Forever Indebted To @mostlysignssomeportents For This One. 

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.

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.

Chat Noir from Miraculous Ladybug is making fucking mac and cheese, and nobody can stop him!

Yeah, okay

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

I’m trying to find my people

There is a post in r/dwarffortress I always think about from time to time, it shows a maze the poster made for a minotaur they caught. It's a neat project for your fortress, you can use it as a dungeon to throw any prisoners into it and watch them struggle to navigate until their inevitable demise, pretty fun stuff. The post also shows the Minotaur's attributes and skills, and she is described as a Grand Master Observer (which in Dwarf Fortress all Minotaurs are) and also "good with language" traits which often Scholars have. A comment suggested as a joke making some office space for her and supplying her with writing materials. Minotaurs can't write (not that I've checked myself), but the concept alone is hilarious can you imagine? being a fearsome minotaur, and going by your day smashing people's skulls and stuff and then writing in your little diary about it? or writing about your existence serving the sole purpose of killing people the little bearded men throw down there simply for entertainment, you know just a cow-girl doing cow-girl things. I swear Dwarf Fortress produces top-quality writing material sometimes

The whole team standing in front of an Adrien billboard

me at the migrants arriving to my fort

Adrien: oh fiddlesticks! That really ruffles my feathers

Nino: please just say fuck

Pidge: I don’t know what to say to Lance.

Hunk: Just be yourself. Say something nice.

Pidge: Which one? I can’t do both.