That Crystal Temple Has One Of The Coolest Designs Ever. Like Seriously, That Shits Pretty Cool. And

why the fuck does english have a word for

but not for “the day after tomorrow”

???

Got tagged by @noahwithaw (As seen above if you’re not blind)

Relationship Status: Has Girlfriend (As of October 1st, i.e. yesterday)

Favorite Colors: Colors along the blue green spectrum, to specifically name them, Cyan, Teal, and Turquoise.

Wake up time: Typically around 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. College is great for sleeping in.

Cats or Dogs: I prefer Cats to Dogs. There are a few breeds of Dog I really like (Yorkshire Terriers)

Coke or Pepsi: These two aren’t that different (I can typically tell the difference and really the only thing they affect is what other sodas come with them since Coke and Pepsi are a huge duopoly and such) though I personally prefer Pepsi, both for the other sodas that come with it, and just between Coke and Pepsi. Most Pepsi machines come with root beer (mug typically) so yeah, why am I going to drink Pepsi when rootbeer is an option?

Chapstick or Lipstick: What? Chapstick I guess? I mean why would I want to wear lipstick? I’m a guy. I barely even use chapstick (typically only when camping, and then I try to avoid using it because chapped lips are a sign of dehydration, which means if you drink enough water your lips don’t get chapped. So how I avoid using chapstick is by trying to drink more water. It works as long as water in is greater than water out).

Last Song I Listened To: Well I’ve typically got some music going on when I’m trying to focus on something so I had Lemon Demon’s “I Earn My Life” and at this point “Angry People” is playing and I’m having a hard time not laughing. “Evil Babies with guns. It’s completely normal.”

I’m not really planning on tagging anyone on this really. Most people I have that I follow/follow me, I either already know the answers to most of these, or they’ve just been asked by Noah, or, OR this is the one person I’m tagging, they’re @bumibomber.

Tagged by @k-omerebii aka my bae 
Rules: Tag 9-10 people you want to get to know better
 Relationship status: cuddling my pillow at night 
Favorite color(s): red, faded colours 
Wake up time: lol it rlly depends. School days = 6:45 am, weekends = 8+ am
Cats or dogs: dogs obviously but I rlly love kittens too
Coke or Pepsi: Pepsi 
Chapstick or lipstick: lipstick 
Last song you listened to: Here Comes a Thought from the show Steven Universe 💖

I tag: @hafizzzle @noahweidner and whoever wants to do this

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.

The Video Facial Discussion

Dib sat in front of his computer. He checked the time again, 3:37 PM, or 15:37 as they insisted upon measuring it. Honestly Dib actually did kind of prefer using military time as a system of measurement. It did result in notably less confusion than the standard everyone else went by. It helped to further reduce confusion when you worked the same hours that Dib did. In fact over the past week, Dib had spent arguably just as much time awake at night, as he did during the day, perhaps even more. He felt close to a breakthrough, though he wasn’t exactly sure on what. Regardless the time had come for another one of his progress reports, or “Verifiable Factual Debriefings” as they insisted upon calling it. Honestly he never quite understood all of the insistance of this repetition of these acronyms. Everywhere he seemed to look it was “VFD” this, “VFD” that. If they could figure out some way of phrasing it as a VFD they did. He honestly didn’t understand why they couldn’t just call it a video-conference or something. If anything, at this point the insistence on the VFD was more debilitating than anything else.

Regardless of his thoughts on their over reliance of the same acronym, they were due to call him in exactly 5 minutes. He wasn’t to get on the frequency earlier than 15:42. Well in 3 minutes now. He supposed that time could really get ahead of him when he wasn’t thinking about it. In fact it seemed like 2011 had just been a bust year for him. Dib hadn’t unrooted anything major conspiracy-wise, He hadn’t tracked down anything supernatural that was out of place or dangerous, and he hadn’t unveiled any secret plots by their enemies or even found any of their hiding allies. All in all, 2011 had been quite the terrible year for Dib. He still was no closer to unraveling the murders of the early 2000′s, or even finding out what happened to Zim.

He checked the time again, 15:41. He supposed he didn’t really have much time left to wonder about where Zim went uninterrupted. It wouldn’t be long before he had to get on the channel to discuss his progress with his superiors. And it was 15:42 right now, and just like that as he joined the channel the entire group of his superiors, all six of them appeared onscreen. Except that they didn’t really. All he could see, just like always, was their faces covered entirely in shadow. It was never any different.

“Agent Mothman. What is your status?”

It was technically the lead in rank asking him. He was always the first to ask, and it was always this exact same question. Dib knew best that he had to respond. “I haven’t found anything particularly new, revealing, or dangerous during my work here.”

Another voice spoke up,“Jeez then what did you even find Dib?”

This voice Dib actually recognized as his own sister Gaz’s voice. He could see her silhouette on his screen as well. It’d been a while since they’d been together in person, Dib wanted to say about 7 years or so, and her hairstyle hadn’t changed much in that time. “Like you’re one to talk Gaz. I’ve never seen you pull your attention away from a videogame long enough to make your own discovery.”

“Mothman. These attacks against your sister aren’t appreciated. You know exactly why she isn’t assigned to fieldwork like you are.”

Did mulled this over, it was about the 15th time they’d told him this in this year alone. Gaz was found unsuitable for fieldwork because she simply didn’t care enough to be out in the field in the first place. Instead they sorted her into the higher ranks with the idea that she’d be better in those positions because she wouldn’t have to actually do much. Then if anyone tried to pull her away from what she was doing, then she’d show them her scary side. He supposed this tactic worked well though.

“Mothman. Why are you even still out there?”

This came from the third voice, yet another man’s. Dib didn’t particularly like this man. In fact of his six supervisors, Dib only particularly like two of them, and they’d been rather quiet this time. Dib would have to admit though, he did know them best of all his supervisors, excluding his sister, though that relationship wasn’t exactly a good one. Gaz only really tolerated his existence at best. Those two however, in fact funnily enough they were married as well, he felt were they only people above him who respected him. In addition, they were pretty much some of the only surviving members from when he originally joined who hadn’t gone crazy, missing, evil, dead, or all four. Though his current leader was technically one of those.

“I’m on to something big here. Just give me a little bit more time.”

There was an audible sigh from the fourth voice, one of the supervisors he actually liked. “Dib, you’ve been searching here for the past 8 months. What really makes you think that this ninth month will be so much better?”

“It’s got to be, I can feel just how close I am to this one.”

It was time for her husband to speak up this time, “Look Dib, in all honesty it’s been really quiet here for a long time. We haven’t had any major incidents since” ----sssshcckck

At this point Dib’s screen went to static, and after fiddling around with the machinery for a bit he got the signal back. At this point most of the members just nodded at his return, assuming he more or less understood where the conversation had been going. Dib then held up a small rectangular box with a black screen and held it in view of the camera. “Why don’t we use these anymore? They are way more reliable than using the internet, and they’re more secure as well.”

It was the first guy again this time: “Agent Mothman, we no longer use the Farnsworth devices since the understanding of them was lost. Without agents able to replicate them, we can’t use them unless all members were able to have access to one. Since only a limited number of them were ever produced, as well as the fact that several of them have fallen into enemy hands as well, just serves to make them highly impractical overall.”

“Well Mothman. Do you actually have anything important to tell us or has this entire checkup been a waste of our time?”

It was the sixth of his superiors. Dib hated this one almost as much as he hated the first one. He never had anything nice to say to him, though none of them really did excluding the couple, and he always said it in such a cruel tone too.

“You guys were the one to assign me this checkup in the first place you know. And no, I haven’t found anything important enough to report back either.”

It was the same man who replied this time: “Well then Agent Mothman this call is over. And there won’t be anymore in the future unless we decide that we actually have a use for an agent as useless as you, because from this point on, your on your own.”

With that there were four clicks and everyone except the couple hung up on him. “What, Wait! You guys can’t just leave me like this! Man, I really hate that guy.”

Another sigh from the woman and then she spoke up: “Dib you know you can’t say that about your superiors.”

“I know, but he can really be such a jerk sometimes.”

It was the man this time: “Dib you can’t let him bother you. You have to be a professional agent. They debated just outright calling you back in and leaving you as a teacher of the new recruits.”

“I’m trying the best I can! You know exactly how powerful our enemies are and just how good they are at hiding. We wouldn’t even have the membership problems that we do have if they weren’t this good!”

“Dib what did I just say about being professional. I know that you’re a new agent, and me and my wife have been plenty patient with you and your progress. Unfortunately the council has not been, and you’re lucky that we managed to convince them to just let you go off on your own. And that wasn’t an easy argument to win either. Consider your freedom from the council, as well as your new freedom to investigate this as you see fit an early Christmas gift from us.”

“But I don’t have access to any of our equipment or resources anymore. Who am I even supposed to contact in the event I actually discover anything!?”

It was the woman who answered him this time. “Us. You know exactly how to contact us, in addition to where we live. If you find anything that you think needs to be reported, then call us.”

“Thank you. Are your kids going to get involved with the organization anytime soon?”

The two answered together with a firm “No.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, I’m just saying that I wasn’t much older than your kids are now when I first started in VFD. And they are going to join eventually. It’s kind of fate at this point to join VFD. I mean they could join alongside you guys now, it’d be more or less the best experience they could get.”

The woman sighed again before she answered. “Look Dib, I get that Dipper and Mabel are old enough to join, and we really do want them to. We just want them to do that when they are ready to join. We don’t want to just rush them right into. Anyways we have to go now. Bye Dib.”

With that the conference ended with a final click. Well he’d just been fired, and he was left with only two real contacts left. He couldn’t even call his sister since she insisted he didn’t know her number, since after all “Being your supervisor is bad enough already Dib.”

Since he no longer worked for VFD truly he didn’t have to worry about any of their restrictions they’d given him impede him. Without these restrictions he could finally go where all of his investigations seemed to point him. “Well it looks like I’m headed to Gravity Falls, Oregon now.”

Omht xdt fv jsh ytrm hojxhn, fqjykzw gjtu juhix.

Yes actually! That was part of 51.08 I think? It was a very recent change like 2-3 minor updates ago, I think it was 2 months now? It’s significantly more balanced, and I’ve got a 5 year fort and find it really isn’t that profitable to sell food anymore. Like the only meals that sell well are masterworks with huge serving numbers, and my cooks don’t make many of those. They make plenty of masterworks, and even use stuff like flour & cheese, which used to guarantee expensive meals, and my typical prepared food barrel is like 300-500 value. A far cry from the 3000-5000 days. I still make the meals and occasionally sell 1-2 of them, but you can no longer just buy out a caravan from meals alone. As much as it hurt my early game economy, it rewards diversifying your economy, and ironically I find it’s much easier to manage my forts when I can’t use food to explode the fort’s value for huge migrant waves. It took 5 years to grow to a duchy, and I still only have a population of 140 or so dwarves, and the goblin sieges are much smaller too. Granted I do get more titans and semi-mega beast attacks, but I feel a lot less strain on my military and fort. I still only really have one squad of half-competent axedwarves defending the fort, and they’re clad in a mishmash of junk. Too busy actually building the fort than having to focus on building a strong army to defend… fancy food.

It’s ironic how much I like that change despite having definitely abused the system historically. Nowadays I run like five different industries for my economy, chief among them a “distressed” clothing chain. I just really like setting up the whole tailoring and dyeing chains

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

Reblog if you’d rather watch Gravity Falls than the Super Bowl

I’m trying to find my people

So, I've been playing Dwarf Fortress for a while now, and tbh, the game will never cease surprising you with the things that go on. Maybe this is tame to someone, but what happened here in my 4th fort threw me for a loop.

So, I was trying to figure out what was going on with my dyer and why my dying isn't really progressing. I've been paying a little attention to the dwarves going into and out of my nearby clothiers, and notice one is a metalcrafter, which is kinda odd, but I recall authorizing them for that work detail. A moment later I see a notification pop up saying that she just had "Dwarven Babies" to which, I immediately think "Aww cute, I'll check out her twins real quick"

Wait triplets? Oh wow, and sure enough she's got three lovely sons clinging to her. I figure I'll check their names under relations, but wait...

So I look at her on the tile, and see Zasit, Olin, and Reg all there, and they're all 0 years old. I click to see Kulet, and it just takes me to their mother's tile. I glance over the tile. No Kulet. I pull up her mother's relations again, and try again. No Kulet. I've got the game paused, and all it does, regardless of which button I push for Kulet, is show me their mother's location. I have no idea where she is, I can't find her at all. I'm like mildly horrified at the concept that she's just abandoned her daughter somewhere, and I just can't find her.

Factorio Space Age: Gleba

Since I recently reblogged a post about Gleba, I figured I should go into more depth about it. In a week or two when I graduate I’ll go into more detail about it, but I’ve probably spent the most time of the expansion on Gleba, exploring things like Quality, the circuit network changes, and sushi belts. I admit some of the tech I learned on Gleba ended up being essential for a later rebuild of Fulgora & stuff I learned on space platforms went to Aquilo, and then what I learned there got brought back to space.

Regardless I figured I could share some of the overall lessons I learned on Gleba & beyond during the DLC that helped me “master” Gleba.

-Identifying where spoilage & freshness matters

There’s a total of about 13 items that can spoil, and they spoil into one of six things: iron and copper ores, spoilage, and enemies. As you want iron/copper ores, we can ignore spoilage here, they become the thing you want typically so except in the production loop, this is a good thing. For spoilage, it’s an item, and you should generally assume anything that stores a spoilable item in it, is going to at some point have spoilage in it, and it will need to be removed. EVERYTHING, including things like biolabs. Lastly enemies, they don’t leave behind items so you don’t need to clean out the machines, but you probably don’t want them wandering around, so you likely want some defense to kill them if they show up. They can wreck havoc on things like space platforms or power plants if they get there, but generally they’re more a nuisance than a threat, so long as you don’t let a massive amount spoil at once… (Most I did was let 100 biter eggs spoil in a chest surrounded by lasers. Didn’t even notice it happened).

So clean up spoilage, and handle “Hazmats” (eggs & spawners) with military or disposal methods (pentapod eggs can be burned & biter eggs mulched into nutrients). Another tip for the Hazmats is to not store them in chests unless necessary (rocket silo loading), and to not put them in assemblers/biochambers unless they are the only missing item. I seriously recommend setting agricultural egg inserters to hand size 1 & to only insert if they have bioflux. (Wire the biochamber to the inserter, use read contents & enable/disable). It might slow down your science slightly but it does make it so you don’t need turrets by the science area.

Spoilage itself can be easily disposed of by either converting it inefficiently into nutrients, or burning it in a heating tower. Personally I use nutrient crafting as a spoilage upcycling system to produce high quality spoilage for efficiency modules, or high quality carbon for coal synthesis w/ asteroid mining for the matching sulfur. (I.e it’s a supplement for Legendary plastic for red circuits and LDS shuffling…)

As for where freshness matters, it actually only matters in a few places. Not all recipes do actually inherit their freshness from their parents (bacteria & pentapod eggs are top of my mind, but I think Fish also don’t), nor does freshness matter if the finished product isn’t spoilable. Ultimately freshness only really matters in the items directly connected to lime (agricultural) science as it’s the ONLY item in game that freshness impacts how useful it is. 5% fresh bioflux will feed a biter nest, as will 5% nutrients a biochamber & so on. Freshness only really matters if you need to move something or if it’s for lime science. So generally with that in mind you can send all your near rotten fruit and other spoilables for producing things like ore, rocket fuel, plastic, lubricant, sulfur or carbon fiber.

Another key idea is “shelf-stability”. You generally want to move raw fruit, bioflux & lime science around because they have long shelf lives. You don’t want to move jelly, mash, or nutrients around because of their short shelf life. It’s much easier to move jellynut, yumako, or bioflux instead and all of them are more space efficient to move as well.

-The Spores, Simplicity, & Quality triad

From what I found it is impossible to create a base that is simple, spore-efficient, & produces quality. At best you can do two, and I suspect it is genuinely impossible to do all three because of how they interact.

So I suppose I should define what I mean by these things. Spore efficiency is basically a measure of how much of the fruit products you make turn into spoilage. A more spore efficient base has less products rot. Why? Because the less products that rot, by definition, the more of your harvest WAS used for production rather than was wasted. While spoilage has its own uses, it isn’t ideal for most production in your base, unless you plan on mass producing only coal. Simplicity is how much of a headache setting everything up is. The more circuit conditions, belt priority shenanigans, and other complexities in the build, the less simple it is. And quality production, I mean large scale quality production, which usually relies on inter-step processing to roll up the products.

But wait you might be asking yourself, this implies it’s possible to build a quality base that’s easy without it being a major headache? Yes! Quality lime science is arguably one of the easiest sciences to produce in quality, only truly rivaled by the easy of quality space science in the late game! My first rocket silo of lime science was 1k rare science. This is because pentapod eggs are a catalytic recipe that can take quality modules, and so rolling up a high quality egg once is super easy, and then you just need to keep feeding it with high quality nutrients… which comes from bioflux, the other item you want to raise in quality! And you can even use a spoilage upcycler to supplement this to prevent the eggs from going off. I’ll show off a surprisingly easy to design base for producing rare quality science in the early Gleba game sometime later when I show off some Gleba designs.

However I do need to point out that the triad does inherently conflict. Trying to reduce spoilage amounts by simply reducing fruit in caused quality to stall. Trying to get quality up again caused it to become more complex, making a newer less-complex design required me to gut quality… you have to decide WHAT you value going in.

So for my MP base I decided I would cut quality, and focus on spore efficiency, as I wanted to produce the most science with the least spores, as I couldn’t rely on Tesla Turrets from Fulgora to protect me.

-Spore efficiency maximization

One of the best ways to actually improve spore efficiency is to start at the fruit production itself. Every second a raw fruit is waiting around, it is getting one step closer to rotting. Why harvest if you don’t need to? Keeping planting going without harvesting is simple if you keep in mind that agricultural towers prefer to plant first, then harvest. So if you wire the tower to anything, and set it to output inventory & only work when seeds > 0, it will only work when it has seeds in it, and will prefer planting first. Which means it will only harvest if there are no plantable spots and you put seeds in. Which means you can control harvesting by controlling when an inserter loads seeds in. So have the inserter only put seeds in when you need more fruit (you can use a circuit condition, like fruit less than 50 (one harvest) to determine when to start a harvest and load seeds in one at a time, if this is your only condition, you’ll probably produce 2-4 stacks at a time depending on your inserters).

Likewise… if you control when you process the raw fruit into jelly/mash then you can again further reduce spoilage. You can use a similar method to the harvest, but by turning off the biochambers for those lines. This reduces fruit usage, which will decrease tower usage & spore output… yet since you only produce the jelly/mash when needed, the assembly line shouldn’t actually slow down. What might happen though is that your power production dips because you’re not burning as much spoilage.

Well that’s a very easy fix. Gleba has the CHEAPEST rocket fuel recipe in the game, especially if you look at the fuel values of its ingredients. It is the ONLY power positive rocket fuel recipe in the game without productivity, and it has a default 50% bonus to it too! Literally no other rocket fuel recipe can get that bonus except the base recipe which requires exported biochambers to Nauvis! (Or Fulgora technically, but why would you do that? Oil is free there) Which is its own nightmare. So you can actually just burn rocket fuel for power in a heating tower! Which has a 250% fuel efficiency, meaning 100 Mj of chemical energy (one rocket fuel) becomes 250 MJ of electrical power! Excluding startup costs for the heating towers.

Well I’d recommend against burning all your rocket fuel because that’d just gobble it all up, but what you can do is measure the temperatures of your heating towers, and if they drop below a certain threshold (I recommend at least 600 degrees) to feed in rocket fuel.

Since I hooked up this failsafe to my power plant the only blackout I had was when I accidentally burned all my yumako seeds and stalled the entire factory, and it took almost an hour for it to begin to get close to a brownout, and it hadn’t when I found out the problem (I had an alarm if the power plant went critically cold (all towers below 600 degrees), so I could intervene before power goes out)

How you decide to reduce spoilage from here is up to you. I decided on my second run to just dead end belts and extract spoilage rather than run them all to the incinerator, so that lines could just pull half rotted mash/jelly for things like lube and ore. Only bioflux has a flowthrough section, and I overbuilt lime science & eggs so it never backs up there either (I’d much rather have rotting lime science than make half rotten lime science)

-Finally… solving the “How do I load my freshest items into a rocket?”

This is much easier than people think. It takes 2 chests, a logistics provider of some flavor (I use red) & a steel chest (wood/iron would work too). I then place the chests a tile apart, and have the inserter wired to the logistics chest. It’s set that if I have more than my desired storage amount (usually one rocket’s worth, sometimes two rockets) it grabs the MOST SPOILED item from the provider and puts it into the steel chest. This removes the item from the logistics network (and the rocket silo therefore) which will turn the inserter back off if the chest no longer has more than enough for the rocket launches requested & reduces the average spoil time of the chest. This is key. The individual items are still spoiling, I’m not managing to magically remove spoilage, but I am reducing the average spoil amount. When a rocket comes, it takes the items from the provider chest and it will gradually fill up again. Since only the freshest 1k items are typically available, this means I always load the freshest items I have. I could then feed in some items back from that “rotting chest” if I wanted to, but I find it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and I’d rather just produce a fresh 1k usually… I might play around with feeding it back in, but I only do this with science… extracted bioflux in this system gets fed into production elsewhere, instead of into a secondary chest. The whole point of the chest was just to act as a large storage vessel for composing science to spoilage.

Anyways, as someone who actually liked Gleba I talked about everything I can without getting into the specifics of like… how to build Gleba with bots, belts or trains… which I would love to cover at some point, because I do think there are too many content creators out there that don’t do Gleba justice… (Looking at Nilaus… I died inside when I saw he just plopped down a bot-base and a parameterized biochamber mall essentially. Dosh likewise also disappointed me on his OG Space Age run with his Gleba (import based) and Fulgora (bot based). I did love Doc Jade’s nightmare scrap train Fulgora though. He understood that the most fun can be had in the creativity of a solution, not necessarily the efficiency)

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Eris’ Shop

Aka stuff I have extra of that I’m selling! I’ll be selling them at the price I purchased them for, with discounts via multiple purchases. I’m selling this now due to my trying to get enough money to afford the set I really want for my birthday in a few months, and to pay off various debts owed. Right now, all products for sale are Doctor Who products, but I’ll likely start selling others once I start getting them in. Price is exactly as I paid for them strictly due to the shipping costs here. Some of these I’ve seen sold for more, others sold for less. Best you know that now. Can be purchased via paypal, or I can place them in a listing on Ebay strictly for you. Just let me know the preferred method. Won’t ship until after I’m paid, will ship as soon as I can just  afterwards! Dvds are shipped in envelopes, wrapped in bubble wrap, the figures will be shipped in boxes, mini boxes taped shut, and the boxes will be stuffed with paper and/or bubble wrap as protection. As a collector myself, I understand the importance. If you don’t live in the U.S., I’ll likely have to charge extra for shipping. Apologies on that count. Likely cannot accept payments or ship out for another week or two. Will place item on reserve if you request it. 

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