#module three

[wordsrundry]

Day Eight;

Dedicated study time 2hr

straight shooter, no breaks, this was a good session and Im not here to push it. I finished the third module in seven and a half hours [not that its a race, its a log] and heres my take on accounting fundamentals so far; its a lot of common sense with fancy steps and special words. its running yourself into a wall with reverse learning. todays photo is as chaotic as my mind. I just need consistency and Im home free, I can do this. week three and its in me to keep going. i have no excuse.

Total dedicated time 24.98hrs

Thirteen months remaining.

[broken-risk-assessment-module]

rip secunit 3 😔😔😔 you're not dead but you would have loved saving the lives of a whole colony of innocent humans by making a factually honest and emotionally compelling documentary 😔😔😔

[bananonbinary]

Just realized I never shared a pic of my new kittens!!

the all-black one is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way (Enoby for short) and the lil tuxedo is Jack.

this is from around a week ago, they're already like 40% larger.

[radiantmists]

so murderbot assumes that three offered its armor because it doesn't understand that the armor can belong to it and thinks mb taking the armor is just good resource allocation.

but if it assumes it doesnt have control over the armor, it would probably let whoever it sees as in charge (maybe ART?) handle it, or at least make the suggestion directly to that person. even newly freed in NE, it's willing to give its security advice (on hostage situations being undesirable) even if it doesn't expect to be taken seriously. it doesn't make sense to me that it would have so much trouble expressing the offer if it were just a security suggestion.

and then i think about how murderbot says later in the book that even if three felt fondly toward its fellow SecUnits, the govmod would prevent it from expressing that care or knowing it was returned.

so-- imagine you're three, and you havent yet internalized that you can just say "i care about you and dont want you to get hurt" to another SecUnit; but you can make sure that it has every resource it might need; you could probably do that even before the govmod was hacked.

you can't explain why, but you can hope that the gesture is explanation enough, and you can look for similar caretaking gestures in return; things like being given code and advice to do your job better, and being reassured when you express that you're finding said job difficult.

i think *murderbot* isn't aware of this language of care, because it hasnt had much opportunity to bond with other constructs. but three probably is, and probably knows how to read between the lines and guess that murderbot is starting to care about it, too.

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

it's hilarious to me that this campaign module has such a hard-on for this damn elevator trap that they forgot to give the brides ANY PURPOSE OR PERSONALITY

[spark-circuit]

quite satisfied with how much i've been improving with my chain dashes. if you ignore all the blunt force trauma and fall-related injuries.

[idlingsomewhere]

..they replaced him with a woman for a couple of the worked examples. but she sounds equally fine. like…chills down my spine

who said that

khan academy sat prep guy has an incredibly soothing voice,,,,,,,

[dullahandyke]

Can I say something insufferably hipster. I dont like miku breaking containment. You have to answer my riddles three (name a wowaka song, explain the concept of tuning, tell me what project diva is) before you're allowed to post about her I'm putting her behind a fence

[thisstableground]

i have officially completed my first year of BSc Natural Sciences!! started my exam at fuckin. 3.45am bc i'm in a different timezone and i have a flight to catch, did not have graph paper, and just realised i accidentally submitted the version where i forgot to finish a few sentences. but! it is submitted, which means i'm eligible to resit if needed and otherwise i am DONE

[wordsrundry]

Day Six;

Dedicated study time 4.5hr

today I write from an extended break and as I promised, keeping it honest. currently, I am two hours into studying. I have completed the quiz to wrap up the recent module and after all three attempts, I got nine out of ten. I rapid fired the attempts out of frustration after my first attempt was five out of ten. I am frustrated with my understanding of the most recent module. everything I completed, everything I answered, was to the best of my comprehension of the teachings so far. it seems my understanding of the content is below average, and Im curious as to how I will approach this moving forward.... edit; ended the session pretty hopeful, troubleshooted the issues I had during the quiz earlier by backtracking my notes. sticky notes and rereading will have to be the start of patching those knowledge gaps. one day at a time.

Total dedicated time 21.2hrs

Thirteen months remaining.

[thesassymarquess]

Factorio’s Module Problem

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it’s been an issue that’s bugged me arguably from the day I started playing Factorio. It’s the Efficiency Module. Specifically Efficiency Modules 2 & 3.

I’ve been thinking about this in no small part due to the fact in my MP save, we decided that each planet should specialize in their respective modules, and as the Gleba player that means I’m in charge of 2 modules, Productivity on Nauvis & Efficiency on Gleba. I’ve got both set up churning out a decent number of them, and upcycling the lower quality ones, at least for Prod mods, I’m waiting on a shipment of quality modules to start it on Gleba.

Which brings me to my issue. I don’t really like efficiency modules, I never have, and as the player with the most experience, my group follows my lead in this kinda thing.

When I first started playing Factorio, I believe the modules had only just been added an update or two ago, and I didn’t frequently use them. I tried with all three, and ended up sticking to Prods & Efficiency modules at first. But then I realized I didn’t care about pollution, so efficiency modules were only good at saving power, and I could just scale that up and ignore the pollution still. This was before nuclear OR flamethrowers, so my defenses were entirely laser turrets and solar. I’d just expand my solar grid since I cleared a large space & scale up.

I took a much longer time to warm up to the speed module, having to do the math and learn that while it increases the power cost to run the machine, the time saved reduces the electricity cost per item… from that moment on I was a believer in the Prod/Speed combo, especially after I saw how compact a Prod 3/Speed 3 Furnace stack was.

This left me only ever making efficiency modules for power armor. I did recognize the pollution reducing benefits of the module, but once you unlock flamethrowers and set them up as defenses, I found pollution management to be irrelevant. Flamethrowers will take care of even behemoths decently enough without any space science research, and by the time they show up (I actually hadn’t seen a behemoth before playing Space Age, and I’ve beaten the game a few times) I’ve already established all the sciences available in the base game.

So ultimately I find their usage… lackluster. But it gets worse, because it’s not just their usage I have to consider that they’re competing for a module slot. And that’s against a Speed & a Prod mod and both are good. Let alone in the base game, I can make the competing modules for the same price, so I usually have to consider which to craft before I’m even at that point.

But I should amend that I think the Efficiency Module 1 is actually good. When it comes into the game it provides a decent power reduction, is fairly cheap, and most players don’t have bases ready to handle the downsides of the other 2 modules.

So now with that out of the way, I’ll mention how they fair in Space Age: Poorly. Ironically despite the fact that the T3 mods have different costs now and the T3 Efficiency mod is the cheapest now (taking 10 spoilage in addition to the standard 5 blue, 5 red, and 4 of the T2 module), it still doesn’t hold up well. Like the Speed/Prod combo is broken because now it’s more viable to look at either Quality only, Prod/Quality, or Speed/Quality, and I think this is awesome that it isn’t straightforward what modules to combine and how anymore, but… efficiency is rarely the answer now. It still shines in reducing pollution on Nauvis, has a new role in reducing nutrient consumption on Gleba, and the power reduction can still be useful in a few places, but… 4/5 planets have power production mostly unchained from their pollution mechanic (Gleba pollution comes from farming mostly, very little is needed to produce significant power) and the last place is Space, which is a great place for the t1 modules, but… T2 & T3 you’re likely to be looking at foundries if it’s going to Aquilo & you’ll need nuclear or better anyways at that point, so power is less an issue than making sure it’s fast enough for ammo production, which… puts another win to speed modules here, because they’re better for churning out more in a smaller area, which is what you want there. Yeah, you do want to reduce power usage, but if you’ve got a reactor you’ve got 5.8 MW of power per turbine to play with, and a minimum of 40MW of heat too. This gets worse if you use quality reactors OR Fusion reactors, as the power density increases a LOT. The smallest fusion reactor build puts out 50 MW of power.

So… the real reason for this post though, is this. I felt something was off in the scaling of the efficiency module, and I realized what it is. It scales differently from all the other modules, which (with one exception) scale all the same.

Prod mods go 4% to 6% to 10% (1, 1.5, 2.5)

Speed mods go 20% to 30% to 50% (1, 1.5, 2.5)

Quality mods go 1% to 2% to 2.5% (1, 2, 2.5)

So those three (with the exception of the Quality 2 mod) all scale the EXACT same for their upside.

Efficiency mods go 30% to 40% to 50% (1, 1.33, 1.66)

If they followed the same ratio, Efficiency mods would have either 30% -> 45% -> 75% or 30% -> 60% -> 75%. Which might be enough to justify making them. Even that though… I’m not sure if it’s enough, as they STILL have to compete against the other mods because there’s only so many slots, and power is one of the easier things to scale up, rather than mines or a build itself.

I just wish there was MORE of a reason to use the T2/T3 efficiency modules. They’re basically useless as far as I can tell since they’re weak and by the time you get them, they help with a downside that’s much easier to just deal with instead.

[essektheylyss]

What I should be doing: the programming assignment that I've been putting off since Saturday

What I'm actually doing: BOOPIN'

[jrueships]

guess whos not going in at all this week, actually

[radiantmists]

the whole "it would be kinder to kill them" exchange re-contextualizes murderbot's initial willingness-- even eagerness-- to kill other SecUnits in an interesting way, doesn't it.

[godblooded]

sometimes it’s just… ‘oh had so much fun on vacation!’ ‘went to a cool concert!’ ‘had a fun day out with my friends!’ cool??? don’t remember what the fuck that’s like since i’m constantly the one forced to be in charge of everything ever.

[gaytobymeres]

1 presentation down, the second presentation has been moved to next week, so now have to prep for the third presentation on Thursday