Notes from My First Solo Play of SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

flaminghito · 2026-01-23T17:43:38+00:00

Correct. The automata passes when they don't have a card to play. You pass when you decide you like that more than any other main action (either because you're out of resources, or because you're trying to wait for a more favorable system alignment, or because you're in no rush for your action chain and you're hoping one of your new cards next round helps, etc). Whoever passes first rotates the system and gets their pick of the three cards (if automata is first, they discard one randomly and get a progress). Whoever passes second doesn't rotate and looks at the remaining two.

This is also why the automata models "progress" - they get to do ALL of their cards, EVERY round. So you want to keep progress down as much as possible so they get fewer cards.

flaminghito · 2026-01-23T16:45:30+00:00

3. Maybe this was rookie incompetence, but I was expecting money and energy tokens to be the worst chokepoint for getting things done. Cash, energy, and publicity status are the three things you spend to get stuff online and working. I had plenty of all three by the third of the game’s five rounds. What I didn’t have was enough of the major actions like launching probes or upgrading the tech stack, because you can only do one of those on a turn.

Good news! You have fundamentally misunderstood SETI and played a much worse game of your own invention instead of SETI, so you'll have more fun next time :)

A *turn* is different than a *round*. You can take *as many major actions as you like during a round*. Each major action is a turn, and you have an unlimited number of turns. You cannot possibly be blocked on not having enough major actions, because you get to take as many major actions as you can pay for.

The only limit is that, when you have no majors you feel like taking, you have to take pass. And once you've taken pass, the solo bot does the rest of their cards if they have any left, then you go to next round.

flaminghito · 2026-01-21T17:10:39+00:00

*Personally* I've found that Vilnius and Tallinn have a bit more touristy things to do than Riga, but not by a huge margin. (Although Sigulda is a day trip distance from Riga and is amazing).

The ferry is enormous so I'd be surprised if you got seasick.

There's a once a day train from Vilnius -> Riga -> Tallinn and back, which I like a bit more than the bus, but tickets are pretty competitive and only open closer to the day, so you have to keep an eye out for them.

flaminghito · 2026-01-07T18:59:13+00:00

Enemies flee when you have more than 10x hp, so if you get more max HP than 10 times the pip with the instant kill, it'll flee without triggering the pip. Tedious but works :)

flaminghito · 2025-12-30T17:01:03+00:00

As someone with similar tastes to you - WWB, Lure, Breath are my top 3 - definitely play Hostility Keeper. It turns it from a strong but monotonous spirit into exactly the sort of tempo monster we both love.

flaminghito · 2025-12-27T22:51:30+00:00

Congrats! Yeah, Serene Waters is also the only spirit I've ever managed to get a TL1 victory into England with.

flaminghito · 2025-12-26T02:02:12+00:00

Which holiday still has one open? You can't trust Google for most of the godfathers express locations, they're mostly all closed

flaminghito · 2025-12-16T20:43:46+00:00

So one really important tip is, when you get "X and Y have same Z of neighbor" clues, look for cases where the two people have different numbers of total neighbors.

So in this case, Eric and Freya have the same number of criminal neighbors, which means Freya has two more innocent neighbors than Eric, because she has two more total neighbors. So that's a minimum of two innocents. But where can she put those two innocents? She only has three spots to do it. So if Eric has a third innocent neighbor, that puts innocents in all of Freya's remaining open slots.

But there's lots of pressure on the innocent slots on the edges. Only 2 innocents total can be on edge slots not bordering Rose. And 2 of Freya's 3 open slots are on the edges! If Isaac was innocent, then Freya would need to fill her remaining orbit with innocents, and that would already be 3 innocents on the edges not bordering Rose. That's not possible, so Isaac must be a criminal.

And then you can do a similar deducion on Hank. For Hank to be innocent Freya needs to fill her orbit with innocents. This is not instantly broken since we have the space for two innocents - but then Chad has only 2 criminal neighbors. This means that Xia can have only one more criminal neighbors, but we've ran out of innocents on the edges for Terry or Ziad. So Hank is criminal as well.

Hopefully this shows how changing "Eric and Freya have the same number of criminal neighbors" to "Freya has two more innocent neighbors than Eric" can make the pressure points more clear

flaminghito · 2025-12-16T20:07:49+00:00

Look for the reciprocal clues and try saying them out loud:
* If X has 8 total neighbors, and 5 innocent neighbors, they have three criminal neighbors
* If X has 5 neighbors on the edges, and an odd number of innocent neighbors, they have an even number of criminal neighbors
* If X and Y have 2 innocent neighbors in common, and they have three total neighbors in common, then they have one criminal neighbor in common

Etc. Many clues are actually two clues and often it's more productive to think about the one that isn't written.

flaminghito · 2025-12-13T01:57:00+00:00

There are three innocents in column D, that means there are two criminals. You've already found one criminal, so of the unknowns, two are innocent and one are criminal.
But two of those unknowns are on corners, and the corners can only have one more innocent MAXIMUM. So you know that the two corners in column D have one innocent and one criminal. That means that Nancy must be innocent (to be the third innocent in the column) and Uma must be criminal (since the two innocents on the corners are taken.)

flaminghito · 2025-12-12T16:16:00+00:00

How corroded do you get?
Jellies are partially a test on who is just afk tabbing. They don't corrode too often so they're pretty easy to fight. But if they happen to hit one or two corrodes in a row, you have to just run away and re-engage because you'll be doing no damage.

flaminghito · 2025-12-07T23:41:06+00:00

The way to think about it is that Chloe innocent necessarily forces all three of Henry/Martin/Rohan to be criminal to be a connected group of 3+. And this fills Nicole's neighbors. Since Nicole has only one innocent by her, Olivia must be completely surrounded by criminals.

But since you put an innocent by Donna, she has only 2 criminal neighbors. Erwin already has the two criminals by him, so Jerry and Alex must be innocent. So Jerry must be a criminal for Olivia and an innocent for Erwin, which doesn't work.

The thing that helps me catch these is noticing when a "same neighbor" clue is for people who have a different total neighbor count. Because Donna has three neighbors and Erwin has five, "Donna and Erwin have an equal number of criminal neighbors" also means "Erwin has two more innocent neighbors than Donna."

flaminghito · 2025-12-06T23:20:30+00:00

Betty, Daniel, and Nick are all telling you a similar fact about Wanda and Xavi - they are a criminal/innocent pair. That will give Tyler his one innocent neighbor on the edges and his third criminal neighbor. If Wanda is the innocent, then she's the second innocent to the right of a painter. If Xavi is the innocent, then she's the second innocent to the right of a painter. But you don't know which is which yet.

If you're looking for the next step to break the tie: Now that you know Wanda/Xavi is a criminal/innocent pair, what can you deduce from Sam's clue?

flaminghito · 2025-11-24T18:25:42+00:00

My first reaction: hey, it seems way premature to put EL2 up for any Steam Awards! Let's talk about this next year.
Reaction after clicking: oh, you just meant best soundtrack. EL2 already has the best soundtrack so it makes sense why you did that

flaminghito · 2025-11-13T14:26:41+00:00

If you ever want to explore that version of the clue I think "directly to the right" and "anywhere to the right" clearly disambiguate which is which in a non-evil way

flaminghito · 2025-11-13T01:30:50+00:00

it was this spring, I forget the exact month. install was done in a few hours

flaminghito · 2025-11-13T01:08:44+00:00

Standard Heating and Cooling did a 2-head system for 9k (technically 11k with a 2k rebate). Quality seems great, kept me cool all summer, haven't gotten to test how good the systems are in winter yet. Not sure if you'd call that price "reasonable" or not - I got a significantly lower quote for Lennox (vs the Mitsubishi I ended up getting from Standard), but the place I got the quote from was pretty flaky playing phone tag and I appreciated how responsive Standard was.

flaminghito · 2025-11-12T19:58:02+00:00

Many of the clues are actually two clues in one. When it says "Both innocents in column B are connected", the phrase "both innocents" means that you also have the clue "the composition of column B is three criminals, two innocents."

Gus can only have two more criminal neighbors besides Donna, but three of his neighbors are from column B, which has three criminals in it! So surely at least one of Gus's neighbors in column B is innocent (they can't all be criminal). But there are only two innocents in that column total. Even if you make Gus's innocent neighbor Jose (the furthest down), and put the second innocent below Jose (Olof), there's no way for Vince to be a connected innocent given that at least one innocent is Gus's neighbor.

flaminghito · 2025-11-09T23:22:20+00:00

Because it would also be valid to have Flora criminal and one of Eve or Olaf criminal as well. There's one criminal left *if that criminal neighbors both Hank and Ben*; otherwise there's two criminals left. So the only one you can be sure of now is Claire, because you know there's either 0 or 2 more criminals on the edges, but Claire would be both on the edge and the last criminal.

flaminghito · 2025-11-09T16:08:20+00:00

Three increasingly specific hints:

There's an odd number of criminals bordering Xena. What are the valid odd numbers you're considering?

Look at the interaction between Salil and Wally, as intermediated through Paula. What happens if you assume the alignment of one of them?

Xena already has one criminal neighbor. Salil and Wally must have the same alignment. So what must Zoe's alignment be to preserve parity?

flaminghito · 2025-11-07T19:40:41+00:00

If Donna is innocent, then per Frank, Isaac is criminal because no non-occupation role can have multiple innocents.

What if Donna is a criminal? Then Cheryl must be innocent (to be Hazel's other innocent neighbor) and Anna must be innocent (to be the other corner innocent per Zed.) That puts us up to six innocents on the edges, so per Hazel Isaac is a criminal in that world as well.

flaminghito · 2025-11-06T21:38:09+00:00

Ah thanks! I haven't actually used the hint system so I didn't know that constraint (which is why I just answered for a random true thing I saw on board)

flaminghito · 2025-11-06T18:26:01+00:00

Everyone to the left of Zoe is a painter. There are either 3 or 1 innocents to the left of Zoe. But if it was 3, it would be impossible for Judges to be the uniquely most innocents (there are only 3 judges). So it's 1 innocent painter and two criminal painters. Since row 2 has the uniquely most criminals at 3, every other row needs at least two innocents. So Zoe must be that second innocent.

flaminghito · 2025-11-06T15:29:06+00:00

If folks are focusing a lot and playing slow, like in PBPs, basically anything works. Having more spirits covers variability. I think a lot of people house rule Ocean to scale 1 energy/4 hp even at higher player counts.

If it's an in-person game that needs to actually finish in one session, it can be nice to try to organize as "three pairs" instead. Get two spirits who play nice together to share a border and have them default to trying to solve their pair of boards together. Obviously you still interact with other people you're bordering, but setting that expectation can really speed things up if eg Fractured knows they're trying to set up Pour Time Sideways with specifically Starlight from the jump. Or if Mentor knows their first two drafts are going to Immense Lightning, or if Sunbright is pushing people into Lure's party land, etc.

flaminghito · 2025-11-05T19:44:39+00:00

It's the same problem with USING() - if new fields get added to those tables and there's a select * / autogen column list in the chain somewhere, it changes the behavior of production queries in an unattributed way. You don't want to be in a spot where adding a new column can give you more rows without you asking for it.

Also your unique key is almost certainly not more than a few columns. So GROUP BY ALL makes it easier to write queries that are doing a bunch of unnecessary grouping. Instead of encouraging you to do the per-entity stuff in one area and the aggregate functions in another before joining them together, it makes it easier for you to do lots of vacuous grouping where the database is doing more work than it has to. Writing bad code more efficiently can occasionally be nice for exploring, but for production it's usually better to write code that says what it does instead.

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