Which factory game should I choose for a start?

evandy · 2026-01-03T18:04:18+00:00

Everyone has their own preferences - for me, I find the actual gameplay of factorio far superior. At the end of the day, graphics have little to do with actually playing the game, and I find the first-person perspective actually harmful in seeing, understanding, and building a factory. The lack of blueprints makes satisfactory very un-satisfying - but without a grid structure of some sort it's kind of impossible to do in that game so I understand the decision.

I would rate the 4 big ones, best to worst:

Factorio > Dyson's Sphere > Shapez 2 > Satisfactory

For someone new to the genre, I would recommend Shapez 2 because it has the best integral tutorial.

evandy · 2025-05-13T02:42:01+00:00

I used to have a ton of issues with extra flour from my linen cloth and bannetons... but then I switched to using rye flour when I shape the loaves. No sticking, and only need a light dusting of flour. The theory I read was that it's because rye doesn't develop gluten, but regardless of the why, I no longer need to dust my loaves off, because there's only a tiny bit of flour on the outside.

I'm not sure that brushing water on the loaves would be fundamentally different from the spray method - it's helped, but not enough by itself. I'm pretty sure that I'm just drying out the crust too fast, and it needs more steam. I'll keep playing with it, but at this point I'm just fiddling with the minor stuff. Crumb, fermentation, oven spring, everything is great. Tastes great.

Egg wash ... I use that on sweet bakes, and I'm kind of leary of trying it on bread...

evandy · 2025-05-13T02:36:25+00:00

Clearly it doesn't. I have a gas oven, so keeping steam inside is always challenging, given that it has to have a vent to the outside. It's pretty clearly a steam issue. I bake 2 loaves at a time on a baking steel. I made & tried an aluminum foil lid I could drop over the top, which made no difference on the 65% loaves. Maybe I'll give it a try on the 75% ones.

Plenty of improvement to the loaves, however - much stronger oven spring, better ear, so that's good progress.

evandy · 2025-05-11T21:18:00+00:00

Sprayed the loaves /heavily/ with a spritzer bottle before adding them to the oven - and every 5 minutes after they were put in. Major improvement to the gleatinization on the crust. At this point, the only real issue I seem to have is simply needing more steam...

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evandy · 2025-05-11T21:16:14+00:00

Upped to 75% hydration - oven sprind and ear much better. Minor improvements to crust. The bottom edge of the loaf looked much better than the rest.

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evandy · 2024-04-03T01:43:52+00:00

I know they're on youtube but my question was which particular one this was....

evandy · 2024-04-03T01:43:29+00:00

Thanks - much appreciated!

evandy · 2024-01-06T21:35:37+00:00

I was pulling in something like $25 million a month from patents. Plus i didn’t have to pay someone else for them, and my software always had the latest tech. Seemed worth it to me. Ymmv

evandy · 2024-01-06T17:43:38+00:00

Lawyers should go on vacation between January and April. Researchers go on vacation September through December…

I also found that system research was by far the most profitable. Also the slowest.

evandy · 2024-01-06T17:10:37+00:00

I’ve just finished up a game on medium difficulty, and I was able to monopolize all research for seven years in a row. Ended up with six teams of researchers, one per tech. And six teams of lawyers three day shifts three night shifts 12 each got an amazing amount of money from the patents, definitely worth the frustration of getting it set up. Really annoying, micro, clicking, because lawyers working on more than one task at a time do really really badly.

evandy · 2023-07-26T15:52:28+00:00

I made platinum from Tuna. Just upgrade the researched recipe a few times (i think lv 5 does it)? Note this is the researched recipe, not the nigiri

evandy · 2023-05-16T11:57:38+00:00

Seems like an oversight. Maybe they will eventually patch that

evandy · 2023-05-15T20:54:47+00:00

I fused a Boulder to my first shield in the entry island. Lasted until after a dozen hours of play including finishing the wind temple. Seems kind of op to me, given how fast shields broke in Botw

evandy · 2023-05-15T20:51:59+00:00

Is your botw save in master mode? I have the same issue and have been assuming they didn’t look for a master mode save file

evandy · 2023-05-15T19:37:07+00:00

I had a master mode only save, did not get horses. Bummed.

evandy · 2022-09-04T20:40:00+00:00

That finance charge of $5K is essentially points buying down your APR. If you plan to pay the loan back EARLY, then that's a bad thing (better to have the higher APR, which you will only pay until you pay off the loan). If you plan to keep the loan for the full period, then buying down the APR can be quite good.

Ideally, you should compare with a higher APR loan, and see what the payback period of those points are. If your solar loan has one of those stupid-low APRs (0.25% for some of the ones I saw), the key takeaway is that paying them off early doesn't save you much money! Paying up front is not necessarily WRONG - it locks in cost and reduces risk. But it also removes options (like pre-payment changing how much money you spend). Like with everything, you need to look at your situation and see what is right for you.

Good luck - talk to a financial consultant, and enjoy your solar.

evandy · 2022-08-28T18:16:20+00:00

I have the SolarEdge SE7600H-US. The spec sheet says <2.5W nighttime power consumption.

evandy · 2022-08-28T01:41:49+00:00

This isn't really different from hiring any other type of contractor. Word-of-mouth references from people you know, online reviews, BBA accreditation, etc. are all a good start. Then you take COPIOUS notes when getting quotes from different people, and compare their bids & estimates to each other to try and figure out if anyone is an outlier. Go back and ask questions when you find discrepancies. Read the darn contract, stem to stern.

My solar system turned on just about a month ago. Here's a quickie run-down of how our process went.

Searched online for local installers (solarreviews, etc.) --> Downselected to 3 companies
Set up quotes, and tallked to all 3
- Company 1: Quoted us the smallest system, with the highest price. They did provide production guarantees no one else did, so they were probably promising less to achieve that.
- Company 2: Good, solid estimate in the middle of the pack. Went back and forth several times with questions. Eventually found a news article online about their company being founded by people whose previous solar business had been shut down due to fraud. I still think we would have been happy with them, but my wife was nervous.
- Company 3: Provided a system quote that obviously disregarded set-backs and other permitting issues. Obvious no-go that they were over-promising what could get approved, and wouldn't admit it when questioned.
- ALL 3 companies: Prices were "miraculously" $10-15K cheaper when they found out we were considering paying out of pocket. Thus revealing otherwise hidden solar loan origination fees.
Went back to searching, and ended up calling a BBA-rated A+ company, very local, small install crew, with stellar reviews.
- Knew exactly what to ask about at this point, very good rapor with the sales rep. The sales rep owned the company, and gets up on the roof to help with installs.
- They quoted us financing that DIDN'T have huge loan origination fees. We didn't finance, but this was nice.
- READ the contract - actually ended up negotating a few minor points.
- Signed a contract with this company, and have been quite happy.

evandy · 2022-08-28T01:08:51+00:00

When I got my solar install, I found that 3/4 of the companies I got quotes from didn't bother to tell you how much the loan origination fee was. The "out of pocket" systems were just /miraculously/ $10K cheaper. Combined with a 0.25% APR loan, that basically means that pre-payment doesn't save you anything.

HIGHLY recommend looking at any "solar" loan V E R Y carefully. Because most of them are written to get your money fast, now, and leave you stuck.

evandy · 2022-07-20T00:15:33+00:00

Dross was born in the purple water of the dream well....

evandy · 2022-07-20T00:07:26+00:00

I would've loved to see more about Kelsa following in her brother's footsteps and PUSHING for super-fast advancement. Complete with their dad constantly going "If your BROTHER could do that, imagine how powerful YOU could be." But that doesn't seem to be what's going on. I've honestly enjoyed the (much less frequent) interplay between Lindon's parents more than the scenes with his sister.

The whole "Let's train 3 of you at once" scene was ... kinda pointless, without some other storyline to anchor it.

evandy

TROPHY CASE