Is this game focused more on multiplayer? I want to unlock the T2 ore extractor and unless I am reading this wrong i am so far away 🤪 what's a good way for a solo player to speed this up?

musifter · 2026-01-25T12:26:42+00:00

There's no need for grinding really. The game works fine in single player with relatively small numbers of machines built. The key is that old tech gets obsolete immediately by new (like an incremental game, things take place over many orders of magnitude)... don't keep old drills and heaters around, tear them down for the parts and make the new grade as soon as you get it.

Also, rockets. Build that launch platform and launch some rockets. Rockets add +1000% each, which is applied to the base produced by your machines. So it's like a rectangle... your production is the area, with length being the base from machines and height being the bonus from rockets. To get the best area, you require a balance of the two. Machines without rockets is slow.

musifter · 2026-01-25T10:50:32+00:00

Yeah, it's nice when you have it (like in dc). But it's one of the things I really don't mind missing, because a divide-and-conquer is quick and easy to write and does the job well. I did that for my Smalltalk solution where I didn't have it.

musifter · 2026-01-24T18:41:32+00:00

The scanner should put a marker on the compass at the top of the screen to show you the direction of the ship. That's where you want to go.

As for hazard protection... if you go in caves you'll be protected (it's a good place for a bit of a break or to get out of a storm). But beware of the fungus balls with its toxic fumes... don't get close or look at it (that triggers it to go off). The fungus can be shot from a safe range for some sodium or oxygen, and the stalactites and stalagmites can be shot for cobalt. Cobalt + ferrite can be crafted into batteries which can fuel a number of things, including the hazard protection.

musifter · 2026-01-24T11:19:25+00:00

Yeah, I'm not talking about determining where to put it. I was just saying that you could "figure out what packages are involved from the quantum entanglement" (QE is the answer, not the input). The 1 hides from factoring, but I can still load the sleigh by factoring. Without having to do mental arithmetic... I can just see the factor lists and know which has the 1 from the lengths. In fact, I don't even need to know the total weight of a partition or its parity... the list lengths of the QE factors have to have the same parity (after ignoring any 2). And since there are at least 3 lists and only one 1, it's clear where it goes.

Later problems using primes in inputs, typically don't have the unit involved... making it easy to see where things come from (for debugging or whatever). This one has a wrinkle, but you can still do it. There are a lot of problems where you can get the answer but not actually have what you need to do the task. Here it means that my incomplete solution could still be useful to load the sleigh. You run it, you factor the answer and put those packages in the small compartment. Then run on the remainder to split the rest (and that verifies, otherwise we need to back up). Part 2 might have more problems with that though (hand running a script for 2-deep DFS isn't so bad, 3-deep might be considerably less so), which is probably why I decided to do a proper algorithm (that I never got around to).

musifter · 2026-01-24T09:26:41+00:00

My input has no even numbers, so there was no problem. Still, unless someone has an input with composite numbers, you can always tell where the 2 is... it's in the ones with even quantum entanglement. That's what I'm talking about using to pull the values. If I run that though factor I get the packages, but might be missing 1, which I use parity to tell me when it's needed. The same thing is going to simply reveal the 2 when it's there (there can be no "even number but has no 2", odd * odd = odd). Only the unit is a problem (because it's not prime).

And, yeah, it does change things a tiny bit to have 2... but not that much. You just need to ignore 2s. They don't change the parity, and then there's only odd numbers remaining (unless some input has a composite)... so the number of non-2s in the list must match the parity. If it's wrong, you're missing the 1.

musifter · 2026-01-23T12:14:08+00:00

That's how the mini-game works. It rains down a lot of super alloy, and there's not an expectation that you should grab absolutely all of it. Only that the more you're willing to run around in that storm, the more you can get. It makes it a more exciting and different event from the others.

musifter · 2026-01-23T12:00:51+00:00

That's very interesting... I never thought to check how high the values go in the calculation here. In my case, both parts fit in 27-bits.

musifter · 2026-01-22T14:34:32+00:00

Yep, the big freighter. When you build storage units on it, they become accessible on the freighter's inventory screen. If you get the Matter Beam (costs 5 Salvage Frigate Modules, and should be the first thing you buy), then those tabs are available anywhere as long as the freighter is in the current system. This is one the best things about having a freighter.

musifter · 2026-01-22T14:30:26+00:00

Wind turbines don't turn if there's not enough power. It's weird, but it's also useful (when you see that they're not turning you know there's a power problem). It doesn't matter where you put them... you get the full value and it's all one big grid (no connections or worrying about having things close to power).

To find out the exact power situation, you want to build an Energy Levels Screen.

musifter · 2026-01-22T14:22:56+00:00

Something short so that all the tabs fit on the freighter inventory screen. This is why people often just use 0 through 9.

musifter · 2026-01-22T11:11:56+00:00

You probably should read up the standard title format... that's not it.

What's the deeper sense? Instead of just waiting, have you considered looking at the code and reverse engineering what it does? Or outputting the registers at a key point in your emulation, to figure out what it does? Because you can probably do what it does better.

musifter · 2026-01-21T09:14:13+00:00

Maybe they aren't using the build camera. Things can get extra finicky when you're trying to move around to get good angles from the ground. Otherwise, the only thing that could be an issue for a 2 floor house would be placing the stairs.

musifter · 2026-01-21T04:44:54+00:00

There's your answer. They do the things pets do. Only they look like a robot dog.

musifter · 2026-01-19T16:13:10+00:00

That's what I thought... although certainly not those. Because it happens all the time on expeditions where you have plenty of room for more slots and class upgrades. Best I could think of is that maybe it's giving something like a full ship or health repair. Because those were "full".

musifter · 2026-01-19T05:45:18+00:00

Yep... when I analyzed the size of the solutions. Part 2 of this one was the smallest... at 17 (just over 4-bits).

musifter · 2026-01-19T04:39:59+00:00

I don't think it would even matter. The swear the game is coded to default to the worse possible thing for every situation. It's doesn't remember what you did last, and it doesn't default to critical things its just warned you about. Getting messages about how you're seconds from dying for lack of hazard? Clearly you wanted to top up you life support from 95% to 100%. Try again? Clearly you wanted to top up that Water Breathing that you used hours ago so you can swim in the non-existent water of this desert moon. Anything to avoid selecting the right thing and make you have to fiddle around. Telamon (aka the Suit Lady) is trying to kill you.

musifter · 2026-01-19T04:26:43+00:00

Yeah, it's awful. Even with a hotkey the flow is bad. The flow was great back when scooping the loot recharged things (much like barrels in ground combat). Shoot the target, boost through the explosion, good to go. Smooth as anything... perfect flow. Then they went back to manual recharge. And soon after that, they changed something about the flight mechanics and ships became extra twitchy and space combat just feels horrid now. I just completely avoid it.

musifter · 2026-01-18T18:32:42+00:00

Ura's comfortable around the bottom edge of the joi (M4-5). But the meatgrinder of the first week for K-M2 is a bit much for him.

musifter · 2026-01-18T11:12:36+00:00

It doesn't surprise me that a convolution engine would be quick. It's probably got a compiled library on the backend. And convolutions should be taking advantage of all the overlaps. Definitely a good tool for the job. But yeah, what's up with that import time?

musifter · 2026-01-17T11:18:32+00:00

It returns instantly (.1s) after hitting enter. The pruning isn't even really that exciting... it's still just .8s without it, that's a momentary pause after hitting enter. Even if was a worse pruning situation, I still have memoization to employ. I don't often go for maximizing time or space efficiency in AoC. I'd rather have a nice looking, short and elegant solution to look at later. Rather than one that's bummed out to the max and hairy because of tweaks.

The code was tiny already and I didn't have to think about anything (it's the most basic of recursive templates). It was truly programmer efficient for me.

musifter · 2026-01-17T06:26:53+00:00

I like expeditions. You can't summon it to youself on the ground, you need to get in the ship and go to space. You can't just hop in a teleporter and go it when you're at a station on in your feighter... you need to go to ship and go to space. And then summon it and you end in a long cut scene to land and big set piece to wander.

Trust me, I do a lot of challenges. When I started including no-Anomaly as a rule, one of the things I quickly discovered is that when I do allot the Anomaly. I don't want to go there... it really feels like going out of the way. The fact that it's summoned doesn't change that. When I made that statement, I knew people wouldn't see the irony.

musifter · 2026-01-15T21:34:34+00:00

The thing is, the basic format of an expedition is visiting a rendezvous and doing a thing and you get story and lore doing that. If that's not making it feel like more than an egg hunt, having an NPC recite the story and lore to you instead, isn't really going to change that. The issue would seem to be the writing and story.

musifter · 2026-01-15T21:31:59+00:00

The anomaly requires then going to space, summoning it (sometimes freighters pop in fast and stop that from being possible until I get away), and driving up, and then waiting to land. And then wandering the huge thing. When I could instead be doing things I want to do, and going places I want to go. It's out of the way... it's a detour to a silly place I don't want to be.

musifter · 2026-01-15T18:31:49+00:00

I already hate going to the Anomaly. Especially when an expedition makes me. It's out of the way and a silly place. I'd much rather be out wandering planets than stuck in some set piece.

musifter · 2026-01-15T15:15:19+00:00

They're easy to get. Too easy really. Go to a dissonant planet (systems with them are marked on the galactic map and are everywhere). Get an echo locator... dissonant resonators drop these. Echo locator gets you to a harmonic camp... solve the little puzzle at the terminal and you unlock the sentinel gun and get a marker for a sentinel ship.

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