Well, it’s some kind of tradition now. I don’t know, I just find it kind of funny always skipping the thirteenth. I’m not superstitious about that number, but that’s the one that kept popping up, so for now I’ll take that day off from posting unless a scheduled weekly post lines up with it or something important comes up.
I had a dream earlier, and it reminded me of just how backward everything in the world’s become. I’d love to describe the dream in detail, but it’s not really meant for public viewing. Instead I’ll just say that I met a certain world leader in a place neither one of us could have ever turned up. It was a short encounter, but nothing went the way I expected it to.
I’m having second thoughts about going all in on Artorius and Remnants of the Elders at this stage. While I do have a good grasp on the stories as a whole, there isn’t any real momentum behind them right now. That’s to say, I think that even if I dropped every other project and unrelated activity, I still wouldn’t make significant progress on either one of them this year.
That view could change, but I’m definitely considering working on other things for the time being. I don’t want to get bogged down again, but I’m also going to give myself another week to consider it before I postpone those two projects. It’s better to be at least somewhat sure.
As for what I would be doing instead? I don’t know yet. I have to juggle inspiration and random new ideas constantly. What I do know is that I’ll always be working on something.
Anyway, let’s give it a week and then I’ll revisit this.
I didn’t get any sleep yesterday, so it’s been a pretty long day. I wasn’t sure if I should participate in Clan Battles on WoWs, but I’d already made the commitment, so a lack of sleep was my problem, not theirs. I even wound up calling the last match of the night. I’d consider it more of a team effort than me coming up with a great plan and good directions.
Moskva
I was debating whether to get Marceu or Napoli with the coal I saved up, but while I was rotated out, I did some research on the coal ships I wanted in general. That included the Moskva. What I really needed for this season of CB was a reliable utility pick in the cruiser class, one with a high level commander to put on the ship. Moskva fit all the criteria, so I picked her.
Overall I like the ship. I’m not enjoying the ride as much in CB since I’m always winding up with an Annapolis in front of me and a torpedo boat on my flank. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when the enemy prevents you from isolating 1v1 fights in the opening stages of the match.
Even with the consistent problems, I still like the way the ship handles, her durability, and the overall accuracy of the guns. The dispersion takes some getting used to, but landing hits on DDs is effortless, similar to the way the Kremlin’s guns work at <10km ranges. The HE damage isn’t great either, but the radar and 10 second reload help balance things out.
Anyway …
I think I’ll just sleep in tomorrow and recharge. It’s the 13th again so I might not post until after the date changes again. At first it was just a coincidence, but I’m thinking of making it ‘a thing.’ We’ll see.
As a continuation of things to be seen aside from Multiplayer, we’re here to show some new functionalities to PvE tech nodes.
I mentioned it this in the comment section of this post, but I rarely remember that Quantum Break is even a thing. It’s a useful mechanic, so I’d like to remember it’s there while I’m actually in a fight.
Any tailoring that can make these mechanics more useful and reliable is going to be well received. I might even remember to start making use of them. Currently, my approach to every mission in M.A.S.S. Builder is dedicated ranged builds. I only tend to fall back on melee when it’s almost time for the boss fight and I’m trying to conserve ammo for that, or I’m feeling cheeky.
Now that I look at it, base QB is pretty slow. I’m not sure I’d risk it during certain boss fights. Not until I got really comfortable with the timing at least. Alternatively, why not just use the node upgrades? It’s something I need to check out when 0.9.0 is finally released. For now I’m pretty committed to the run and gun style of combat.
Here’s something I found especially interesting about Vermillion’s post today, though.
Thus sub-units that can modify the number will come into play in 0.9.0. As much as we wanted these type of nodes to exist before, we did not have the time to code them into our game until now, and we’ve added a few 10% here and 20% time reduction there to a lot of nodes focusing on defenses while also providing a choice to lower it by 50% with drawbacks as well.
I like the idea of demerits showing up as you begin to ‘overspecialize’ in a given area. It’s very Armored Core-esque and balanced, at least when it’s done right. Whatever these drawbacks are, they should be something that some players will want to avoid, while others will want to lean into it for the extra challenge.
This is also going to be available in PvP, so I think it’s important for people to be able to decide whether they want to cover up their weaknesses with more balanced builds or lean heavily into their niche and embrace the danger.
It’s only a couple of minor changes, but I’ll try to go over them really quick.
General
In general I’m going to be quantifying my progress in whatever areas I can. That means that if I’m in a stage of an active project where I can gauge the work left to completion, I’ll post a progress bar highlighting the current task directly beneath the project that task is tied to.
Now for specifics.
Lydia’s Golden Treasury
I want to get that 1st draft finished up this month. I know some people prefer to use word count plugins to track their writing progress, but chapters don’t have specific word count goals. They can range anywhere from 6k to 12k words.
Posting my current word count isn’t as precise as judging how many scenes I’ve got left to write and basing my progress on that, so Lydia’s Golden Treasury and any other written projects will just get progress bars.
Fleeing Victory
I’m not working on this at the moment since there are much bigger priorities right now, so I’ve taken it out of the Current Projects section. The same thing will happen to anything that gets temporarily shelved. Likewise, it’ll go right back up once I start working on it again.
Artorius and Remnants
These are the two most serious and challenging projects on the list by far and I’m not sure I’m going to have any interesting updates for these over the summer. While neither project requires it (debatable), both would benefit immeasurably from me brushing up on my digital art skills again. Among other things.
While I’d like to do that, making artwork can be extremely time consuming, especially working alone. It could easily take up more time than the rest of these ongoing projects combined. I still want to do it, but it’s something to approach carefully. Just diving in is going to lead to a burnout and I can’t have that right now.
Space Engineers
I added the logo so all of those progress bars at the bottom are clearly tied to Space Engineers.
Admiral Hipper
There is one major and one minor change I need to make to the Hipper before she’s ready for prime time. The major change is the main drive (engine). I need to finalize the design with a fair compromise between PCU and aesthetics. The minor change is the ship’s scripts, its suite of ‘software’ essentially.
The Hipper class is intended to use the same scripts across all of the different hulls. That means finishing the scripting portion of this isn’t a high priority and doesn’t necessarily preclude the ship from becoming a full workshop upload. I would just need to update the blueprint on the workshop later on with the final tweaks.
All of that to say the ship is near enough to 100% that I don’t think it needs to be on the projects list anymore, same as the Cosmo Messer.
Closing
That’s the update in a nutshell. I’m going to be as precise as I can with the progress bars wherever I use them, but ultimately, they’re just progress bars, not timetables.
