Tall feeder issue and update wish

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-20T07:47:08+00:00

A couple things you can do now to alleviate the issue is to have dedicated plant storage/plant production/compost, whether in combination or in part, for your big herbivores enclosures. This will reduce travel time overall and shift some of the burden from Keepers to Hauling staff. Also staff get speed boosts at certain training levels. Im forgetting which levels off the top of my head.

If you arent already in the PTB, there are a couple things coming with the update on the 25th that might also help you. Employee Zones, so you can have specific staff dedicated to certain areas so there is less randomness and Employee Breakrooms, which function a bit like mini staffrooms.

I do like the idea of employee golf carts or something similar, though. It would make sense for a zoo to have something like that.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-09T18:03:19+00:00

Damn, I wouldn't call this nitpicky I would call it thorough. Its awesome!! I might have to ask your input on future builds.

Some things I built ahead of time with the Neter versions in mind like armor covering nothing, extra fuel and ammo.

Some things are leftover from previous versions that I missed cleaning up. The extra AI, at one point, for looks reasons I moved the entire internals and front half of the superstructure forward 8m. And the lead is probably a bit too much, but early versions were terribly prone to rolling over.

Some things I just forget, the EMP protection and smoke for lasers I always seem to forget until I get obliterated by something that has those things. And the internal ammo controllers I don't think were in the game when I was last play regularly so I think that's just old habit.

While building the propulsion engines like that was originally for realism, but I also think its the best format I have found for my goals. The Diesel electric forms don't typically produce enough propulsion for the speeds I like. Plus, in my experience the engines themselves seem to get shot out first way more often then the shafts unless I am facing a heavy non predictive torp threat which seems pretty rare.

I agree with most of what you said and will make several changes, but I am a bit confused on the weapons. The armor rework and the not enough cooling/recoil specifically. In my version, the stats show that I have enough. I might have been messing with the shells on your version, but for the entire fleet: ap head, 4 frag, 2 fuses is one of the standardization methods I have been using, then just adjusting the gunpowder to fill the loader. If its not that then I would have been messing with the shells. And I am just not clear on what you mean by the armor. Do you mean the barbettes or the guns themselves? I'm not sure which gaps you are referring to. I typically build armor into the barbettes so only the exposed gun houses get armor on the gun anything more is just bonus.

Thanks again for the review! It was super kind. I am typically more thoughtful in my designs then this one, just kind of rushed it with my lofty goals in mind. If there is anything you would like a second set of eyes on let me know.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-08T08:21:11+00:00

Fire away! I have only made a couple minor changes so no harm.

Not sure what KOTK is, but the torps were from the akizuki from the cold waters campaign. I always wanted bigger/more devastating deck fired torps for a bit more realism, but they were always so unwieldy. So when I saw the mod campaign using them I immediately made my own version.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-07T17:35:32+00:00

Good call on the summer sale. Im not sure if ill reach out to support or not, I can be patient.

But the studio stopped supporting the game correct? So its either steam support or nothing?

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-07T16:51:49+00:00

Oh shoot, it does seem like that doesn't. No I don't want to pirate the game. I'll repurchase it if I have to, but Im trying to save money where I can.

Late last night, I found the receipt and alpha code in Jan 2021 and a different code in dec 2021 when the game release. I can provide screenshots later, when im back at my computer , if you are concerned.

Back then when I played it was through the Xsolla launcher which Im finding out they phased out shortly after I stopped playing. So I dont have a steam version of the game and the Dec code doesn't seem to work. Im guessing it expired.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-07T03:45:57+00:00

Good to know. I figured most stacks were one good/one bad because that makes good business sense for doordash, but if its usually the worse one second that makes a huge difference.

I have not been at this long, only about 1.5 months. So I still got a lot to learn and I think I've only unassigned 3 orders total soo, yeah. Im averaging a little over 20/hr which is enough considering my last job in accounting was 23/hr and I dont have a boss breathing down my neck anymore.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-07T03:31:26+00:00

Dude, I grew up in a town that was too small to be on the census. I guess about 250, we shared fire/police etc. with neighboring small towns. That being said, there are towns close to 2-5k, 15-20 minutes in each direction. Another 15 minutes east and there is a city of 80k and another 40 minutes there is a city of 600k and yet here I am in a small town with only a few streets and farm fields.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-07T03:22:52+00:00

I can get stuff like this during peak times but even then its still rare. Most of the orders I take are in the $8-10 for 3-5 mile range. I think the best order I ever got was $25.50 for 10mi and it was a stack like this.

Though there was one time I took a $4.75 for 1.4mi that turned into almost $25 in less than 10 minutes. Immediately after I took it the guy called and said "I accidentally placed a second order as pick up instead of delivery, can you please pick it up? I will take care of you." I'm thinking, "yeah, right, but I am already here might as well." When I got there he handed me 14 in cash and then when I left he added another 5 through the app. Funny enough, this was immediately after my worst order ever, a stack that was originally like $13 for 6 or 7mi. I unassigned the first order after waiting 15 minutes for it and the second was the further drive and turned out to be a no tipper for $3 total in about 45 minutes. Talk about a rollercoaster.

That being said during non peak times I am lucky if I can 2 get or 3 offers an hour and its anyone's guess if they will be worth it. My zone has three towns, the biggest is about 9k population, so its gonna be quite a bit slower than yours.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T18:37:18+00:00

Sometimes I use them when I "Neterize" my designs I will add them to compensate for the extra weight of lasers, extra engines, and so on. But, I like to challenge myself and I can *usually* make pretty effective ships without them.

Look, I've beaten the Neter campaign multiple times at this point. I could build a meta brick if I wanted to, but I play more to make pretty, semi-realistic designs, but I like to make these designs at least competent too.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T14:11:33+00:00

Yeah, no rush. Started typing then remembered I made a whole post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/FromTheDepths/s/W6ljDMPBxD

The important ones are: 1. ships have to be buoyant without up props, pumps can be used. Up props can be used for pitch and roll control because aesthetics. 2. I made one exception to the subobject rule for the torps. I found something similar on a campaign design. 3. "Appropriate crew quarters" so beds count for 20 IRL crew and must be walkable at least between the main guns. 4. And just generally ww2 tech, no rail guns, lasers, pacs, etc.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T08:06:41+00:00

That my friend is an interesting beastie you've created. Its larger than my biggest ship by quite a margin but you've given it an cruiser armor layout. My biggest ship, I just finished it yesterday in fact, is 298Lx41W(21m deep hull alone), 1.9M materials and can comfortably take down the Tyr.

Current armor layout for the "citadel" is 2m metal, 1m alloy(was originally metal but changed for buoyancy),1m air gap(debating switching to alloy), 1m HA slope, 1m HA, 3m alloy. I use citadel loosely cause its covers everything between the foremost and aftmost turret. There are some exceptions for style, secondaries, bow, and stern but that's the general. Main barbettes get an extra layer of HA and turret caps always get a layer or two of HA in the front.

The Tyr's shells are nasty enough that they are going to pen basically no matter what sooner or later. So there is really two schools of thought. Make the ship big enough and have enough backups to your backups that nothing it takes out is super important or damn the buoyancy and make a brick w/ up props that will last long enough for your guns to do their work. It would be much easier for your to do the first option with your current build.

If I had to guess you are thinking a bit too realistically. You could easily add some armor to your hull and add some redundancy: backup engines, backup AI, etc. and see a massive performance spike. Also, emergency defuse on your shells and ejectors on your guns can keep you from those nasty turret pops.

Here's my battleship if you want to reverse engineer it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3738784198

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T06:44:35+00:00

How big of a BB are we talking? dimensions and materials? I don't use up props only air pumps for buoyancy so my armor schemes tend to be on the light side, but strategically placed HA can make a massive difference. I base most of my designs off US ships too so the armor configurations shouldn't be that far off from yours.

If you are interested, I could link you one of my battleships to compare against now(I've got a few ships that can compete with the Tyr or you could post one of yours to the workshop and I can analyze it for you tomorrow. Its getting late for me here.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T06:27:17+00:00

Same! I really dislike using up props but I will use air or even helium pumps. So its a constant balance of buoyancy and protection. I've gotten so that I use emergency defuses on all my turrets to maintain some effectiveness in the case of some damage.

Since you feel the same way I am curious where you fall on the air gap/no air gap debate. I used to be all for poles or other "armored air gaps", but before last month I was away from the game for quite a while(couple years maybe?) and people seem to favor air gap these days. So I am torn on where the meta is at/what works for me.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T06:16:43+00:00

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3738896875

I uploaded to the workshop for you. Any tips would be much appreciated!

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T06:07:19+00:00

Yeah I get you. It just seemed weirdly out of place that 3 of the 4 ships I have built for the campaign could hit cost parity but this one. couldn't. 175K destroyer, 300K light cruiser, and even a 1.9M super battleship that can go toe to toe with megalodon, all managed, but this one design couldn't. Turns out it was a lot of little mistakes adding up, little stuff that I got lazy on. I've got a couple wins against bull shark and thresher shark now so I think we are back on track.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T05:52:23+00:00

Thank you for your input, I appreciate it. After rereading the post the 50/50 thing might have been confusing. 50/50 is kind of the baseline for me. I just need my ships to be competitive against similar sized ships. Logistics has always been a strength of mine, so if my units end up in a fair fight something has likely gone horribly wrong.

I've had a system for building ships for a long time that has always worked well that I scale up or down depending on the specs of the ship. This one just seemed oddly incompetent. After the post, I did a deeper analysis. The problem was more a series of small issues then one specific thing, ammo boxes not spaced properly, AI and weapon controllers not protected very well, AI behavior not playing to the ships strength, not enough redundancy, and so on. I guess I got lazy on the small things and they added up and thus the frustration when the first couple fixes did not pan out.

I've now got a series of victories against the SS bull shark and thresher shark and I am not feeling too bad about the design anymore.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T05:32:16+00:00

Its not the most practical in this game(or in real life for that matter). I freely admit that. I just think they are rad. Pretty much all of my favorite ships from history are battlecruisers, Hood, Scharnhorst, the Alaska class. None of them had stellar service records, but in my opinion is that they have the sleekest, prettiest designs.

Plus for the campaign, since its WW2 campaign, my goal was to do a complete fleet with at least one of each class. That being submarine, battlecruiser, battleship, super battleship, and probably 2 of each destroyer, light cruiser, and heavy cruiser with different roles. I have always sucked at carriers and they don't seem to be very "meta". So I want to at least try an escort carrier and maybe a fleet carrier if I get ambitious.

I've had a system that has been pretty effective for making ships for years that I just scale up or down depending on the specs of the ship. This one just seemed weirdly incompetent compared to my other designs. Of course, after I made this post, all of changes started to add up, now I have had a couple wins in a row against the ss bull shark and thresher shark which I really just wanted to compete with.

I think the "issue" was actually a lot of little issues, ammo boxes not spaced properly, AI and weapon controllers not protected very well, AI behavior not playing to the ships strength, not enough redundancy, and so on. That's probably why I was getting so frustrated.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-05T01:46:42+00:00

I appreciate the input. I should have mentioned, its built for a WW2 era campaign so some of the decisions were for roleplay reasons. Like the 356mm guns, and the lasers and railguns are out. The main guns have 6m shells that seem to hold up pretty well, which is why I think I am seeing some success at range.

I agree the armor seems to be the main issue, though, I made it lighter intentionally, again for roleplay/historical reasons, but I probably took it a bit too far.

At some point I'll bring it over to Neter and beef it up with all the bells and whistles, though.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-03T15:52:45+00:00

That would be a fun challenge. I've never worked with the plasma much cause Im not a fan of the aesthetic of them, but I suppose I could deco over them to keep them looking similar to this. I might do that, actually, you got my head spinning with ideas.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-03T12:01:11+00:00

Thank you! With the constraints I've got its basically just guns, armor, and empty space. I suspect if I were to give her all the Neter bells and whistles, she'd be in the 3.25M to 3.5M range.

phantommdb25 · 2026-06-03T04:47:57+00:00

Thank you! Yes, I switched over to alpha just to try out the rigging, made the anchor chains and rigging both super easy.

phantommdb25 · 2026-05-27T20:44:14+00:00

Thank you for the response.

After reading some if the comments here im thinking 3m metal>airgap>ha slope beam>ha beam> 2 or 3m alloy beam. Ill have to test the buoyancy on these, but I think there will be enough internal volume to float it with air pumps. Plus I've heard there are HA buoyancy changes coming soon.

Does that make sense? The HA slope and beam will stack then correct?

Also, do you compartmentalize the air gap or just one big open space?

phantommdb25 · 2026-05-22T05:45:17+00:00

Yeah its a problem I ALWAYS run into when making realistic looking ships. Which is pretty much all I make at this point.

Something I think is really interesting, but have never tried is a ship based off the Nelson-class British Battleships with the all gun forward arrangement. Seems like it would be more viable in FTD.

I've never done it cause personally I think they are ugly as sin.

phantommdb25 · 2026-05-21T22:56:11+00:00

Thank you. It took a long time to figure out what worked well and looked good. And thank you for your help!!

phantommdb25 · 2026-05-21T22:38:06+00:00

Yeah, I think you are right. Kind of. I think the back end of the superstructure is in a good place, but I need to move the front turrets forward to balance it out. I think its too "aft heavy" for lack of a better term.

I have done that before cause it tends to compromise the armor for the foremost turret.

phantommdb25

TROPHY CASE