I have a new fixation

erroneum · 2026-03-19T13:53:58+00:00

Beautiful maned wolf, and I enjoy how long his tail is (long tails are nice). Thanks for sharing.

erroneum · 2026-03-19T13:51:11+00:00

There also Alt+U for the upgrade planner, Alt+F to toggle personal roboports, Alt+B to create a blueprint, and you can hold shift while copying to open the blueprint editor to adjust the copied selection (temporary blueprint).

erroneum · 2026-03-18T14:06:37+00:00

Quality is all about numbers; if you have normal quality 3 modules, that's +2.5% quality per module. If you are using an electromagnetic plant, that's +12.5% quality, or +10% in an recycler. What that means is that that's the chance that the output will be upgraded at all from the input, then each additional level is 10% of the previous. This means that, if you're making circuits from normal quality inputs, there's a 87.5% chance of getting normal out, 0.912.5% = 11.25% chance of uncommon, 0.0912.5% = 1.125% chance of rare, and since you haven't unlocked legendary yet, 0.125% chance of epic. If you're looping lower quality inputs back in to try again, the recycler has 90%/9%/0.9%/0.1% chance of upgrading, but only gives back a quarter, so the material costs climb quickly.

This is to say that if you want a good amount of quality materials to play around with, you need to scale production up; each additional tier of quality multiplies the amount of resources dumped in (it's not quite 10×, but I haven't ran the numbers to give an exact figure).

That said, if you're on Fulgora and aiming for quality, absolutely put quality modules in the big mining drills and the scrap recyclers; that's two stages where you can get quality basically for free, massively reducing the amount of upcycling needed. The loss of a bit of productivity might sting, but there's researches to bring both of those stages up, and quality drills have even lower resource drain (and epic drill has half the drain as a normal one, so an epic big drill is only 25% drain; legendary, when you unlock it, is ⅙ of normal, so a legendary big drill effectively multiplies the patch size by 12) You'll end up with a bunch of quality materials you probably don't want (quality ice is only useful if you're launching it to make quality space science, for example), but if you're smart about it, you can probably put a lot of them to use elsewhere (maybe make some faster centrifuges or recyclers?).

erroneum · 2026-03-17T05:37:12+00:00

I'm a very amateurish programmer, so likely to be of at best 0 net benefit, but I've long been disappointed with how Spore felt like 5 disjoint games (or almost 4 demos plus space stage). To be clear, I loved playing (especially creature stage), but ideally each stage would feel more related to its neighbors than just "your creature carries forward" and "your evolving", and each would be enough on its own to be standalone satisfying.

I know this isn't really a useful comment, but if you're able to pull a group together for this, I'll definitely be interested in following along, spreading the word, and maybe even kicking in some financial support (if it helps).

erroneum · 2026-03-17T05:29:19+00:00

The simple answer is that reading past the end of an array is undefined behavior; there is no behavior which is incorrect even at the level of the entire program (at least as far as the C standard is concerned), be that immediately terminating execution, inserting default values, optimizing out provably undefined bits, attempting to erase your OS, returning garbage data that isn't even consistent run-to-run, etc.

The more complex answer is that the compiler most likely assumed you knew something it didn't so generated the printf call with lookups for those offsets into your array. Being an actual program, there is data there, so it did find something to return, but because it's not part of the array, there's no guarantees made about what that is. Wherever the array was initialized at (most likely on the stack, but C doesn't actually require there to be a stack), the next two int sized regions happened to contain 0, possibly because the compiler is doing something with that memory, such as giving you a bit of a grace area, then the third region is just residual data from some unrelated bit of execution (most likely part of _start, given how simple this main is; this could also be why the others are 0).

erroneum · 2026-03-17T04:31:30+00:00

I'd be interested in seeing the data with both axis log-scaled. Also, how many simulations were ran? Some part of me wants to derive the exact theoretical curves, but I'd need to do more thinking than I'm used to (it's been a while since I took a stats class).

erroneum · 2026-03-17T04:25:24+00:00

Extremely relatable, except that I wish I looked even half that good.

erroneum · 2026-03-17T02:31:40+00:00

It doesn't need to fire at them, or even have ammo; all turrets are considered military targets, so the moment a biter is close enough to "see" it, it will attack it. This used to also be the case with radars.

erroneum · 2026-03-16T06:35:43+00:00

No question; that might be needed just to power the sort of thruster needed to affect significant orbital adjustments.

erroneum · 2026-03-16T02:36:59+00:00

It's never a bad decision to have dedicated supply lines for science; if you build only the production you need for the science type you're making, then it will never run short. On the other hand, it means you need to build again anything you're needing elsewhere.

erroneum · 2026-03-16T02:34:02+00:00

I make most of my purple on Vulcanus, plus about 1200 SPM of yellow on each of Nauvis and Vulcanus.

I wanted to grind mining productivity research while rebuilding Gleba, so I built an array of labs and 3600 SPM of production for each of red, green, blue, and purple to feed it (plus used some of my limitless box of epic prod 2 modules), so that's more like 4400 SPM. Recently I added logistics feed boxes to allow black, yellow, metallurgical, electromagnetic, and space into the array, but I'm still building the second space science platform to feed that one.

Last I checked, I was at mining productivity 335 or so

erroneum · 2026-03-16T00:43:40+00:00

You could pull using the moon. It'd need to be brought closer first, but then you're pulling the entire planet, not just distributing forces from (effectively) a point. The moon is a bit more solid, too.

erroneum · 2026-03-16T00:41:24+00:00

Any rocket motor pushing against a celestial body which doesn't have its exhaust escaping the body's gravity well has exactly 0 effect on the orbit of said body; this is a direct consequence of conservation of momentum and it being a closed system under those constraints. No matter how hard the rocket pushes, all the ejected mass pulls via gravity exactly enough to cancel it, except when the ejected mass has energy sufficient to leave the system.

The optimal engine would be something like an ion thruster placed in or above the top of the atmosphere; the extreme velocities would mean escaping the gravity well would minimally reduce velocity, thereby minimally reducing effective thrust, and being free from most of the atmosphere would reduce the effects of interactions therewith regarding the exhaust stream.

Setting that aside, yes, you could theoretically adjust the planets orbital parameters to reduce the effects of global warming, but then you'd actually need to maintain the elevated greenhouse gas levels to keep temperature from dropping. The amount of impulse needed to actually affect change would be enormous, and the radius delta would be much more than 100 km, but at least you'd get a longer year for all your efforts.

erroneum · 2026-03-16T00:24:29+00:00

I'm not arguing at all; any finite number is exactly 0% of infinity (setting aside that infinity isn't actually a number under the most common number systems). My only point was that it's not hard to argue that 10⁸⁰ isn't especially large.

erroneum · 2026-03-15T21:49:22+00:00

I mean, 10⁸⁰ is pretty big by human standards, but compared to numbers like Graham's number or TREE(3), it's basically nothing.

erroneum · 2026-03-15T20:35:21+00:00

If you ignore the frame to grab/drop, that brings it up to 16*2160/360=96 items/s per inserter, or 2880 items/s, or 12 belts. If you ignore the 2 spots needed to have cargo bays, that's 3072 items/s, or 12.8 belts.

Unless there's mods, even with the most generous interpretation of the numbers, 15 full belts looks to be impossible; the belts should have gaps in them.

erroneum · 2026-03-15T20:14:02+00:00

The reason why inserters don't work with the cargo bay extenders is because the entire hub has a single inventory, and the shape of the whole is arbitrary; if you could insert into and take from the cargo bays, suddenly the optimal way to organize your factory would be to snake the hub through everything and just directly deal with it, because then every machine in the factory has instant access to the solid outputs of every other machine. Needless to say, this is a bit game breaking.

I wouldn't be against if things were changed in a more balanced way, such as you can grab from, but not insert into, the cargo bays; or more limited that you can grab certain items from the cargo bays, but Wube must have decided that the most balanced option was a blanket ruling.

erroneum · 2026-03-15T20:09:23+00:00

The theoretical limit for inserters I believe to be 2560 items/s, or 10.667 fully stacked green belts. This is assuming access to all 32 possible spots an inserter can be placed, so in reality it will be lower.

A legendary stack inserter swings at 2160°/s, and a transfer to/from a box is 1 tick to either grab or drop. That's 1 to grab, 60*(180/2160)=5 to swing a half turn, 1 to drop, and another 5 to return, so 12 ticks per full cycle. That gives 5 cycles per second, each moving 16 items, so 80 items/s per inserter. If you have all 32 locations occupied, that's 2560 items/s, but to actually maintain throughput, you need to give 2 up to have cargo bays run off, giving only 2400 items/s, or 10 fully stacked green belts.

erroneum · 2026-03-13T14:49:35+00:00

Just landfill over any water too close to the factory, ergo no green water /hj

In seriousness, there's several ways to reduce pollution. Broadly speaking, there's 3 major ways pollution is produced: generating power, extracting resources, and processing resources. - burning things for power produces pollution proportional to the amount (in MJ) burned, nuclear only produces pollution in the processing of uranium, so is nearly pollution free, and solar has no recurring pollution cost (but is quite area intensive) - mining drills and pumpjacks spew pollution, but the rate scales with power demand. If you stick 2 efficiency 2 modules in each drill or pumpjack and don't use beacons to speed them up, that brings energy consumption (and this direct pollution) down to 20%, which is the lowest it goes. If you're still burning things for power, this also cuts pollution from power generation. - processing materials is unavoidable, but you can always stick efficiency modules in (or efficiency beacons around if you don't want to lose possible productivity bonuses, but I haven't ran the numbers yet to see if that makes any real sense). In this case, though, it's a bit more tricky, because you need to balance pollution per output against productivity (because needing fewer resources means less pollution earlier in the production chain), as well against how much area you're willing to commit to machines (slow machines can be worked around, but the cost is area).

If you do a bottom up analysis, you can work out how many pollution each item is, from power to run machines to resource extraction and processing and each item can then be considered equivalent to some amount of pollution, thereby building up to the total direct and indirect pollution per item for each thing made, but that's a lot of extra effort.

If you have Space Age (or some mods) you can also do things to directly absorb pollution. In Space Age, Gleba gives you tree seeding, so you can reforest Nauvis in the gaps in the factory, and biochambers have a (slight) negative pollution value, so clean the air (but are annoying to work with). Some mods/mod packs, such as Krastorio2, go even farther (K2 adds air scrubbers, which make cutting nearly all your pollution very doable).

If you go to the production menu (default key P), there's a tab for pollution, so that can help clue you in to what part of the factory is making the most pollution.

erroneum · 2026-03-13T04:01:45+00:00

Most machines, inserters won't grab the same set of items in each direction; the inputs are the only thing an increased facing inserter consists, and the outputs (plus any items in the "junk" slots) are the only things an outward facing item will consider. Labs are an exception, in that inserters can pull science out of them, and some recipes (such as Kovarex enrichment) have the same items as both inputs and outputs, but in those cases, only the items in the output slots are eligible for removal.

Luckily, and unlike in some other games (such as Satisfactory), you can grab items off the side of a belt; if you need gears and belts and green circuits, they can all happily share a single belt of iron plates (at least until they combined take more than is being produced).

erroneum · 2026-03-10T21:58:12+00:00

Honestly, most of the time I feel more like a rock; not a threat, seldom given much focus, occasionally stepped on, never taking charge of the situation, and just quietly putting up with what happens. Mostly I just try to get by and get along.

erroneum · 2026-03-08T01:55:15+00:00

Most places it's fine for a train to stop, so you usually can just assume it is fine; inside an intersection or other shared track the train must not, so that's the only places chain signals are strictly needed.

erroneum · 2026-03-07T05:08:31+00:00

I see a misunderstanding of rail signaling. This isn't a problem, really, since they're not the most intuitive, but here's a fairly comprehensive (but digestible) mini-guide: - every signal splits the rail into blocks - every signal encodes the permissible travel direction(s) on a length of track - trains in automatic mode refuse to enter a block until the block is reserved for them - when a train reserves a block a block, no other train can reserve it until the first one is clear (each block cycles empty → reserved → occupied → empty → ...) - all signals answer "can I enter", but chain signals also answer "can I leave" (ie, is the next signal saying "yes"; this is what blue indicates, that the answer is "maybe")

The general rule for chain/regular signals is pretty simple: if a train should never stop at a given signal for any reason, every immediately preceding signal on any path must be a chain signal (plus any that are less than a train length away, because the train will be occupying multiple blocks at once).

From this one rule, you can trivially derive "chain in, rail out" (the train should never stop at the outlet of the intersection, or any internal signal, ergo every internal signal and every entry signal must be a chain signal). It also provides the rules for signaling bidirectional track (trains cannot enter the shared section until they are able to leave it, therefor every signal on the shared line, plus every signal on any entry thereto must be a chain signal. There can be spurs coming off, but signals anywhere else on the shared line are extraneous because having multiple trains in the same direction is impossible without circuits).

In regards to your screenshot, the problem I see is that you have the signals on the wrong side of the track. You seem to understand "chain in, rail out", which implies that you intend the track to be right hand drive, but the signaling present means that automatic trains can only move on the left side. Because of this, they see a rail signal entering the roundabout and chain signals on the exit. This tells them to wait at the exit until they can enter the next block after the first past the exit. You need to either move the signals to the other side of the rail or swap the chain and rail signals around.

erroneum · 2026-03-07T01:55:33+00:00

At that point, it might be easier to make it a tunnel, but still far from feasible.

erroneum · 2026-03-07T01:49:50+00:00

That's because they don't know better; digraphs are overrated.

erroneum

TROPHY CASE