corona_wind

yes, this works now, and is amazing

This drone completes the "disrupt fracking operation without harming local wildlife" mission. It flies at the shield towers, but not directly, as there's so much stuff in the way. It takes a looping, semi-random path that dodges hits every freaking asteroid but tends not to get stuck, and only goes straight on when it detects a target, allowing the defenses to detonate it. It's another use of the gimbal.

It looks like this bug is fixed! The tags list no longer contains anything but strictly in-use tags.

You're supposed to have enough essentials to quarantine yourself at home for 14 days if you catch it. Some people are just panicking, others are seeing dollar signs and grabbing all the TP to resell at 1000% profit. That hasn't been happening here so far. People are stocking up, but sensibly.

Programmer mode core hammerhead defeated! I sent a bigger version of my mining roller along the landscape until it fell into the core. If it detected a temperature change (magma sensors do **NOT** work right now), or the hammer head, it launched bombs. I love that one bomb that just nopes out of there...

With the programmer mode having wireless fuel, this feature idea makes more and more sense. It'd be nice to have a simple deadman switch for mini-drones.

Programmer mode mining! The only gate is a button.

Lava is not enemy, enemy structure, terrain, obstacle, or danger zone -- what is it?

What I imagine is a direction indicator with a configuration slider that allows this to happen: ...plus inputs like a motorized hinge, to change that setting in-flight. It's important that it shouldn't physically rotate itself or anything attached to it. It's the one part in this game which really needs to be stable. All that's really changing is its frame of reference. Moving the reference gives the basic direction indicator more uses than i can properly explain. There's just too many, and I keep finding more.

An experiment in programmer-mode navigation! You can't just *tell* your robots where you want them to go anymore. And there's nothing like a compass. The direction indicator in the tank tracks where you are on the planet. The timer is set to a precise amount of time to make it point at what you want. It directly controls the left/right engines to make it move across the surface towards the place it's pointing. This allows me to perfectly nail this tunnel by programming. Did you notice the familiar shape? A direction indicator on an axle? Yes, this is a gimbal yet again! Something that'd be a million times less awkward were it an actual thing in the game instead of this gigantic wobbly monstrosity we have to build! Please vote for that feature I just linked!

Outcome #4 of distress signal: It's a derelict ship with a transmitter, set by the corp to draw you in. You gain more threat.

My strategy for defeating the snake automatically: I send a pair of factories into the room, following gravity. The factories fall to the edge (direction-flipped by a long-ass timer). They then print bombs set to seek a) enemies, b) gravity as fallback. The bombs gravitate to the center, then flock to the jewel points when the snake gets close enough. Usually one of the factories survives long enough to finish it off. I also have an "empty fuel tank" control set to detonate everything, to prevent the bombs from overopulating.

A hybrid half-dragger for rifle-straight starts: Trilobite V is my fastest versus racer to date at 13.25 seconds.

These position indicators are set to primary of 'position indicator', and fallback of 'next waypoint'. That is ... not the next waypoint. ... Where *is* the waypoint? There's no waypoint!

We can "kind of" do that already with factory parts, and its not that amazing. It sounds like OP has something very specific in mind, but I have no idea what.

That's exactly what they can't do, ghost blocks that materialize inside enemies just break.

Or higher air resistance.

The altimeter is not very useful right now. Getting it working on any planet means 2 hours of trial and error in which you discover the altitude setting you need isn't actually possible in this combination of planet size and mothership hover altitude. The altimeter should measure absolute distance from the core, and the orbit screen should show the altitudes the various machinery will end up at.

Quite a lot of things in Nimbatus are magic but this takes it a bit too far IMO

Could you suggest a use case for this?

The whole racing cleanup worked to my advantage! The Jellyfish has risen to #3 #4 worldwide in Phoenix Raceways without having to change a thing! ...and I suspect shenanigans there, given that #2 and #3 are an entire 15 seconds faster and there is no #1. Maybe I'm #1 o_o Have I mentioned how nice it is to be able to rotate drones now? I can skim closer than I ever have! A #14 finish at 17.354 s: Also a first try at two-stage starting.

It does cost more to bring mining parts, but once you survive the first galaxy, minerals are so abundant that carrying mining stuff is usually a win. I'm not sure that's bad - game progression without rewards is just a treadmill, and these lodes come with big risks. Balancing is still needed though. The threat mechanic is still obnoxiously luck-based. No matter how well you progress, you either find a shop in time, or die. My suggestions for both problems come down to more uses for money: Fixing the Nimbatus should be E X P E N S I V E. 200 Rougium a bar? Doable in the second galaxy, very hard in the first. Some items should be reliably stocked in shops. I'd stock with one engine or fuel tank, one battery or weapon, and two randoms excluding engines and batteries. This brings it to odds people would be willing to bet on. Shops should be much more expensive as a tradeoff. Ways to manage threat percentage with money. That random encounter where pirates ransom you with +50% threat level? How about the option to triple their price to mislead the corp, for -25% threat! A one-use item to mask your ion trail, letting you temporarily reduce threat level by 50%. Super-expensive, but easily a decision of life or death. A false decoy to attract the corporation, exchanging +25% threat now for -25% in the next galaxy. Et cetera. This gives meaningful choices and multiple strategies for dealing with threat %, none of them free.

I had been building magnet systems with a switch, to turn on and off, but have found that can be replaced by a distance sensor, set to detect collectible items, pointing straight through the magnet. I put this in "logic" though the only logic is mechanical - it stays on since the magnet holds it to the sensor.

Noticed another one today: Pirate Ransom - A space pirate threatens to rat you out to the Corp unless you pay. If you say no, your threat percentage may skyrocket. Sometimes they're just bluffing and nothing happens.

Bio, plasma, cryo, all do less damage. If there's an average, kinetic's way above it.