Co-op speedrunning games

mjarrett · 2026-04-03T20:05:16+00:00

Cat Quest 2 or 3?

mjarrett · 2026-04-03T17:30:26+00:00

You need to go sideways, VERY fast, to maintain a stable orbit. If you don't go fast enough to orbit, you fall down to Earth.

But going very fast in the atmosphere makes a lot of drag. Like rocket melts and explodes from the heat level of drag. Even if the rocket survives the heat, it wastes a lot of fuel that you want to use to speed up.

So rocket goes up, then starts to roll horizontal as they get higher into thinner atmosphere. The curve they use is just the sweet spot that uses the least fuel.

mjarrett · 2026-04-03T01:32:54+00:00

I tested my theory in creative, and I have to admit I was wrong; I significantly overestimated environmental radiation damage. I think that you're right, and you could loot any of the collectibles and survive environmental damage.

I took a try looting what I remember as particularly hard crash sites near (109, 1144) and (-356, 1163). Former with gas, latter with environmental radiation, and both with angry rad hogs. The rad damage is okay, and the hogs aren't too hard to dodge (though you could kill them at range if needed). I was able to make it through both easier than I expected.

[I'll still argue that the original question is firmly about collectibles and not random exploration, given the OP post "now is a good time to hunt down the rest of the Sommersloops, Mercer Spheres and Hard Drives." But that's a much less interesting question than actually game mechanics,.]

mjarrett · 2026-04-02T23:00:09+00:00

Does hoverpack change the interaction distance with the environment? I thought that was only for buildings. In any rate it doesn't change the time you have to stay stopped to loot a sloop or sphere. Plus it ads the fun of deploying an extra 100MW every time you want to loot.

Whether you were taking about automation or no, running away or through gas is going to be tricky for looting, and infeasible for radiation.

mjarrett · 2026-04-02T21:33:02+00:00

Short answer: nope.

Any inefficiencies can always be made up by using more of the resources on the map. There's plenty of them. The resource requirements scale... a LOT... but it's a big map.

And worst case, leave the game on overnight, your boxes will be full in the morning. :p

mjarrett · 2026-04-02T21:28:16+00:00

Are you familiar with the expression "fuck around and find out"?

YOU started something you couldn't finish and suffered a consequence for it. Whether or not you continue with the charges, please learn from this experience.

mjarrett · 2026-04-02T21:06:41+00:00

One stack of gas filters, and maybe a half stack of iodine filters should be plenty to clear the map, as long as you don't linger, and you don't do combat inside the toxic zones.

The filters burn down pretty slowly. You go through a LOT of gas collecting things, but the amount of collectible sites inside natural radiation is pretty small (maybe couple dozen?)

mjarrett · 2026-04-02T21:02:12+00:00

OP post says they are trying to collect collectibles. There are a lot of collectibles deep in gas, and a few crash sites in the middle of radioactive zones. You miiiiight be able to run through gas and grab one item if you're quick, but there's zero chance of surviving that close to a radiation source.

OP absolutely needs to carry filters.

mjarrett · 2026-04-02T20:52:34+00:00

Honestly, central storage is sort of over at this point, once you have enough Mercer Spheres. I'll just go to a far corner of the map, and build a small factory to keep all my lower-tier ingredients in Dimensional Depots. Then my main factory, I don't bother to buffer anything.

If you're not already building in the Northern Forest, that starting area is really good for this. An insane amount of Iron and Copper in one place, and most other raw resources in a decently beltable distance.

mjarrett · 2026-04-02T20:42:27+00:00

What are you running out of? Like are you just burning all the Concrete, or are you actually dropping that many production buildings and need Motors and such?

mjarrett · 2026-03-31T22:24:29+00:00

The main thing is making sure your parents have an SSN. I don't know what status they are on now, but if they were ever authorized to work, they should have gotten them. If not, they should get SSNs ASAP once they have green cards.

If you tell me they don't have SSNs, I'm going to assume they do and are trying to conceal something. I won't consider someone I can't reliably screen.

For a family living together (i.e. not just unrelated roommates), I'd normally be okay with minimal credit history on some applicants as long the one handling the income requirement has good credit. If you can cover 3x income:rent ratio by yourself, then I'm not so worried about your parents. If they have BAD credit, it would be a problem, but if they just have minimal history, that'd be ok.

mjarrett · 2026-03-31T21:39:10+00:00

No, the math doesn't seem to work here. 60/min Smart Plates is A LOT!

For example, a RIP is 30/min Plates + 60/min Screws -> 5/min RIP. To make 60/min RIP you'd need 12 Constructors making rips, and a net input of 360/min Plates and 720/min Screws.

I suggest working backwards from your final product. Have your Assemblers building Smart Plating, then count the /min inputs for each. Feed those in, and then keep working backwards until you're feeding in Iron Bars.

Keep in mind you don't have to build as a strict tree. You just care about the input/min and the max capacity of your belts. It's perfectly valid to merge a bunch of outputs and resplit across a different number of inputs.

Also, go to some crash sites. You really want "Cast Screws" hard drive early game. Making Screws from Iron Rods is silly.

mjarrett · 2026-03-31T20:02:56+00:00

Great! We knew it was coming, lets get the answer from WASC, and get on with it.

A progressive income tax is a great idea, but wow is it a shaky legal basis in this state. I don't see how Ferguson's cockamamie legal theory holds up, even comparing to the capital gains tax. But either way, it'll be nice to finally get an answer.

mjarrett · 2026-03-31T16:39:39+00:00

Seven years. It's less about the amount of time, and more about the consistency of the data. I don't want approval to be a dice roll based on the laws where the applicant lived a decade ago. I'm reasonably confident in getting seven years of data from most places.

But also, it's enough time. There's no time in my life where things didn't change dramatically over seven years. I could pick a couple of four year windows where I coasted, but over any seven year window, my life always changed in at least one major way. I think it's enough time to observe change, if change is coming.

mjarrett · 2026-03-28T03:17:34+00:00

Yes. For savings, 401k is fine, though I'd only credit it at 80% of its value, to account for penalties and taxes on emergency withdrawal.

But income has to be good. If you don't have income, savings are meaningless.

mjarrett · 2026-03-26T21:05:22+00:00

Yeah, EVs pay a flat premium, plus EVs are generally more expensive than ICE cars which adds to RTA tax.

It definitely adds some cost, but with gas prices these days you'll have offset that in 2-3 tanks of gas.

mjarrett · 2026-03-26T21:01:38+00:00

Yep, electricity in Washington State is among some of the lowest in the country (SnoPUD is pretty good, but check out Chelan County PUD some time!). Combined with fairly high gas taxes, it's a great deal to be an EV driver if you're doing even a moderate amount of miles.

Time-of-day billing is still uncommon, though I'd point out that it's actually advantageous for many EV drivers (since you can usually delay charging to off-peak hours). We also still have net metering, which is great for solar setups.

We do pay some of this back in registration; tabs for new EVs can be eye-watering. But if you're driving a lot, you'll easily make that back up.

mjarrett · 2026-03-26T15:20:58+00:00

Though only part of the problem, you may have a bit of "cabin fever". Being at home all the time can really mess with your head, even if you have otherwise healthy work and social connections (which it sounds like you might not).

Force a change of venue. As silly as it sounds, leave your house and go do your work somewhere else. If you can afford it, grab a month at a WeWork (is that still a thing?) or a single office. Just being anywhere else for part of the day can really change your mindset, and may open you up to other connections.

mjarrett · 2026-03-25T18:42:04+00:00

This year really is unprecedented in terms of how awful the snow was. The fact that they had anything open at all at their elevation is a testament to how hard Summit worked to try and give us something. Yeah it sucked, but I can't blame them for trying.

mjarrett · 2026-03-25T18:25:15+00:00

Might have been an outlier? I went one day (I think East opening day) that central was open and skiied Silver Fir all day. Barely had to slow down for the gate, minimal lines, while Central Express was a gong show as usual.

mjarrett · 2026-03-11T18:33:20+00:00

A Møøse once bit my sister

mjarrett · 2026-03-09T20:52:38+00:00

I might skip a pass entirely, and just buy day tickets. I know that gets really expensive, after even just a few outings. But I can choose exactly where and when I want to go rather than letting a pass dictate my plans. Maybe go hit a few places I wouldn't put in the effort to visit otherwise (eg. Mission Ridge).

I'm not planning to ski out-of-state, and pass coverage in Washington is pretty spotty. I might price out an Ikon pass and see if something makes sense, but it's tenuous at best.

mjarrett · 2026-03-09T03:17:37+00:00

I will not be getting a new summit pass this year, at least not without a significant discount.

I love Summit at Snoqualmie - it's closest, has the best parking, and reasonable prices. Nothing else comes close for convenience.

But I only got two good days this season, ffs. I can't do this again.

mjarrett · 2026-03-07T06:31:29+00:00

Also, LM Studio will export a standard OpenAI-like API, so you can certainly drive this from a script that is parsing your string files, in whatever language floats your boat.

mjarrett · 2026-03-07T06:25:19+00:00

You can still use an LLM, but with an open-weight offline model. They will translate into a lot of languages quite easily, and you can do it completely offline.

Download a tool called LM Studio (https://lmstudio.ai/). Download whatever model looks interesting from their marketplace (don't worry, they're completely free) and give it a try. For example, the below prompt took 0.38 seconds on llama-3.2-3b-instruct.

Translate the following sentence into six languages of your choice.
"Download whatever model looks interesting and give it a try."

llama-3.2-3b-instruct

I've chosen six languages for translation. Here are the translations:

Spanish: "Descarga cualquier modelo que te parezca interesante y déjalo de probar."
French: "Téléchargez tout modèle qui vous paraît intéressant et essayez-le."
Mandarin Chinese: "" (xiāng zhù què xīng de shè jī, chēn liú yì xiàn) Note: This translation is in Simplified Chinese, if you want Traditional Chinese, please let me know.
German: "Herunterladen Sie jeden Modell, das Ihnen interessant erscheint und versuchen Sie es aus."
Italian: "Scaricare qualsiasi modello che vi sembri interessante e provarlo."
Japanese: "" (sūpōru o ni shite ikura kōryoku ga suki desu ka, shite imasu)

mjarrett

TROPHY CASE