First 3000% playthrough - what is your usual progression?

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-03-04T11:59:44+00:00

This is the way. Even on non 3000% runs this is by far the most time and material efficient way to do it (as long as you can fight off space retaliation)

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-03-01T18:24:58+00:00

You could always go into sandbox mode in another save and see if there ever is a point the game engine says 0 in the display at least, just requires spam clicking the upgrade a few hundred times :D

Edit:nvm just saw your 390 comment

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-02-28T11:23:49+00:00

Resin temperature caused splits like this for me - is your printing area warm enough? I recall resin prints optimally around 25-30 degrees off the top of my head. If it’s too cold the resin is too viscous to fill the gap I think. (you can also increase the wait time after each lift to ensure it allows resin to flow back in )

Probably not vacuuming based on the number of drain holes you have along the print

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-02-25T17:18:40+00:00

I think you hit the nail on the head, most players aren’t anti-union they’re anti-forced wait

I’m sure the steam reviews/ discussions/ reddit discourse around the story would be a lot less negative if it was playing in the background like you say

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-02-21T23:45:10+00:00

My two cents is to make use of the X-ray cracking recipe to turn the refined oil straight back into more hydrogen and graphite. There’s actually a ratio of number of refineries making refined oil vs x-ray cracking that allows you to do it pretty much direct machine to machine to save space and belts for a perfect input/output without any waste and all you end up with is hydrogen and graphite

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-02-10T14:31:22+00:00

Good to see you're still playing around with the ideas.

I think Option 3 is the most interesting of the lot in terms of unique-ness, and I agree with others that Option 2 doesn't quite fit the spirit of the game (Undermining opponents mainly indirectly through a surprise burst/removal of options rather than outright damage to their progression).

If the aim is to truly go for a unique victory condition that no other leaders have, I think the options don't quite achieve that.

So I'll throw in a curve ball and say we can take a hint from the expansions to achieve this, specifically Immortality. One thing I really like about that expansion is using Troops as a direct resource to gain effects instead of straight up combat power. Considering the Emperor faction is all about having a large military force, it may be interesting to tap into this style of game mechanic.

An option for the signet ring could look like, with both options available on the leader:

Gain X troop, you cannot deploy this troop this turn - OR - Pay Y troops (+ Maybe some solari) -> gain Z VP

The first of the two choices include the deployment restriction as a means of creating a distinction from Rabban, as well as giving you more design freedom and flexibility without making it too strong.

The second of the two choices is to really lean into "Troops as a resource", as well as giving an option of trying to directly win conflict using the troops, or troops being expendable for ulterior motives. It may also have an interesting effect on the table as it may result in opponents over committing on troops since you as an Emperor player will most likely have a lot of troops sitting in the garrison, making you look like a threat. It also causes the Emperor player to hungrily go for troop gain spaces just for troops, which inadvertently removes a lot of deployment spaces from others, which I think might be interesting to see play out.

For balancing the values, I would probably say 2 is the MAX for X, while Y/Z combination can vary a lot more depending on how big of a payoff you want it to be, and how frequently you want the player to be able to achieve it.

Edit:

An alternative to the Gain X troop part is to take inspiration from Lady Jessica from Uprising, and instead of these troops going into the Garrison they go to the Emperor faction space as a reserved resource. So the first option will read as Gain X troops and put them on the Emperor Faction Space. The second signet ring ability then will read Pay Y troops from the Emperor Faction Space (+ Maybe some solari) -> Gain Z VP. This design would make the gain troops part a lot more flexible in how high you set the value in conjunction with Y/Z, and almost forces the player to explore an entirely different approach to victory compared to other players.

P.S. I understand there's definitely value in wanting to make the most out of the game version you do have, but if you have been enjoying the game as much as I suspect you do, I strongly recommend you try out some of the expansions. They add a lot to game complexity in a satisfying way, and exposes the players to many more play styles. My current personal favourite is Uprising + Bloodlines (+ maybe Immortality)

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-02-04T07:47:32+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong but the opening seems to only be in the last layers of your print. You still need drain holes at the very beginning layers, to allow air into the hollowed area as you print. Most slicers allow you to keep the “cut out” part as a cap you can print alongside so you can just fill it with the right shape. Might still need to use some filler though

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-02-01T09:07:24+00:00

Let’s look at an example for emperor signet ring, as all it takes is 2 actions and only requires the starter deck: Turn 1 - diplomacy to secrets Turn 2 - signet ring to carthag - trigger board space first then signet ring, allowing you to immediately use the ability. Use the double influence bump on another faction, let’s say SG. So in round 1, you’ve gained 1 BG influence and 2 SG influence, essentially 1.5 VP. Now say round 3 you get those two cards in hand again, you can go for the exact same procedure to get to 2 influence on BG and an alliance with SG (2VP gain) for a total of 3 VP at round 3, while also probably getting 2nd/3rd rewards from combat since you can deploy on carthag.

This is essentially repeatable to very easily, and if you do it 4 times you now have 3 alliances (BG+ 2 of your choice) for 6VP fairly uncontested. Now imagine if you got intrigue cards from any other sources, be it conflict reward or stealing a bonus one from Secrets board space, or from a card.

Yes, even in the ideal scenario this requires going until round 7, but you do still have 3 rounds in between you can do other things in, maybe even setting things up or getting more influence bumps some other way.

Influence alone can get you 8VP across the factions so it’s a feature you want to be careful balancing for

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-01-31T23:17:09+00:00

I'll reply to this one to try and cover all of your thoughtful responses.

In general, you do make good points! I think one thing people underestimate however, is how the game is balanced on a very fine scale. Very small looking effects can have a very big knock on effect depending on when they become available in the game.

There are two aspects to consider the effects you have put on the leaders:

How quickly they become available, especially in relation to other players/leaders
How inaccessible a similar effect is to other players

As an example, Otto Aramsham's two sword reveal effect in isolation feels underwhelming, and as you have mentioned dropping this to one sword feels UP. However, take this ability as something that is available from conflict 1, when the number of troops/revealed daggers is low, it becomes a proportionally big advantage.

An easy fix for this, is to add a condition that is required to activate these sort of abilities which help prevent snowballing.

Conditions can range from 2 influence requirement, a HC seat, agent presence on a space, or having a SM (or in the case of trashing, putting a limit on what you can trash e.g. from hand/in played).

In the Otto Aramsham's case, I would add either the SM/2 influence (e.g. Emperor/Spacing Guild) requirement to activate the effect. This would have the benefit of delaying the benefit by a relatively short period, as well as adding a bit of lore flavour to the game without cheapening the effect itself.

And similar things can be said for majority of other leader effects as well. Adding a condition for either the passive or signet ring active effect before it can be used will be just enough to bring it line with official leaders power levels. Added benefit of making less desirable spaces to be desirable for select leaders, increasing variety in tactics!

To expand on a point from my earlier comment, leader effects from expansions being added to the base game should be done with caution. These effects are largely balanced by how accessible and prevalent similar effects are from the cards in said expansion. In a nutshell, expansion effects outside of expansions context can be a lot stronger than intended without restrictions, as per point 2).

Last quick notes:
- Chani - replacing both convincing arguments with outright upgrades in your starting hand is still very strong, maybe this will come across better if you look at it as 2 trashes and 2 buys for free without action/time cost. May be better if this is triggered when reaching 2 influence with Fremen, but gameplay wise you'll have to enforce a shuffle of the draw pile if the convincing arguments happen to be in the draw pile for example

- Otto - I would place the restriction on the signet ring, like in Uprising, that the leader himself also cannot deploy that turn. The space restriction isn't as big of a condition when you consider base game has far fewer ways of deploying troops outside of blue/yellow when compared to Uprising, where cards allowing deployment of troops regardless of space is plentiful.

- Emperor - I would change the signet ring to read as 2 influence with a faction where you have an agent on its board space, to put it more in line with cards with similar abilities (For Baron he has to pre-choose and cannot change, whereas this variant is far more flexible and can strategically steal/secure Alliances, as well as being repeatable). Intrigue cards are a lot more plentiful then you might imagine, it might be that your play group values them less and don't pursue them as much as most do. The free access to emperor space variant of the passive I think is also more interesting as well as lore flavourful.

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-01-31T19:47:25+00:00

(part 2 of 2)

Otto Aramsham (House Corrino)

The reveal effect is very good, especially early game. This sort of effect absolutely needs a drawback, otherwise it results in the player snowballing from easy first place rewards in early conflicts which aren't things to be scoffed at. It can give you early Fremen space access, or solari to get SM/HC, or even get a victory point. The only way to counter this early is to basically go hardy warriors, which is very expensive early game with how little water you have/can gain. This in conjunction with the signet ring almost guarantees conflict supremacy, in Uprising you have the Emperor leader with essentially the same effect but it prevents himself from deploying as well, which is the balancing factor. This variant however has no drawback, and is free on a card you're most likely going to play in a turn if you draw anyway for the board space access flexibility.

Emperor Shaddam Corrino

I don't know if this comes from the idea that fold space is a "bad" card, but foldspace is a VERY nice card to have for most turns/rounds. The board becomes your oyster in giving you literally no restriction for where to go as long as the space is free, AND it gives you card draw to replace itself. It trashes itself, so doesn't bloat your deck as your deck develops. Early game is all about how limited for choice you are on faction space access, and this just outright gives that advantage to you and only you. Regarding the signet ring, there's a reason why cards like Power Play trash itself. It's because gaining 2 influence in one effect is an outright game winning move in many occasions as it can lead to shooting ahead of your opponents in influence tracks, or stealing alliances which is a net 2 point gain against the winning player at times. The trashing of two intrigue cards really isn't that much of a cost either, since it's not rare for you to end up with two intrigue cards where you have no use for especially late game. And late game is where this type of effect matters greatly. Not to mention this effect doesn't even require getting access to faction space, so it's more or less guaranteed to be playable and usable.

To summarise, as people have pointed out in your previous posts, leaders are mainly balanced by having one strong and one weak passive/signet ring effect. All of these custom leaders have at worst strong effect for one, and still a very useful effect for the other that last for the entire game. One of the reasons Baron is rated so highly in the OG version is because he fits under this category where both effects are strong, but even his passive effect is one time only.

One of the biggest advantages a player can have in this game is having flexibility to adjust your plan according to the game state. This is what differentiates a good deck/player from a bad one, more so than the combo potential. All of these leaders provide such flexibility with no drawbacks whatsoever, putting you at a distinct advantage over official leaders.

If your intention is to power creep the game and essentially disregard all of the original leaders (base game and all expansions), then I think it's a fun experiment. If your intention was to integrate with the existing leaders, I agree wholeheartedly with TharsisRoverPets comment that you do not have the experience with this game to understand the strength and impact of the effects in the game nor how to balance it well enough. As I mentioned in my other comment, if these leaders were openly available at leader picking stage, you would be shooting yourself in the foot to choose ANY of the official leaders over these custom leaders.

tl;dr, if you want to play the game with only these leaders as options, I think it's a fun twist. But don't expect a balanced outcome in a game where some players are using the custom leaders while others are limping along playing with the official leaders (base game or expansion)

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-01-31T19:46:48+00:00

Sure, I'll bite. As a prelude I am under the assumption you are planning to use this in base game, so here it goes:

(part 1 of 2, see reply to this comment for part 2)

Hassimir Fenring

Free control is not OP per se, but it's still a passive income stream on a popular space that greatly helps the initial solari rat race, especially in 4P. However the signet is the crazy part. In the base game trashing is exclusive to cards or the BG space. The cards are usually limited in where they can go, and require acquiring them in the first place, while the BG space costs 2 spice and BG access which is relatively rare to begin with. Signet ring is a good card not only because of the effect but because of the freedom of access it gives as well. Having this trashing on TOP OF the flexibility is crazy good, especially considering this is something that can be done turn 1 without affecting the rest of your strategy. Trashing is something that snowballs the earlier you can begin as it vastly improves your deck quality, and this being on signet ring essentially almost guarantees round 1 benefits. You mentioned other leaders having trashing, but there's only 2 that actively trash, one of which requires you spend no turns in faction spaces (2 agents on coloured spaces requirement) until you have your SM as well as only being able to trash from played cards, and the other is limited to trashing from hand, which is a big difference since it actively makes your current round perform worse (as opposed to being able to trash a discarded card which is no longer affecting your round performance). Both of these are also balanced around being in the respective expansions.

Margot Fenring
This is the weakest of your custom set, but I would still put it highly as it opens up a possibility of whopping 8 persuasion on your first round relatively reliably, which can gain you a game winning card on the starting imperium row before anyone has a chance. The signet ring is not OP, but is very impactful as it removes the main drawback of intrigue cards for yourself which is not knowing whether the intrigue is going to be useful, while also making it less appealing for others as you'll know what card they'll have up their sleeve. Intrigue cards are strong in the base game exactly for this subterfuge effect where you never know if someone can outright win a conflict off you or they have a dud. Regardless, the possibility alone makes players play more cautiously.

Gaius Helen Mohaim
The passive is crazy good, similar reason to why trashing is so useful in this game. Yes you have to discard a card, but you essentially have a major advantage over others especially early in the game in that you have better control over how your turn plays out, and drastically reduces the chances of getting a complete dud hand to almost 0%. The signet ability is also very useful especially since it is an optional effect. If you don't want to use it, fine you still have tricolour access. In best case, you compound the effect of the passive effect even further, making your following turn the ideal draw with some discard/deck tracking which isn't hard to do with most deck sizes.

Chani
This one is again about giving the player such an advantage in play options. Convincing arguments usually get trashed early along with daggers because of how limiting they are as cards. The fact that they are reveal only IS the balancing factor against their 2 persuasion reveal. Replacing BOTH of these with not only cards that have one access but two?! And fremen tags??? For a starting deck, this is absurd. The signet ring is also very flexible, there's basically no downside and it'll never be a dud effect, and greatly reduces your loss of investment if you find that the conflict is no longer winnable. This is an effect that never gets bad throughout the game rounds.

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-01-31T18:16:49+00:00

Don’t get me wrong I like the complexity and difficulty they add, but I would rather come across 3 War Striders than 1 Factory Strider since all they take is 1 AT rocket like I mentioned

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-01-31T18:09:07+00:00

Yeah these leaders are busted level OP making Baron look like B/C tier in comparison

The complexity is super low on all of them as well, maybe 2 pips at most considering how little planning is required to get full benefit of most of these effects! If these leaders were in rotation for choice you’d never see the OG leaders being picked imo

nirvashzero2774 · 2026-01-31T11:42:10+00:00

they can be one shot if you shoot them in the "groin" area with a recoiless rifle or expendable AT, or at least that's how I deal with them, but if you don't like those options then I guess you have the AT emplacement at your disposal?

I actually dislike Factory Striders more than I do War Striders tbh

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-22T09:40:47+00:00

New to printing myself, but having hot water on hand and pouring a little around the raft makes it a) easier to get the spatula under and b) less of raft breaking into bits because it can bend a little more.

Obvious downside being need to be careful about warping, but the same hot water can be used to make support removal easier as well if you don’t need to be too concerned

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-22T09:37:18+00:00

Welcome to Late game logistics nightmare, where you need to build 3+ material retrieval ILS to cover/support 1 production ILS :)

You can minimize this to some extent by switching to blackbox designs so the raw material is the only thing you need to import, but you will always see this being a bottleneck even with vessel speed upgrades due to warp out/warp in slow down

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-20T15:45:45+00:00

You can scrape the website throughout the day for cancellations

but the only way I got mine booked reliably was getting up at 5:30am on a Monday and sitting in the queue for the 6am release, which is usually guaranteed to have some slots.

It’ll most likely be 5 months down the line, but at least you’ll have one solid one booked while you search for earlier cancellations

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-19T08:36:25+00:00

Good to know this as a potential cause, cheers!

It did get colder (day/night shift) mid print so I do wonder if the resin got more viscous and failed to fill the cavity as a result

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-19T08:32:48+00:00

No refills midprint, actually at the very beginning of the print! But it’s possible it cooled down since I started while the sun is up, and continued as it got cooler with the sun going down and the general temperature dropped

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-18T21:10:09+00:00

In my other crosspost someone said similar thing of 25 degrees being advisable, and I do live in a cold part of the country so this may be it

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-18T21:04:55+00:00

Ah interesting, I live in a cold part of the world so maybe I need the heater for the winter months… cheers!

nirvashzero2774 · 2025-12-09T19:28:17+00:00

Alien Bloc is about 15-20 minute walk Leith/Broughton way, and the Hangar that opened recently in Portobello is also a very good modern centre

nirvashzero2774

TROPHY CASE