From That Time I Opened A Sulfur Geyser In A Oil Biome, With A Magma Leak. Also Featuring Molten Lead

now that atlas is a thing

does that mean there’s going to be x2 the ‘form voltron’ sequences??

This is interesting coming from a post-expansion perspective. I do feel Space Age in some ways tried to approach this problem, and succeeded in some ways. Ultimately someone else pointed out very well that this isn’t a problem inherent to Factorio. It’s a problem that stems from how humans approach problem solving as a whole. We like to find one-size fits all solutions that we can apply over and over again. Ultimately what the expansion tried to do to solve this problem was to introduce new mechanics to act as new constraints. Spoilage is a constraint, constraining your throughput by time. So is Aquilo’s increase power draw for bots. Likewise Fulgora’s inverted crafting tree and Vulcanus’ lava do force you to rethink how you approach certain problems and they don’t reward a one-size fits all solution. Sure, a bot base WILL WORK for EVERY planet, but…

Spoilage will cause a lot of unnecessary bot work, and bots do NOT take freshness into account, which I think is intentional. Aquilo requires a lot of bots to get anything done in a timely fashion and they drain power like crazy too. Fulgora’s biproducts likewise introduce more jobs for bots. They end up becoming very unscalable on 3 of the worlds, and I think that’s a good thing. Ultimately it won’t stop you from just building huge bot bases on them, but it definitely works to discourage that. Each planet tends to have different optimal solutions, and we’re currently in a time where we’re free to explore those. Admittedly there’s still some of the old problem as the “LDS Shuffle” presents a new endgame homogeneity for solving the Legendary production problem, but something like it would evolve regardless. I admit… I also turned around and went to modded playthroughs after finishing the vanilla game for similar reasons. And I still am doing that, but now it’s less of to explore the fun of the base game, and more to explore new mechanics because I like seeing how people try to create their own challenges for mods. Like I’ve been meaning to do a playthrough of Ultracube myself

there's something kind of amazing about this. that you can take an obviously terrible design approach on purpose as a challenge and then on some level it turns out there's still a one-size-fits-all solution that is... maybe not 'optimal', who knows, but, highly optimised? the whole factory is in large part the same basic building block stamped one time after another. the design constraint prevents the already-existing standard solutions from working but then you find there's a new kind of standard solution, even more uniform.

and on some level you'd think that was an artefact of this run, but no. i've seen this guy's other challenge runs, like the beltless one and the all-burner one. they all end up with 'yeah turns out there's a standard solution i am just going to keep implementing over and over'.

i am reminded of what @definitelynotplanetfall was saying about how the main bus architecture and more broadly the factorio 'meta' of standard arrays for doing things means it's very easy to just take The One Tool That Solves The Problem and implement it and it feels... a bit like drudgery? idk i don't want to put words in their mouth that's the impression i got from what they were saying. and like at the time i pushed back a little because, like, i am having fun playing.

which i am, but. idk. there's something there. it seems easy sometimes to take the tools that simplify your life in this game a little too far and simplify the fun away. but at the same time it's also the case that i hate it when i grow used to a tool and it goes away, like when i started a vanilla playthrough for reasons a while back and noticed how much lacking simple things like module inserter and autodeconstruct was annoying me.

Im going to bed

i think everyone should be at least a little bit fixated on a niche video game that came out like 10 years ago and has never been relevant enough to discuss with people you know in real life. for your health

So I added a cipher to VFD

So the story called VFD actually needed an end cipher to it, and since I forgot it, here it is:

Omht xdt fv jsh ytrm hojxhn, fqjykzw gjtu juhix.

So happy solving. Or if you’re lazy here’s the key:

VFD

Not cool dude, but I understand, it was a hard key.

Reblogging for future reference

Word Tracking Spreadsheets - These sheets also have sections for character and plot information.

I did something similar with a friend the other day while showing him the game. We set it to Adventure Mode, made him a mantis woman (Gelder of course) and set up all their skills and spent their money. We then turned around and made a worm man so we could spawn on the main continent, and while trying to pick equipment… we saw Pet Worm… and we had about 600 or so spare points. We spent them ALL ON WORMS. So a mantis woman and a worm man and his worms.

At this point I figured I’m probably just humoring him to even see if we can leave character creation like this. But the game loads, sticks us in an Elven retreat, and I check and we’ve got a fuckton of worms crawling on our worm man, who is stuck in a tree… after an impromptu climbing lesson, we’re out of the tree, and ready to travel to our Dwarven fort of choice to settle down for some Fortress mode shenanigans. So we open the travel menu and *then* the game crashes. But climbing a tree with 100 worms on my shoulders and head was fine lmfao

Trying out the Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode beta finally, I rolled up a black bear man with 40 pet turkeys. He's from the same civ as Fort Bowloar but on a different landmass, I guess it couldn't be selected because it's on a different continent from the rest of the civilization.

Having this many turkey followers seems to be a bit of an issue (for some reason), every step they're going prone and standing back up as they enter and exit each others' spaces, generating a message that needs to be clicked through.

I experienced a bug where I was up a tree after exiting the travel screen, and I could climb down but my 40 turkeys were stuck up there. Thankfully traveling again brought them down.

We found a goblin site but it was populated by neutral dwarves and goblins, for some reason. Maybe we conquered this site during world generation? Still couldn't travel or make a campfire until leaving. Also Bowloar mention!

After leaving the goblin site we were attacked by dingoes! Until this exact moment I had not realized that my turkeys have natural predators.

It's pretty gruesome. A quirk of mass combat in this engine when you're controlling a single unit is that things tend to move into adjacent spaces when they dodge attacks, which means they ping-pong around a bunch when being attacked by 40 turkeys simultaneously. It was very hard to get into melee range. I got two hits in on one dingo. (they were pretty good hits, though)

The turkeys won with three dead and a lot more grievously injured. Perhaps from this humble beginning there will emerge a scarred and battle-hardened uber-turkey who will be the perfect adventuring companion. Or, possibly the rest of them will bleed to death.

To honor the dead I must respond to this tragedy in accordance with the customs of my people.

^ from this post

Here you go @incorporatedmii!! Have I already told you that I love your AU???

As a college student in computer science, fuck generative AI. I’ve watched it suck the brains right out of peers, to the point they’re incapable of doing basic tasks. It’s mindnumbingly frustrating to be explaining something to them, just to get a “Oh let me just ask ChatGPT”. Like… if you didn’t get the explanation I JUST gave you, just tell me what part! I was teaching them how to set up a unity project for our SENIOR PROJECT, they said “I’m just going to ask ChatGPT,” and then did, in front of me. And then, ChatGPT gave them the wrong answer, and I had to correct them AND the AI and restate my original point. And this was for the install process for modules… I’d even linked the manual for it

Hey, you reblogged that AI post and I was surprised to see something so mean on your blog. "If you cant write unassisted, fuck you, youre a disgrace to the community." Is that really something you want on your blog?

Just in case this isn't a spam message:

Posting AI-generated content to a platform intended to be an archive for writers is not appropriate use of the platform. On a platform intended for human creation, it is rude and inappropriate to clog search results with AI-produced content which often plagiarizes the work of human authors.

Use of generative AI is also horrible for our environment, leading to massive waste of fossil fuel energy and water. We should not be doing damage to our planet for the sake of generating (robot-produced, often plagiarized) fiction, especially when the joy of fiction comes from the creation and emotion of real people.

Rather than giving a prompt to a generative AI, people should consider attempting to write their own work, or asking another writer from the fandom if they would be interested in writing it. Anyone who is capable of typing a prompt into ChatGPT is capable of writing a story. The first attempts may not be amazing, but that is true of any skill, and anyone can improve with time and practice - and while ChatGPT may give you big returns in your time, it doesn't give you practice, growth, or creativity, which is where the joy of writing should come from.