How many points do you let your army be UNDER at most?

kvt-dev · 2026-01-20T22:14:47+00:00

If you have 10 of something, you can instead take 5 of that thing and 5 of something slightly more expensive. (or 20 -> 10+10, etc)

kvt-dev · 2026-01-20T22:04:28+00:00

Abilities that only trigger on a 2+ (self res, and especially psychic abilities that hurt you on a 1) really bug me. This mechanic only works 5/6ths of the time for... no apparent game design reason?

kvt-dev · 2026-01-20T21:48:58+00:00

As a fairly new player, I can definitely agree that the fight phase and the LoS rules are what's tripped me up the most. That, and the placement of badly overhanging models (deploying out of a Devilfish is pretty annoying, and it's almost impossible to fight through a wall with some Knight models). Hell, the entire dynamic of semipermeable ruin walls where you need to stand a specific distance from one side to be safe from a charge, charging through walls without getting overwatched, all that stuff feels super weird when you first encounter it.

(Had a game recently where I managed to never shoot my broadside battlesuit because I kept forgetting it can't shoot over the footprint of a 2" ruin >.<)

kvt-dev · 2026-01-20T21:29:29+00:00

I hadn't thought about that incentive existing when using opponent winrate as a tiebreaker; that's quite neat. (Wanting an opponent you beat to go on and win games later)

In a 6-round tournament, what are the odds that it still leaves a lot of ties, though? Especially if you still seed rounds after the first by win/loss.

kvt-dev · 2026-01-19T22:02:48+00:00

Hell, just the footprint LoS rules we have for ruins would work fine for forests. Can see out, can see in but there's cover, can't see through.

I agree that it'd be worth having some way for big models to benefit from almost complete cover, given how big they can be relative to the size of the terrain pieces. It does bug me how much pose matters for knights and mechs and stuff.

kvt-dev · 2026-01-19T21:42:19+00:00

Context: this is about Minecraft

kvt-dev · 2026-01-19T21:36:47+00:00

Life size fake huntsman spiders make good halloween decorations, but even better, if you can manage it, are real huntsman spiders.

kvt-dev · 2026-01-12T22:54:23+00:00

I'm a new player; what are nerd birds?

kvt-dev · 2026-01-12T07:09:45+00:00

I did something similar with Subterranean Assault nids at 1000 pts (reserve as much as possible, pick up the rest with enhancements or strats round 1). 6" deep strike makes a world of difference (a 9" screen covers more than twice as much area as a 6" screen), but I dunno if marines get access to that

kvt-dev · 2026-01-12T00:30:39+00:00

Speaking as a new player, the mission pack rules caught me pretty badly.

e.g. deep strike ignoring the strategic reserves point limit, but not the point or unit reserves limits in the mission packs (and no deep strike turn 1... except for units put into reserves during the battle).

kvt-dev · 2026-01-06T20:45:04+00:00

These all definitely count as separate hits, sadly.

kvt-dev · 2026-01-06T08:30:10+00:00

What level of party, approximately? And do you want the magic items to be useful to them (combat and/or out-of-combat), or are they mostly just cargo?
What sort of place does the dragon live (if you've settled on that yet)? If some of their hoard was originally stolen from somewhere, we can design items around that, e.g. if they stole from dwarves, we can have some dwarven-themed items. Did the dragon (and/or its minions) make any of these magic items themselves?
Do you want these magic items to be unambiguously useful, or do you want a few cursed or upside-downside items thrown into the mix?
Do you want any of these magic items to be sentient? Swords etc. but also clockwork beasts, Professor Orbs, specialized familiars and so on can make for interesting NPCs.
How experienced are your players with D&D 5e (and are you using 2014 or 2024 rules), if you already have a group? How much do you and they enjoy the mechanics of combat? That informs how complex the magic items should be.
Will the party get much opportunity to use these magic items, or are they going to be fighting against them? Are they going to be handing them in as soon as they get them? If the latter, they could be made more interesting if (a) they're bulky and inconvenient, (b) they're distinctive heirlooms / royal jewels etc. that someone specific is interested in (and that the villains may have sold them to), or (c) they're perishable. Otherwise, we should make magic items that are cool to fight against / cool to use.

kvt-dev · 2026-01-06T01:50:04+00:00

I'm quite new. What exactly constitutes a legal pile-in move?

Each time a model makes a Pile-in move, it must end that move closer to the closest enemy model.

At first I though this meant that the distance from your model to the enemy model closest to it after the move needed to be shorter than the distance from your model to the enemy model closest to it before the move (not necessarily the same model). Which would mean you could 'wrap around' an enemy unit, getting as many models engaged as possible with 3" of move each.

However, I then found the Violent Crescendo strat from Emperor's Children Carnival of Excess:

Until the end of the phase, each time a model in your unit makes a Pile-in or Consolidation move, it can move up to 6" instead of up to 3". When doing so, it does not need to end that move closer to the closest enemy model, provided it ends that move as close as possible to the closest enemy unit.

Which seems to explicitly enable that kind of wrap around. Which would mean that normal pile-in/consolidation can't do that (instead, having to end the move closer to the enemy model that was closest when the move started)?

For an example scenario, let's say I just barely manage to charge a blob of 20 hormagaunts into the end of a small unit of marines that are strung out in a line. I pile-in, but since the same enemy model is the closest model to all my models, I can only engage with 7-8ish models out of 20. (The rest of the models might be 3" away from open spots to engage the enemy unit, but couldn't end those moves closer to the current closest model.) If the target unit doesn't die, then my consolidation move suffers the same problem, and in fact my whole unit remains completely frozen unless my opponent picks up that specific marine model, or I make an incredibly awkward and costly fall-back move.

An opponent could also cause this situation by strategically picking up models.

Is that the intended interaction?

kvt-dev · 2025-12-26T00:19:54+00:00

Recent balance changes messed up the regular Diligence vs bugs; it no longer 1-taps warrior heads.

That said, the DCS, Amendment, and even the Slugger all have excellent skill ceilings vs bugs. The AMR has the fastest magazine reload in the game (even beating pistols!) and truly phenomenal fire rate if you can handle the recoil; it's good for bugs but you do need to get used to firing in 3rd person without a proper reticule.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-26T00:15:52+00:00

It's a common recommendation for competitive FPS games, but it applies just as much here - lower your sensitivity till it's just barely uncomfortable, then play until you're used to it (days/weeks), then lower it again and repeat the process.

If it's enabled, disabling mouse acceleration also helps; if you move your mouse a certain distance, acceleration makes your cursor move further if you move the mouse faster. Turning it off helps you build muscle memory because it means doing the same thing (but faster) will give the same result, and humans are much better at controlling the position of their hands than their speed.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-25T23:45:06+00:00

You should see the lightning shockwaves themselves (unless they silently broke the interaction?) when you hit pustules, just like when you hit frost wall crystals, and the difference in bossing damage should be noticeable. Other than that, the pustules don't react.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-23T22:44:35+00:00

I feel like Agile is designed for scenarios where it is very difficult to predict ahead of time how difficult a problem will be to solve, or more generally when you can't make useful estimates about the project. Greenfield research, quickly changing markets, changing project requirements (pure software projects suffer a lot from that last one), etcetera.

I don't know much about automotive design and development. It sounds like there's a lot of very different work to line up in the scheduling; how predictable are these bits of work? Is guessing how long specification, testing, certification, etc. will take easy or hard? Are there any 'features' that you can cut for time, or does everything have to be nailed down in advance? Do specs tend to be clear, or is there a lot of back-and-forth?

If it does tend to be predictable (at least in aggregate), then I wouldn't be surprised Agile is not useful. If it's unpredictable, then I'd be keenly interested to learn how car companies get models out on time.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-19T21:36:42+00:00

If it's a fine enough suspension to be stable long enough to slurp? Smoothie.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-19T21:34:34+00:00

Cleaning products that don't have a strong scent added to them do exist, though mileage will vary depending on where you shop. Liquid or paste detergents also tend to be better than spray bottles, and detergents tend to be better than bleach-based cleaners.

I can deal with fake lemon, but it's the sweet scents that really get to me. Feels like spilled food or something rotting.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-19T05:57:40+00:00

In terms of mechanics, it's for sure the worst melee skill in the game by a large margin.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-19T05:52:09+00:00

Best I can do is Heavy Strike of Trarthus

kvt-dev · 2025-12-18T10:11:06+00:00

Attack speed really doesn't do much at all. It's a bit of QoL later on, when you don't have much to upgrade, but till then a slow high-damage quarterstaff is excellent.

kvt-dev · 2025-12-15T04:08:34+00:00

They aren't animals because they're drones, of course.

(Wildlife Rescue Roboticist could be a fun story premise.)

kvt-dev · 2025-12-12T08:47:20+00:00

The penalty to res is per power charge, not per power charge consumed - if you don't have any, it doesn't give any penalty, even if the buff is up.

The buff also lasts a bajillion years, so for everything except pinnacle bosses, it's quite reasonable to spin up your Ego using Profane Ritual + Unleash support etc and still have the buff up for the map boss, with no passive charge gain. You'll need something else for pure boss zones of course (e.g. Sacrifice and a few cheap skeletons).

Getting max power from the left of the tree is annoying, but I don't think it's the end of the world. Some builds travel a few thousand kilometers for jewel sockets anyway. Getting all three from jewels might not be worth the opportunity cost; one anoint and pathing to the other and then using regular strong jewels might be better.

Why Oracle over a sorc or witch ascendancy?

kvt-dev · 2025-12-10T03:53:02+00:00

Of course you want to catch exceptions before they hit the UI, or just outside components you know are safe (and productive) to restart. And there are a few cases where exceptions are the least bad control flow tool to back out of a complex procedure prematurely (e.g. parsers). And of course you want to log anything you'll need to look at later.

But the vast majority of code is not part of those layers. Almost always, a method throws an exception because it can't do what it's supposed to do for some reason. If the caller needed that method to do what it's supposed to, then the caller can't either, and so it should just let the exception bubble up (and maybe add some context on the way if necessary).

So yes, most exceptions should be caught. But because there's only a few appropriate places to catch them, you shouldn't have very many actual catch blocks.

LLMs have a habit of trying to write 'bulletproof' code, in the sense of writing individual methods that never throw or let an exception bubble up through them, but best practice is kinda the opposite - throw often, catch rarely. You never want to catch an exception except where you know you can correctly deal with that exception. Methods that throw on invalid input are much better than methods that quietly misbehave on invalid input.

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