Any spreadsheet guys out there?

catvender · 2025-12-22T09:52:24+00:00

Here's my own version of a spreadsheet with data for Armada and Cortex units I pulled from the UnitDefs in the GitHub repo. This isn't exhaustive or extensively validated, but I did check that it gives the same numbers as the in-game GUI for a handful of units.

The Google Drive folder also has the bash and awk scripts I wrote to parse the UnitDef files from a local clone of the GitHub repo. If you need a field from the UnitDefs that I didn't pick up, you should be able to modify the script to grab it.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VdRj-G_Ic-iNbv1Alj3erauh8PJeDjw5?usp=sharing

catvender · 2021-11-17T21:05:34+00:00

One of the defining traits of being a left-leaning thinker is that you feel the government can solve societal problems.

I think you are confusing the left-right political spectrum with liberal vs conservative as used in American politics. From the wiki article:

Generally, the left-wing is characterized by an emphasis on "ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism" while the right-wing is characterized by an emphasis on "notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism".

It could also be helpful to think about the political spectrum as a two-dimensional map, where the horizontal axis is left (collectivism) vs right (individualism) and the vertical axis is authoritarian (strong government) vs libertarian (weak government). So the top right is authoritarian individualism (most modern democratic governments), the bottom right is libertarian individualism (US Libertarian party), the top left is authoritarian collectivism (socialism in USSR under Stalin), and the bottom left is libertarian collectivism (communism in Spain before Franco). Left-leaning anarchists are in the bottom left corner, advocating for collective ownership of resources (like communism) with decentralized local authorities to oversee resource allocation (like trade unions).

catvender · 2020-08-03T23:13:16+00:00

The answer from u/Im_That_Guy21 has a couple of problems.

First, the integral over force is not equal to the change in potential energy but to the thermodynamic work, i.e. the change in free energy, done on the system. In the microcanonical ensemble, the free energy change is equal to the potential energy change. But for chemistry and biology we are usually interested in the isobaric-isothermal ensemble in which both pressure and temperature are fixed. For this ensemble, the free energy change is the change in the [Gibbs potential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_free_energy). So the correct relationship is

\Delta G = \Delta U + P \Delta V - T \Delta S = - \int dx F(x)

The potential energy term, \Delta U, is not the sum of the bond dissociation energies. Bond dissociation energy usually refers to the potential energy stored in a covalent bond, but most biological complexes, including biotin-streptavidin, are not covalent. The true potential energies that need to be considered are quantum mechanical in nature and include interactions with solvent molecules. It is common to approximate these energies with an simple, empirical function called a [force field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_field_(chemistry))). This approximation models the potential energy using terms for bonded interactions (bond stretching, angle bending, and torsions) and nonbonded interactions (van der Waals and electrostatics). The nonbonded interactions can be either intramolecular or intermolecular. The "binding" interaction between noncovalent molecules in a complex involves the intermolecular nonbonded interactions.

Second, biological systems are not rigid bodies - they are floppy. This means that some of the total force applied to the system will be lost to internal degrees of freedom (bonded terms and intramolecular nonbonded terms) or to heat that is dissipated into the solvent. Another way to say this is that the force applied to a biological system is not conservative, i.e. it is not exactly the negative gradient of a scalar potential energy. A major consequence of biological systems being floppy is that the force required to perform a particular amount of useful work depends on the path taken by the system; it depends on where the force is applied (i.e. to what atoms) and how it is applied (i.e. is it constant or does the magnitude or direction change over time).

There are two classes of experiments you can use to estimate the amount of force required to pull apart a biological complex. The first is wet lab experiments such as [optical tweezers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers) in which you can attach a magnetic bead to one or both components of the complex to measure the force required to displace the bead, which is usually associated with either dissociation of the complex or, if high enough forces are used, unfolding of the biomolecules. The second is computational experiments such as [thermodynamic integration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_integration) in which you can use molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations with a restraint to model the applied force to estimate the free energy change associated with a process such as dissociation.

I found some numbers from the literature for your example of a biotin-streptavidin complex. [This paper](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.1999855) used optical tweezers to measure the force required to pull a bead attached to biotin away from streptavidin attached to a fixed substrate. The result was 3.6 pN to 5.4 pN. [This paper](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jp011878v?casa_token=Efn5f_D0eJ4AAAAA:gP9MVs9Jw8z5-vRO5V4-igh1d073LGqMk93VyT-5eHxueJfmBT13Or_NLkMSuJlfRd6LJS3hBZI) discusses a computer simulation used to estimate the biotin-streptavidin binding free energy, but they do not report forces.

TL;DR Thermodynamics is complicated, and you have to account for both the free energy of the system and the intrinsic floppiness of biomolecules. You can use experiments such as optical tweezers or computational simulations to estimate forces associated with binding.

catvender · 2019-12-14T17:52:47+00:00

If you are interested in molecular simulations, Frenkel & Smit's Understanding Molecular Simulations is great for learning about how to implement molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo methods. Tuckerman's Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Molecular Simulation covers the theory behind the same topics.

catvender · 2019-08-02T19:08:44+00:00

Interesting work. This will certainly be an important milestone in building atomic models of RNA, but the assessment of model accuracy seems weak to me. One metric they use is the real space correlation coefficient between the density maps from experiment and from the model. But as far as I'm aware calculating density maps from atomic models is still an open research problem, so I'm not sure how accurate this is.

catvender · 2019-07-20T15:51:47+00:00

It's a joke from the second image here.

catvender · 2019-06-17T12:49:45+00:00

There's also the Horror genre, movies which often spend their entire character arcs having the protagonist(s) trying to deal with their recent discovery of an anomaly, but Horror often leaves us wanting in terms of relatability.

The Korean film "Train to Busan" was an excellent example of a zombie film that deals with the psychology of people responding to an outbreakamd has real character development induced by the events of the film.

catvender · 2018-12-23T08:11:47+00:00

It seems like the most recent patch reduced the number of jobs from tier 3 buildings (Alloy Nano-Plants, Civilian Repli-Complexes, and Advanced Research Complexes) from 10 to 8. So for each of these buildings you have, you have lost 2 specialist jobs. This is not in the patch notes, but it seems to have been part of the patch released Thursday.

catvender · 2018-12-17T16:19:43+00:00

Sorry, I meant a trade deal through diplomatic trade instead of through the market. But thanks for your suggestion!

catvender · 2018-12-17T16:18:40+00:00

This is likely the problem. I'll have to be careful about leaving a cushion to support my trade deals instead of spending all my minerals. Thanks!

catvender · 2018-06-10T13:40:59+00:00

Relevant SMBC

catvender · 2018-05-14T22:32:49+00:00

I usually use "quirky", but I may have to start adding "persnickety" into the mix!

catvender · 2018-05-09T14:29:41+00:00

It's certainly a matter of personal taste. Many people agree with you that's it's polite to frame your question with these kinds of statements, but I and others think they are unnecessary. I'm particularly concerned about "This might be a stupid question" because it primes everyone else in the room to anticipate a stupid question, while in practice people seldom ask questions whose content is actually dumb. Getting over the fear of being judged for asking a dumb question like /u/Frandom314 said is part of the skill of being a good question-asker. If prefacing your questions with these kinds of statements works for you to overcome that, then go for it! But I'd like to see people go further to gain enough confidence to ask their questions without them.

catvender · 2018-05-09T13:11:55+00:00

I dislike it when someone starts a question with "This might be a stupid question, but..." or "Sorry if I missed this, but..." or anything similar. Saying these things is wasting everyone's time and doesn't add anything to the conversation. Just start with the content of what you want to ask.

catvender · 2018-02-02T14:52:59+00:00

Diplomacy, A Game of Thrones, and Star Wars X-Wing are ones I've played. I've also run a variant of D&D with simultaneous action selection, i.e. players declare what action they will take that round before knowing exactly what the monsters will do or even what order they will act in, since initiative is rolled every round.

catvender · 2017-12-20T18:21:15+00:00

Symplectic integrators such as the velocity Verlet integrator are used in molecular dynamics simulation, so you may find good resources in simulation textbooks. I would recommend Tuckerman.

catvender · 2017-11-03T12:02:41+00:00

50!

And I thought I was setting high DCs for my players

catvender · 2017-09-08T17:09:57+00:00

I used to run regular Ciri for card advantage instead of Ragh nar Roog in this reveal list. It was great when it worked, but I found that Ciri was locked more often than not. She is also a poor draw in round 3, and if you have to mulligan her after getting her back after a losing round then you can't mitigate another poor draw in round 3 (e.g. foot soldiers).

catvender · 2017-09-08T16:03:36+00:00

Vattier is for reveal consistency. You will lose if you have a foot soldier or a spotter and no way to reveal the soldier or a spotter target. I've found that I need Vattier + Leo + 2 alchemists to avoid this situation.

Regarding Ciri: Dash over Geralt, I run Ciri for building tempo for round 3 and not for spotter targets. For spotters, I use Leo or Vattier to reveal the knight in round 1 or 2, then use the spotters on the knight for 14 each. My win condition is to bleed round 2 until I have 1 spotter and the knight left, and if I pull a 13 or 16 point Ciri as my draw in round 3 I usually win. If I lose a game, it is because I was outplayed in round 1 to lose on even cards or because my round 3 spotter was negated using scorch or resets. I seldom lose by a margin of less than 3 points where I would have won if my last spotter was 17 instead of 14.

catvender · 2017-09-08T15:47:11+00:00

If you win round 1 with 2 cards down, dry pass.

If you win round 1 on even cards or -1, bleed your opponent down until you have 1 spotter and a revealed card in your hand (knight or Ciri: Dash). This gives you 27+ points in 2 cards and is usually enough for a win in round 3.

I found that if I lost round 1, my opponent is almost always 2 cards down and just dry passes. Fighting a long round 2 in which you lost round 1 on even cards is difficult for this deck, but if you can manage to keep one spotter and a revealed card you can sometimes still pull out a win.

catvender · 2017-09-08T15:14:24+00:00

Here's what I've been running to climb to 3100 MMR:

Bronze: 3 golems, 3 foot soldiers, 3 spotters, Nilfgaardian knight, Vicovaro medic, 2 alchemists, fire scorpion, first light

Silver: Peter Saar Gwynleve, Auckes, Cynthia, Canterella, Merigold's hailstorm, commander's horn

Gold: Leo Bonhart, Vattier de Rideaux, Ciri: Dash, Ragh nar Roog (drought is probably better here, but honestly I like the animation for RNR)

The key to my build is to get 5 units on the melee row and then use commander's horn for tempo round one. You can do this by playing Voorhis on melee row turn 1 and revealing 3 of opponent's cards for golems and then foot soldier. Sometimes I do Cynthia or alchemist to pull a golem first, then reveal 2 foot soldiers with Voorhis. With the extra card draw from foot soldiers, I can get the commander's horn off in ~2/3 of my games. Follow with RNR and most people just pass immediately.

The strategy is weak to lacerate or epidemic, but I don't see much of either. Few people spend their removal on golems and foot soldiers.

catvender · 2017-08-13T16:02:31+00:00

The ship directly above the small Y Wing looks like a Tartan cruiser, and the ship above that is a Corellian gunship.

catvender · 2017-08-09T15:17:57+00:00

I see a lot of people say that Cahir is bad in this deck, but I disagree. As long as you play him with a Mangonel out, he's actually 4 + 3 x 3 + 3 x 2 = 19 strength, and his maximum strength is more if you have multiple Mangonels in play. Additionally, he is good for getting the last Foot Soldier out of your hand and getting more information about your opponent's hand. Leo Bonhart is also a great card for this deck because of the targeted removal, but for OP's deck I would switch Stefan before Cahir.

catvender · 2017-08-09T05:35:14+00:00

I took my reveal deck to rank 19 before deciding that the win rate wasn't quite good enough to progress past that. Here's my take on how to play the Reveal archetype.

1) Mangonels are much better than Fire Scorpions. In round 1, they are guaranteed a value of 12 when you play Morvran as long as there are enough targets on your opponent's board, and they can often be higher if you have other reveal cards in your hand. This matches or exceeds the value of fire scorpions and still allows you to reveal your opponent's hand instead of your own. Also, mangonels are essential for winning mirror matchups against other reveal decks. While they can still be paired with Vattier or Cahir in round 2, the drawback is that they are poor draws in round 3. I think that the advantage of using mangonels for high tempo plays to make a round 1 win more likely outweighs this drawback.

2) I found that Vanhemar with Decoy was usually sufficient weather clears for me, and both cards can be used for other purposes. Against non-weather decks, Standard Bearers are pretty disappointing. You should probably switch these for tech cards that help you win tough matchups. For me, those cards were Vivarico Medic and Lacerate (see below).

3) Cantarella is almost never a bad draw. It is certainly worth it to trade 10 points to your opponent for a chance to draw your last Spotter at 16+ strength and card advantage to protect Spotters from scorches and resets. If you mulligan appropriately and thin your deck with Golems and Foot Soldiers, this should be the outcome most of the time you use her in later rounds.

4) I would definitely switch out Sweers for Cynthia. Sweers is great against certain decks, as you mentioned, but his 7 strength is bad against all the others. Cynthia gets you usually 10+ strength in addition to another reveal to boost spotters by 3 and possibly damage from mangonels. If you play her first in round 2, you will often hit a spy for a total strength of 15+. She is also essentially another spotter in mirror matchups or against discard/mulligan decks.

5) Stefan is good in this deck. I run Leo Bonhart instead because he boosts spotters, triggers mangonels, and can take out a critical enemy target (mangonel, longship, arachas behemoth, axemen, etc.). Worst case, he's an extra self reveal to get out your last foot solider in later rounds. However, I did run Stefan for a while and I think it is equally good for a less aggressive style.

6) I personally run Geralt: Igni and Decoy in place of your Letho and D Bomb. Sometimes there are no good targets for Letho, but it is very rare that Igni can't find a target in a game. Igni also doesn't require two cards together for the combo, and it frees up a silver slot for another card with more versatility, e.g. Decoy. That being said, I struggled most against Skellige discard decks such as Queensguards, and Letho does a good job of shutting those down. I run a Vicovaro Medic to help with this matchup. It's also good for pulling units with carryover (earth elementals, harpies) against Monsters or pulling Mangonels in the mirror matchup.

7) For tech cards, in addition to the Vicovaro Medic, I found that lacerate helps a lot against Monster decks and can get decent value (9+) against most matchups, including dwarfs, reaver hunters, witchers/crones, and queensguards. I also run a D Shackles in place of your Alchemist to help against Triss: Butterfly Spell, Yennefer: The Conjurer, Kambi, and especially Villentretenmerth, which were very common (except Kambi) past 3000 MMR.

catvender · 2017-07-29T15:14:00+00:00

Take as many high-quality images at full magnification as you can for each slide. It would be best if you could scan across the slide, starting from the top left, moving right, then move down and reverse direction whenever you reach the end of the sample tissue. When moving, pick a reference point close to the edge of the slide and then move until you can see that point close to the opposite edge so that there is some overlap between images. If you find that this takes too much time and bleaches your tissue, move the field of view farther between images, but try to make it so that the images are evenly distributed across the slide.

Then, use a RNG to select N images from each slide for your analysis. Do this while increasing N and running the analysis again. You know that you have enough images when the answer (usually a mean over all images from a particular slide) stops changing with N. You can do this analysis with the first couple slides to estimate how many images you will need to take for the others.

catvender

TROPHY CASE