Zeusthecat

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Everything posted by Zeusthecat

  1. Social Justice

    I don't know if I should be annoyed at you or just laugh at your petulant little jabs. I try to respect everyone here as intelligent and respectful human beings but you make it pretty damn hard sometimes with unnecessary comments like these and your constant commentary on how shitty America is compared to the perfect country you live in.
  2. Kerbal Space Program

    Minmus is definitely easier to land on and return from than Mun. It's very small and has very low gravity so getting back up and into orbit takes very little fuel. As far as Duna goes, I'm still figuring that out. It took a pretty beefy rocket just to get my little science lab onto the surface so I imagine getting a ship there and back would probably require setting up some kind of space station in Duna's orbit for refueling (or if you set it up with some light spacecraft docked to it ahead of time, you could launch from Duna, rendezvous with the space station, and then EVA to one of your return shuttles). I'm sure it's possible to do with one rocket, but it seems that landing on other planets and their moons and then returning to Kerbin is nearly impossible without setting up some kind of checkpoint. On the space station thing, I don't think there is much benefit beyond having a station with fuel/RCS fuel that you can dock with and refuel your ship. If you get it in a good orbit it can provide a decent amount of science too if it passes over multiple biomes and you run the science over each one.
  3. Kerbal Space Program

    I've been continuing to play this game a ton and have started making some pretty significant advances in my overall plan to conquer the solar system. To reach my goal, I've laid out a set of smaller objectives to get me there step by step. Coincidentally, the contracts I've been getting in career mode have been lining up almost perfectly with many of those objectives giving me a steady influx of cash to offset the cost of each of my endeavors. To make this all feasible, I am making liberal use of the 'revert flight' functionality to discover the best designs and not be constantly broke. I know some people hate to use that but the way I look at it, launching test flights and seeing how far you can take a design without having to eat the costs is no different than real life engineers designing these things and running them through simulations so they can calculate everything before they hit the launch pad. Once that part is down though, shit gets real and I do my best to handle whatever mishaps may occur. So first off, I had to solve my number one problem that was limiting how far I could travel from Kerbin without breaking the bank: getting into Kerbin orbit while still having a lot of fuel and spare stages for further travel. To do that, I needed to construct a refueling checkpoint in low Kerbin orbit. So, guided by one of my contracts, I started by launching a simple space station into orbit with some science instruments, solar panels, docking ports and other miscellaneous necessities. Then, I followed that up by launching a second core space station unit with additional batteries, RCS fuel, and other things that I didn't want to try to squeeze into the first part. Once I had my two core components docked together, I put some time in and eventually found a good design for a big refueling ship that I could use to form my space station refueling bay. Four painstaking launches and docking maneuvers later, I finally had my refueling checkpoint with four giant tanks full of fuel. Parallel to all of this, I needed more money and science to keep moving forward and had a big contract to set up a base on Duna that I had been sitting on for awhile. So I went ahead and eventually came across a seemingly good rocket design to carry my first base component to Duna. From what I had read on constructing bases, it sounded like having everything on wheels was essential to making it work so I made sure that my final stage had a solid center of gravity and threw a bunch of rover wheels on it. The launch ended up being successful and I made it to Duna orbit without issue. My first adventure to another planet! Once I had achieved stable orbit, I started my descent... ...and then realized as I was nearing the ground that the atmosphere was thinner than expected and I was still going way to fast even with my parachutes deployed. I hadn't ditched my final stage yet though and still had some fuel so I burned retrograde as long as possible to try to aid in slowing my descent, ejected my final fuel stage at the last moment and... Now I may have shattered all of my rover wheels when I landed, had no engineer to fix them, and had to leave two Kerbals perpetually stranded on a desolate planet. But I got so much science and money it was ridiculous. Maybe one day I will try to rescue them or send the rest of the Duna base components to see if I can still dock with my crippled science lab, but for now these two Kerbals will just have to live out their days in their little research unit. With my Duna mission complete and my low Kerbin orbit refueling checkpoint completed, it was time to finally try to tackle another contract I had been putting off: building a base on Minmus. A while before tackling some of these bigger objectives, I had successfully landed the first part of my base, a housing unit, on Minmus. But after that, I had decided to hold off since it required 4000 units of fuel on the base and I hadn't unlocked the rocket components I needed to get a decent sized bank of fuel tanks onto the surface of Minmus to dock with my housing unit. At this point in the game though, I finally had everything I needed and was able to build a rocket that was just barely capable of getting into Kerbin orbit while still keeping its final two stages for the trip to Minmus and the landing. The problem I was having though was that the rocket was just so bulky and unwieldy that every time I tested it, I wasn't able to get it into orbit efficiently enough and kept leaving myself with only the tiniest sliver of fuel in that second to last stage, which wasn't enough to make it to my refueling checkpoint. Unfortunately, I mis-clicked at one point after achieving one of these less than ideal orbits, and returned myself to the space center, losing my 'revert flight' option in the process. That rocket was pretty fucking expensive and I couldn't afford to build another one but the situation seemed completely fucked and I wasn't sure what to do. But then I realized I totally wasn't fucked, I just needed to launch another one of my refueling ships and dock it with my stranded Minmus fuel bay. In addition to that, once I launched my refueling ship and was planning out my intercept, I realized I could also give my Minmus fuel bay some mobility by manually transferring all of the fuel from the final stage back into the second to last stage. So I did that, successfully docked with my lone refueling ship, and then transferred all that fuel back to the final stage before topping everything off again. Not only did I narrowly escape a very expensive disaster, I was now perfectly positioned and had all the fuel I needed to finish my journey to Minmus. So I plotted my course and continued on. The approach, de-orbit, and landing all went beautifully (I feel like I earned that one after what I had gone through). I ended up landing about 8 km from my housing unit and made the not so long drive to my final destination. Alas, the reunion was bittersweet. It turns out I placed docking ports in the most idiotic places on my first base component and had made it impossible to dock with. Oh well, I'll have to send a replacement housing unit and maybe I can get creative and even ultimately get that first one docked to the greater base too. In the midst of all of this, I've kept a steady influx of Kerbals and cash by regularly accepting contracts to rescue them from various orbits, sent another satellite to Duna, and had an accidental Ike encounter that destroyed said satellite at some point when I was time accelerating for another thing. This game is pretty fun you guys.
  4. Social Justice

    Bjorn, you are a wonderful person and I appreciate the thoughtful response. And I agree with both you and Ninety-Three on why these things are so difficult, even in our quiet little neck of the internet. This format all but guarantees these types of disagreements and assumptions will happen. Hopefully we can continue to recognize that moving forward and respect each other as fellow intelligent humans with good intentions. I do have some thoughts on the general topic that started all of this but I'll wait a bit and maybe post something later in the cultural appropriation thread.
  5. Social Justice

    I've been very tempted to post in here and have read and re-read all of the comments multiple times but this has been one of those arguments that has left me feeling frustrated and seems like there is no way to say what I want to say without possibly mischaracterizing what others are saying or coming off as 'tone policing' or whatever you want to call it. But whatever, I'll dive in and hopefully not regret it. Leave the 'smug' part out of what you quoted and I think I tend to agree with the spirit of what Chris and Argobot are getting at and I believe it is central to the discussion at hand. I honestly believe that everyone participating here is coming from a good place with good intentions and most of us agree on major issues like 95% of the time. Where I get frustrated is when there is an actual disagreement, there is a certain subset of very well educated and well spoken people here that tend to lay down the 'correct' viewpoint and don't leave much room for debate on the topic, opting to instead educate the dissenters on why they are wrong. I know I haven't participated in this conversation and maybe I have no right to butt in with my thoughts but I definitely feel like some of that was going on here and it prevented me from having any desire to participate. Gorm and Bjorn, I love you guys. But I don't think I entirely agree with you here and I feel like, had I participated, I would have had to either acquiesce to your point of view to avoid things escalating as they did, or continue to disagree and majorly frustrate you guys with my inability to see your viewpoint. (I've learned as much by trying to debate people here on things like fashion and the ethics of meat consumption(although that was the ultimate clusterfuck)).
  6. Backlog Busters

    With ~110 hours logged now in Kerbal Space Program, I'm officially calling my Steam backlog completed! It feels good... so so good. My first post in this thread was November 2014 and I managed to knock out all 21 games (started with 19, then 2 more were added later through a Steam gift) in that time. And that was even with a ton of distractions including: A few hundred hour/several month diversion with Destiny Stalling early on with Dragon Age Origins and all of its DLC (over 100 hours there) Playing several dozens of hours of Nintendo games from Super Nintendo through WiiU with my daughter About five months of sacrificing almost all of my Sunday through Thursday night game time to play through all of the Borderlands Handsome collection and all DLC with a couple co-workers (I thought it would never end and my hatred for the Pre-Sequel gets stronger every time I think about it) If there is one thing I've learned from all of this it is that I really don't like owning more than 3 games that I haven't completed or played to satisfaction. As nice as it can be to have a huge library of unplayed games, I have found that it just leaves me feeling frustrated and becomes a barrier to me just playing and enjoying games as they grab my interest. Instead, after I let things get out of control for awhile, I feel an overwhelming compulsion to halt all new game purchases and experiences until I've taken the proper time with the games I already have, which of course I originally grabbed because they were interesting and I wanted to play them. From here on out, I'm keeping Kerbal Space Program in my rotation and am going to start chipping away at Demon's Souls, which I've been meaning to do for awhile now. A co-worker also gave me Heavy Rain and MGS V (as well as a few other games that I think I decided I'm going to get rid of) so I'll probably get to those afterwards and might replay MGS 4 in there too. So many possibilities.
  7. I was pretty put off by Star Trek as a kid because my parents were obsessed with it and I was too young to appreciate it. I'm pretty put off by Star Trek now because of the Beastie Boys. 2 out of 3 movies now. I can't stand it, even if they planned it.
  8. Destiny

    I haven't tried Sparrow racing yet, but I did get dragged back in on Friday night to do a King's Fall hard mode attempt. All but one of us were below 310 light level but we still managed to get all the way through to Oryx pretty easily (we didn't even attempt Oryx because we knew we were still way too under-leveled and wanted to end on a high note). It was pretty fun and way less frustrating than I expected. I also got really lucky and got a ton of drops bringing my light level up to 311. I got a 320 chest, 315 and 300 sniper, 316 Titan mark, 310 legs, and a 305 ghost. Aside from my ghost, my lowest level gear is 310 now so I guess there's no point in farming 310 exotics any more. I keep saying I'm burnt out on this game since there haven't been any new substantial content drops and that continues to be the case (and no, I haven't tried Trials yet). But that raid is so damn fun and satisfying that I just can't not join up when the option is there.
  9. After watching and waiting for weeks, I finally caught a 20% off sale on the i7 4790k (shortly after finding a good motherboard that was 55% off (normally $200)). If anyone else is still looking to pull the trigger on a processor, Amazon still has it on sale for $299 (normally $379). I have everything ordered now except the graphic card and got smoking deals on virtually everything. I've been checking the GTX 980 ti for over a month now and haven't seen anything better than 10% off so it looks like that will be the one component I may have to actually pay near full price for.
  10. "Cars sucks." - A Pixar Thread

    Let's just do something similar to the FPS or LucasArts playthrough threads and just do our dirty business there. I think if we just update the thread title for each movie similar to what Ben is doing in his FPS thread and have a clear introductory post to kick off each movie, it should work out. Then we always have this thread for any spillover should any discussions continue past the two week window.
  11. Kerbal Space Program

    Ah, that explains it then. I'm actually starting to get curious about the space plane stuff. I might start delving into that soon after I finish my current project. I've had some pretty great moments recently and managed to capture a few good screenshots so I hope to get in here and post some of my latest exploits soon.
  12. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    I just turned 31 and my wife surprised me with tickets to a Muse concert. They put on a really extravagant and awesome show! So many crazy visual effects.
  13. The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

    In a vacuum I think it's fine, yeah. And depending on your tastes, the WiiU could definitely work as the only console you might own. But I really think going with the withered technology approach again after doing it with the Wii was a really bad move. We've speculated for awhile whether or not it would pay off and I think enough time has passed that it is fair to say that this console is a pretty huge disappointment. There are so many major games that it doesn't have and won't ever get because of the corner they painted themselves into. Again, in a vacuum the situation might not seem so bad. But when I think back to my time with the Gamecube, I was able to do the majority of my gaming on that console because most of the games I was interested in, Nintendo or not, were coming to that console. And just to be clear, I still like my WiiU and play it regularly.
  14. Movie/TV recommendations

    I ended up watching this reality show in my hotel room last night called Prospectors. It is a beard growing/gem harvesting show where a bunch of guys try to find the best gems and grow the scraggliest beards in the Colorado Rockies. On one hand, this show is the fucking dumbest thing ever. On the other hand, it gave me a slight urge to abandon everything and devote the rest of my life to digging around in rocks and dirt to try to find good aquamarine samples.
  15. The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

    With the N64 and GameCube, I always felt like I had plenty of games and was able to pretty much do all of my gaming there. While the good WiiU games are really good, there are nowhere near enough of them. I can't think of any other console (and I own a shitload of consoles) I've played aside from original Xbox that has so few offerings. The list of games I still want to play on my PS4 is at least five times as long as the list of games I still want to play on my WiiU. I still need to get to Smash Bros and maybe Captain Toad but there isn't much else that I'm really that interested in.
  16. The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

    We recently bought New Super Mario Bros U and it is really good! Surprisingly good! It feels like a love letter to both Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World and is easily the best of the New Super Mario games. I was expecting to be disappointed but the levels have been fun, the overworld is the best one since Mario World (having one contiguous overworld that covers everything is the best), and the items and mini games are reminiscent of Mario 3 in the best way. I know I'm in the minority here but I think this is a very good Mario game. On another note, as much as I love my WiiU I think we've reached a point where we can call it an utter failure. I kept holding out hope that this system would end up being something special in the long run but they totally fucked up with this one. This is by far the most disappointing Nintendo console and that makes me sad.
  17. Mexican food is the best food. Italian food is just the pretentious, over-priced wannabe cousin of Mexican food. My problem with any food that isn't Mexican food is that they don't appreciate the breadth and depth of all the various chiles and peppers like Mexican food does. And for the record, even though I love it, Taco Bell is not Mexican food.
  18. "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

    Bummer that Dawkins is such a turd. I liked The God Delusion and have a very strong distaste for religion so he resonated with me on that level.
  19. Life

    So I absolutely hate traveling and luckily I have to do very little of it for my job, but this week is one of those rare cases where I had no choice. So hello to any LA/Pasadena thumbs out there! I'm actually somewhere other than Arizona for a change.
  20. "Cars sucks." - A Pixar Thread

    Okay, I know in the past we've had really good luck just checking them out from our local library since they tend to have a big selection of movies. If that doesn't work then maybe an Amazon or Red Box rental will do.
  21. "Cars sucks." - A Pixar Thread

    Definitely wait till after the new year and maybe do a 2 week window for each since a week might be a tight time frame to coordinate with everyone. And honestly, I'll be skipping some of these because I see them all the freaking time. Also, for the ones I haven't seen and don't own, what do you guys think is the best way to view these? I'd be surprised if any of the streaming services have more than a handful of them. Hopefully we can find most of them at our local library.
  22. Kerbal Space Program

    Yeah, not sure if my advice necessarily applies. But the basic idea behind it is that if you have say, a three stage rocket that is fairly top heavy, you can alt + right-click your first stage tank and your last stage tank and set it up to transfer all of your last stage fuel to your first stage tank (or split evenly between your first stage tanks that you plan to eject if you are doing asparagus staging). Then, once you get through to a decent altitude you can reverse the transfer to put the remaining fuel back into the last stage tank where it started so you have the fuel you need. Obviously you would need to time it so that your first stage doesn't burn it all before it gets transferred back. You aren't necessarily using any more fuel in your first stage by doing this, it is just a technique to temporarily redistribute the weight of your ship to get you through difficult parts of the launch. I haven't had to do it for that purpose yet but I have had to transfer fuel out of my last stage to a previous stage to give it enough juice to get to a refueling ship since I needed to keep that stage to have enough delta v to get to my destination.
  23. Kerbal Space Program

    Just pump it all to your lower tank temporarily until you get out of that danger zone and then pump it all back up to your top tank. As long as you have enough extra fuel and don't burn it all before then, you should just be able to pump it right back up without taking any kind of hit to fuel.
  24. Kerbal Space Program

    You might try pumping some fuel from your upper stages to your lower stages during the ascent to keep your rocket from going top heavy. You shouldn't need fuel lines either, just alt-right click on each tank and manually transfer chunks of fuel down to your lower tanks as needed to keep the weight evenly distributed. It can be a bit much to manage but if you have your launches down to a science it isn't too difficult to pump that fuel around as needed. Depending on your fuel setup, you may also need to pump fuel back out of your lower stage and into your upper stage before breaking off that stage so you can fill your top tanks back up (top-heaviness shouldn't matter at this point since your rocket is about to get much shorter from losing its first stage).
  25. Video Game Baby - Idle Parents

    I think I've pretty much chronicled my daughter's introduction to games in this thread and I basically just started with Super Mario Brothers and slowly worked through those. They are her favorite games now and she's gotten pretty good at them. Since then we've branched into a bunch of other stuff but I think those laid a pretty good foundation for her.