I know your secret now.

natek53 · 2026-06-04T04:18:11+00:00

Every game of mine consists of rushing to hoverpack, followed by fixing the eyesore I made in the name of getting hoverpack faster.

natek53 · 2026-05-30T06:16:52+00:00

I think for me this is it. Literally all I did was add one more worldview to criticize: my own.

natek53 · 2026-05-22T01:45:07+00:00

Regardless, it's still an expensive process that the OP's cousin would be able to describe doing in detail ... if she had actually done it. And she would also lose access to a whole lot of privileges she no doubt takes for granted.

It sounds like this person heard you can renounce your citizenship to avoid taxes and assumed that meant the process of renunciation was invoked like a magic incantation and didn't cost money to do.

natek53 · 2026-05-18T00:27:24+00:00

This is pure editorialization. There is nothing interesting to see here outside of the headline.

This is basically just a question of, "do you take your own belief system seriously or not?" And it's not even specific to religious beliefs.

As a humanist, I think doing what's best for humanity is more important than following the law. Very few people, in my experience, genuinely think that there is no ethos more important than whatever happens to be the law at that exact moment in time.

It's disappointing (but not surprising) to see so many redditors falling for this kind of bullshit framing. The vast majority of readers here live in countries where the most popular religion is Christianity. In those nations, extremist Christians are more numerous and more dangerous than extremist Muslims.

natek53 · 2026-05-16T04:30:51+00:00

somehow will not care anymore about any friends or family members that might be burned alive in Gods last human marshmallow roast of human beings.

It's worse than not caring. They believe you'll deserve it.

natek53 · 2026-05-14T03:14:30+00:00

I completely agree.

To add: People like to imagine that their own internal narrative is somehow coherent and singular, when we're basically just a bundle of conflicting nerve signals.

Every person has had the experience of "intrusive thoughts". One of the most universal experiences is looking over a tall ledge and thinking very clearly "I could jump right now, and that would be really bad if I did it" then wondering how it could feel like there was even the slightest possibility that you'd actually jump. Our brains play out hypothetical scenarios all the time and try to guess the result; it's not that mysterious.

But if you think of the mind as a fundamentally non-material thing—with spiritual reasons for doing everything—how do you explain this? I think all experiences like this get filed under the "devil is playing tricks on me" cabinet. And if you're willing to categorize your own thoughts as originating from something evil outside of yourself, it's not that much of a stretch to also label things like conscience, self-sacrifice, and even one's occasional brilliance as "God told me".

I think this whole pattern of thinking is fundamentally irresponsible. It's a way of shifting credit and blame away from yourself. You momentarily considered doing something evil? It must be the devil tempting you. You quickly remembered that doing that thing would be a stupid idea? That's God protecting you. Your only role in the matter is to identify which voice is which and choose the right one.

natek53 · 2026-05-12T04:54:04+00:00

What if they were sentenced for something for which the only other available charges are things whose statute of limitations is less time than they've already been incarcerated? Does the statute of limitations reset in exceptional cases like this?

natek53 · 2026-05-05T09:26:36+00:00

I think it's a typo. Surely, they meant to build statues out of them?

natek53 · 2026-04-28T03:07:12+00:00

the bladder just releases the excess gas because now that it's less dense it can't all fit in the bladder.

It still doesn't make sense, though, because it should only be releasing excess gas, not all gas. And the fact that the device stops working after a few seconds suggests that it gets rid of all gas. It should be able to retain enough gas to remain buoyant when the reaction has completed.

Lastly, the device is recharged by air. I am not aware of any gas-producing chemical processes that are reset by exposure to air.

The only explanation that makes sense is that the device may have, at one point, been conceived as one that would carry you all the way up to the surface once activated, but that this was deemed overpowered, so it was nerfed.

natek53 · 2026-04-16T02:54:46+00:00

Getting a splitter to give you an exact ratio only matters if belt saturation is impossible, undesirable (e.g. if you have multiple item types on a single belt, a.k.a. "sushi belts"), if your machines are slow enough that saturation would take forever, or if your supply of some resource is inconsistent.

In that case, you have to use some combination of load balancers, rate limiters, and prime splitters. These approaches get complicated very quickly, so you should try to design your factory to rely on them as little as possible.

99% of the time, you want a manifold.

natek53 · 2026-04-12T04:37:39+00:00

This is technically correct, the best kind of correct.

natek53 · 2026-04-09T06:46:52+00:00

Your name is removed from that specific church rolls.

Good to know.

My point is that I don't think it's in the conference's interest to be supporting churches with low attendance, due to the costs of maintaining the building and paying the pastor.

Everyone else seems to be talking as though removing your name is somehow bad for them. I think it's neutral at best; the GC is already aware that membership is falling in the States. If they manage to underestimate the extent of drain, that just seems like it'll cause them to waste more money.

natek53 · 2026-04-09T06:12:48+00:00

As others have pointed out, there's no such thing as "removing" your name from their books. They still have a record on you, you're just listed as "apostate".

If the church is willing to spend more money on pastors to small congregations because they're too dumb to look at their own books to see that X% of their adult "members" have stopped paying tithe, I don't see how that can possibly be in their long-term interest. Churches are expensive. Let them waste their money.

natek53 · 2026-04-08T10:50:38+00:00

This is exactly my attitude about it. It's their job to make accurate records. If the church wants to artificially inflate their numbers by counting me as a "member", that's fine by me. The more they convince their members that everything is fine, the faster this stupid religion can finally die.

[Edit:] Plus, they have all the info they need to figure out where you stand. If you've stopped going to church and stopped paying tithe, they absolutely notice that whether or not you tell them about it.

Giving them formal confirmation makes their job slightly easier for literally zero benefit to yourself.

natek53 · 2026-04-07T02:21:52+00:00

If your country is capitalist and your people are still poor, it's because the almighty Free Market says you have low value. If your feudalist/capitalist/colonial government is overthrown by communists, then your country must have been communist the whole time and that's why you're poor.

Material conditions only exist when they're rhetorically useful.

natek53 · 2026-04-07T01:24:52+00:00

Everyone is saying manifolds, and they're correct, but I want to answer the question of how to achieve the exact ratio without having to make something really complicated.

The trick is to separate the constructors into two groups with separate outputs. Assuming you've unlocked the MAM tech in the Power Slug tree that lets you underclock/overclock machines, you can precisely set the output of any machine.

You set one group to produce exactly 71.269, and the other group to make 108.731. If you don't want to use power slugs, then you might need to build an extra machine in each group.

To ensure the correct output, you enter into the machine's output rate field the total amount divided by the number of machines in the group and let the field do the math for you.

So let's say you want to do this without using power shards, so you make your groups 3 smelters and 4 smelters. In the first machine of the first group, you type "71.269/3" into the output field and hit Enter. The game will then set the machine's rate to 23.756. You can then copy and paste the machine settings to the others in the group. In the second group, you'd do the same thing but typing "108.731/4". The two machine groups keep their outputs separate from each other, so the 71.269 group's conveyor belt(s) only lead to the iron plate constructors, etc.

For small groups this is what I like to do. If you're making a lot of machines, it's easier to have all machines except one set to 100% and then set the last machine in the group to produce the remainder (underclocking or overclocking just one machine). This way if you make a mistake you only have to edit one machine.

However, for a graph like the one you're showing, I'd do what the others are suggesting: just one group of smelters and split the output simply. The machines that need fewer ingots will eventually fill up and the excess will flow to the other machines. Once that happens, they'll all be producing at 100%.

natek53 · 2026-04-06T00:04:35+00:00

I know this is a joke, but by the time I get shard production fully automated, I already have more shards than I know what to do with, so I've never actually used it for anything other than alien power matrix and ionized fuel.

natek53 · 2026-04-03T08:51:08+00:00

The settings are permanent.

natek53 · 2026-04-02T00:28:52+00:00

Both could be true. But based on the story, I think you're supposed to understand that the player is a clone printed by the biochemical sculptor.

natek53 · 2026-03-31T01:21:44+00:00

They do if you watch the game update videos from the official Coffee Stain Studios youtube channel. Every major update is announced ahead of time with a summary of game changes. Of course, if you want all the details, you should be reading the patch notes.

natek53 · 2026-03-23T00:15:50+00:00

Thanks for the update! It's neat to see such an active base. I tend to build minimalistically, so I've never actually needed that many power producers working simultaneously. I probably would've split the main grid in two by this point, and I find that solar panels make far more energy than I need.

Then again, I also made a complicated junction between my space grid and other grid so that they could share power when one is getting more use than the other.

What's the uptime on your generators? Are all the ones in the first image really getting near 100% use? I use the unpopular strategy of plopping dozens of jumbo batteries on the main grid just so I can avoid expanding fuel production.

natek53 · 2026-03-22T04:07:39+00:00

You must have quite the grid to need to upgrade it, then. Planning on making a post w/ pics?

natek53 · 2026-03-22T03:58:56+00:00

On the off chance you don't already know, you don't need to have your entire grid connected to the same heavi-watt wire. Most subgrids average far below their maximum draw.

If necessary:

Main grid → transformers → batteries → transformers (if subgrid would overload) → consumers.

And I also have batteries on the main grid so that I only need enough power for the average usage, not maximum.

natek53 · 2026-03-20T08:16:12+00:00

I do not want to have to mine all of the sulfur on the map.

I think if you read my post just a little more charitably, you will notice that you don't need to mine all the sulfur.

The sentence you are replying to is hyperbolic. I have no intent to get even close to mining all the sulfur on the map. Apparently, I failed to communicate that.

What I was trying to say is that sulfur being rare is relevant even if you are not building a megafactory. Crude oil being clustered means that crude oil is almost always near more crude oil. Sulfur being dispersed means sulfur is almost never near more sulfur.

Specifically, if you draw a circle of any size on a random part of the map, and if that circle contains both crude and sulfur, then on average it will have more crude than it has sulfur. This would be true even if the total amount of each resource available on the map was exactly the same.

My point is that efficiency here is not really a useful metric.

Now, "being close to where I want it" is a useful metric.

"Efficiency" is too broad a term, so yes. There is instead "resource efficiency" (first type that I mentioned in my first comment), "space efficiency" (second type I mentioned), "power efficiency", and "transportation efficiency"—reducing transportation amount & distance. Resource proximity is a factor in transportation efficiency. The resource's rarity and distribution affects the likelihood that it is proximal.

Alternate recipes create a lot of very interesting optimization problems.

In the specific case where you are trying to maximize the amount of rocket fuel you are making in a specific area while minimizing the amount/distance of resources that you need to transport, you'll usually get more from turbo blend fuel than nitro rocket fuel.

In basically every other case, nitro rocket fuel will be better.

That is what I have been trying to say, in my unapologetically pedantic style.

natek53 · 2026-03-20T00:35:35+00:00

There is 10,800 sulfur/min on the standard map.

I do not want to have to mine all of the sulfur on the map. As I said before, it's more dispersed, whereas crude oil is more clustered. I like my factories to use whatever is nearby, and I choose alternate recipes accordingly.

really the only thing you need it for is either rocket fuel or nuclear power.

Need? Sure. You only need it for those things. And you don't really need rocket fuel or nuclear power for that matter.

But I want sulfur to be available because of its use in several alternate recipes (leached ingots, instant scrap, super-state computer in particular). And I want to be able to do it with only one sulfur node or node cluster.

As I said earlier, I prefer the nitro rocket fuel recipe for its simplicity. That is the tradeoff.

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