What are we playing?

[Lord_James]

53 minutes ago, Laviduce said:

 

My ban was on March 13/14th. I checked "recent" online acitivity but thanks to the way the "online login activity" is registered I can not go back far enough. But IMHO, i seriously doubt it was an account (or PC) hijack. I had changed my password last fall/winter so I doubt my account was hijacked by someone. Also if my PC was hijacked then why is only conveniently WT affected ?

 

I also thought about potential trojans or viruses but there again this malware also conveniently only affects WT. So i doubt that that was the reason either.

 

I did have custom WT.live sights installed but I have not touched those since fall,  prior to the motherboard implosion. The only user mission I have installed is from WT.live as well and I have not updated since last year. The user skins I got from the Gaijin market place. So these IMHO, can not be the culprits for this ban.

 

I did had to have my motherboard replaced 6 weeks before the ban. I had to have windows "fix" itself. I lost all major desktop shortcuts and certain programs stopped working. I had to create new shortcuts for some (including WT). I did not reinstall WT but i think i did a file check and it worked again.

 

According to some internal sources there was a change in the hash number in my gaijin aces.exe 4 weeks before my ban. Then my source said that this was about 2 weeks before my ban. Frankly I am not sure how accurate these statements are. To calm myself down I did check my download history and I could not find any weird or unrecognizable .exe. file, .dll. or folder in that history log.

 

Around February 28th (2 weeks before my ban) I did install Core Temp to monitor the temperature of my CPU after a burned smell had emanated from my PC. All temps turned out to be OK and I never found out what had caused that smell. I do think I let WT run while I checked the temperatures.  According to my insider source the change in the aces.exe was potentially inserted while WT was running. But that is only his opinion. Gaijin is not saying anything besides copy and paste statements.

 

Since I currently work from home and my USB sticks/data carriers have not left my sight. At this point in time , I seriously doubt that this mystery software (or whatever it is) is even on my PC.  I was thinking of pulling my ISP traffic data. I doubt I got this "cheat routine" of of Amazon.

 

 

To add insult to injury , I got myself two no so cheap premium vehicles after I allegedly "cheated".

You could have had a situation where you got banned because of “him to gud, must be cheatin” like @Jeeps_Guns_Tanks did in world of warplanes because he knew how to use a rudder in a turn (iirc, because I’m to lazy to go find the original post). Or maybe you “weren’t being a team player enough” like I sometimes get in world of warships because I’m off helping someone else and the person asking for help got butt hurt (more often then not, those games would turn out to be wins, too). 
 

1 hour ago, Laviduce said:

 

I appreciate your offer Lord_James but I could never accept your offer even if it was not a TOS violation. This move by you and me accepting it would just throw good money after bad. Even if you or someone else paid me to do it , I could not do it. Why would anyone spent time, money and effort in an endeavor for fun, business or otherwise if you just got ripped off after 8,5 years and thousands of dollars spent ?

 

What shocks and disappoints me the most is that a couple of other players that also got screwed over (potentially) said, that they would be willing to return to WT. How in the f***ing world can you go back to a company that screwed you over like that ?  I mean I like WT but a move like this crosses too many lines even for a WT crackhead like me.

 

Anyway, since Gaijin refused to be constructive or cooperative I had seek legal counsel in the mean time to potentially "resolve" this matter. My legal counsel said that I (and others) were potentially "shot-gunned" to demonstrate that they, Gaijin,  are doing something against cheaters. He went on to say that these companies do not invest much in parts of their companies that do not directly make them money. So yeah, sometimes people get thrown under the bus and this time , after 8.5 years, my number came up. According to him and what I could hear from others,  this behavior is not limited to Gaijin. EA , Rockstar and others also seem to have been doing this in the past.  They just do not have the resources and willingness to tackle a problem like this individually. With hundreds and thousands of users and a company size of no more than 500, a lot of these processes have to be automated.

 

This came from one WT forum administrator concerning my case that surprised and disappointed me:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

To be fair, WT forum administrators do not seem to have any inside knowledge of things such as this.

 

A this point in time I am not even sure if I will return to WT even if my ban is lifted.

 

There have been a couple of other odd bans in WT lately (and over the years):

 

 

You’re respectful, so I respect you, and I’m ok with bending the rules of people I don’t respect. Also I didn’t spend any money on wart chunder, and my few premium vehicles I have (PaK puma and Ki-94-II, among others) didn’t cost me money, only some years off my life from the stress  But they definitely do have the resources to police their cheating problems without shotgunning their player base, they just don’t have the willingness (or creativity) to do it. 

[Laviduce]

53 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

You could have had a situation where you got banned because of “him to gud, must be cheatin” like @Jeeps_Guns_Tanks did in world of warplanes because he knew how to use a rudder in a turn (iirc, because I’m to lazy to go find the original post). Or maybe you “weren’t being a team player enough” like I sometimes get in world of warships because I’m off helping someone else and the person asking for help got butt hurt (more often then not, those games would turn out to be wins, too). 
 

You’re respectful, so I respect you, and I’m ok with bending the rules of people I don’t respect. Also I didn’t spend any money on wart chunder, and my few premium vehicles I have (PaK puma and Ki-94-II, among others) didn’t cost me money, only some years off my life from the stress  But they definitely do have the resources to police their cheating problems without shotgunning their player base, they just don’t have the willingness (or creativity) to do it. 

I thought of a "performance ban" as well but then again I had kill streaks before over the years and nothing happened. Yes, certain people have said that I cheated over the years but nothing happened. I am a very defensive AB player and I usually like to keep my distance. Also in the weeks leading up to the ban, I was trying to grind my crew with my M-51 and the Merkava 2D , focusing on the M51 primarily.  Besides that I played low to mid tier (BR 3.7-6.0) primarily. Yes, I did get 0 to 5+ kills at times regularly but that does says more about the quality of the opponents I faced than me. It has also come to my attention that some people do not seem to use their minimap at all.  I almost look at my minimap all the time, especially in close quarter affairs.

 

In the months leading up to the ban I also did not have any arguments with any moderators in the forum. I was too busy finishing up my Leclerc project and RL affairs to invest in destructive talk in the forum. But  I did submit a post concerning the protection of the Merkava 2D, 1-2 weeks prior to the ban. That was my last forum activity besides me asking in vain for people to review my replays (of me cheating).

 

I did squad a lot with my clan and eastern European friends but since my ban I have not. Usually I am a team player in my squad.  I will not make another account if this mess does not get resolved. I basically consider myself defrauded by Gaijin and that was also the reason I got a lawyer involved in this s**t show.

 

The lawyer just said that these companies focus their resources on the things that bring in the cash. Anti-cheat does not bring in the cash so these companies  might be cutting corners and getting sloppy here and there.  If they have 10k paying customers and screw over 200 of those, what difference do these wrongful bans make ?  They have no incentive or "motivation" to reform their system. As i pointed out before, even some people that got screwed over by Gaijin are flocking back to them (dafuq!?).  No lessons to be learned by Gaijin.

 

In my paranoia I also checked if my bank account was somehow in the red and that that might be the reason for the ban but that turned out to be OK.

 

As it stands now I have no idea why I was banned from WT.  Besides the copy and paste statement they send to everyone they ban, I have received no definite data that says anything detailed. According to them I just violated section 3.2 of the EULA (i.e. using a modification to gain an unfair advantage). At no point in time in my 8.5 years did ever use an overlay or modification (excluding WT.live sights) to gain an unfair advantage.  I do not even know  if this "cheating" was a one-time event or if it was ongoing affair according to Gaijin.

 

If I was the cheater why did I just not make a new email and WT account?  This should have not taken me longer than an hour to setup. Yet according to Gaijin (and/or EAC) I just happen to cheat after 8.5 years with basically fully trained crews and researched trees (excluding Israel, Sweden and Italy). As a hacking "cheater" I was also dumb enough to just send them my DxDiag file too. On top of that I , the alleged cheater,  am stupid enough to get a lawyer involved. I am delusional at times but I doubt I am that delusional to cheat and behave like this. Overall, this and other odd cases tell me that Gaijin does not take a look at who they ban, unless you are a prominent WT youtuber/twitch streamer. 

 

On a side note,  I do have a VPN. And no, my VPN was not active during the period (February?) of the alleged cheating. My VPN usually degrades my connection even more when I use my local powerlan network.

 

As far as I could gather, IMHO, these "odd" bans pretty much come down to internal failure, sloppiness and carelessness on part of Gaijin and/or EAC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lord_James]

39 minutes ago, Laviduce said:

I thought of a "performance ban" as well but then again I had kill streaks before over the years and nothing happened. Yes, certain people have said that I cheated over the years but nothing happened. I am a very defensive AB player and I usually like to keep my distance. Also in the weeks leading up to the ban, I was trying to grind my crew with my M-51 and the Merkava 2D , focusing on the M51 primarily.  Besides that I played low to mid tier (BR 3.7-6.0) primarily. Yes, I did get 0 to 5+ kills at times regularly but that does says more about the quality of the opponents I faced than me. It has also come to my attention that some people do not seem to use their minimap at all.  I almost look at my minimap all the time, especially in close quarter affairs.

 

In the months leading up to the ban I also did not have any arguments with any moderators in the forum. I was too busy finishing up my Leclerc project and RL affairs to invest in destructive talk in the forum. But  I did submit a post concerning the protection of the Merkava 2D, 1-2 weeks prior to the ban. That was my last forum activity besides me asking in vain for people to review my replays (of me cheating).

 

I did squad a lot with my clan and eastern European friends but since my ban I have not. Usually I am a team player in my squad.  I will not make another account if this mess does not get resolved. I basically consider myself defrauded by Gaijin and that was also the reason I got a lawyer involved in this s**t show.

 

The lawyer just said that these companies focus their resources on the things that bring in the cash. Anti-cheat does not bring in the cash so these companies  might be cutting corners and getting sloppy here and there.  If they have 10k paying customers and screw over 200 of those, what difference do these wrongful bans make ?  They have no incentive or "motivation" to reform their system. As i pointed out before, even some people that got screwed over by Gaijin are flocking back to them (dafuq!?).  No lessons to be learned by Gaijin.

 

In my paranoia I also checked if my bank account was somehow in the red and that that might be the reason for the ban but that turned out to be OK.

 

As it stands now I have no idea why I was banned from WT.  Besides the copy and paste statement they send to everyone they ban, I have received no definite data that says anything detailed. According to them I just violated section 3.2 of the EULA (i.e. using a modification to gain an unfair advantage). At no point in time in my 8.5 years did ever use an overlay or modification (excluding WT.live sights) to gain an unfair advantage.  I do not even know  if this "cheating" was a one-time event or if it was ongoing affair according to Gaijin.

 

If I was the cheater why did I just not make a new email and WT account?  This should have not taken me longer than an hour to setup. Yet according to Gaijin (and/or EAC) I just happen to cheat after 8.5 years with basically fully trained crews and researched trees (excluding Israel, Sweden and Italy). As a hacking "cheater" I was also dumb enough to just send them my DxDiag file too. On top of that I , the alleged cheater,  am stupid enough to get a lawyer involved. I am delusional at times but I doubt I am that delusional to cheat and behave like this. Overall, this and other odd cases tell me that Gaijin does not take a look at who they ban, unless you are a prominent WT youtuber/twitch streamer. 

 

On a side note,  I do have a VPN. And no, my VPN was not active during the period (February?) of the alleged cheating. My VPN usually degrades my connection even more when I use my local powerlan network.

 

As far as I could gather, IMHO, these "odd" bans pretty much come down to internal failure, sloppiness and carelessness on part of Gaijin and/or EAC.

Well, at least you can spend your time on healthier and more productive pass times, like hookers and cocaine 

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

That was Meplat that got banned. 

[LoooSeR]

 

A bit of DooM

[Toxn]

I got GHPC and am currently playing Warpact. So far the game has firmly convinced me of the merits of laser rangefinders, thermals and good fire control in general, and made me annoyed that whatever side you're playing suddenly becomes as dumb as a brick for some reason when playing randomly-generated campaign missions. AI vehicles on your team (at least the ones that you're not immediately leading) will just sit there, while the enemy actually maneuvers. So presently the only way to succeed in by frantically hopping from platoon vehicle to platoon vehicle to shuffle all the units about.

 

If they ever get around to giving all the vehicles commander's instructions (presently only available for M60, M1 and M2), putting in more dynamic environmental opponents (dismounted infantry, aircraft, artillery etc), making the maps more usable, allowing units to inform each other of things via radio, and making your own AI buddies a bit less dumb, then it could be an amazing game.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

I slowly grinding my soul away on WarThunder, trying to get an F4J and F-14. The F-8 is pretty fun. 

[LoooSeR]

Trying out Mirrors Edge (Dice/EA, 2009 running/parkour simulator). It have unique style, but gameplay isn't well polished.

 

   Levels are interesting visually. A blend of nearly concept art look of landscapes with realistic lighting and low amount of vibrant colors gives it very different impression from other games.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

One of things that don't glue well with game theme is frequent use of vents, small indoor spaces where you need to climb and similar. It brakes the flow and pretty nice feeling of speed when player is running in this game.

 

Captivating gameplay on screen

 

Other thing i found not to work all that well is combat. Melee is ok, but again, it makes you stop and kick people in a game where you suppsoed to run and parkour through the city. Shooting is also present, although not very deep, and it is rather bad.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Animations in between levels are nice looking and detailed, but plot itself is barebones and generic.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Alzoc]

4 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

Trying out Mirrors Edge (Dice/EA, 2009 running/parkour simulator). It have unique style, but gameplay isn't well polished.

 

The reboot (Catalyst) solve some of those gameplay fluidity issues (combat for example feel much less clunky) but lose some of it's uniqueness in graphic design and free roam can be a bit annoying from time to time (going from one end of the city to the other repetitively can be boring).

 

 

It solves some of the issues from the original but create new ones.

In the same genre (Parkour) I quite liked Ghostrunner, reasonably difficult but with quick respawn system and frequent checkpoints avoiding a lot of frustration :

 

Spoiler

 

 

[LoooSeR]

   A bit more of Mirrors Edge. Played bunch of other games, i want to get finish with ME to get to other games. One of those games was Severed steel, and funny idea came to me is that it had several more fitting combat mechanics to Mirrors Edge than what Dice made. Like ability to shoot during wall running, dash moves, slide while shooting, flying through the air upside down and stealing their secondary weapons to shoot them in the back.

   In fact whole combat with guns feels out of place. Not only because of gameplay. I felt like for whole concept of the game they should have gone hard on non-lethal acrobatic encounters. But what is done is done forever.

 

Anyway

    

lel

Spoiler

 

 

   I have feeling that ME with Ray traycing and more moving light sources would look even better, specifically inside of some buildings and structures. Grey concrete would act as "clean sheet" for light bouncing of colored parts, which would bounce light rather well. Although in plenty of places light/shadow maps are pretty detailed and well done.

 

Spoiler

 

Note how shadows become softer the further object casting shadow is.

 

 

 

 

Wierd looking skyscraper

 

 

 

 

HL2 Canals level from parallel universe

 

 

Moody

 

 

Lightmap limitations are quite visible here.

 

On the other hand this one shows also some good lighting done on those maps.

 

Eww, so low poly

 

 

That would have been pretty nice office, haha

 

 

 

 

 

 

That totally how body work, Dice.

 

This whole area gives me hard "Blame!" flashbacks.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

More:

I like how each level had its own color pellet. Even looking now at a previews of pics to upload i can see where some of new levels start and ends.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Hello, Soviet copy-pasted pre-fab parts buildings.

 

 

Ok, no touchy of fence

 

 

 

That looks quite natural

 

CAPTIVATING GAMEPLAY

 

 

 

Warm lighting, cozy feeling.

 

Human models and texture work looks very dated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

toobe oroonge

 

 

 

Note orange hue on left building

 

Sometimes it looks like devs forgot to put textures in the map, greybox look in some places is strong, haha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think art direction is strongest when enviroment that gets Mirrors Edg'ed looks natural/realistic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That would have been rather interesting looking buildings in real life

 

 

 

Familiar combination of colors

 

I like how transition from 3D models to background skybox is obvious, haha. I think Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was released in 2007 with city maps with rather long range view distance.

 

 

 

Some action bits

Spoiler

Bullet hits look pretty cool

 

 

 

 

 

 

In slow mo that would look cooler

 

 

 

Guns in ME are so generic it is not even funny.

 

Some places showing off their advanced^tm cloth sim. Not bad looking, but looks a bit outdated now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOOK AT OUR CLOTH SIM

 

BUY FROSTBITE. Funny thing is that in ~2015s CoD engine in grahics department managed to out-tech Frostbite

 

 

Cloth sim was impressive in 2008 and barely anybody used them for anything. First time i saw one in Far Cry 1 and that shit was like Neo's "Wow"

 

 

 

How to defeat unarmored girl running around the city and being mildly annoying? Exactly - create a secret unit of traning parkour ninja with guns!

 

 

Most of guns feels the same, but MG have more rounds in a mag

 

 

*Proceeds with Glory Kill*

 

CoD 4 Modern Warfare was released in 2007, ME in 2008, 

 

 

Nice model!

 

This time we are not shooting Zakhaev

 

 

 

 

 

Look at me! I can fly with power of my farts!

 

 

Good job looking into camera, Faith.

 

 

[Lord_James]

recently got back into satisfactory this week, and my upgraded PC makes it look great. This is medium settings, cant go higher rn until i upgrade it again. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Lord_James]

Some more stuff from Satisfactory. For some reason, the game decided to give me moodier lighting and shadows than last time despite none of my settings changing. It did that before I took a break a year ago and I still don't know why. 

 

 

Actually picked my starting factory off the ground and put it on a foundation so it's nice and neat. Also, my space elevator is in the background. 

 

Spoiler

 

Coal power plant producing 600mw (with upgrade to 900mw in the future), somehow that tiny pond can supply 360 cubic meters of water per minute. 

 

 

You do research with that little drop pod, which lands in that building there. Some remnants of my pre-foundation factory scattered about. 

 

 

 

Similar shot to one I took before, just with different lighting. 

 

Spoiler

 

Huge honkin waterfall. 

 

 

There's supposedly a story in the works for this game, but they have yet to actually expand upon it since they released the game to the public. Either way, these cool ring and arc structures scattered about the map are interesting to look at. 

 

 

They did a great job on how the rain affects your buildings. It doesn't modify the surrounding environment much, but I can imagine this being quite taxing on software and hardware if it did. 

 

[Lord_James]

finally got to the point I could build my own vehicle and decided to go on an adventure. The lighting reverted to its original settings... despite no input from me, but I do prefer that I can see in shaded areas clearly, as I could in rea life. 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Your poor character has to stand to drive this tractor; very safe. This area is called either the "gold coast" or the "oil coast", due to the significant amount of oil in the islands just past that poison gas to the left. I can't extract oil yet, so I have no real need to be here other than exploring. 

 

 

These crashed pods contain hard drives that act like free loot boxes: you research them and they give you an alternate recipe for a product you can make... though my luck has it they give me stuff I can't make yet. They're also guarded by some of the local wildlife. That gun is currently the best self-defense I have, and it's only a single shot, rebar ballista like thing. 

 

 

One of the enemies, this one shoots fire at you in different ways: either a burst of 4 shots or a big grenade like thing. 

 

 

 

This is what the hard drive looks like after you retrieve it. Guess they should have switched to SSD's  

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

This type of enemy charges and rams you. Thankfully their AI is easy to break, as they don't seem to know what to do when they go swimming. 

 

 

One of the other things you can find near crash sites is discount, store brand Nvidia chips, which I can sell on space eBay for an extreme markup  

 

 

 

These enemies can only be killed with explosives, which I don't have right now. They're just weird plant things that emit poison gas when you get close. If you're quick, you can loot anything they guard before you take damage. 

 

 

 

 

idk why, but I always like desert environments, both irl and some games. Might be because it's slow and peaceful, or I'm just a lizard man. 

 

Spoiler

 

These slugs are important, because they can be turned into a resource that can increase the production speed of your buildings. 

 

 

This enemy is very annoying because it's a pod that infinitely spawns small flies that attack you. Good thing I brought a gun, because melee against these is a pain. 

 

 

This is how you do research on non-mainline tech. Just place whatever it asks you into that big tub on the right, and wait a couple minutes. You can deconstruct the building immediately and it will still do the research. 

 

 

Cool cave with a rare (and useless) resource. Probably story related, soon.tm 

 

 

 

Just a closer look at the blue palm tree oasis, and an animal. This bird fakes being a flower to catch bugs, it even has an animation of it catching them. 

 

 

 

 

2 areas got updated recently, but I'm travelled through 1 because it was a much shorter path. 

 

Spoiler

 

This is the other updated biome. The forest I went through is on top of the cliffs to the right. 

 

 

I spy with my little eye: something valuable. 

 

 

Guess there's a way to turn those slugs into a hover pack  

 

 

One of the wackiest structures I've seen so far. 

 

 

 

 

Some of the locales they make are absolutely gorgeous, and I wonder if the scenery could be used for stuff like "sleeping in VR." There is a setting to turn all the creatures peaceful, and the environments are so far removed from earth it might help calm you down. 

 

Spoiler

 

Looks like I went to the wrong neighborhood! 

 

 

A closer look at those giant trees. It's a generally dangerous place when you get amongst them, but there's a scenic route around. 

 

 

Cool spelunking cave. 

 

 

Big cave but not very cool; lots of big and very aggressive spiders further down. 

 

 

This area is pretty cool. It's a forest with these wide-open golf trap clearings. There's few resources to exploit, though, so not a lot of reason to be here. 

 

 

The blue mushroom biome down there is one of the most dangerous so far. It does have a lot of oil as well as "caterium" (gold or electrum; it's used in high electronics) and some sulfur. 

 

 

A lot of tall plateaus that overhang a bottomless death pit. Not very resource rich either. 

 

 

Almost home, and I managed to get a shot of this little guy. It's a tamable animal and the game's unofficial mascot. 

 

[LoooSeR]

On 3/9/2023 at 8:02 PM, Lord_James said:

Big cave but not very cool; lots of big and very aggressive spiders further down. 

 

   I hate when devs go for spider enemies. Not because i have some phobia, i just find those enemy types lazy.

 

On 3/9/2023 at 8:02 PM, Lord_James said:

This enemy is very annoying because it's a pod that infinitely spawns small flies that attack you. Good thing I brought a gun, because melee against these is a pain. 

Oh god, one of those. Also hate with passion.

[Lord_James]

As fun and beautiful as exploring is in Satisfactory, it's not the main objective of the game; Building a factory and production lines and consuming resources is. But I had to go exploring for more hard drives because I didn't get a recipe I needed to make this game so much easier, as I had gotten nearly every other recipe for my tech level instead 

 

 

Damn does this look good though. 

 

 

Because I was approaching my power limit, I made a new coal plant. The portion on the right consumes 270 units of coal per minute and 810 cubic meters of water to produce 1.35 GW. The portion on the left consumes only 225 units of coal, mixed with 225 units of sulfur, and 1,350 cubic meters of water per minute to produce 2.25GW. I also plan to upgrade my first coal plant to that of the right column, but I have another project (or 3) before that. 

 

Spoiler

 

I built the right side first, and this picture is from the "morning" that I started the left side. 

 

 

The size difference is due to the enhanced "compacted coal" fuel I'm making. It burns for longer (that's how it works mechanically in game) than normal coal, but you have to prepare it with another machine, and use sulfur which is a valuable end game resource. Because it doesn't have many uses at the moment, I can burn it without handicapping myself, though. 

 

 

 

My inputs compared to my output. I do like how it's much easier to differentiate the compact coal from normal coal now, as it use to be just a yellower/brown retexture of coal. 

 

 

My enormous water requirements for both systems. 3 of those pumps equates to 300 cubic meters per minute (actually 360, but I derated them for convenience), which is the maximum throughput of the pipes I am using. Those funny pistons add head lift so I can actually pump the water up to the generators above. The liquid system they have in the game is a little weird, and can be frustrating to manage as reliably as belts. This is why I have those large water tanks in front of my generators: to even out the bizarre flow that was causing my previous power station to drop power output because one of the generators wasn't getting enough water despite me over feeding all of them. 

 

 

 

This is what I was needing the power to produce: 3 builds utilizing coal. The first build makes (from left to right): 

Compacted coal for personal use (the tractor that I drive runs off solid fuels). 

"Nobelisks", which are explosives that I can use to clear terrain (but not deform), or as a weapon against hostile creatures. 

Encased industrial beams, which I need to construct some buildings. 

 

Spoiler

 

The second build here also produces a triad of products I need: 

Stators, which are rarely used for construction. 

Steel pipes, that are used to make stators and for a few buildings. 

Steel Beams, which are one of the most used products I have because they are used for the fastest belt I have access to. 

 

 

 

My build just to make 10 motors per minute. This is WITH the enhanced recipes I was looking for. Lots of autism went into making this look nice and neat, and with generally balanced inputs. The system has stalled because it filled up its storage container in the time I took to make the new coal power plant. 

 

 

 

Raw inputs of Iron and Copper (and coal), and the end product: Motors. Humorously enough, there's a machine at my job that uses a motor similar in appearance to operate its hydraulics. 

 

 

 

This is how you place buildings in Satisfactory: You select what you want to build, and point it at a location. The color of the ghost/hologram will change depending on a couple factors (and what you set the colors to be), but blue means everything is good. This building is the only one that requires stators in its construction; it is a battery for your power grid so you have a little leeway when you accidently use more electricity than you produce. 

 

[Lord_James]

It's been a while since I've given an update on my fun in satisfactory. I've been working on it since I posted last, but life got in the way and I also decided to make some of my builds more complex for no good reason. 

 

 

This huge build, which takes about 1.1 GW to run, is to make "heavy modular frames", and this is the first of 2 culprits that have slowed my progress, because I decided that using 6 different resources would be more fun that the normal 3 that are required. I also upgraded my first coal power plant to make sure I had enough juice just to run this supply chain before I got into oil tech. 

 

Spoiler

 

For the first unnecessary step, I used "caterium" (gold, essentially) to create common wire, which I could have used much more common copper or even iron to make; this recipe and using gold in this way is often considered haram and wasteful. This wire is then combined with iron plates to make "stitched iron plates", which is an alternate recipe to make a tier 2 iron plate, basically. 

 

 

Next, I used an alt recipe to make iron ingots, Iron alloy ingot, which combines copper and iron ore to make more iron: normal video game stuff. This specific production chain is to make all the screws I required. It follows as Iron ore + Copper ore > Iron ingots > Iron rods > Screws; there is an alt recipe that removes the iron rod component and manufactures screws directly, but I chose not to use it. 

 

 

This portion of the build could also be considered a sin, because I'm using sulfur to produce compacted coal, and then using that mixture to smelt all the steel I need. This recipe is generally slower, and consumes sulfur (which is a very rare resource) even though there was ample coal around for all materials and products, but my smooth brain wanted to use it for the meme. I could have actually used 3 more resources in this production chain, but their locations were either inconvenient (quartz), or I didn't have the technology unlocked (Aluminum and Oil). 

 

 

And finally I had to construct concrete, which just takes limestone. The spaghetti belts leading to the machines are a 2>7 splitter / balancer: I had to use 2 different limestone nodes which produce at different rates, and to ensure that all the machines are equally fed, I made this. The orange boxes are mergers, and the silver boxes are splitters, which are limited to base 2 or 3, so if you want to spilt belts by higher prime numbers, you have to go through some shenanigans like this. 

 

 

Mix all the ingredients in the correct way, and bake at 350 degrees for 30 seconds, and you get these nice and tasty Heavy Modular Frames at a rate of 2 per minute per machine. Their used in a couple machines, and as a component in future, more complex parts, but I'll be making a dedicated supply of frames for those builds, because this build is for personal use. 

 

 

Just the upgrade: now with 50% more power and a more reliable water supply. 

 

 

 

After that project, I decided to work on quartz technology before I went on to oil; how very un-American of me . 

 

Spoiler

 

I had originally intended to do something like this for all my factories: to make them in these tall towers so I wouldn't have to cut down a lot of foliage, but I couldn't get it to look good at the time. I decided to say fuck it and forced it to work in this instance. I found out at the end that it was the right decision to forgo building my factories like this. 

 

 

I didn't take a lot of pictures because the production line is very spaghetti like, but this is what I was mainly trying to automate: "Crystal Oscillators." I'm not exactly sure what this is trying to imitate from real life, if anything, but I use enough of these that this production line is very welcome. 

 

 

The other objects I wanted to produce were discount Nvidia "circuit boards" (which I've shown previously), and these bags of silica, which are used to make glass windows and ceilings for decoration. The raw quartz can be seen to the right of that. 

 

 

 

The most recent factories I've set up all heavily rely on CRUDE OIL! However, Satisfactory does oil a little weird. I'm not going to get into it, but It's simpler than Factorio in the starter set ups (and the extreme oil set ups you can find on YouTube are absolutely self-inflicted convolution rather than necessary), but the unavoidable byproducts make it just as annoying to keep the production chain running. The wonky fluid physics in this game also make it kind of frustrating if you don't compensate for them. 

 

Spoiler

 

Extracting and transporting crude oil. Humorously, this game previously had crude oil extracted out of the ground as barrels and you could transport it by belt to wherever you needed it. I do have a little bit of nostalgia for those days, but I also like the complicated oil factories you can make now. For reference, the factory in the distance is roughly 1.1km away. 

 

 

This is how you utilize oil to make electricity: in these big reciprocating engine generators, and I might have gone overboard with how many I constructed (jk, the high tier electronics factory I made after this used about half of the power produced by all these generators). 

 

 

The first picture of my oil set up produced rubber, plastic, and polymer resin for personal use, and I turned all the byproducts from that system into fuel oil for power. This set up produces polymer fabric, empty fluid canisters, and filled fuel canisters, and also converts the byproducts into fuel for a single row of generators. I have all the solid products arranged so that when my personal storages are full, they overflow into a resource sink and don't clog the outputs, preventing fuel from being produced for the generators. 

 

 

Damn this is a good-looking picture. These machines primarily produce fuel oil, with solid byproducts (which I use in part of my electronics factory, later). The 16 machines lined here consume 360 cubic meters of crude per minute, and produce 960 cubic meters of fuel with the help of 2 alternate recipes: "Heavy oil Residue" that turns crude into heavy oil in a 3:4 crude to oil ratio, and then a recipe called "Diluted Fuel" which uses a lot of water and the previous heavy oil to produce fuel in a 1+2:2 heavy oil + water to fuel oil, respectively. 

 

 

This setup is technically part of the electronics build, but it's all based on oil. This is a big build, with each floor being 9152 square meters in floor space (each square you see is 8 x 8 meters), and each floor is 40 meters tall. This particular arrangement of refineries, and the alternate recipes they're making, produce either plastic or rubber at 3-4 times the efficiency of their base recipes, is self starting AND self feeding, and have no byproducts to be removed after you have produced your desired product. 

 

 

 

With all that I've done, I could finally move on to producing a part I've never actually automated in this game: the Supercomputer. This is second culprit to why it took a while to post again, as I've been working on this production chain for over a month. It also consumes some 2.5+ GW of power, without accounting for the previous oil factories that feed into this. 

 

Spoiler

 

These are the top and bottom floors to the factory, respectively. The top floor produces a product I couldn't fit in the first floor, and also the machines that produce the supercomputers themselves. The bottom floor is where all the smelting takes place. As you can see, there is a significant amount of gold used in this process, but also a greater amount of copper is used as well (some 400 units of copper ore compared to 260 units of gold ore, per minute). 

 

 

This section of the build produces "High Speed Connectors", which are notoriously gold hungry. The first picture is making the gold wiring, in an alternate recipe that used copper to offset some of the gold needed. The second picture produces circuit board on the left, and an overly complicated wiring build on the right using Iron and heavy oil to produce something you can craft with just copper alone. 

 

 

I'm constructing "A.I. limiters" here, and they use a lot of copper. To the right are circuit board constructers that feed the normal computer build. 

 

 

The rest of the machines present produce parts for personal computers, and aren't really part of the supercomputer supply chain. 

 

 

This produces an alternate computer called "Caterium Computer", which is more resource efficient that the normal computer, and constructs them faster, but it uses a bit of gold. I've used it to feed the supercomputer manufacturers in the distance there. The stock recipe takes computers, high speed connecters, AI limiters, and some plastic to make. 

 

 

These are all the products that are being constructed for personal use at this factory, respectively: 

Caterium "Quickwire" 

AI Limiter

"Normal" Computer 

High Speed Connector 

Supercomputer

 

 

 

I've also upgraded some of my equipment to better explore and exploit resources. This is the jet pack (you get a better one later) and consumes fuel canisters to fly. 

 

Spoiler

 

A gas mask attachment, which works kinda like the Metro games in that you have to replace your filter every so often when in a hazardous environment. I needed oil tech to make both this and the previously mentioned jetpack. 

 

 

Those structures on my legs are "Blade Runners", which allow the character to run faster, jump higher, and take less damage when falling from heights. I couldn't get a good picture of them without jumping off a cliff and using a parachute, which is what my hands are holding in this shot. 

 

[Alzoc]

Finally bought Sprocket and finished the campaign.

My design aren't really original as I simply did it once and then upscaled it with some tweaks when changing period.

I tried to use relatively sensible design decisions whenever possible but I didn't went out of my way to make something perfect either.

 

WWI

Spoiler

ARSI-10 :

 

• 65 mm gun for 100 mm of pen
• Between 70 to 55 mm of effective armor frontally
• 9,7 t
• 15 hp/t for an effective speed of about 12 km/h

Interwar

Spoiler

ARSI-17 :

• 75 mm gun for 137 mm of pen
• Between 80 to 100 mm of effective armor frontally
• 17,64 t
• 31 hp/t for an effective speed of about 19 km/h

Early war

Spoiler

ARSI-24 :

• 90 mm gun for 200 mm of pen
• Between 125 to 155 mm of effective armor frontally
• 23,84 t
• 39 hp/t for an effective speed of about 29 km/h

Mid war

Spoiler

ARSI-37 :

• 90 mm gun for 230 mm of pen
• Between 200 to 225 mm of effective armor frontally
• 36,85 t
• 39 hp/t for an effective speed of about 33 km/h

Late war

Spoiler

ARSI-50 :

• 105 mm gun for 284 mm of pen
• Between 225 to 270 mm of effective armor frontally
• 50,01 t
• 29 hp/t for an effective speed of about 42 km/h

 

All in all they are akin to a more optimized version of the Centurion. I was quite happy with the design since they were mostly immune to enemy fire across 70 to 80° frontally, had a gun capable of penetrating about any IA at range (with the exception of the IS-2-122 which could be tricky) and were mobile enough (having access to better gearbox is just plain cheating).

 

So back to waiting for more features to be added to the game.

[LoooSeR]

On 7/2/2023 at 10:24 PM, Alzoc said:

/.../

So back to waiting for more features to be added to the game.

What they plan do add to it?

[Alzoc]

4 hours ago, LoooSeR said:

What they plan do add to it?

 

Apparently, next thing would be geometric internal components and crew, that you can place yourself.

It won't change the way the vehicles handles but it will add more realistic constraints to the design instead of just having enough gross volume inside the hull or the turret :

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1674170/view/3669903800710929168

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1674170/view/5320484387351341998

 

 

Spoiler

 

[LoooSeR]

So i completed bunch of games that i didn't posted here, but few of them are somewhat interesting to share.

 

   Soldier of Fortune 2 was a bit strange as a sequel. Gameplay is way different compared to run and gun SoF1, enemies armor work differently. Even guns and recoil mechanics are noticeably different. After finishing singleplayer of both SoFs, i can say that SoF1 was more coherent and fun to play, not only becayse it was more bombastic but because there were less rough gameplay mechanics at play. Stealth in SoF2 feels broken in some ways, which leaved not very good impressions on me.

   SoF2 also feels like Call of Duty prototype in terms of gameplay bits, which was a bit unexpected to discover, as i was going into it blind. Turret sections, chases, helicopter gun sections, corridor shootouts with enemies behind chesthigh walls and so on.

 

 

Spoiler

Bayonet - never used it in game.

 

 

 

 

 

Turret section that becomes a chase section

  

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Helicopter section

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Tanker assault in the dark during rain... hmm, i think i saw that one somewhere...

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

And helicopter boss fight!

 

 

 

On no! Thermal goggles in old games are known to be capable of things real thermals are not able to do - like see through solid objects.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Another gadget you can play with is OICW

 

   It is weirdly well represented - you can lase targets, increase of decrease range at which 20 mm grenade detonate. Sight shows how much you need to elevate to get grenade hit target area. Grenade are airburst, it is not just usual game UBGL mechanics re-used.

   Almost never used those features as actual controls are clunky, most of levels are close range and indoors, don't have time to press 10 buttons before shotgunners just rush you.

 

   SoF2 firefights in some later parts gives me strange feeling of playing a mix of CoD and FEAR shooters. Enemies have better AI and quite mobile than usually what early 2000s enemies have, can jump over obstacles, eat more bullets, kind of like FEAR Replicas beta version. But levels are very linear so you can't really "dance" with enemies as you do in FEAR. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captain Price finishing Mile High Club mission in CoD MW 2002 edition.

 

   In the same time SoF2 occupied that strange moment in time in game tech progress where it had some unusual engine capabilities that were too advanced for older FPS but where not there in terms of more modern tech, like ragdoll physics, for example.

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

   This game have pre-animated death poses, which in games like HL1 and other FPS of that period where just objects with barely any kind of physics other than weight and collision detection on a root point of the model. That leads to body clipping through walls or laying horizontally like on normal floors while being on angled surfaces. In SoF2 devs created a system that modify pre-animated body poses to match level geometry, which looks neat and works pretty well for non-ragdoll physics.

   System can deal with bunch of situation in which body can be and significantly change pose, like twist some joints (within expected constraints).

 

   Another strange system was shadow rendering tech. It used 2D projection of 3D model filled with block void as a shadow. That thing interacted with map geometry very strangely:

   "Look at this patient, he got infected with a virus that separated him from his shadow"

 

Spoiler

 

 

   When it works though it was pretty cool looking for 2002.

 

Spoiler

 

Another interesting feature - their gore system. Once i turned it on firefights started to feel more visceral and weapons became more .. deadly feeling, which made action more gritty.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brutal

 

 

   SoF2 left strange impression - a transitional title as far as tech and gameplay goes, with proto-CoD set pieces and mission sections conflicting to certain degree with parts that play more of run and gun. I do recommend to play first SoF, this one though - only if you are interested in early 2000s shooters from pre-2004 era, before Far Cry, Doom 3 and HL2s set new standarts for shooters.