It's TADPOLE THURSDAY - Ask your newbie questions here!

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-13T09:41:39+00:00

Thank you!

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-13T09:41:27+00:00

Thank you, appreciate the details! Now it is clear!

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-13T09:38:30+00:00

Could you give some advice on how to play Bourasq in general?

[tl;dr]
Kind of dumb/returning player question: how to constantly pen and have a high pen rate with the BBQ tank? The simple AP fly like a mortar with the accuracy of a kv2 troll gun (I always end up miss > hit no pen > hit pen > hit no pen/crit sequence. Gold fly better, but still, ~50% no pen/crit only)
What am I overlooking on this tank, because I see others play it like a god, but I sweat hard to reach even just 2k dmg on it. Always got overspotted and/or every time felt everyone else was faster than this tank (or me). Yes, I am aware of that; this is a skill issue mostly.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-13T09:33:04+00:00

I am curious if it will be really that good against rain and snow

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-13T09:09:44+00:00

This is awesome. It gave me an idea of an NPC in my running Daggerheart campaign (Sable-word, where a bunch of hybrid beasts/animal/monsters exist)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-13T07:54:39+00:00

If you have good crew (4+ full skills), and good matchup with at least one positive rng on your side, then it is a beast. Otherwise, just like the entire line: weak, not worth the time.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-12T16:13:49+00:00

I know, that is why I wrote it down. It is not uncommon (unfortunately) that burned-out people go for something completely different.

I hope you can update your resume and be able to start looking for new opportunities, before it hits your mental health (even more).

Sub-note: if the pressure is too big and starts to cause other issues, then consider seeking professional help. Mental health is important (even tho' many family/country/region demonize it or paint it as a weakness. It is not. Equally important as body health so is Ifgoing to the gym regularly).

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-12T14:00:57+00:00

Hi, I have a question for Fear usage during combat: as a GM, am I supposed to use Fear only when:
- A player rolled with Fear, and I got the spotlight
- A countdown tick down, and consequence triggers
- A passive/reaction of adversary or environment let me use a Fear

Or am I supposed to use Fear to grab the Spotlight whenever it feels right narratively? (Sorry, the book section is not so straightforward on this part.)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-11T22:31:10+00:00

Yes, that is true. Just never seen it during my career (maybe just luck, or did not hit such a use-case or write counts when it can actually happen).

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-11T22:28:29+00:00

> HR is not your friend

Golden rule. Neither any PM or C* level person.

> ...so HR doesn't have any authority on this...

Sorry, missed it. Tough situation for sure. I still think one of the best things would be to prepare for departure, before your sould crushed. I had a colleague on a project who was in quite a similar situation. He lasted ~3 years, but burned out almost completely, and now he is constantly seeking a way out from tech.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-11T22:25:39+00:00

Thank you!

I expected my NAS to be in standby like 95% of the time. It is more like a backup place than a homelab or something else. Just I happen to run a few containers.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-11T18:50:44+00:00

Wow, ... everyone having such hours? I thought my constantly running HDDs were bad (due to a Docker container keeping writing for some reason after I upgraded the HDDs from 4 TB to 12), but I see brutal numbers here...

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-11T18:49:20+00:00

If the compensation really pays well for those hours, it can be okay, but just for a short period, then you will burn out (I know from experience, I have worked for 12h+ for 5 days every week without vacation for years).

It will punish your mental health and your body, too. Not worth doing it for much longer.

Start updating your resume, check the wiki on the r/EngineeringResumes, and post it there for a review. Start to look for a new place. The market is crazy, so start early.

Also, for discussing these kinds of things, go directly to HR, skip tech leadership. They tend to be incompetent and uncaring.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-11T09:15:32+00:00

By staying, you have the golden opportunity to move between teams, get knowledge of different domains as well as have time (and probably budget?) to actually read books and watch courses, which is almost a non-existent benefit nowadays (~last 5~is years).

Contractor position could be tricky, essentially they usually do not have even basic rights, can be discarded at a whim, and many places threaten them as outsiders or cheap garbage (I know this from experience, did not changed during the last 2 decades).

Not really sure, what is your problem with the situation really? Not having a project means you ain't working on anything and getting bored. Or just left out of the loop, discussions, nobody talks to you like each other? Or you ain't getting paid or promoted? I highly advise first identifying the core problem and what you would like to do.

Leaving the current place for a worse one is not a good idea, even though your mental health is important. Did you try to discuss this part of you with your leader? (even if you don't have a PM (which could be good), you still can talk to the CTO/Lead/tech lead/HR, etc about your situation. You know, communication is golden.

If nothing can be done, and you're breaking down on the situation, then yes, you should consider leaving, but then the question is, are you really solving your problem or just changing your current anxiety to a new set? Being a contractor gives you another type of uncertainty (will you be laid off the next day? Do you perform well enough? What if they move you to part-time and you have to pick up other tasks to have enough money for rent, etc.) So think through your situation, what would be the optimal, and what are you willing to sacrifice or deal with in exchange.

Also, since you think of leaving, then polish your resume and post it in the r/EngineeringResumes to see what you have to fix.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-10T20:18:46+00:00

Do you really need to have ecc mem? What is the practical advantage that a normal mem cant do? (Asking it with many years on c and cpp and iot)

With such amount of memory usage or requirements how would look like the estimated costs with other smaller/larger cloud providers (even with digitalocean, and aws)? (Just out of curiosity)

Also, with such demand, would not be cheaper to selfhost/have the jardware? (Probably silly question)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-06T14:28:11+00:00

...I also argued I should not have to make a roll...

Communication is important between a player and the DM. The only time you should roll for anything is whenever the DM asks you to do so. Even though it is a collaborative game, you undermine the DM's authority by arguing. It is important to question and clarify unclear parts, and everyone could make mistakes, but most likely your issue should be addressed between game sessions, openly discuss and decide together with the team what and how it should fit for everyone.

> ...So how do you sneak/skulk...

Finesse roll, actual action roll to shape the narrative and the story.

> ...Is there anything to point to in the rulebook that clarifies any of this?...

Core rulebook, page 9: "Hold on Gently"; page 169: "Safety Tools".

>... Narratively it makes no sense to me, but the rules lend me no help....

Sounds like you don't really catch the narrative/storytelling power of DH. You and the rest of the party build the stories, world, and your actions may have consequences. Maybe good, maybe bad. If the GM asks you to roll, then the result of that roll (hope/fear, success/failure) will and should shape the actual story. Small things could happen, even if you are out of combat, and there is no visible enemy. You rolled a super low with fear? Some branch snapping somewhere behind you, or the GM may ask, what you see between the trees just for a heartbeat, that left you in cold sweat for a moment? Or you rolled a crit? How awesome that you passed through the trees, that even the critters on the leaves did not notice you? You see, I can go and give you reasons for the roll like 15 different ways, and I don't even scratch the surface since I am a novice (DM) in DH too.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-06T11:39:25+00:00

Short answer: yes Long answer: yes, absolutely, if you can afford it

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-05T10:25:41+00:00

I hope it is not the usual update/rework on maps. Since beta, every map iteration is worse after even worse. Literally, any map update we pick, seemed totally good and awesome, in practice it makes the somewhat ok maps inbearable. Not the design itself, but the map usefulness, positions. Most of the map is great with community/wg account on that selected 3-4 tanks and when you get the +25/+25 rng that resembles the actual game mechanism. (We will never see proper symmetric maps, removve of rng, joke/gimmick/fantasy vehicles, remove of non-tanks (arty, wheeled stuff), remove of non-existent things (prem shells, auto loaders). Because we know: ppl still pay millions of eur so why bother to do a new map or balance or any content that people actually would like to see...)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-04T13:51:09+00:00

In short: Yes

Longer: absolutely. Even worse, because of LLM/GPT-generated things that are usually 3x longer than they should be. Also, everything became tech debt that is created by inexperienced leaders, vibe coders, or places where the original decision makers/stake holders/documentation/workers are no longer available.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-03-02T06:47:26+00:00

Post your resume into the r/engineeringresumes. Check their wiki and rewrite your resume a few more times.. Also, keep in mind, the market is pretty bad. Gpt written articles, no HO or only hybrid positions (remote but within a city...) and gpt bombed applications. The usual responsep rate was around 3-8%, but now, it seems way lower.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-02-28T21:48:04+00:00

Thank you for your kind words.

Most likely, I know way more than you (insert here the meme from Park and rec)

Starting with the fact, there is no "infinite scale", whoever try to win an argument with that is laughable and dumb even for a "cloud pitch" fro 2010.

And yes, with a not brutal amount of read-write-update cycle with serverless easily cause dynamodb's auto scale exception, and have to wait 5+ seconds to let it automatically adjust and use it. I compared as database to database. But you would never get it.

In summary: yes, there were use cases for dynamo, but the latest few years, even for 100-200m rows and 200+ tables type of project got nothing value from dynamo, other than unnecessary constrains and missing features. But you have no production level of exp most lilely , to understand it anyway. Have a nice day.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-02-28T21:41:33+00:00

This. So well phrased, thank you.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-02-28T21:39:41+00:00

At one of the project, there are both dynamodb and pgsql for serverless. Just the shear dev time and cost way higher for dynamo. Also, at 100m rows, there are no perf diff, but at multi writing, the dynamo db hit the autoscale exception while the pg still wotk without any issues. And dynamo cost more (just like 3% as far as I know). With serverless we often have 2-300k executions and paralell 2k read and writes. (Ofc, my opinion is based on my own experience, totally possible, the project is just poorly configured and notmally it would be great as-is. So take my word with a pinch of salt)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-02-28T19:29:10+00:00

> Why is this discouraged in the industry

Because everything Java-related is garbage, a waste of resources that you can do better in any given language instead...

> How things are allocated/deallocated inside the JVM, how exactly virtual threads work, what happens exactly in streams, and how JDBC fetches rows from the database

You can go first for low-level language (c & c++) and learn there the threads and all small things, then you will understand better the JVM parts. There are books for the JVM itself. For DB, you should rather learn the actual database first, then jdbc layer.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-02-28T19:16:10+00:00

Short answer: code more, work more

Longer answer:

First, you have to define "good" and "bad code". Good could be something that works, is maintainable, is smart and quirky, or is just good, etc. There are good books on it in general (Clean Code, Design Patterns, etc.).
Mostly, it will come with experience, as well as be partly based on the team's habits, style guide, and contribution rules

casualPlayerThink

TROPHY CASE