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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • Satisfactory: Clearing That First Hurdle

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    Someone on Discord gave me a great piece of advice for starting a new Satisfactory save. After I mentioned wanting to wait until after the FICSMAS event ended to kick off my new session, they said: Start now in order to grab the “advent calendar” goodies from the Hub, because some of those are required to open a few of the crashed drop pods strewn around the map.

    And so, last Sunday, I did.

    Nice pristine planet you’ve got here. Be a shame if a whole bunch of industrial development happened to it.

    I’m a week into my new save (titled “New Clear Plan”) with fewer than 9 hours of in-game time so far. To show for it I have sent up the Phase 1 space elevator shipment, transitioned from biofuel to coal power, and unlocked steel production. I can attribute part of this (relatively) speedy progress to having three previous solo and several co-op games’ worth of practice time under my belt. Also, I credit some decisions and techniques specifically chosen in order to streamline parts of the process. Please allow me to elucidate.

    (more…)

  • Not Particularly Final, Actually

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    My interaction with the sprawling multimedia beast that is the Final Fantasy franchise is rather limited. I played the 10th game installment for a while but didn’t finish. I avoided watching the infamous 3D CGI movie from a number of years ago. The most direct and long-lasting experience I have with a Fantasy which is Final (but is it really?) started when I signed up to play the critically acclaimed (yadda yadda) MMO, Final Fantasy XIV.

    Then I stopped. Then, a year or so later, I picked it back up again. Then I stopped again.

    Now, even more years later… I’m back? Probably maybe?

    Meet Amber Ellidee, a miner and part-time monk (who also dabbles in goldsmithing), seen here contemplating another in a long series of fetch-and-talk-to quests along the massive Main Scenario Quest line…

    Back in the day I started a new character on a new server every time an online friend said “Yeah, I’ll be happy to help you get through those pesky required dungeons!” Cue the chirping crickets sound effect. That’s a main part of why I kept bailing on the game: Enforced partying with strangers. More often than not the strangers you get tend to be hardcore into the game and lack anything resembling patience for anyone who doesn’t already have the dungeon duty mechanics down pat, let alone their skill rotation completely mastered. Off-putting, that.

    Now, though? The game provides NPC helpers! And they do their jobs! Including staying out of telegraphs! I can solo those duties! Music to my ears, I tell you what.

    I still prefer mining and crafting (no, not like that) but at least I can progress the story on my own terms. And, for now, I think I shall.

  • Satisfactory: The Planning Stages

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    The second-best time, I’ve learned, to plan your Phase 4 shipment production for the Space Elevator in Satisfactory is about 250 hours into your session. The best time to plan your Phase 4 yadda yadda is before you start the game.

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  • Changing How I Note The Time

    When I started with my current employer, lo the many years ago, I started taking notes in text files. One text file per day, every single day. I have (nearly) all of them, just in case I need to refer back to something I did [mumble] years ago. It happens!

    It’s not a bad system, obviously, since it’s served me well. Text files are easy for the computer to index for searching, to name one useful feature.

    I manually created a new file every day, and at the end of every month (and every year) I moved the previous month’s/year’s text files into an archive folder. Also, I pressed Ctrl+S a lot to make sure I didn’t lose information as I go. The “ongoing notes” and “to do list” sections I maintained at the bottom of the file needed copying over to each new document every morning.

    At home (as it were) I’ve been using Obsidian, the notes tool which saves everything as a discrete Markdown file in its library structure, for all of my personal notes for a few months now. A Markdown file is just a text file with simple formatting markers that reads like plain text in Notepad++ but does fancier things in a product like, well, Obsidian (and others).

    So at the start of 2024 I made the change: A new Obsidian vault in my “work” document folder, complete with automatic creation of the new day’s time file every day, already placed into a year-and-month folder structure. The carry-over notes and to-do list are separate documents “outside” the day/month/year structure but still in the vault. And since Obsidian saves changes as you go, I spend a lot less time hitting Ctrl+S. (Or, I will, once I break the habit…)

    If you surround some text with a pair of equals signs on each side, you get a “highlight” effect. Handy, since I like to flag which time blocks I’ve entered in the ticketing system.

    Was this really worth it? Who knows? Who cares! It feels like an improvement, and “a change is as good as a rest.”

  • First check-in of 2024

    You know the year’s off to a fun start when you startle yourself awake several minutes before the alarm on the 3rd day of the year with the realization that you forgot to pay the rent and the electricity bill two days prior like you were supposed to.

    The year’s not bad exactly, so far, but it’s certainly being weird. And that’s before we get into it being an election year. Ugggggh.

    I don’t have as much to look forward to this year, entertainment-wise at least, so I’m going to have to make my own reasons to keep going. Like, I have a new Satisfactory (solo) save game to kick off now that “ChooChooingScenery” is wrapped up. The goal is to post more & better material about that as it begins and proceeds, both about what’s happening in game and what I’m doing around the game (planning, etc).

    There’s also the ongoing (for now) co-op game with the kids, plus a possible new co-op game with someone from Discord. More on that when/if it happens.

    Last year was a lot about music, this year may be a lot about (e)books. I’m ramping up my light novel reading, (not) helped by getting into the Ascendance of a Bookworm series which is a stack of reading all on its own. (They’re quite good, though.) Then there’s Apothecary Diaries to start in on, the Frieren manga to continue, and so on. Ask me about my rec’s! Oh wait, maybe those should become posts. Right. I know how this thing works, honest.

    I stopped using what-was-Twitter, started using Mastodon more and Bluesky somewhat, but mostly my intent is to post things here first & foremost. I did much better at it last year! Some months I hit double-digit post counts! Not many, but some. Drifting away from “social media,” I take refuge in the land of RSS and such.

    Join me, won’t you?

  • Satisfactory: Employee of the Planet

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    I met my goal. By year’s end 2023, I made it all the way through the Phase 4 parts shipment. Look!

    This officially puts the “ChooChooingScenery” savegame sequence to bed at 299 hours 45 minutes accumulated play time. Coming up in mid-January: I… haven’t figured out what I’m calling it yet but it’s a new savegame with a very particular focus, and I also want to sort out how I can turn it into more regularly-scheduled material for this here not-a-blog.

    Wait for it! It’s coming! It should be fun!

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