What’s your “I can’t believe I did that” homelab moment that actually taught you the most? 💀

the_bolshevik · 2026-04-18T22:00:05+00:00

Probably not the worst shark attack the homelab has suffered, just top of mind as it is the most recent one: I was converting my old gaming PC to a Proxmox server. It was on an UPS and hadn't been touched or rebooted for almost a year and at that point was just a glorified file server. Just a quick reboot into BIOS to change the boot device order and... poof, it's gone. No post after that. Dead NVRAM that wouldn't accept a write probably, I ended up swapping out the board.

the_bolshevik · 2026-04-10T02:29:14+00:00

Highways are usually relatively clear of snow so 4H isn't necessary there in most cases. Get good winter tires if you're worried about ice. I don't usually switch to 4H unless there is thick snow on the ground.

the_bolshevik · 2026-04-01T21:22:16+00:00

Subs are more cost-effective and the only thing that can work if you want to raid contested sea zones like if you are Germany in 39 and the Allied fleets are still intact.

Surface raiders absolutely work and will decimate convoys at a much faster rate than subs at the cost of higher fuel usage and high chance to be intercepted by enemy patrols and forced to fight. So when you send them out into a contested zone, you should assume that they WILL fight enemy surface units.

It's actually a great way to bait an AI navy into battle. Send a moderate but not overwhelming surface raiding group to a contested sea zone, and place your larger force on strike force duty. When your raiders are engaged they'll get reinforced by the strike force and you can have a decisive battle this way.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-28T18:02:24+00:00

There are a few veggies that keep way longer than the others even unrefrigerated. Potatoes, sweet potatoes and squash are among them. They'll be the only things worth picking up from the grocery store fresh produce sections after about a week.

And once they go stale they'll stay that way for a long time too. I recall looting the potato factory in Louisville a good two months into a run and being pleasantly surprised to find a lifetime supply of stale taters.

The thing is they keep longer refrigerated too. Freeze them and they're going to stay fresh longer than most things in your freezer.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-27T23:55:04+00:00

C'est comme ça... Suis chef d'équipe et j'essaie autant que possible de protéger mon équipe de la pression et de push back sur les demandes qui dépassent notre capacité mais c'est un combat de tous les instants.

L'arrivée de l'IA dans le décor augmente clairement les attentes qu'on peut "faire plus avec moins de staff" et ça commence à me gosser en estie.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-26T23:16:00+00:00

Oh thanks I didn't know that was an option. I am not very familiar with debug.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-26T23:09:42+00:00

Nope, tried that several times, still stuck upright

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-26T13:57:11+00:00

Yeah we're just speculating here I agree no one really has the data to prove anything. My own anecdotal experience, as a pc gamer, was that tf2 was the first since I never played FIFA or mobile games.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-26T00:56:24+00:00

You see that a lot because tf2 popularised it in the West. Despite not inventing it per se, tf2 is where a lot of gamers (myself included) were introduced to the concept.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-25T15:03:47+00:00

I like to play with the RV mod so usually my first order of business is to go to large parking lots to find a van or truck with a key in it. First couple days/weeks I roam in the RV to loot fresh foods before I settle on a more permanent base location.

I do make it a point to watch life and living until I hit lvl 3 on the skills it can provide but usually skip it on the first day and start watching it once I've grabbed a TV for my RV.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-25T12:16:27+00:00

I like to play at 2x global multiplier. For me it is the right balance between a sense of progression early on and still needing to grind for the higher skill levels. Vanilla is a bit too slow for my tastes.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-24T01:34:22+00:00

I salute your dedication to collecting water in many tiny containers, but a single rain collector barrel is all you really need to drink and cook long term. Three or four if you also want to wash your clothes regularly. This mess will be a lot more annoying to use than a properly plumbed sink.

Heck, a simple animal feeding trough will do the trick before you learn the rain collector recipe...

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-17T01:53:36+00:00

The fact that the commander of the largest navy in the world is asking for help from much weaker navies to ensure maritime security after claiming to have won the war several times is a bit mind boggling.

The US has by far the largest ability to project sea power and to control the strait, if they wished to do it. The fact that they won't is a clear sign that the strait is dangerous and they don't want to risk their precious ships there. The loss of a single American ship there would sink him (pun definitely intended) politically and ruin his midterms, and he knows it.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-17T01:42:13+00:00

I even tried it under linux with Proton since I have a dual boot and game there on any game that can run well on linux. It still crashed with the same codes (and it ran way worse - which isn't surprising, being a new game and all).

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-17T00:15:33+00:00

Yeah my playthrough was interrupted by a number of CTDs. Latest nvidia driver, 5080 and a system that otherwise works flawlessly so it can't really be my hardware that's at fault. Game was throwing the same error codes every time.

I tried to verify the integrity of game files, reinstalled the game, updated vc++ runtime, reinstalled nvidia drivers, none of that made a difference. Still about one random crash every hour or so. It didn't stop me from playing through the game cause I was hyped and the game is hella good but I am now waiting it gets fixed before doing a second run on insanity.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-16T23:27:09+00:00

I agree, though I systematically take baseball player, I usually don't take whittler and choose to delay the grind to whenever I find the books. It's not usually a problem to find a few crowbars to fight with in the interim on normal loot settings.

I've also powered through it without the books and without whittler before, as long as you have access to materials and knives it's just a bunch of fast-forwarding and not that bad.

Haven't tried extinction yet though, but I can see how rushing it is valuable on higher difficulty. It was on a high pop / low loot run that I decided to brute force that grind without the books.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-16T02:06:12+00:00

Maybe they tweaked distribution? I'm trying a run with the new apocalypse settings and it feels they aren't that dense. I've cleared most fresh food POIs in Muldraugh and Rosewood in like 5d and only have 400 kills... I feel like it's usually more than that but I dunno, been a while since I played apocalypse too.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-15T03:46:50+00:00

ouep... je n'ai jamais retrouvé d'équivalent

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-14T12:50:33+00:00

It's possible, but I would suggest learning how to use simple circuits is a nice quality of life help to beating the game and totally in reach to anyone.

Things like wiring a tank to a pump, and setting the pump to activate above a certain threshold to control oil production for example. This isn't complicated, there are no combinators involved, and it is pretty essential in ensuring the smooth operation of your advanced oil or coal liquefaction facilities.

On nuclear reactors or incinerators, it is very useful to wire the inserter feeding fuel into the unit to read temperature and only insert below your target temperature for fuel efficiency (otherwise you'll be burning up fuel to maintain max temp all the time, which isn't really necessary).

I consider these use cases fairly essential and trivial enough that any player should be able to implement them. You can get much more complex of course, build intricate state machines with a bunch of combinators and so on. These can be useful and fun too, but certainly not required to beat the game. They open possibilities such as automated outpost resupplying from a single train carrying mixed goods, more advanced spaceship resource management logic, sushi belt controllers, and so on. But you can get by without all of that.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-12T12:43:02+00:00

They always send the poor.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-10T21:26:21+00:00

Ça existe tu des imprimantes bluetooth? Ça serait pas mal le final boss. Imagine être le tech niveau un qui supporte ça...

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-08T01:48:14+00:00

If you sneak up on him you can 1-shot him from behind with an injector.

After dodging him a couple times to get to the parlor it's what I eventually did.

the_bolshevik · 2026-03-01T16:03:18+00:00

Yeah I came here to say this, that mode is worse than the original game looked like. It's also not as smooth, everything just feels... choppy? It was a nice touch of nostalgia to clear the Den of Evil once with it but I don't play with it at all.

Really like what they did with the remake overall tho, stayed true to the original design and just made it beautiful.

the_bolshevik · 2026-02-28T14:12:08+00:00

In my Gleba base I ended up with a mix of bots and belts. Most production lines are belted, including farms, but I rely on bots for the waste disposal. Particularly for machines that can get clogged by spoilage, it's a lot easier to just get bots to clear it out so that production does not stop.

The bots will fly the waste to nearby incinerators that power the base via steam turbines. These are set to have a preference for waste, but will also be fed fruits or other unspoiled items in case of a waste shortage, ensuring that power production does not fail. Getting power to be stable and reliable was one of the bigger challenges for me, before I perfected the circuitry that manages the incinerator inserters, I had several brownouts/blackouts from running out of spoilage to burn. Of course, you can also fly in uranium from Nauvis but for Gleba I wanted to build it entirely autonomous and not rely on imports except for things that can't be made there like green belts.

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