Before I start with this post, this wouldn’t be possible due to Time Warner shockingly not being a total dick and doing their surprise maintenance all night. I came close to being forced to write this entire thing in a text file on my computer and paste it tomorrow afternoon.
With that out of the way, time to go for the first thing. This is related to Factorio. I’ve managed to catch up to Shen and Aavak’s playthough (as they’re close to ‘completing’ the game, and so am I). The Rocket silo has been researched and ready to see how they do it. I also have a set of Power Armor MK2, with the power to “gotta go FAST” as Sonic (aka, 6 basic exoskeletons)!
My factory seems ohh so tiny when I can run around 360% faster than the normal run speed.
How did I do it? The thing that has put me on the fencepost for months is no longer a problem. And that is an alternate means of getting Purple Science/Alien Artifacts. Aka, endgame items. It’s a mod called ‘Alien Science’. I had to do a few tweaks to get it to work with 0.12.35 (with help from the Factorio IRC).
What it does is it takes your existing Red/Green/Blue Science packs and turns them into one Purple Science pack. Now I get what you say; that doesn’t feel balanced at all. That I have to work my ass off to get it.
Well, contrary to popular belief, it’s actually quite easy to get Alien Artifacts from killing Biter bases (in Multiplayer). Especially when both know how to move around in their tanks or Power Armor. Me? I’m no fighter. I put Peaceful Mode on when I started this map. I even disabled biters to not have them be a problem for expansion.
But this is just to make Purple Science. To make Alien Artifacts is even MORE use of your existing packs. I tweaked this, to accept 10 Purple Science for one artifact. — As you can take 10 artifacts to make one Purple Science pack. It was better than overly abusing my science packs. Red and Green were getting used up the most. Even with a redesign of the Red Science factory(which needed one for a long time), the demand was too strong.
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The only way I could think of how to counter this, is to plan out a sub-factory of science packs that wasn’t connected to this. But with what hell I went through to make JUST the Blue Science (and with no idea of where/how to plan the entire mess), tweaking was the ‘best’ option for me.
Honestly, I want to be done with this map. I actually want to move on to 0.13, but I cannot because of this map. And to do both, I have to constantly upgrade and downgrade (and make sure all mods are set for that version of Factorio). Too much unnecessary work.
But this gave me the means to finally research things that require Purple Science, such as making my drones faster when moving around (and my logistics drones to carry up to 4 items). I’m happy where things are going, and I can’t wait to launch that rocket and be done with this map!
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Now the next thing. Since I’ve pretty much gotten everything done that needs to be done, I idled in Factorio. A bit later, Arty (the person I invited to my friends list to play Elite Dangerous with) asked if I wanted to go back to the planning of that exploration thing we were going to do, months ago. Said “Sure” and we got to it. We were to meet up in Maia.
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He though was pre-occupied with missions for the Federation to do, but I headed back to Maia anyway. Got interdicted once. Forgot how I was supposed to react and my ship went spinning over and over for at least 45 seconds before I was able to recover and get out of there. Luckily I didn’t take any damage as the pirate’s weapons were pretty weak.
Nearly to Maia, I discovered a new icon at Obsidian Orbital. It was a Community Goal. Something about delivering a few items to this station to help the Federation. First time I actually saw an event. I also read something else. Something about a nearby system, HIP 17225, having a “well known” area for Barnacles.
And if that wasn’t interesting enough, I sold all of my planet scanning data and saw something new. “CONGRATULATIONS CMDR BENIE! You were the first to dis–“. It shows I discovered two systems on the way to Maia..that no one else did. That means MY NAME IS IN THE GAME of discovered systems!!! 😀 HOT DAMN!!
And sure enough, looking at these two systems at the Galaxy Map, it showed “First Discovered By: Benie”! It’s like I just got an early birthday present, and I love it! My name being in the record books for exploring systems undiscovered by others! And it was pretty close to the bubble, too. It wasn’t that whole “you gotta go 10,000LY away from the bubble to find unexplored systems.” Maybe I just got lucky. I sure as well feel lucky!
Anyway, I went to that system. Wasn’t too far away. The landable planet that claims to be “well known” by the galactic community to be the home of Barnacles, the planet’s color masks the hills and other features, making it hard to find a suitable LZ. The planet also has high gravity(0.42G higher than Earth). Not to mention I was in the star’s noon shine (the glare prevented me from finding POIs for the most part). Eventually I finally found one, but it was another one of those random crashed SRV wreckage sites.
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Arty joined me and prepared to land. Suddenly I noticed his ship flying sideways into the planet (and that’s when my cable modem lost its connection).
Back up (thankfully), Arty got into his SRV and ran into everything he could. Says he’s not exactly good with the SRV. Get a HOTAS, and you’ll be good! … Just saying.
So I pondered if we should split the lootable containers and go sell them back at Maia. He seemed interested until I went to go get my ship. Flying back over to the POI, he was in the air as well of his ASP Explorer. He wanted to at least explore one nebula and I agreed.
It was originally going to be the Helix Nebula, but it turned out to be the ‘LBN 623″ Nebula. We went there. We got there. He went to bed, and that’s that for tonight.
Tomorrow, who knows where we’re going. I just hope its a long, interesting voyage.