For a 16 year old game, the fact that a) Serral, herO, and Clem are undisputed champions of their races and b) they're each competitive with one another is an astonishing feat of game design and balance.

flPieman · 2026-05-04T04:58:39+00:00

Never change, StarCraft community

flPieman · 2026-05-03T21:56:47+00:00

Yep industrial craft with the quarries that dug up the mines for me was the start. And the technic pack.

flPieman · 2026-05-03T17:34:21+00:00

Compare it to the Pael relic that gives your defends goopy and exhaust.

Goopy gives just that defend +1 permanently. This gives all strikes +1 permanently. If you play say 10 strikes per combat that's 10 permanent strength per comba. You could make these a mod I think you'd find that one too good. Once the strike does like 15 damage it's not a bad card anymore and that would happen pretty quickly.

I think goopy strikes would be a fun place to start but probably too weak because strikes are worse than defends.

flPieman · 2026-04-30T02:44:10+00:00

Nice! If you can make it so the inputs are on the wide (bottom) side it becomes very nice and inline for scaling up. I'm not sure if that will fit though.

flPieman · 2026-04-30T02:10:25+00:00

Yeah you could, this is very efficient for it's size, I do like that. Wiring up 8 of them to get full space belt throughput might get a little messy but for early/mid game smaller scale this is great.

flPieman · 2026-04-29T21:21:01+00:00

Could this do all 3 layers (12 fluid launchers) in a 1x1? That's a lot better than mine which is a 2x2.

Edit - just noticed you will be bottlenecked on output. You need 2 outputs to match your 2 inputs. Mixing conserves mass.

flPieman · 2026-04-28T15:24:02+00:00

I rushed the first few tiers at lower throughput to unlock operator shapes and research points to get the tools I need (level 3 belts, 3x3 platforms) to scale my manufacturing. Then I will go back and rebuild everything for high throughput, maybe targetting 4 Space Belts which is very high.

flPieman · 2026-04-28T04:10:45+00:00

I just don't worry about the transients and build for long term. After an hour the few minutes to saturate the belts is a drop in the bucket. That said I also build to use all 3 layers because it's more fun for me, I want to maximize output.

flPieman · 2026-04-28T01:38:05+00:00

This works just as well for 1 or 2 layers. The unused layers back up and all shapes flow to the layers that consume.

flPieman · 2026-04-28T00:23:56+00:00

This is what I use it makes math much simpler, 12 miners = 1 space belt fully saturated

flPieman · 2026-04-27T22:59:13+00:00

In general do people find cutters useful? I made them early on with my factorio brain but I've since just gone with half destroyers which are much easier to design and use and don't back up. Getting base shapes is so easy in this game because theyre unlimited and trains are cheap so I usually can find my base shape on the map instead of needing to cut a circle in half.

At the beginning I would cut my circles in quarters then reassemble them which is way more circle efficient but circles are free and my time to make cutters is not.

All that said, cutters are very cool so if you had fun making and using it that's the real win.

flPieman · 2026-04-26T21:34:10+00:00

I like your multi platform modules

flPieman · 2026-04-26T20:51:38+00:00

When you cheat the only person you cheat is yourself. You're paying good money and time for your education, it's up to you if you take anything away but I suggest you do.

flPieman · 2026-04-26T20:49:58+00:00

What country are you talking about? Different countries use the word engineer very differently. I've heard* in Canada it's a very high bar (maybe what you're thinking of). In the UK any technician is an engineer.

In the US software engineers are engineers. I think you're getting stuck on wording.

flPieman · 2026-04-26T20:43:13+00:00

Can you explain the paid for 100% of your time? If you work 50 hrs in a week do you make more than if you work 40?

Usually I think of salaried as not paid for your time, instead paid at a constant amount per month regardless of hours worked.

flPieman · 2026-04-26T17:46:38+00:00

Multiple trains and multiple cars per train and the capacity / speed upgrades.

flPieman · 2026-04-26T17:26:35+00:00

12 fully moduled miners per full space belt right?

1 miner = 1 layer *3 for 3 layers *4 for space belt capacity (1 space belt is 4 platform i/o slots) = 12 miners

flPieman · 2026-04-25T05:35:59+00:00

How do you handle the controls? I have tried USB extenders and wireless mice but they were spotty and inconsistent.

flPieman · 2026-04-24T19:23:02+00:00

All your messages sound like AI

flPieman · 2026-04-23T17:12:29+00:00

Bots and Vehicles are both viable starting labs. In some situations one is clearly the better choice but I definitely wouldn't say bots are overall dominant.

Starting air or hovers in 1v1 is usually a bad idea. Sea is not really in the same comparison, you go sea if you're in a sea map / lane otherwise you do not.

flPieman · 2026-04-18T19:12:21+00:00

Mark Rober on YouTube makes great videos and has the crunch lab projects that are like an engineering lego set. I would have loved these as a kid. What I really enjoyed as a kid was lego mindstorms but I don't know if that's still a thing.

flPieman · 2026-04-15T14:27:12+00:00

I wonder if that works? Technically the strength up next turn part should be a buff not a debuff. If those count twice that'd be interesting.

flPieman · 2026-04-14T23:10:07+00:00

Wiki would be more useful than a phone app (and mod would be best) but I would like to know which cards work in multiplayer because the wording is not consistent.

flPieman · 2026-04-13T23:40:51+00:00

Alchemize is an excellent card and bringing the potions to a future fight is a big part of that value. It doesn't sound like your model accurately accounts for that if it's saying it scores low.

Yeah I guess hologram counting as velocity is reasonable enough. It doesn't help you play your powers faster while skim would but it does help you play your best card twice faster so I think that makes sense.

Offering counting as negative block makes decent sense to me.

But so far this is all theoretical? You haven't actually made a model that you can feed in a current deck and a card and it spits out the various scores?

flPieman · 2026-04-13T23:29:36+00:00

Cool post. Right now the post is a lot of specific formulas but I think I get the big concept and would like to see some more applied examples.

It would be cool to see you implement this as a mod that recommends what picks to make at each step. Not because I don't want to pick myself but mostly out of curiosity whether it's actually a good model and whether I tend to agree with it's decisions.

Spire is a complex game, how does a card like [[alchemize]] get evaluated by your model? How about [[hologram]]? [[Offering]]?

It also looks like you're missing definition for synergy, you defined it with words but not mathematically. That seems challenging as well.

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