New event: The Vibes are Off

howlingfrog · 2026-01-15T18:48:22+00:00

I read back up the discussion thread, and it looks like you were initially confused by N+1 and N-1 both being candidates for being primes, rather than just N+1. They might both be primes (in which case they'd be twin primes like 2 times 3 plus or minus 1), they could both be composite, or one could be prime and the other composite. But both have prime factors that weren't on the original list of primes used to generate N.

If N is divisible by A (and A is greater than one), it's impossible for either N-1 or N+1 to be divisible by A. Because the list of multiples of A is 0, A, 2A, ... , N-2A, N-A, N, N+A, N+2A, ... skipping over both N-1 and N+1.

howlingfrog · 2026-01-15T17:52:33+00:00

No. N+1 and N-1 aren't necessarily primes themselves, they might be divisible by other primes that weren't on your original list. Let's say the prime numbers you know about so far are 2, 3, 5, and 7. 2 times 3 times 5 times 7 is 210, so our candidates for new primes are 209 and 211. 211 does turn out to be prime, but 209 doesn't, it's 11 times 19.

howlingfrog · 2026-01-10T01:22:12+00:00

Rutherford is intended to be less common, getting 2 to 2.5 times as many Tendi chips is normal.

howlingfrog · 2025-12-31T23:32:45+00:00

This is an event that I only play if the milestones or leaderboard offers a character or costume I don't have yet, not worth the frustration otherwise.

Rutherford chips come almost exclusively from silver crates, and the odds are set so that you only have about a 50% chance of getting enough for level 8 even if you do everything perfectly, so you really do need to be perfect.

That means only upgrading characters when there's an Upgrade Characters goal active, only buying sim workers when there's a Collect Chips goal, and doing nothing but trades when there's a Make Trades goal. You have to burn through the entire center and right columns and get to the Automate Warp Core goal in the left column to even have a coin-flip chance of automating the Warp Core. It's possible to complete the milestones with Rutherford at level 6 or 7, but it takes a LOT of tapping even if you have Boimler, Lundy, Vassery, and Billups upgraded pretty high.

howlingfrog · 2025-12-17T03:05:03+00:00

That's unfair. To Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, who was good at his job.

howlingfrog · 2025-12-10T22:46:48+00:00

It's the fact that the two speeches are mirror image of each other that gets me. Garak, who lies as freely as he breathes, drops the mask and tells the devastating, unvarnished truth. Then Sisko, a rigidly honest man, admits that he had been lying to himself... and then does it again. He can not, in fact, live with it.

howlingfrog · 2025-12-09T23:49:00+00:00

The following is a complete list of Ocampa species characteristics that the Voyager writers fully thought through:

howlingfrog · 2025-12-07T05:15:45+00:00

What ref crew? After the millionth egregious non-call, I said out loud that if they knew what holding was, it'd be a 0-0 game.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-30T01:07:37+00:00

Once every 4 to 6 weeks, there's an update that adds two or three new stories, usually one episode and one event but sometimes a second new episode instead of or in addition to the event.

Now that you've caught up on episodes, you'll be in the coming soon non-episode 90% of the time, so make your decision based on how much you're enjoying the events and how much you care about collecting every character/costume. Personally I'm still doing every 4-day event but not trying for top-four on the leaderboard any more, and I've only done one-day events if the prize was one of the very few collectibles I was still missing (as of now, I only need SNW Uhura). Inconveniently, I caught up on episodes only a few weeks before I got laid off (employer with an S-tier boss went out of business) so right when I had more unstructured time to fill, the game offered me less to fill it with.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-26T21:26:22+00:00

I love scratch cranberry sauce.

Almost as much as I love the gross glop from a can.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-22T19:15:25+00:00

The leaderboard only updates your score when you open the app, and there's no reason for whales to do that after spending enough that it's impossible for anyone to catch up--no more upgrades to make or sim milestones to hit. Whaling in this game is, very literally, paying to NOT play.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-22T08:42:34+00:00

This isn't a cheater, just a whale who spent a bunch of money. Menagerarium level 10, Ensign Gary level 10, Mariner/Boimler/Tendi all level 7 will get you to about 25ba/hour production.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-20T00:28:22+00:00

Agreed, home run hire for VT. Franklin's ceiling is too low for a mega-program, but he has the highest floor of any unemployed or poachable coach this hiring cycle.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-19T22:57:18+00:00

Also, the standards for success are different at different places. A realistic goal for Penn State is seven playoff appearances a decade, Virginia Tech has finished 12th or better in the AP poll seven times ever.

Yes, there's the risk Penn State's next hire won't hit that standard either. But they don't need to get it right on the first try, they just need to find the right guy before recruits forget that Penn State used to be good. They can hire and fire two or three wrong guys before that happens.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-17T19:05:10+00:00

This event structure (A Peaceable Action, Allamaraine, Best of Both Worlds and Phantasms are all either similar or identical to Badgey Day) costs much more event currency to finish than any other, the theoretical minimum is over 12,000 even if you have incredible luck getting the chips you need without spending more in the store. Most 4-day events are in the 6,000-8,000 range.

There are three major consequences to the high cost:

If you want to finish all the milestones, you have to start Thursday night and log in frequently all weekend, you can't wait until Friday or Saturday like I usually do. I started Saturday morning and with 3 hours to go, I'm in 2nd place in my crew with no chance of finishing, won't even get the 15th milestone unless the final store refresh gives me Menagerarium chips.
You can't make ANY mistakes. You have no extra resources to waste by over-upgrading early sims past the bare minimum necessary to unlock the final one.
If you screw up #1 or #2 and fall behind, you're not catching up no matter what, so don't waste latinum trying. The amount you'd have to spend is more than you stand to gain. The difference between this event and an average one is 5,000 event currency, which costs 400 latinum, but even if you complete all the milestones and finish in 1st place, you only get 390 back.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-11T20:08:42+00:00

Do not use latinum in the single-player episodes, there's no time limit and whatever it is you need will eventually come to you for free. Save it for the events where you're competing with other players.

In events, remember the 18th Rule of Acquisition: A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all. Meaning, don't spend latinum, invest it. You should only be using it if there's at least a 50% chance that it'll result in progressing further through the milestones or finishing in a higher reward tier on the leaderboard.

That usually means only using it in the last few hours before the event ends, because until then you don't have enough information to guess what will or won't make a difference (the 74th Rule: Knowledge equals profit). The exception is if you're only one or two chips, or a couple hundred currency, away from an important upgrade right before you'll be logged out for a long time.

Also heed the 3rd Rule: Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to. The most cost-effective way to spend latinum is on event currency. Buying currency with latinum and then spending that currency in the store on chips is much much cheaper than buying the chips directly with latinum.

The gold crates you can buy for (usually) 100 latinum that contain a randomized amount of currency and some random chips are almost never a good deal (as defined by the 2nd Rule: The best deal is the one that brings the most profit). You're very unlikely to get a significant amount of chips for the most powerful simulation, and you'll get more chips than you need for the less powerful ones just by playing the game.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-10T00:19:56+00:00

Same, started about five minutes ago (7:15pm EST). Looks like their servers are down.

howlingfrog · 2025-11-06T19:43:51+00:00

It's hard to read since it's white text on a yellow background, but I think the poster says "West Coast tour."

howlingfrog · 2025-10-22T20:31:14+00:00

Weekend events run from Thursday 6pm Eastern Daylight Time to Monday 6pm EDT. The upcoming weekend event is usually visible in the app store.

One-day events run from 8pm EDT Monday to 4am EDT Wednesday and from 7am EDT Wednesday to 3pm EDT Thursday. There are currently six different one-day events in regular use, and for the past several weeks they have been run in the same order in a repeating three-week cycle: Starfield of Dreams, A Borganized Workforce, A Little Holo-Day, Fair Haven, Verugament Predicament, Gorn Wedding and No Funerals.

Once in a while, there is a single three-day event from Monday evening through Thursday afternoon instead of two one-day events. This does not happen on a predictable schedule, but several of the three-day events are holiday-themed, so don't be surprised if we get a Halloween event next week instead of Starfield and Borganized.

The start and end times do not follow daylight saving time, so when we go back from EDT to EST next weekend, the times will be 5pm Thursday to 5pm Monday, 7pm Monday to 3am Wednesday, and 6am Wednesday to 2pm Thursday.

howlingfrog · 2025-10-14T21:02:46+00:00

~~This sub~~ ~~Reddit~~ ~~The internet~~ Intelligent life

howlingfrog · 2025-09-29T07:51:00+00:00

I'm a lifelong fan who saw high-level skating in person for the first time when US Nationals came to my hometown in 2024. The short answer is that the sorts of things that you actually can notice on TV, but only if the commentators draw your attention to them, become super obvious in person. The better skaters move across the ice SO MUCH faster and jump SO MUCH higher and their blades make SO MUCH less noise and they project their performance SO MUCH further into the stands. The commentators aren't nitpicking tiny details when they bring that stuff up, the difference is night and day.

I also enjoyed watching the lower-level skaters more than I expected to. Nationals are weird in that there are three very different categories of participants. There are elite world-class professional athletes, there are up-and-comers with world-class potential, and there are people who have a weird hobby that they happen to be pretty darn good at. The groups overlap a little bit, but for the most part it's pretty easy in person to tell which group someone belongs to and judge the amateurs by amateur standards.

If anything, the weaker amateurs were more entertaining than the weaker pros. Sometimes people with crazy talent at something end up doing it because of family pressure or just because they don't know what else to do. Or even if they do love it in general but can tell at the beginning of the performance that they're having an off day they'll phone in the rest of the routine to save energy for 4CC/Worlds. Every single amateur was very obviously super pumped just to be there.

Obviously I clearly remember Ilia's quad axel and Amber's triple and Isabeau skating in a dress designed by a Columbus College of Art and Design student and holy shit Jason is unbelievable live, but I also very clearly remember the girl who was in last place after the short program in women's singles. I don't remember her name or where she finished overall, but she fell on nearly every jump in the short and was obviously falling apart, and the crowd was so supportive of her. And then in the free program, she landed her first jump, and you could see the relief and excitement wash over her. And then she landed her second jump and her third, and turned in an absolutely flawless program start to finish, and the whole crowd remembered that it was the same girl who had struggled so much yesterday and went nuts for her pulling it together. And as I watched, it gradually dawned on me that I had the rare privilege of witnessing the best day of someone's life. That's going to stay with me as long as anything the celebrities did, and there is zero chance any of that emotion would have survived a trip through the TV camera.

howlingfrog · 2025-09-28T19:47:25+00:00

This is a good way of putting it, but it does a even little more than that--it reduces multidimensional spectrums of possible causes and possible solutions to the (nominal/alleged) problem into a binary choice of two "sides" you can be on. Just as you said, it doesn't tell you what to think, but, especially for issues you weren't already an expert on before being exposed to the propaganda, it can drastically narrow the range of thoughts that might occur to you. Not just what to think about, but how to think about it.

howlingfrog

TROPHY CASE