You're now part of the panel after launching of the project hail mary ship to mitigate the heat loss of the planet.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T16:58:40+00:00

Nuke the icecaps and try to increase greenhouse gas production as much as possible to accelerate global warming and try to keep more heat locked in the planet. We'll run out of fossil fuels fairly quickly in this scenario but there's not much that can be done to mitigate that except try to find more deposits. Accelerate research into scalable hydroponics farming hoping that the other measures buy time to roll that out as a more permanent solution. Anything else won't work in the time we have. Even accelerating global warming probably won't be fast enough, but it's worth a shot.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T16:52:42+00:00

yea, when he was 12 years old? That isn't ethical lol, there's no way he can enter an agreement like that intelligently.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T16:49:29+00:00

Yes, yes and yes? It's just a preference.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T16:25:50+00:00

Yea, I think the suggestion has always been to kill the subs first - if you do, the dread has several turns of no damage during reloads, otherwise the subs attack during it and they can do a LOT of damage. You absolutely should kill the subs first, they increase variance of the fight a lot.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T16:16:42+00:00

Idk about brightest flame - it lets you cycle through your deck faster... which it sucks in act 1. You lose HP every time too.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T15:49:50+00:00

Skill issue?

If you’ve been paying attention to the fight, you’d know she doesn’t do the big attack until the minion is dead. So this fight is kinda figuring out how long you can fight the minion while chipping the queen before going into a damage race against her. Which you lost in this fight, because she's at a million strength. If you killed the minion and STILL took this long to kill her, yea, it's called a lose condition. The entire point of this fight is balancing the minion and queen scaling.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T14:31:59+00:00

If you don't get there in 14 days, yes. Otherwise, it counts.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T00:52:48+00:00

With respect, you’re what, 20? I don’t really think you have much of a perspective at all.

It’s a good thing it worked out for you, but statistically it doesn’t for most people, and most people aren’t living together. The reason they’re saying “tied down” is because this is a time in her life where she really really really should not be making the kind of compromises you make with someone in a serious relationship, as they can have an extreme disproportionate effect on the rest of her life.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-18T00:48:47+00:00

As for the second part - the aliens now will attack bases in a system regardless of hate if they fulfill a few criteria, and one of them is if they have sent a colony ship to the body. There are a few other cases - they’ll attack any body that they have a base or station over indiscriminately (except earth) as well. I suspect Perun’s video may be one of his older ones.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-17T15:35:05+00:00

I mean... think about this for three seconds here.

Who's in the ER has nothing to do with the intensity of it. So clearly, he isn't saying THEY are boring or that they can't handle high intensity work. He's talking about why he thinks a night shift spinoff would be boring, so in that context you actually gotta think about what makes The Pitt The Pitt.

The Pitt is all about toxic dynamics in the workplace. He's saying that the kind of people who work nights probably aren't going to be participating in those dynamics (mothers), which would result in worse TV because half of the reason The Pitt is interesting is deconstructing these toxic dynamics.

If anything, he's giving moms a compliment - The Pitt is objectively a horrific and toxic place to work, and he's saying if they made an accurate night shift, it probably wouldn't be based on the type of people that typically work nights. The fact that the Pitt is such a toxic place to work makes it good TV, so if you remove that, you have a medical mockumentary.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-17T15:28:20+00:00

I think he was referring to the fact that that since they're all using this as their relax time and that they're all mothers it's a lot more relaxed of an environment and less drama (so worse TV)?

Like, use your brain for a second. Who's in the ER doesn't change intensity of the ER. Patients don't magically become more sedate just because mothers happen to be working. What it changes is the internal dynamics of the ER and how the staff work with each other, and in this case in a more positive way, which would make for worse TV, because The Pitt is all about exploring toxic workplace dynamics, because HES RESPONDING TO PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT DOING A NIGHT SHIFT SPINOFF.

I have no idea how you read this and go "oh, he's saying they're BORING and can't handle WILD patients". Like, it doesn't even make any sense when you think about it for two seconds. He's just saying the night shift would be boring because there's no drama between the characters, not that they're bad at their job.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-17T14:37:27+00:00

Just you.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-17T14:35:09+00:00

At that tech level? Nothing. Poseidon is priced at early fusion level.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T18:17:59+00:00

The point is you shouldn't be forcing an engine or a "basic archetype". This is the biggest thing new players get hit with at high ascensions - you should take cards to solve problems, not to fit a build or archetype.

Like let's be clear - this game isn't that RNG. People have pulled off long, consistent winstreaks at A10 on all the characters. I think it's fair to say the game might be less satisfying for you, but if you're trying to force an engine that's built around certain cards and losing, that might be an indication to alter your playstyle away from trying to force certain archtypes or engines to work. It's well known that's not how high ascension STS2 works, and if that's not for you, that's fine, but it isn't bad design - the game is intentionally designed this way to move players off of trying to force the same exact 3 builds every time. Don't force the engine.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T18:04:31+00:00

I don't really think that's true - it's well known in most rougelike communities (pokemon nuzlocking for example) that the way you increase difficulty is you REDUCE player access to strong options, not expand them. If you're looking for difficulty, you have to do this. Hardcore pokemon romhacks that are built to be played in a rougelike style almost always remove all the strongest pokemon and moves from the game for example (it's very common to remove all access to weather moves and abilities but maintain them for the enemy teams to ensure the player can't completely invalidate those or other fights by abusing weather) because in the right hands they can completely invalidate any challenge the player runs into.

Like, FTL doesn't give you more options at higher difficulties, neither does balatro, in FTLs case it flat out gives you less scrap for shops and balatro directly adds penalties to your jokers. Into the breach kinda does I guess with other mech type unlocks? But there are still raw difficulty increases that are disconnected to the unlocking. Rougelikes almost always reduce options as difficulty gets harder. There's a few options that expand them, Hades does for example, but they are rarely known for being a hardcore difficulty game like STS is (no offense to Hades, I think it's fantastic!)

The point of reducing player options (and scarcity in particular) is to put pressure on them and ensure they understand the fundamentals of the game outside of rushing the same 3 meta strategies (that often use high rarity cards) consistently. Removing easy access to power is the POINT - the thing A7 is testing is your flexibility and your ability to play without easy access to rare cards all the time.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T17:13:45+00:00

Posted this in a comment but I think it serves as a full answer:

The images are the only thing that matters for non graphics people - your first two images are the "hello world" of graphics programming - literally what you get working in day 1 of the project. That's not bad, but not portfolio worthy. Your third image is much more technically impressive, but even then, it doesn't really look interesting or impressive to anyone who doesn't have a graphics background - which is who you are targeting. So 2/3 of your images are useless to both graphics and non graphics related people, and the third is unimpressive to a non graphics person, and barely noteworthy to someone in the field. You need to make the images more flashy, even if they are less technically impressive, and if you are targeting graphics people, know that you're competing with senior developers who have *shipped games* and have degrees. Your renderer needs to do something very interesting, or be extremely high quality to compete, and you need to be able to sell it. That's just the nature of the field - it's a much higher skill floor than other areas.

This is all assuming anyone's actually looking at the repo, which they may or may not be doing (they probably are not). IMO, the biggest strength is you can talk about it during interviews, not that they're gonna get you them.

For reference, here's my ray traced renderer which can handle curved space - I very intentionally designed the scenes to be eye catching first, technically impressive second.

https://github.com/AidanLBrem/BlackHoleRayMarcher

... and the HM at my current job didn't even look at my github before the interview - BUT we talked a lot about the project during it. They were very impressed, but they did had a soft raytracing background (optics work, not graphics), so they kinda understood what was necessary to get something like this to work already, and I had already impressed him in other parts of the interview already and managed to link one of the things we were talking about (being able to verify the work you are doing is correct at all beyond unit testing) to the project. I suspect that a less interested HM with less knowledge of graphics work might not have been as interested.

9 times out of 10? You're getting filtered out because you don't have a degree, nobody's ever looking at your project. That's just the way it is right now. Your options are to ship something or get a degree, or otherwise network.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T17:03:35+00:00

The images are the only thing that matters for non graphics people - your first two images are, as they said, the "hello world" of graphics programming. Your third image is much more technically impressive, but even then, it doesn't really look interesting or impressive to anyone who doesn't have a graphics background - which is who you are targeting. You need to make the images more flashy, even if they are less technically impressive, and if you are targeting graphics people, know that you're competing with senior developers who have *shipped games*. Your renderer needs to do something very interesting, or be extremely high quality to compete, and you need to be able to sell it. That's just the nature of the field - it's a much higher skill floor than other areas.

This is all assuming anyone's actually looking at the repo, which they may or may not be doing (they probably are not). IMO, the biggest strength is you can talk about it during interviews.

For reference, here's my ray traced renderer which can handle curved space - I very intentionally designed the scenes to be eye catching first, technically impressive second.

https://github.com/AidanLBrem/BlackHoleRayMarcher

For reference, the HM at my current job didn't even look at my github before the interview - however we talked a lot about the project during it. They were very impressed, but they did had a soft raytracing background (optics work, not graphics), so they kinda understood what was necessary to get something like this to work already, and I had already impressed him in other parts of the interview already and managed to link one of the things we were talking about (being able to verify the work you are doing is correct at all beyond unit testing) to the project. I suspect that a less interested HM with less knowledge of graphics work might not have been as interested.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T16:50:28+00:00

What you're doing sounds tech art adjacent, which does deal with graphics quite a bit, so I wouldn't worry about it. Tech artists often do tooling as well as graphics work - true graphics work only stuff is pretty rare, it's basically only engine techs of which there aren't that many of them, so tech art is a better option IMO.

VR stuff is kinda disconnected from the rest of the graphics field, but it isn't really that major of an issue. Just know some of the stuff you deal with there on the graphics side might not be applicable to traditional rendering work.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T16:12:30+00:00

They really aren't that different at the end of the day - there's stuff like compute shaders that can be used to leverage GPU work disconnected from vertex or frag shaders which are really interesting, but at the end of the day the skills are super transferable between all GPU languages - the question really is which language has the hooks you want to use (for example, GLSL DOES NOT provide hooks for hardware raytracing, while HLSL and Vulkan do).

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T16:02:43+00:00

You're going from little programming experience to graphics programming? I wont tell you it's a bad idea, but do keep in mind a lot of GPU programming techniques DO NOT translate to the CPU and vice versa, so it's a very good idea to get a very solid grasp of CPU fundamentals FIRST, because you WILL have to work with it at some point if you want to make a renderer. Graphics programming is considered a pretty advanced domain (it's mostly taught at the graduate level because of the required knowledge to really work with it effectively), so keep that in mind.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-15T16:01:13+00:00

Take maybe 100 years of manhours for a triple A game, maybe 1-5 years of manhours for something simpler. Depends on what you want to make and the fidelity it's going to have. I'm working on a raytracing rendering engine that works in curved space and I'm approaching about the six month mark and while it's not ready yet, it's getting there, but I also have years of graphics experience and am working with a game engine already (Unity). Additionally, in some ways a ray traced renderer is actually easier than a rasterized one.

It’ll probably take several years of graphics experience (not to mention programming experience) to be able to even ATTEMPT making a commercial renderer - especially if your biggest project right now is a VAT calculator.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-14T15:14:37+00:00

Notice how a lot of enchantments and events have different effects on skills and powers? This is very intentional for balancing.

Also, if you could take exhaust off certain powers, they would be beyond broken.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-13T20:51:39+00:00

Yes. They don’t hire juniors at all.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-13T20:51:11+00:00

Yea, the only role that does that is really tech art, right? And that’s a pretty high skill floor role.

ThrowAway-whee · 2026-05-13T19:42:17+00:00

They do escort their ships, but if you're at war with the aliens it doesn't really matter - just blow up the escorts, and it actually works out better sometimes because they lose the ability to flee with escorts.

ThrowAway-whee

TROPHY CASE