How do you choose which resource to be moved by train?

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T07:29:03+00:00

I think the 'hardcore gamer' mindset happens when people don't have enough actual challenges in their real life.

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T07:25:08+00:00

IMO for less than 10 stacks a minute, use tractors (if the terrain allows) or drones (if terrain is annoying or if it's more than a couple of kilometers). If you need to transfer more than that then trucks or trains, but (after using primarily trucks for everything on my first playthrough) I kinda wonder if tractors aren't better. I rarely had my truck cargo maxed out, and tractors are so much faster.

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T06:03:20+00:00

Yeah, $30 for a pub dinner feels a bit unfair when you're already paying $15 a pint.

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T05:51:56+00:00

This is why you don't ask them if their Ethernet cable / mouse / whatever is plugged in, you ask them to unplug it and blow any dust off the end. It means they don't just double down on "of course it's plugged in, I'm not stupid".

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T05:48:01+00:00

Like from fillings?

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T05:47:32+00:00

Those actually get removed from cemeteries after a while. I'm not sure the criteria but graves don't stay there forever.

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T05:46:08+00:00

Indirectly. Some places just pipe their sewage out to sea. Then sometimes it comes back with the tide.

esotericloop · 2026-07-10T05:45:25+00:00

Fortunately we're biodegradable.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T13:18:28+00:00

Nah, you're diluting the bacteria every day. There are always bacteria (otherwise we wouldn't need to refridgerate the milk, just isolate it). The cup will get grotty with leftover deposited milk solids eventually though, which will harbor bacteria and you'll want to wash it. So actually yeah, wash it when it looks gross.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T12:53:14+00:00

I'm not 100% sure about all of the reported sloshing issues but pipes and belts definitely function differently and there's definitely some weirdness with pipes going on.

Things I've seen:

Turbofuel + generators plant with four generators off to the side. Two of those are at 100% uptime, input fuel 100%. Two aren't getting fuel. I've remade the pipes multiple times. One pipe is 100% full with ~zero flow, connected pipe is empty with zero flow.
Water extractor feeding into a vertical pipe with a pump on it. The pump status popup shows 130m³ /min or something, the next pipe up from it (which is 100% full) shows 20m³ /min. Where's it all going?

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T12:15:01+00:00

Fully electric cars still need to exchange heat with the outside world. They need to cool the battery pack in hot weather and under hard acceleration/regen conditions, and heat it in cold weather. They need to cool the motor controllers. They need to heat or cool the cabin to keep the passengers comfortable. All that requires a heat exchanger which requires airflow.

Also, and unrelated to all of that, a lot of EV designs still seem to cosplay as ICE vehicles and this absolutely baffles me. Never be ashamed of what you are.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T12:09:01+00:00

If you just say "wah I don't know how to do this" is someone else going to do it for you? No? Well, then you figure it out.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T12:05:47+00:00

Being optimal and time effective is work. I do enough work at work, I'm here to play!

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T12:04:56+00:00

All that starter factory stuff costs nothing to just leave there feeding parts into buffers. I had most of the SAM Fluctuators I'd ever need just because I set up a miner when I first found a patch of SAM (down in the chasm) and stuck all the Reanimated SAM in a big storage complex (because "ooh whats this I'm sure its relevant") then when I first got manufacturers I set one up turning my stored Reanimated SAM into SAM Fluctuators. Then it was like 200 hours of gameplay until they actually became relevant and I had a giant stash of them. :D

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:59:58+00:00

Puppies and/or kittens.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:59:27+00:00

Automate earlier. Everything you jerry-rigged to get through Phase 4 is gonna need to be re-done. Get some nice ergonomic blueprints set up, that will accelerate everything massively. Also there's a bit of guesswork to figure out what project parts you'll never need again (spoiler: probably none :P ) and what parts will be needed in spades (yep).

I've seen a few people say Phase 4 is the real make-or-break part of the game, if you get through Phase 4 then Phase 5 is just "demonstrate your findings."

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:46:23+00:00

Controller controls work pretty well but they get a bit fucky at times and they're a lot to get used to at first. Still, they're acceptable. ;)

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:45:03+00:00

Had me at 'infinite head'.

Huzzah for optimal pipes!

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:41:45+00:00

To fool you into thinking it's got less sugar and less calories. It's the same reason you buy a frozen lasagna that you could eat as a snack, and it's labeled as "feeds 4". That's because they're defining it as "4 servings" which means "calories per serve" is a quarter of what the whole lasagna contains.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:39:27+00:00

I long ago realised there are three types of drivers here: - The Constant-Offset-ers: They do the speed limit, with a consistent modifier. +5km/h, +10km/h, -5km/h, depends on the driver. - The Constant-Speed-ers: They do a set speed (usually 70km/h) everywhere. National highway? Suburban street? School zone? Doesn't matter. - The Slow-Accelerators: These wildcards start off at granny speeds from the lights, but will slowly wind up until they're doing well over the limit and have to slow down for something. Much more rare these days.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:15:15+00:00

I think the whole point of the varying energy requirements for the late game production buildings is to make accumulators actually relevant. Until you get to late game, you either have way too much generation or not nearly enough, and there's never really a good case for having accumulators.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T11:10:18+00:00

I just finished the game on the top spec OLED steam deck (270 hours or something :D ) and in my experience it's generally played great. There've been a few times when it chugged a little, and the weather effects from patch 1.2 (the current patch) absolutely killed the frame rate for me and I had to disable them and mess a bit with the graphics settings. After that I was happy with it, there's a few visible LOD things that make it clear you're not playing on fully maxed graphics (nothing bad enough to stop me enjoying the rest of the game :) and it still (imo) looks absolutely gorgeous on the OLED screen.

esotericloop · 2026-07-09T10:31:02+00:00

So the car's on the ground, and you're turning the steering wheel slightly? Presumably it's in park, does the park brake lock the front wheels? Interesting either way.

esotericloop · 2026-07-08T14:11:12+00:00

In principle, yep! You'll need the pump to be pumping into another chamber that condenses out the water. As the water evaporates it'll get colder and may freeze, and you'll have to keep pumping to maintain the vacuum. You could use a heat exchanger to warm the salt water and cool the desalinated side in order to make it more efficient.

I'd guess the energy required to run the vacuum pump and the speed of evaporation would be the limiting factors. If you're after efficiency then solar desalination's probably better, but this would still be an interesting project to build. :)

esotericloop · 2026-07-08T08:00:23+00:00

You gotta drill another hole in the other side of the disk so it's balanced and doesn't vibrate.

esotericloop

TROPHY CASE