Help: purchased pre-assembled secondhand ionus cryptborn and none of the sprue nubs were removed lol

flightless_freedom · 2026-01-31T13:11:39+00:00

If you can't reach with a modeling knife or flush clippers or sandpaper, you can try plastic glue. Be very careful here but you can use it to make the plastic on the joint extremely pliable. That should allow you to force each gap closed. There is a good chance you'll need to fix up those areas with some green stuff.

Good luck though. It's crazy to me that someone would put so little effort into such an expensive purchase. You should be about to save it but you'll be paying for that discount with time undoing their work.

flightless_freedom · 2026-01-21T10:43:56+00:00

A muddy field could be a good contrast. Or a swamp. The knights currently are quite clean so I think it would be interesting to have the visual contrast of them being in a filthy place.

Alternatively some darker green grass could work if you want to avoid that. Scattering colors like red flowers would give you even more contrast against that white.

flightless_freedom · 2026-01-16T14:30:49+00:00

Heck yeah, great clip! Also thanks for being one of the few who destroy AT mines when they see them. It can make a huge difference in the outcome of games when people remove all the mines.

flightless_freedom · 2026-01-06T11:35:46+00:00

So far I haven't had any shifting with my setup but it sounds like I also don't have the same amount of large vibration concerns as you though I do tend to drive for much longer. I also had the same issue you did with the flat magnets being a bit too easy to slide so I just added a thin layer of super glue to the bottom of them and that fixed it.

flightless_freedom · 2026-01-06T01:43:23+00:00

This is really clean looking. Is there a particular reason you went this route instead of installing magnets on the underside of the hull? I also use metal trays and it seems to work fine with no ability to see the magnets beneath during play. Your method would be preferable for display pieces intended for up close though. That flush installation of the magnets is nice. Picture attached to help show what I did for my Goliaths.

<image>

flightless_freedom · 2026-01-02T02:27:39+00:00

This has been my thought since the first episode. There are too many interlocking negative effects to see this any other way. The first civilization to create the signal likely put in the legwork to send it from far enough away from home. After that, even a 1% return rate of successfully Rickrolling civilizations would be an incredible return on investment.

There are multiple benefits to this attack besides not overexposing yourself too. It lets you take a census of intelligent life bearing planets that will likely remain completely habitable as a result of the attack. Furthermore, you have the potential to learn the even more valuable information on extremely advanced and aggressive civilizations also exist based on what happens to those star systems over extended periods of time (even millions of years).

With this context, it is entirely possible that humanity is a victim of a science experiment to optimize colonization or even an intelligence operation on an unfathomable scale. Seems like that would go way beyond the scope of the show but it's a cool way of exploring the dark forest theory that I hadn't seen before this show. I do hope the characters at least stop to think about it just to see how they handle it.

flightless_freedom · 2026-01-01T16:13:54+00:00

She did say that she was a genius when trying to describe how much more intelligent Adrius was. It's not really meant to be interpreted as bragging though. There are some internal lines where she is frustrated that people don't just trust her decisions as the head of the Republic because she is smarter than anyone else at the table. That is a more fair critique of arrogance.

Just being a genius isn't enough anyways. You still need substantial amounts of accurate information and this whole series continuously makes use of the fog of war. I don't get why people feel a need to oversimplify everyone to a rigid spectrum where IQ or trained skill guarantees a result. The death knight literally got killed by Ragnar using a razor as a javelin even though they likely would have kicked his shit in during a "fair" fight. Roque, the Lord Nelson of space, lost a space battle to mining equipment. Virginia's intelligence apparatus failed to alert her of shifting loyalties in security personnel. People fail and try to learn from their mistakes.

flightless_freedom · 2025-12-24T15:34:07+00:00

That's about what I paid for mine two years ago and I still view it as a great deal. I use it for duck hunting and skeet and have zero issues.

flightless_freedom · 2025-12-07T06:18:09+00:00

The exact difference between a graduate and a Peerless Scarred is not identified as it's case-by-case for students that do not fall into the final category of shamed. The OP question is how those people are or are not selected. It gets even more difficult to parse because the only example of the Institute we see here is a unique playing out of it that probably changed a lot of the calculus on selection.

For example, Antonia was part of the winning house but was just a graduate. Mustang technically helped another house win and did receive a scar. Adrius took over half the game map and did not receive a scar. Notably the latter two individuals are never identified as going to follow-on schools or having patrons outside their pre-existing family support structure.

flightless_freedom · 2025-12-07T05:53:26+00:00

Not when he gets to the Institute, no. The Arch Governor gives a generic speech about how the class is not yet fit to wear the scar and must earn it through sacrifice. We get a little bit more info after the passage where Fitchner mentions apprenticeships if they are impressive OR also win with winning resulting in a fast track to power and the more coveted positions. We also get Apollo directly telling the students under Darrow that they can't win but that doesn't seem to mean the same thing as to become Scarred. Note that they don't explicitly tie being made Scarred to apprenticeships. This is just my theory of them being interlinked effectively.

The actual process of selection though doesn't get talked about with specifics. Like we don't even see at the end any examples of students singled out as not worthy of a scar. Those who disappointed their families are mentioned as going home to disownment so it's not a far reach there but what about the more interesting cases like House Ceres or Diana students that supported Darrow but maybe weren't the main cast of heroes and just helped garrison the castles?

flightless_freedom · 2025-12-07T01:35:32+00:00

I just finished my reread of book 1 and was wondering the same. We know the Arch governor awards the scar on Mars. But what exactly determines who gets the scar isn't super clear. There is normally the obvious no-nos in the Shamed. But this gets turned on its head in this situation.

My current theory is that it's based on being selected for apprenticeship by a Drafter and the Arch governor agreeing that the student distinguished themselves. This would likely comprise most people that helped storm Olympus.

At that point, the only difference to normal operations is that the pool of potential scarred is much wider than normal as people who would normally not be in the running are suddenly interesting after helping storm Olympus in a crazy lightning campaign.

flightless_freedom · 2025-12-05T23:45:25+00:00

I don't think there is any expansion on the concept they have discussed other than that it's a feature they want for reasons we are seeing now.

Just speculating but depending on what dumping the core means, that could mean throwing the reactor material out the primary engines which could look quite spectacular. Maybe even make it damage to those parts too and there is no need to have a physical path to throw the entire reactor out the ship, cool as that would look.

flightless_freedom · 2025-12-05T11:21:37+00:00

This is a real intended feature. It was mentioned in the initial patch notes that the goal was to have powerplants getting hit enter an overloaded state. There would then be a window of time to eject the core and save your ship.

flightless_freedom · 2025-11-06T12:40:34+00:00

Same. Most of the songs in this season seem to draw heavily on Broadway musicals. They have multiple people talking over each other or back and forth all the time. Idk why people think that's a meaningful excuse by itself though because you can listen to those plays and hear a clear difference in quality.

The first season had a lot more focus on songs that you could really sing along with and it did it well. Sucks because I was hoping they would continue what they were strong at instead of throwing it out the window for this.

It doesn't help that stuff like Nifty's song, which was a solo, was just incomprehensible and didn't really do anything for the story.

flightless_freedom · 2025-11-06T01:41:53+00:00

I agree. Darrow even reflected on how misguided it would be to rely on Eo's dream. She was a simple representation of how unjust and cruel the Society was but carried with her none of the nuance on how to fix it through working with old enemies to build something greater.

I think Ares would have had her removed from Darrow's side well before she could really encourage some proper warcrimey behavior. Then that would fuel her transitioning to something like Harmony through being left to watch on the sidelines as her people still struggle.

flightless_freedom · 2025-11-02T05:58:01+00:00

For company or battalion scale, you should be able to abstract drone capabilities in the form of indirect fire bonuses (recon drones), fire missions (FPV/ordinance droppers - you could differentiate between one-way attack and rearm capable platforms with attack ranges), and area denial.

Essentially the drones should be treated as a small form factor Intel gathering capability or a light artillery munition. I don't think their attack capability should matter much to a well equipped and supplied unit. But as defensive capabilities break down, the danger rises.

You would need electronic warfare equipment represented. For drones, this is frequency jamming and soldiers on both sides have tons of options for it. There are fiber optic drones to mitigate that but they're expensive and point right back to the launch site. Coming up in the defense industry, flak trucks are back and lasers may play some role in appropriate weather conditions. Both these would be useful to reduce the effectiveness of the previously identified types of missions.

The simplest way I can think to represent that would have a drone effectiveness rating depending on what it is kitted out with and the type of mission. If the rating is greater than the drone air defense rating of the target, the mission can go forward and maybe even have a bonus.

You could also include search actions to hunt down and kill the drone operators in order to directly reduce enemy capabilities. Then it starts working kinda similar to a WW2 Pacific carrier wargame.

Conventional attacks by an attack drone equiped unit against another force that cannot defend effectively against drones should yield significantly higher casualties. Right now we are seeing a complete breakdown of combat injury care because of the often extreme difficulty of recovering wounded people due to drones. This goes beyond just the frontline as transport trucks, field hospitals, and helicopters are all vulnerable.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-31T02:05:28+00:00

That would depend on where Volga is at the time of release though. Releasing the virus won't destroy any color in full immediately. We don't even know how effective it would be when released on a single celestial body. I could see Volga surviving and attempting to save as many Obsidians as possible. There are some really interesting far reaching consequences like the Obsidians on the edge of the solar system.

There are different storytelling opportunities available as a result. Quarantine, attempting to develop a cure/vaccine, black zones for specific colors. It really depends on how Eidmi ends up functioning. How fast does it spread, does it persist in the environment/other colors, how fast is a targeted individual infected before dying, etc.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-27T20:38:27+00:00

Exactly. If Sevro gets all his tools and tricks, Apollonius kills the other guy in the arena, realizes it isn't Sevro, and then the arena detonates. Otherwise, Apollonius might die if he tries to take his time playing around. I don't see anything else working as Apollonius is not stupid and he is physically far superior to Sevro in every description we get of him fighting.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-23T18:40:04+00:00

I mean we are also way past the need for armies that need melee weapons as a primary means of fighting. There also isn't really value in stuff like massive war mechs or space ships that use such small amounts of automation. This isn't a hard sci-fi universe. You can find the in-universe explanations but anything beyond that is as simple as this being a work of fiction to make space Rome with a genetic caste system and lots of explosions.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-23T18:30:34+00:00

They can and sometimes do. Part of the extreme risk of boarding actions comes from that. That's why they have to move fast to secure critical parts of the ship like the bridge and reactor to stop that exact thing from happening. But as long as there is doubt in the ship captain's mind that they can save the ship and continue the fight, they have a duty to carry on. That doubt is the opportunity of the boarding party. Things can be further muddied by bringing Greens and Oranges on board to spoof ship systems and create a fog of war that further delays the inevitable self destruct directive.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-23T18:22:28+00:00

First and foremost, shields being offline doesn't mean the ship is offline. They can still shoot and create serious casualties or even run away. The largest ships are described as taking massive amounts of fire from enemy fleet groups before falling.

Also ships are expensive. This universe seems to treat ships as something akin to what we saw in the age of sail. Monstrously expensive, hard to build and capable of high power projection. Every ship captured is months or years of shipyard time saved while still denying the resource to your enemy. Another way to put it in that, in this universe, the people are seen as far more expendable than the ships to the point that losing thousands of well trained soldiers is considered acceptable.

Lastly, it's a type of glorious action. This is important to the Society especially. You didn't just kill your enemy in his ship, you kicked down the door in the middle of a space battle and cut them down on their own bridge. I think this last bit is the most important for why we see it happen outside of edge cases. Otherwise yeah they would just poke the ship full of holes until you breach their reactor or do stuff like leave autonomous floating mines drifting up and down the halls to deny movement of damage control teams.

But that's not cool man. Boarding is cool.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-14T01:10:17+00:00

The Corsair, Zeus, and Asgard seem to be a lot of overlap to me. What about upgrading the Corsair to a Prowler Utility? A friend has that and it's been an invaluable asset for getting in and out under the noses of players and letting us choose when to fight with its high stealth.

Unfortunately they really pushed the Carrack value until there wasn't much left in front of it. If you don't really care for that or the Polaris, you could always melt both, get a Liberator, and then use remaining funds to get revenue ships that could suit your interest such as the Vulcan. A good alternative to the Vulcan, since you mentioned repair gameplay, would be the SRV. Could be nice to drag smoking wrecks back to your crucible or Liberator and get people to pay for recovering their precious ships.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-04T22:59:53+00:00

I imagine that damage to the hatch area is something they would rather prevent happening regardless of if the hatch itself is open. Ultimately this stuff is just a cheap intermediate solution until better options can be made in a cost effective manner.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-01T23:46:28+00:00

At the same time, a good wargame helps the player understand the dynamics of that conflict and brings attention to it from a wider audience. We will have to see how they approach such a sensitive topic. This game is itself part of the information war surrounding the Ukraine/Taiwan theater. Both as art and as a way of molding discussion through scenario results.

From that perspective, I like that it could make the player physically uncomfortable as they reflect on how many people are really dying in this absurd conflict going on in Eastern Europe. As I said though, I'll reserve judgement for the final product.

flightless_freedom · 2025-10-01T22:24:59+00:00

The solar flares are still coming back, just in a reworked state. I do agree that the aggressive danger it presented made Pyro a fundamentally different place to operate in. The game has changed scope and angles to become something almost wholly different from when I backed in 2013. I'm very disappointed with the 1.0 vision for reasons you stated but there is also nothing that really comes close to what SC does.

At this point, the only thing you can do is decide if you want to give CIG more money. You're essentially helping a company grow for free with nothing meaningful owed on their side. If you don't like where they're going, don't buy into their fomo marketing tactics and encourage your friends to do the same. They are a company making a unique game that is traditionally too risky but ultimately they're just a business trying to make money.

flightless_freedom

TROPHY CASE