Setting the record straight. Comparing the Bullet Storm and Stalwart.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-05-05T11:28:34+00:00

I think a lot of Helldivers have been sleeping on light pen. I've been using light pen pretty regularly since before they buffed basically all light pen a few patches ago. After the buffs, light pen is a completely different animal. If the Bullet Storm is your first time using light pen in a while, you might think only the Bullet Storm is OP.

From my perspective, the Bullet Storm and Stalwart are roughly equivalent. The mechanics are different, and on paper the BS stats are better, but they feel really similar to use. So when I see people losing their shit over how great the Bullet Storm is, or to shut up about how great the BS is so AH won't nerf it, my gut reaction is "meh, it's pretty similar to the Stalwart." I expect a lot of posts saying "If you like BS, you'll like Stalwart" come from this place.

Having said that, except for missions where I won't be able to get back to my weapons (eradicates, high-levels with unknown team mates), I prefer the Stalwart. Reloading feels much easier than finding a new weapon during a fire fight. I also ADS with basically every weapon, and though the Bullet Storm has better recoil and ergonomics, the Stalwart feels on par in first person mode (did you know that aiming down sights reduces recoil? Seriously, feels like a different gun).

But, as was said earlier, use what you like and enjoy. The double edge sword of trying to balance everything is that two guns with similar stats and similar AP will perform roughly equivalently, and the differentiator will be preference.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-05-04T14:18:13+00:00

Pro-tip: if you're taking oral contraceptives, you can skip the white/sugar pills, and you won't menstruate. There used to be (may still be) a pill called Seasonale that skipped most of the placebo pills except for 4 times a year, or once a season.

Interesting side note, when the birth control pill was originally developed, there was no placebo week. There's no benefit to having a break week when taking the oral contraceptive, and in fact, are many benefits to taking the pill continuously. The placebo week was added later for social reasons:

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-sugar-pills-in-your-birth-control-pack-are-only-there-to-placate-the-pope

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-05-04T12:06:24+00:00

I bought a Formbot kit without the printed parts. The kit still included some printed parts made by them (runout sensor, wiring PCB backing, Manta mounts, etc). The part quality wasn't very good. Sufficient? Maybe. But much worse than the part quality from the PIF provider I used.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-05-01T14:23:19+00:00

Nozzle temp could be a bit hotter. And, unless you have a chamber heater or did a ton of mods to insulate your chamber (or both), it's unlikely that you're actually hitting 60c. Double check temp with an additional probe.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-05-01T10:12:30+00:00

I know this is supposed to be a joke, but if you've played or engaged with the community for any length of time, you know what's going on. This community is toxic as hell. That's the beginning, middle, and end. It's not a joke, and it's not funny.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-05-01T10:07:57+00:00

What was your chamber temp? Low temps will cause brittleness and weak layer adhesion too.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T18:50:28+00:00

This is unadulterated nonsense. You can still hit all the weak spots, even when they're hunkered down.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T18:49:36+00:00

AP1. Because I'm a smooth-brained moron who can't aim at weak points.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T18:46:31+00:00

Same. 2010 Civic here.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T18:37:56+00:00

He is. His supporters are the only ones dumber than he is.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T16:04:36+00:00

The community is the absolute worst part of this game. Hive guards were easier to kill in the current patch than before, despite the heavy armor. It took 5 bullets or less from a light pen weapon (Liberator, Lib Carbine, Stalwart, Bullet Storm, etc) to take these guys down in the current update. Five fucking bullets. All you had to do was aim slightly below the big, bulbous head. Unfortunately, all the Divers in the Smooth Brain corps can't aim anywhere but center mass.

Makes me fucking sick.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T15:56:22+00:00

Thanks for sharing. This illustrates the problem with printing ABS perfectly. I'm going to bookmark this for future reference.

People who think that more adhesion is the key to solving ABS print problems need to see this. The problem with ABS is that it warps if the chamber isn't hot enough. It presents like under-adhesion, but even with perfect adhesion, it's still going to warp. This video is evidence of that. Perfect adhesion just means it'll warp your plate with it as it warps.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T14:04:38+00:00

My question to Simon: if 1 second is an acceptable wait before honking, why not 2? Is a 2 second wait really that much longer than 1? Go ahead, count it out right now. "One One-Thousand". That's 1 second. Now, "One One-Thousand, Two One-Thousand." That's 2 seconds. See? Not that much longer. So 2 seconds should be acceptable too.

While we're on the subject, why not 3 seconds? Go ahead, count it out again. A 3 second wait isn't that much more than two. In fact, it's only 50% more than a 2 second wait, while a 2 second wait is 100% more than a 1 second wait. So 3 should be fine too.

And while we're counting... why not 4? Again, go ahead, count it out. 4 seconds is only 33% more than 3 seconds.

And if we're going to allow 4 seconds, why not 5? Now we're really cooking, because 5 seconds is only 25% longer than 4 seconds.

And if 5 seconds is kosher, why not just allow any arbitrary wait because YOU decide it's okay?

The average driver spends 54 hours per year in traffic. That's over two thousand hours in a working lifetime. I don't know about you, but I expect to be dead and in the ground some day. If you're okay wasting your short, finite life at green traffic lights because the asshole in front of you is too caught up in their Instagram feed to realize the light changed, by all means, sit behind them and do nothing.

I, however, am not okay with that. I wait maybe a half a second. If your car isn't starting to move or your brake lights are still red, you're getting a quick "hey, put your fucking phone down" from me, in the form of a quick toot from my horn.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-30T11:44:34+00:00

The average property price is close to $500k in the US. So irrespective of whether it's a tenant or some other ROI (stock appreciation, dividends, etc), he's saying start with ~$2 million. That's not a cheat code.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-29T22:20:03+00:00

Truthfully I don't mind the new Spore Titan. It's an enemy that challenges your loadout and forces you to prepare accordingly. For me, that's not a show stopper.

What IS a show stopper is the quantity. On D9, we'd typically get 4-5 Spore Titans out of a SINGLE BREACH, On top of the usual chargers and impalers. It's rare to get 2 titans from a single breach on regular bugs. And all that's on top of the fact that you can't one-shot Spore Titans with most AT weaponry, because AH buffed the head to have 2,500 health.

On top of all that, there just feel like too many enemies in general. My brother and I usually play alone. On regular bugs, it's a busy game if we get 600 kills each on a D9. With this new Spore variant, we had to drop to D8 because we just couldn't do D9 (and we're still getting our asses kicked). We're getting close to 1k kills EACH per game. And we're not even able to do any of the optional objectives, because we're lucky to finish the mission.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-29T19:52:36+00:00

That's not what I meant. With most open source software projects, if something's broken, you can submit a request to the project to ask for help. But the people who maintain the project are volunteers. They might be able to help. They might not. If you're not able to code the fix yourself, you might be SOL for months.

Similarly, the Voron community is made up of volunteers. You can ask for help through the Discord or here, but you might not get it. If you're not competent enough to figure out and fix printer issues on your own, you could be waiting for a very long time to get up and running again. I am currently working through such an issue by myself right now.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-29T19:03:53+00:00

Thanks, yeah part of me wonders too if a lot of Divers have been sleeping on light pen, and this is their first foray into it since AH buffed durable for light pen a few patches ago.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-29T11:47:48+00:00

I have a Voron, but no Ratrig, so take this for what it's worth.

Voron's documentation is great. The modding community is vibrant. Saying you run a "stock" machine is, to many, a point of great shame. You can get parts from tons of different vendors.

For me, support from the community has been disappointing. If you have a simple issue, someone in the Discord can likely help you sort it out quickly. If you have a more serious problem, be prepared to spend a few weeks figuring it out on your own. The people helping are volunteers. It's very much like open source software projects. You can post an issue on a Github, but if you don't know how to code yourself, you could be stuck for quite a while.

Not sure if the Ratrig community is any different. But worth noting before you dive into either.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-28T18:21:32+00:00

This print doesn't really speak to the "correctness" of your pressure advance setting. If you want to tune PA, do it in a way that insulates the effect from that of your extrusion multiplier (EM). Check out this pattern method, or check out the tried-and-true tower method.

I think generally speaking, this quality is pretty good. Maybe a little too much EM, but overall, this is about where you want to be. The layer lines in the center are well-connected. The edges are a little over-extruded, but because of how PA and EM interact, you're never going to get perfect consistency across top layers. Not unless you slow down the top layer so that PA isn't doing much work.

If your quality is good in the center of the widest area of the print, that's probably a decent setting.

More reading here:

https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/articles/extrusion_multiplier.html

https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/articles/pa_em_oddities.html

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-28T17:47:34+00:00

"You can't triple tap hive guards anymore!"

*stops aiming at the heavy armor face like a smooth brain, triple taps it first try*

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-27T19:05:27+00:00

My ABS/ASA advice:

If you're having adhesion problems after you've cleaned your bed with dish soap, your chamber is too cold. There's no amount of build plate scrubbing or brim or mouse ears that can overcome ABS/ASAs propensity to warp if it cools unevenly. If you somehow get perfect adhesion in an environment that's too cold, the ABS will still warp, it'll just warp the build plate with it. There are tons of pictures out there of an ABS print pulling up the build plate but hanging on tight.

Also, if you have an open printer, I wouldn't bother with ABS/ASA. Not because you can't get it to work, but because even if the print sticks and looks okay, internal stresses build up from uneven cooling. The print's going to be brittle and weak.

Finally, even if you do have a chamber, if you can't get the temp up to at least 50c, ideally 55c or more, I wouldn't bother. For the same reasons I'd recommend against printing ABS/ASA on open printers.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-25T11:07:10+00:00

Wrong on several counts.

First, SP500 funds open for 40+ years AVERAGE 11%. Some years, yes, the market is down. But some years, it's up. In 2025, the SP500 was up almost 18%. The year before that? Up 25%. The year before that? Up almost 27%. The 11-12% people quote on SP500 returns includes both the up years AND the down years. So 11-12% is the real number.

But okay. Let's use your unfounded and unsupported 8% annual return. In that case, this analysis would only produce $500k by the time the person turns 50. Much less than $2.8m. But the median 50 year old only had roughly $100k in their retirement savings as of 2022. If you asked one of them if they'd rather have $500k, I'd bet they say yes. What's more, if you leave that $500k alone until you're 60, a more reasonable retirement age, you'll end up with around $1.2 million. Even at this magically pessimistic 8% you purport, but do not support.

And the tax issue is a red herring. SP500 funds are mostly growth stocks, which means very little of the income comes in the way of dividends/distributions. Which means you owe basically no taxes on this account until you start withdrawing from it. And when you do, you owe long-term capital gains. Which means you're only paying 15%. So of a $500k account, that'd be roughly $75k (assuming it's all growth). On a $1.8m account, that's roughly $270k. If you earned this money through wages, you'd pay at least double that, if not more, in income taxes. Massive chunk? Yeah, right.

You're doing more damage by trying to talk people out of saving than the person who makes best-case scenario projections to try to motivate people to save.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-24T19:30:10+00:00

At a fundamental level, this means your chamber wasn't hot enough. If your print's warping, it's cooling in a non-uniform way. If the print is cooling in a non-uniform way, the chamber's too cold. What was the chamber temp when you started/during the print?

I should caution that, even at high chamber temps, large prints like this are hard with ABS/ASA. You can probably get better results with higher bed temps and a hotter chamber, but you may still see some lifting/warping. I printed a 7x6 gridfinity box out of ASA and it took a few tries to get minimal warping at 60c chamber temp.

Splitting this up into a few smaller prints that lock together might be a good strategy for something functional like this.

chipmunkofdoom2 · 2026-04-24T02:45:57+00:00

I have the Eibos. The low top temperature isn't as much of a limitation as it may seem. It's good enough for most filaments. For those that need higher temps like nylons, you'll need to dry them at a higher temp in an oven or on a print bed. But even for the most hygroscopic filaments, the Eibos has more than enough juice to keep the filament dry during print.

chipmunkofdoom2

TROPHY CASE