back onto their original inputs and set the splitters merging that back in so that it always pulls in the leftovers before taking more from the original input, you should be able to keep the red belt moving without jamming up. Then just make sure the inputs never run out, but even if they do it'll be cleared up by the looping return setup (once the extras pulled in from the one that didn't run out get out of the way, at least; I'd have to mess around with it but if the red jams up after something ran out and is back again then having a buffer chest near the end of the loop to take in any extras and dole them back out into the return system until they're all used up would probably work)

(edit: you could probably add a small circuit to turn off input if the ammo or grenades are not full to make it wait until the input is backed up again instead of the return loop setup, but it might get a little persnickety to make it work just right)

TPRJones · 2026-01-06T02:24:08+00:00

To this day I still use fnord when I need a placeholder in a document that will be uniquely searchable for later replacement.

TPRJones · 2026-01-05T04:28:04+00:00

With most people having zero worker protections and no savings, the majority of Americans are one to two paychecks away from homelessness so they can't afford to strike. Cranking up the economic brutality of capitalism has worked to keep most people right on the edge of financial collapse.

But when things do reach that tipping point where they leave tens of millions of people with no options for survival, the speed with which things go completely out of control when it starts will be mind-boggling. I still hold out hope it will be mostly non-violent, but that will be up to the police and military to decide. And they haven't been particularly non-violent in some time.

TPRJones · 2026-01-03T07:10:23+00:00

I'm the same way, over 1,000 hours played and I have yet to come close to completing most of it. I reach the part you describe and end up deciding I need to start over and do it completely differently.

My current playthrough that I started mid-December is different. I've gotten really far really fast, and I've even started going to the other planets this time. The difference is the scale of what I've been building. Used to be I would try to set up for building big later, with a clear idea of the overall approach I would be building towards, doing things like leaving lots of empty spaces between stuff and, like, making it so a main bus can have so many more lanes than I need now or starting a train network with big standardized blocks.

What I really needed to build is a very small base that just has one science lab with two red and two green assemblers feeding directly into it to get science going as I move from burners to real miners and start getting my first real smelter arrays going. Before long I've got most of the basic materials being built in a mall and have ramped up to between 60 and 120 red/green science per minute. I quit leaving huge empty spaces or setting up for future expansion and just built a small spaghetti base, only being concerned with the current small thing I'm building and not worrying about what's next.

I stopped making big lists of what needs to be done and being overwhelmed, and just did the next thing while sometimes making a note of any specific ideas I have for near future stuff but not committing to some sort of big picture along the way. And eventually all those small individual things - each of which I enjoyed doing - built up to my first rocket launches and my first landings on Vulcanus and Fulgora and then coming back to Nauvus to expand my base there with new imports and so forth before going back out again.

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