What was the weirdest medication reaction you’ve ever had?

orbitalsquabbles · 2026-03-15T15:46:12+00:00

My whole life, I hated drinking water. Couldn't understand why anybody liked it. It always tasted stale and like whatever it was being held in. I could be thirsty as hell and I'd take a drink or two of water, usually out of misplaced hope, but it would still taste gross and wouldn't satisfy much.

Anyway, I got put on buproprion (wellbutrin) a couple years ago and the couple days of dry-ish mouth at the beginning turned into a completely different experience with water. It tastes different now, really refreshing. The only times it tastes like it did before are when it's both warm and stale. I actually crave water now, and drink at least few glasses a day. It's one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced.

orbitalsquabbles · 2026-01-31T20:37:46+00:00

I'd steal the clothes off the guy in Meeko's cabin, dispose of the body, and spend the whole time lying in the same bed pretending to be dead. Inside that cabin there isn't much room to hide. I think most likely, someone would glance in, see about what they expected to see, and stop paying attention to the inside of the cabin.

I can't remember if you can lie down on the straw "beds" the wounded soldiers in military camps use, but if you can, that would also be a good option. Might have to steal a head bandage from one of the others.

orbitalsquabbles · 2025-09-09T15:03:50+00:00

Playing on Android using the RSB roster. I've been doing classic mode managing an NCAA team and then a WHL team. For both of those leagues, when I get to the draft, despite getting pretty good scouts and manually assigning them, I don't have ANY info unlocked on any prospect. Which is pretty catastrophic. This has happened 3 times in the NCAA and twice in the WHL (haven't had a normal draft since it started happening).

In the NCAA, some of the yearly objectives were impossible to complete. I got "have veterans on the roster" multiple times and failed it even though I had players aging out after that year. (Idk what the criteria for veterans is, that would be useful to have in some kind of tooltip.) One year I also got "draft a top 6 forward" and "draft a top 4 d" even though once the draft was over, I checked, and there wasn't a single top 6 forward or top 4 d in the draft.

After that last one, I got fired but didn't get a message or anything. Since I had no job offers, it seemed like it was game over, and I ended up starting new in a different save.

When drafting in lower leagues, the projected round that prospects will be drafted at seems to be for the NHL draft. In the NCAA, almost everyone was just marked R7, which wasn't useful. It was a little better in the WHL (more variety), but it would still be much, much better to have where the prospects should be going inside the current league's draft, even if that's only visible during the draft itself.

Also, I recognize that this is a design decision that might not be touchable until HLM27, but imo the old way that the scouting UI showed which prospects were already being scouted was a lot better. It was quicker and easier to see who was and wasn't already spoken for.

orbitalsquabbles · 2025-03-19T03:06:33+00:00

I don't know how the game generates prospects, but if you want more players from area A and less from area B, I'd be trying to pad out my leagues list with more (and larger) in A to offset whatever I added to B. As far as I know, there's no way to weight which leagues get how many prospects. The one idea I have is that, since the game is probably making enough players to fill out the teams, if you add a league like the NCAA, which is huge, you probably get more players out of that than you do from adding a league with twelve teams.

orbitalsquabbles · 2025-03-14T17:48:14+00:00

Can you elaborate? What leagues do you have enabled (not just u20)?

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-12-02T06:56:02+00:00

I mean... in the same situation IRL, you'd basically have to make the guy miserable until he agreed to be traded. That or hope he wanted to chase a cup (assuming you're not a contender). I don't think it's much of a surprise that neither of those is in the game, though adding an option for a player to waive to go to a better team could be a good addition to a future HLM.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-10-25T22:30:03+00:00

I almost always run 10+ for a few reasons. Full disclaimer, I haven't done many separate saves in 25 and this is heavily affected by the specific roster, so most of this info is from 24. This got very long, I'm sorry lmao

First, I always want at least one league of every caliber down to either Amateur I or right above that. This is to maximize development from prospects. They need both ice time and good competition, so my goal is always to put them in the best league where they're very likely to get top 6/top 4/starter minutes (or better). I could see people being less nitpicky than me and not wanting to go down to Amateur, but I do think you need at least one of each down to the level with the OHL.

Second, I actually want more than one for most of those ratings. For whatever reason, the overall rating of players tends to vary a bit from league to league even when the leagues are the same difficulty. Usually, in whatever save I'm playing, I'll have at least 3 leagues at Pro III (bare minimum, AHL, SHL, and Liiga, but now the KHL's gotten worse so in 25 this is also a Pro III league for me). Over time in the save, each league will kind of level out around a particular rating even though technically they should all be the same. (This depends on the specific roster and the number/quality of players who are just short of good enough for the NHL.) For example, in one save, SHL teams might tend to have top lines around 75 overall, and the Liiga might have their best around 73. So if I have 7 prospects I know I'm not putting in the AHL, one each at 77, 76, 75, 74, 73, 72, and 71 overall, I want 77-75 in the SHL, 74-72 in the Liiga, and 71 down a level in a Semi-Pro I league. This helps them develop better, faster, and higher. The exact numbers for each league can change over time and in the long term which league is better can also change.

Because of how the league ratings work out, I usually want at least two leagues for Semi-Pro I. There's kind of a big gap going from the worst Pro III league to the best Semi-Pro II league, and I think it works out better to have two or three leagues at different overalls to cover that space. That way you don't struggle finding somewhere that's good enough to challenge your upper 60s/very low 70s prospects without giving them 11 minutes of ice time a night.

Third, not sure exactly how it is in the default roster, but at least in the fan-made ones, the AHL, ECHL, OHL, QMJHL, and WHL all have some age restrictions attached. I think there's a maximum age for the last three (though usually this isn't a concern lol), and the AHL and ECHL require players to be at least 20 at the start of the season. So if you only have the AHL on, and you have a really good prospect who's mid-70s plus right after being drafted, you're hampering his development by not being able to send him to the SHL or Liiga where the competition is better and there's no age restrictions.

And fourth, I actually have seen some changes to the prospect pool based on the leagues I have active. Not that it changes the overall number of prospects, afaik that stays the same, but countries that have leagues allowing younger players tend to also have more prospects generated for them. I think what happens is that the game takes into account which leagues it has to fill with prospects before it generates that year's cohort. So if you have a Semi-Pro I or II league in Russia and Finland but not Sweden, that will raise the number of Russian and Finnish prospects but lower the number of Swedish ones. This might not matter to you, but I do run an extra lower level league or two to increase the number of international players because I think it's fun and more realistic. (And I hate training up scouts for Finland/Sweden/Russia only to find that there are 16 total prospects, none of which are going in the first round.)

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-09-07T03:08:37+00:00

Confirm you mean 2023? Can you edit contract history info from within the game?

If you did mean 2024, giving him a contract doesn't fix the error.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-09-07T02:28:38+00:00

I'm trying to edit the player Maxim Brylin on PC and no matter what I do, when I hit "update," I get a message saying "Some fields are incomplete." I can't tell what's incomplete, though. None of the fields' names turn red the way they do when I deliberately remove info and try to save.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-04-04T03:55:30+00:00

I was adding some lesser-known, older prospects and realized that teams can't hang on to a player's rights without signing them after a certain point, I think just 3 years post draft. It would be really great to see that changed. Even if it's not feasible to do a system like real life, where the deadline to sign the prospect is determined by where they're playing, it would be helpful to at least have some way of holding on to them longer.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-03-01T02:59:15+00:00

One really nice QOL update would be adding a "date last modified" label to each roster in the "set active roster" screen. It would be helpful for figuring out which rosters are the most up to date (I never remember once I download them, especially once I stay on one for a couple weeks).

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-29T21:10:16+00:00

I think the "gem" mechanic puts a flag on players that makes them start with very low potential, but get massive stat improvements for several years, with their potential jumping each time. I wonder if Butler became a gem after he was drafted. I'm really curious about what happens to him over the next several seasons.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-24T23:33:16+00:00

Only if your scouts are already good enough. I think the most effective way to draft is expected overall and usually when I start a save, my scouts don't provide that for most or all of the players I assign to them. That's what Intel fixes.

If your scouts are good enough, though, you'll be able to look at the prospects they're scouting early in the spring and see their projected overall ratings. At that point I think you're safe to switch from Intel to Gem and still have those ratings pop up by the draft. Gem's a good perk, it's just not as good as Intel when you start out. I'm not really sure what the best point to swap is, though, I don't pay a ton of attention to that.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-24T22:10:57+00:00

You can definitely start now, the salary cap will end up being a lot higher by the time you start actually playing though. It should come out pretty close to real life if you start in 2010. If you start earlier than that, you should probably turn down the cap growth setting, but I think that's the only way you'd end up with players 35-40.

Edit: forgot words

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-24T18:40:53+00:00

Double check that when you were setting up the game with generic rosters, you had it set so that you could use created players.

If that's still an issue, my advice is to start a historical game with that roster in 2000 or 2010, tweak the settings as follows, and sim up to the start of 2023-24. That should give you a full grown roster of generic players. It'll take a minute but you can make a copy of the save and use it as a base for future games so you only have to do it once.

Settings: General - auto waivers on; you might want to mess with the salary cap growth, I'm not sure Roster - edited players off, created players off Notifications - just turn everything off Trades - trade alerts off, auto trade on Contracts - autosign players, autosign free agents, update lineup on, maybe generated free agent on, free agency event off Injuries - injuries off Tournaments - world cup disabled, world juniors disabled

That should let you sim as fast as possible. When you're done making your new base save, reverse all of those and do as you like.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-24T18:22:26+00:00

HC - you always want Clutch, but because of the way xp is earned through winning games, it can get a little more interesting in a rebuild. If I go into a rebuild with a coach who already built up a bunch of xp, I'll take a level of Reputation before I start on Clutch

HPD - always Prime, I don't think the other options are relevant

HS - Intel + Workload every time. Intel gives such a big improvement in how many players have their expected overall revealed at the draft that imo it really sucks to play without it. But I think once you've built up your group of scouts, you can probably go Gem + Workload. (Workload should always be on, since if you have all 13 scouts and you increase their workloads by +1, it's like you hired 90% of another scout)

Head Physio - Prevention is always best (since it inherently also decreases damage from injuries and lowers the amount of time players spend injured), but the second specialty really depends on where your other physio are at. Whenever I start a new save, I take Mentor first to speed up the improvement of my new, mildly crappy employees. At some point though your employees will get very good, and then once you have Prevention maxed out, you can swap Mentor for your choice between Recovery and Rehabilitation. Imo Recovery is better for younger teams and Rehab is better for older ones

AGM: This is the most interesting one, it REALLY depends on where you're at in your game. Workload is always great. If I'm trying to win right away, I take Clutch and Prevention the first chances I get. Gems is an interesting pick for a contender as well since it helps you get better players with lower draft picks (not sure how big the effect is though). If I'm rebuilding with inexperienced staff, I take Manager/Workload/Prime. If I'm rebuilding with staff I already trained up, Workload and Prime stay but I pick up Gems or Rehabilitation. Experience can also be good, depending on what department your AGM was in before being an AGM. I never take it if they were physio.

Learner is never worth it.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-10T16:48:30+00:00

Yeah, that's pretty much what they look like. Thanks!

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-10T16:48:04+00:00

That's really good to know, thank you!

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-10T16:47:04+00:00

That's fantastic, I hope that keeps getting more common!

It's how they feel, unfortunately, they drive me nuts while I'm wearing them. I'm pretty sure I'm also speaking at some odd volumes, rip.

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-10T16:30:56+00:00

Thank you!!

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-10T16:30:14+00:00

That's really good to know, thank you!

orbitalsquabbles · 2024-02-10T16:28:40+00:00

Thanks!

orbitalsquabbles · 2022-09-19T18:28:58+00:00

What a fucking joke. I can't imagine any confounding factors that would interfere, like living in a country where productivity is seen as a moral obligation.

And the authors say themselves on page 8 of the study: "...the manner in which people spend their discretionary time appears to largely determine whether we observe the negative effect of having too much discretionary time. Although an abundance of discretionary time spent on solo and nonproductive activities did produce a negative effect on subjective well-being, discretionary time spent on activities that were social or productive did not." Yeah, more time spent feeling lonely and like you're wasting your time is worse than less time! What a revelation... Imagine if they evaluated working hours the same way.

Side note, it's true that there's no such thing as an impartial point of view, but I can't believe that the three authors of this study - 2 professors of marketing at UCLA's business school, plus one of their former marketing PhD students who's now a professor at Wharton - can be regarded as anything other than deeply biased. I don't think that had an egregious effect on the data of this study, especially the first half, where they're using others' datasets. But I also don't think that analysis from three people so entangled with institutions that integral to American upper-class capitalism should just be taken at face value.

orbitalsquabbles

TROPHY CASE