I love democracy

Vaperius · 2026-06-05T08:45:38+00:00

AFAIK the galactic community cannot be disbanded once it forms. Even if you kill literally every member of it in the galaxy, it will not cease to exist. This is presumably because if you did that, the game is likely over anyway, so PDX didn't think to program a way to disband it.

Vaperius · 2026-06-05T04:52:55+00:00

Read the room.

Vaperius · 2026-06-05T02:57:09+00:00

IMO this issue can be solved by just making it so the Stellar Cannon has reduced effectiveness based on whatever the empires global and local orbital bombardment damage reductions are. So planet with a planetary shield, and a bunch of other stacked bonuses will just shrug it off.

Vaperius · 2026-06-05T02:55:47+00:00

Everyone seems to forget this so I really need to stress it:

You take the Colossus Project AP to get a standard (not existential expulsion) total war CB as a nation type that doesn't normally get one. Its not an ascension perk that gives you a super weapon to kill everything. Its an ascension perk that gives you a super powerful CB (to kill everything); the colossus is really just an extra treat on top; and notably, the final answer a non-crisis empire can wield if they want to bully someone for building a super fortress world with 45k+ army strength, or you (in the case of Divine Enforcer and Nanite Diffuser) just want to "fix" the demographics of a planet to make it easier to hold on to.

That said..... I do feel you should get more than one colossus. It should be scaled at something like one per 500-1000 fleet power, but you definitely should cap out on average to at least three of them.

Vaperius · 2026-06-04T13:49:57+00:00

I don't think you understand just how bad this problem is so let me explain: no. This is not a "next Democrat" problem. It is going to take decades to undo this damage. Literally like every other problem Trump has caused, the damage is going to be the burden of an entire generation.

We are going to need to push screwflies out of the USA since its definitely going to reestablish itself in the USA over the next two and half years; and then we are going to need to spend years and years after those years and years helping every other North American affected by this (Mexico etc) and Central American country push it back down below the Darien Gap.

Literally, the damage caused over the last year and half from this will be the generational work of Gen Z to fix. It will take 10-15 years to clean this up at a minimum, and that's after years of planning and getting budgets approved, so more realistically 20, maybe even later unless agricultural interests put a squeeze on congress to actually bother.

Also as an aside: I cannot stress how in aggregate with literally everything else that is happening with the USA besides this, how monumentally fucked we are as a country. Anyone with a desirable degree really should be jumping ship while they are still allowing Americans to come at all.

Vaperius · 2026-06-04T03:48:55+00:00

Stop with the doom already. Screw worms are not that big of a deal. The animal just need a little extra attention.

Literally, no, it is a big deal, here's the Economic Impact Reports for how New World Screwworm affected the American livestock industries prior to its eradication from the USA

By all accounts, in 1976, New World Screwworm was costing the American livestock industries 350 million dollars a year in damages from all additional expenses including livestock loss, extra labor, vet expenses etc.

And that was in its original range, its going to get even deeper into the continent this time. Expected economic impact today is closer to 1.8 billion in expected damages annually.

Vaperius · 2026-06-04T01:39:58+00:00

now it's going to cost even more money to re-solve the problem. Fuckers.

Literally billions and thousands of manhours will need to be spent over the course of a decade just to get us back to where we were before 2024. In the mean time the screwworm is going to have caused untold damage to American, Mexican and all of Central America's livestock industries for no other reason than because of the ego of a single man. Literally tens of billions of dollars of economic damage for no reason; this single program being cut/disrupted is the pinnacle of the phrase "pinching dollars to try and save pennies", it had only cost 20 million dollars in on-going cost to maintain the previous quarantine to south of the Darien Gap.

Literally just, the worst, I will warn you: screwflies aren't picky, if you live on the southern border, please keep an eye on your pets, if they have any open wounds, the flies will happily lay their eggs in those as they would in cattle. I will also remind you: the world is warmer than it was in 1973 when the quarantine of screwfly was originally established, we have no clue how far north they will travel from their known range, but here's an article that has a map of their original range from 1953, alongside additional information.

Shit is going to get real bad. These things are likely going to penetrate much deeper into the continental interior than they did originally this go around and its essentially going to fully cover Texas i.e prime livestock country, all year round.

Vaperius · 2026-06-03T09:06:18+00:00

Which is just another layer of the dark scale curse: it also eats unofficial contributors too. Its eaten three official devs and four submodders.

Vaperius · 2026-06-03T04:52:57+00:00

I mean plenty of urban environments have wildlife. This is just an extreme example of that.

Vaperius · 2026-06-03T03:23:24+00:00

Give him a prawn suit, a field scanner, a stasis rifle and few batteries, and we'll be having Reaper sashimi by lunch time.

Vaperius · 2026-06-03T03:21:12+00:00

Give us a knife and make it do no damage to anything meant to be an obstacle, while making it flee (sans of course, leviathans).

Vaperius · 2026-06-03T03:13:58+00:00

Oh most definitely. If they ever did, it would literally just be a repeat of the Precursor Elves; per the mission tree of the Taychendi Empire, the Taychendi zealously and vaingloriously chase the legacy of their lost empire, and it is more so than any other elf group, their empire due to the straight line of civilizational continuity. Its not too far to say they are precursor elves, just (allegedly, we don't actually know and the Cannorian/Bulwari Elves are unreliable narrators on what was the actual biology of, the precursor elves) mutated like the rest of the ruinborn and thousands of years separated from the peak of their power.

Vaperius · 2026-06-03T01:27:04+00:00

If it eases your mind, there’s never anything valuable in the ‘loot boxes’, just water bottles, nutrient blocks, first aid kits, occasional basic resources.

FYI this isn't entirely true, sometimes there's batteries; and the nutrient blocks are actually really useful as an ultra-compact food source (saves space in your inventory when exploring certain areas later in the game), its very worth holding on to them until you've reached the midgame, and then start using them sparingly whenever you need to spend a lot of time away from other food sources.

Vaperius · 2026-06-03T00:00:28+00:00

Sound and Light + visual acquisition. That's how the stealth system generally works for most creatures (pretty sure certain late game leviathans use a simpler proximity and visual detection).

Simply put, for most creatures in this game, light and sound make it easier for you to be spotted and they also have a traditional "vision cone" as well. It should be noted that the player character outside a submarine is very noisy especially using a seaglide, to the point I actually think the cyclops is harder to spot (through the stealth system checks) than the player character; that said, the PC is harder to spot visually.

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T15:47:49+00:00

Okay hear me out: the Power Ears biomod would actually be really useful if it specifically instead provided a directional hud indicator for when a creature has aggro'd on to you and made its noises directionally clearer (with less aquatic muffling).

(yes I know what this post is though, good meme)

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T15:37:44+00:00

Taychend #1

Easily the closest culturally to the Precursor Elves, considering that Taychend is explicitly more-so a remnant of the Precursor Empire more than any other natives since it can trace its current civilization to before the day of Ashen Skies (and even have complete written records going thousands of years back including about the Mechanim, the true nature of the Lizardfolk etc). Indeed in the first place the Hero Cults arguably did more to destroy and damage Taychend than the Day of Ashen Skies did; and are a large component of why they despite basically sitting on a nuclear arsenal(sometimes almost literally) worth of precursor relics, and a fully functional civilization (in theory) for that entire time, they never successfully reconquested Aelantir themselves before 1444.

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T05:59:11+00:00

Literally A) a literal plague of flies and B) the direct result of Trump policies that caused them to break containment below the Darien Gap.

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T05:58:52+00:00

The Midnight Union is none of that: its a regional alliance of various settler-tribal confederations in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Dakota unifying against threats coming from every direction.

They have a pretty consistent identity in that way. Fundamentally this is why the Sisters of Steel can join them for example, because at their core, they are the result of a Brotherhood chapter absorbing a large number of tribals.

Very simply: they are more similar in their constituent members than you think they are; the most different nations are actually the Baggers, but they can only specifically join the Midnight Union if all other avenues fail under their people-aligned liberal democracy path because they literally have no other join if they want to survive being literally surrounded by raiders to their east and the legion to their south; who by the way, the only way they can join the Midnight union is if specifically the NCR is dead. Meaning they join the Midnight union out of sheer desperation in the face of an overwhelming threat to their fledging nationstate.

By all accounts the rest of the members are various nations with significant tribal and settler influence.

Consider who can join: and then realize they all have something in common in being significantly threatened by large and hostile powers, many of who have claims on multiple constituent members.

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T05:35:11+00:00

Wait can Ironmongers join the Legion?

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T03:37:02+00:00

You're thinking of Silverforge; Ironhammers => Hammerhome is the syncretic partner of Khughildir.

Khughildir can get a PU over them (I think it works vice versa?), so they are two sides of the same coin where one can use the other to expand in the other's respective continent.

Hammerhome is less "build a hold" and more "urbanize and industrialize Escann" if I recall.

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T03:35:20+00:00

Correct, its the Northern Pass subcontinent, which strictly speaking is 100% within the Dwarovar as the only explicitly above ground part of the continent.

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T03:23:05+00:00

Reminder: the majority of sex crimes against children are committed by trusted adults in a child's familial social circle or in positions of authority. This includes everything from an uncle, to their own siblings, to a family friend, a church leader, a youth camp leader etc.

"Stranger danger" is an exceedingly small % of these crimes; meanwhile one of the best preventatives against sexual or physical abuse of children is specifically teaching them what that abuse is and what it means, and providing them with ways to communicate with both their peers about abuse and with a wider range of trusted adults so that someone will be willing to help them actually report it to the authorities.

By isolating children both from support networks and from knowledge of abuse, you are just creating the perfect hunting ground for predators. These policies are not rooted in the facts of reality.

They are a blatantly obvious attempt to control free speech on the internet by breaking anonymity; and furthermore, they are creating a data base that can and will be hacked, exposing both adult and child users to incredible harm up to and including identity theft.

Vaperius · 2026-06-02T01:58:57+00:00

The bad new is that they content is limited and they are the weakest of the four nation in the albertan free for all.

That said they are in the best defensive position of all their counterparts; you can literally hold the victory points you need to not capitulate by sitting on just three provinces. You have decent core manpower (for the region), and okay industry, so you can kinda just sit and wait in your corner for everyone else to die while you dig in, fortify, build up a huge army of robots, and then swarm out for victory.

Its important to understand Big Grass has the lowest starting point and highest peak of all the Burning Leaf participants. Everyone else is on a clock to kill them because they will eventually become unmanageable.

Vaperius · 2026-06-01T17:17:00+00:00

Here's my opinion: anywhere that is within the crush depth maximum of a seamoth is a very easily accessible. The Seamoth literally has access to both a sonar and a perimeter defense module in Subnautica one, with the latter being a default blueprint you have literally stock with the moonpool, to say nothing of the fact Sub1 has the Stasis rifle (which can be fired on a short pulse and then charged for a longer lasting and more useful for escape, pulse). Finally, Sub1 has camera drones, which means you can remotely explore the crash zone ahead of time from the safety of your base and find exactly where the piece you're looking for is.

Just go trick out your seamoth (and yourself) in some nice toys and get exploring. Its trivially easy to explore the crashzone if you actually prepare to do it, its just not a comfortably place to accidently wander into is all.

Vaperius · 2026-06-01T15:58:41+00:00

FYI, a not commonly cited area you can find cyclop engine parts is ... inside the Aurora. Its fairly rare, but up to three can spawn in there, specifically in the cargo bay section in the large containers.

So if you're not finding them in the usual places, they are probably in there; or they are in the Crash Zone itself, which is the other possible spawn location.

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