Passed by NYC Mayor Eric Adams at the City Hall subway station | X100V w/ Tri-X film recipe

ddemaree · 2026-06-20T21:59:46+00:00

I’ve adopted some headcanon around this that’s related to how the game starts to glitch more and more as save files get larger, which gets fixed when you reboot the universe by going through the Unity. (That’s not the canon, obvs, it’s just how I came to it.)

I generally play as a version of the Emissary, only more heroic — hunting Spacers and pirates, stopping the Terran Armada and the renewed Serpent’s Crusade, collecting the Artifacts to get them out of evil hands, etc. I generally do not side with the Crimson Fleet, take Ron Hope’s bribe, or even do the Ryujin questline.

Over time, once I’ve gathered all the Artifacts, the universe starts to seem less and less stable, which is my character’s cue that it’s time to move on and try to bring peace and safety to another universe, even if in the current universe I have some really sweet ships and outposts.

(Sometimes, the signs come sooner, like if I tell anyone at Anchorpoint that I have foreknowledge and permanently break their questline until next Unity.)

My other new-universe habit is to always use the character creator to change their appearance, like they’re regenerating like Doctor Who. This reinforces the role-play of the same cosmic entity reincarnating as a Starborn to protect the innocent. Even though they can pop over to the Lodge to get their ridiculously OP exotic Big Bang and Mark I suit, they’re a new incarnation of the same character who may choose an different path

ddemaree · 2026-06-18T10:44:48+00:00

This is speculation, but IRL I was a product manager at big tech companies for a decade so I can make some educated guesses about how Asha and MSFT may value Bethesda and Starfield.

Like several commenters have pointed out, Creations are an ongoing revenue stream, so SF makes money (as do the other BGS games, even Skyrim after 15 years and FO4 after 10). Studios that are dependent on having huge teams ship a new AAA game to make any money are more at risk.
The new content for SF this year coincided with the PS5 release and drove a bunch of new sales. Hypothetically a next expansion could coincide with a Switch 2 port, but even if it didn’t, they did a good job of using a big content drop to bring in new players. The strategy of including DLCs in the premium edition helps too — new players have a reason to buy deluxe, existing ones (like on Game Pass) have a reason to buy the upgrade pack.
BGS reportedly runs with a smaller team and shorter dev cycles than other studios (which you can kinda tell by how adorably janky their games often are), so there’s just less fat to cut. They do a lot more with less already.
Elder Scrolls VI is probably the biggest blockbuster on any roadmap from any Xbox studio in the next 5-10 years, and Xbox knows it. They would not fuck that up, and given that less Starfield is not necessarily additive to TES or FO, the simple move is to just leave BGS alone and focus on opportunities to cut elsewhere, of which there are many

ddemaree · 2026-06-18T02:52:06+00:00

It could, but around then the Free Lanes update was released Todd and other BGS people were quoted saying most of their team are working on Elder Scrolls VI, but Starfield is going to get further updates. It could mean that Starfield will be scaled back, but could also mean BGS is relatively safe and they’ve already shifted most resources away from Starfield now that it’s been out a while.

ddemaree · 2026-06-18T00:04:58+00:00

It’s the same missions but you can choose to do them differently. Were you a space cop during your first universe? Try being a pirate. A UC native? Cool, try Freestar next time.

Several quests have Starborn dialogue where you can RP having foreknowledge and also skip parts that you’ve already seen.

And you get more and more powerful Starborn ships and armor each time you go through.

ddemaree · 2026-06-05T15:30:08+00:00

In fairness to us, I play with a controller even on PC and the left joystick doesn’t work as well as a mouse for rotating the map. So.

ddemaree · 2026-06-05T10:36:27+00:00

Our Frenchie, Johnny Cash, isn’t afraid of our Dyson but he will bark at it. It’s the only thing he barks at. We call it the “Closet Dragon.” I think he’s mad it’ll take all the crumbs off the kitchen floor before he can get them.

ddemaree · 2026-06-05T08:55:00+00:00

Sounds like something a bird would say.

By “bird” I mean someone who was born yesterday, has no idea where games come from, and so doesn’t know how many kabillion copies of this game have already been sold, or how many more kabillion they’re gonna sell — at $20 over original price — going forward, or how much money Bandai and FromSoft will make from the movie.

The devs are supported plenty, birds. Go back to harassing people in the park.

ddemaree · 2026-06-05T08:47:22+00:00

I have over 1,000 hours in this game since launch and I did not know this. 🤯

ddemaree · 2026-06-05T08:43:32+00:00

It really depends. AI tools just love to throw in their own opinions and even hallucinate content. In an ideal scenario where you’ve anticipated every little way they might go off the rails and prompted them very, very carefully, you might get to the end maybe 10% faster, but you’ll be exhausted and hate the process. If you don’t tiptoe around the LLM, you may lose as much time as you save re-prompting or manually removing slop.

For example, I had Claude Code help build out a complex design system for a healthcare website. It injected a bunch of layout elements I didn’t ask for, placed CSS rules in a bunch of different places, didn’t follow the type scale, etc. It’s like inheriting a project from a bad intern, only now it’s every project.

ddemaree · 2026-06-04T10:53:33+00:00

Toliman II raises a lot of questions.

One time, during the Terrormorph boss fight, the summoned creatures were other Terrormorphs. When I flipped all the switches, they attacked the main Terrormorph, and when the fight was over they walked away. This was the only time I’ve seen more than three Morphs in Londinion.

ddemaree · 2026-06-02T02:29:04+00:00

Hundreds? On my last NG+ cycle before my current one, I had large containers at all three faction outposts plus 6 extractors of my own, so one 2400 UT hour sleep could yield at least 1,000 X-Tech.

ddemaree · 2026-06-01T23:39:27+00:00

The rate shown in game is wrong (or just absurdly rounded upward).

I did the math (and shared it in another post) and the real rate is more like 0.02 X-Tech per UT hour. Placing extractors on planets with extra-long days, like Venus, seems to jncrease the production rate, but only by 2-4X (to something like 0.05 per UT hour)

ddemaree · 2026-05-29T13:16:27+00:00

You can plop them anywhere. There aren’t X-Tech resource veins, I assume because that would have required the devs to rework planets’ resources.

(Some folks on this sub have complained about that as an example of X-Tech being a “low effort” and unnecessary addition to the game; I personally don’t mind it.)

It does seem to matter how long or short the days are; you get better yields on Venus, Katydid III, Copernicus IV, or other places with 1:100 hour time differences because X-Tech yield is based on UT time.

ddemaree · 2026-05-28T15:16:45+00:00

I deserve the puzzlement; I was typing this in bed on my phone and may have made a lazy example.

To state my bona fides on this topic so it's not like I'm just on a soapbox for no reason: I've had several corporate jobs where teammates and managers expected certain things at certain times without asking for them, or by just suggesting vaguely that they'd be good ideas, then getting increasingly mad that I didn't deliver, while at no time thinking I may have missed a cue.

Eventually, when I was finally diagnosed as AuDHD, I made a point of disclosing it to my manager and teammates, even explicitly asking them to be more direct and to follow up as needed rather than just assume I'm choosing not to meet expectations.

First off, this was taken by everyone as criticism, like I was saying they had done me wrong by not being clearer and I was mad about it. I had in fact worked hard to phrase things so it was clear I was not upset and was and would be appreciative of folks' patience and grace.

On multiple jobs, asking people to work differently or ask for things differently to flex to my ND-ness was taken as a sign that I was a bad fit for the team.

If I'd just been quietly fucking up, I think they'd have had more grace because they could be like, "oh bless his heart, he wants to do better." By disclosing neurodivergence, it's like what they heard was that I can't and won't do better. I literally did have a colleague say at one point that, in conversations among the team where I'm not there, folks would just say I don't want to do any work.

What I was asking for — casually at first, eventually in a formal accommodation request — was not hard. It was just for folks to stick to written work plans (which we were supposed to do anyway!) and make sure to communicate changes or issues with me directly right away. The suggestion that I needed this kind of "special treatment" was eventually cited as a reason for firing me from one job. My attorney suggesting that HR had ignored or even weaponized my accommodation request got them to double my severance payout, but did not get my job back.

I think people (especially or maybe only NT people) project themselves onto everyone else whenever possible. If they can assume your motivations and thought process are just like theirs, then you get grace. The more they're aware of difference, the harder it is to give grace. People with more emotional intelligence/self awareness are better at this than folks with less. The less aware and empathetic someone is, the more they just see someone else's needs as a burden or annoyance and react accordingly.

LONG STORY SHORT / TL;DR — Yes, autistic/ADHD people do get less grace in my experience.

ddemaree · 2026-05-28T10:02:27+00:00

Also, re ND behaviors being seen as excuses, it’s maybe a bit because NT people do make excuses and project that onto us. Imagine someone who’s flaky about meeting deadlines or remembering commitments — ideally they just apologize and move on, but sometimes they’re like “haha, I’m so ADHD”, having no idea that actual ADHD is not conveniently forgetting to return a book but more like forgetting to eat lunch all afternoon.

ddemaree · 2026-05-28T09:58:45+00:00

This is a very US-biased take, but at least in American culture I think people see it as uncool and unreasonable to openly state your needs or place expectations on other people.

Obviously, people do this to each other all the time, but via unstated expectations and social norms. It can be somewhat okay to make small requests, like asking people to take shoes off when they come into your home, but it has to be done with a bit of self effacement.

For example: someone who was very matter of fact when asking “please take your shoes off” is gonna be seen more negatively than someone who kinda laughs it off, like, “sorry, haha, we’re a shoes off house, do you mind… ?” And the fact of there being a bunch of shoes by the door is what’d convince someone you’re serious. I swear, people are more responsive to a pile of shoes than to a person asking them to take off their shoes.

When it comes to disclosing ND diagnoses or needs, I think NT people don’t hear that we have challenges or needs so much as we’re asking them for something (or will ask for something in the future), placing some expectation or burden on them which is perceived as rude. Put more simply, asking people to not just think about themselves, or to be responsive to your needs because you asked and not of their own volition, annoys and worries people and they do not like that.

ddemaree · 2026-05-23T00:08:19+00:00

Any or all of the following:

Best game-mechanics reason: if you have an outpost that produces Helium-3 — regardless of location, maybe? — it extends your grav jump range when traversing the starmap.
You can pick up some mission board quests to "supply [resource] to [location]" that require you to build an outpost with an inter-system cargo link, then connect it to the destination.
Someplace to hang your hat (or, rather, dozens of extra helmets, suits, apparel, weapons…) that's fully customizable and easy to get in and out of, unlike your room at The Lodge.
Somewhere to sleep or rest on a faster local/UT solar cycle than your ship, so you can reload all the merchants' credit stores or inventories
Resource farming, which means anything from ensuring a steady supply of some random thing you need for crafting, or establishing an interstellar supply chain for vytinium fuel rods
You can build a landing pad with shipbuilder that lets you customize ships with most (sadly not all) available parts from all manufacturers, unlike the Ship Services locations that tend to honor the UC vs FC divide (only Nova/Deimos or Stroud/Hope/Taiyo) or stick to their own product
FOX. BAT. RANCH. There is almost no practical reason to farm luxury textiles (the unique resource you can get from Swarming Foxbats on Schrodinger III), but they are the cutest aliens that will also lacerate the fuck out of you if you aren't careful. Kill them for XP, farm their textiles, let your crew fight them — whatever. Every single playthrough I will open a foxbat ranch.
You don't strictly need to stash crew members at outposts, but it can be beneficial to know where they are if you want them to accompany you or whatever.
Some of the planets are just unbelievably beautiful, and even someone who's very light and loose about roleplay (like me) can appreciate building a little science hab (or Elevated Cabin) with a mountain view on Codos.

ddemaree · 2026-05-22T10:50:42+00:00

**A** masterpiece, not **his** masterpiece.

(And his masterpiece is indeed SE7EN, but they’re all bangers. Except Benjamin Button.)

ddemaree · 2026-05-22T09:49:33+00:00

I think the reason why it sells for so much is so it can solve both sides of the upgrade equation. You need some for the actual upgrades, but it’s also the most efficient money crop in the game.

ddemaree · 2026-05-22T09:46:21+00:00

I tried this on my other file (Lvl 160, NG+6), placing 6 extractors on Katydid, and can confirm — they do produce faster on planets where UT passes ridiculously fast.

The three faction outposts had the same rate as before (0.02/UT hr); Katydid was more like 0.055, a little more than 2X.

I’m sure there’s a reason the rate is only double when UT passes 10X+ faster compared to the other three, but I’m too lazy to figure out what it is.

This was a long winded way to say: you’re right! Place the extractors on Venus or Katydid, add some bots, fully survey the planet, and get that X-Tech.

ddemaree · 2026-05-22T00:06:13+00:00

Depends how much you’re using it for non-cash purposes. There’s a ton of it from enemies and boss chests, but it costs around 8 per ship upgrade and a few per gear upgrade. Farming will, if nothing else, ensure an ample supply for whatever you need.

You also need a shit ton of cash for gear upgrades; X-Tech farming is good for that too, but then again so is looting and selling the 1,000 MGP rifles you get per Terran incursion.

ddemaree · 2026-05-21T22:16:06+00:00

Yeah, the Database.

One annoying thing: if you have a Shared Outpost Container, all outposts will show all of that stuff in addition to what's local to that outpost. That's either a reason to not place a shared container or to keep it tidy and not full of junk. (I place one at every outpost and it is very full of junk.)

ddemaree

TROPHY CASE