The manual hacks mostly (maybe all?) come from talking to npc's in the branch areas and the computers you find there. You can check how many you've found in the records/lore menu.
As for armor, I need to do the math, but I think even one small piece will have a large effect on capturing overflow damage and preventing critical hits.
So I don't know where you're at, so I'm just going to info dump a few things that have increased my scores recently:
Materials
The first few floors are all about giving you time to prep a starting build. Even if you intend to go flight, start with some storage and clear these floors completely to gather any good loot. You don't have to kill everything, but check everywhere for any good items and get some hacks going. Fill up your storage with your entire flight build before switching to flight, and honestly, it's good to try and keep the storage after transitioning so you can keep extra flight units and armor.
Hacks
Swarmers are a pain, but if you manual hack analyze(swarmer), then you get +5% accuracy towards them and they get -5% towards you. There are only 3 main models of swarmers, so any time you seen the next level of swarmer, hit this hack. Really, analyze(...) everything! It's like having a free reaction control system and target analyzer on at all times. There are also some seriously useful trojan(...) hacks.
Armor
Always try to carry some armor to switch on if you're getting shot at. It absorbs all overflow damage, protecting all your vital bits. I was massively undervaluing armor, assuming I was never supposed to get shot at as a stealth-flight build, but it'll happen, and armor can let you get away clean.
Other than that there's chopping through walls with melee weapons, standing inside doorways to minimize enemy fire, knowing when to hit side branches for good loot, scanning your equipment for little bonuses, checking enemies when you see them for damage resistances. The dev puts out videos of him playing (and streams), and watching him do the first few floors really showed what important factors I was missing.
I remember reading through the oral arguments from the US house of representatives Office of the Clerk website for a bill about banning aerial photography near meat processing plants . The republican speakers only talked about "national security", and how drones could be used to target our nations vital factory farming infrastructure, while the dem speakers talked about this being a push to hide factory farm conditions from customers. Neither side seemed to consider the possibility of scaring cattle to do damage a relevant matter in this case, especially considering that intentionally causing damage to equipment and cattle is already a legal offense, so there would be no need for further regulation. So it does seem like the intention is to hide the conditions around the welfare of factory farm animals.
CoQ is an example of a game that gives you so much when you invest time in it. If you're into that, I would also recommend Cogmind. It's similar in that the world has so much texture, both in lore and mechanics. We're lucky have so many great roguelikes to choose from!
Caves of Qud is one of my favorite games of all time! The writing got a Hugo award last year. The story is developed algorithmically for each playthrough, with historical events that affect the towns and factions within the game. It's tone is amazing, I can't recommend it enough for people who enjoy roguelikes.
O positive is the most common blood type, and apperently O-neg folk can handle O-pos once, so O-pos is generally the most commonly used for a crisis. Source: MD partner just checked openevidence
Edit: O-pos is 40% of the population, O-neg is 6%, so they prefer to use O-pos. The real risk is just not having enough blood.
Reading more, some 2019 source says only 1 in 2 million O-neg would die from O-pos blood. So really, almost everyone can use O-pos
I have a graduate degree in statistics and use it heavily in my job. I always tell people that mathematicians study math, but statisticians just use math the study data.
This article mentions "writing by hand" but I've gotten a lot of value out of using project specific markdown files for keeping track of project info, logging discussions and decisions, and generally keeping a small knowledge base. These have been wildly useful for remembering small details and project histories, and if you sync them between devices, you always have access to your project notes!
This really helped clear things up for me, the main idea is that everything is represented by the filesystem, so you can use the same file-manipulation tools on a ton of systems.
I can speak to the value of a community fridge, I've been helping pick up food donations once a week for the past few years. Our town has a few locations downtown and a small network of people manage them (I'm only there to help with heavy boxes). The fridges are all posted outside of churches, which provide electricity and extra storage space, and it's mostly retired folk who handle the logistics.
Whenever we run into someone who's there to pick up food, they're always so thankful (if they want to talk, some people aren't comfortable interacting). We often hear of medical issues putting people out of work, families having to take in kids from other places, and all manner of difficult situations.
Oh fun! 3 groups writing essays over 3 sessions, llm assisted, search assisted, or raw brainpower. Generally the llm assisted group had more accurate essays, but were less cognitively engaged and couldn't remember their own writing. All the stuff I think one would expect, but the NLP section went way over my head.
Ohhhh I like the step by step compiler build, could be a good time! I've always wondered what makes a lisp a "lisp", this would probably elucidate that pretty fully.
VR Ocarina of Time! That's wild. So it works decently well? How are the controls?
The manual hacks mostly (maybe all?) come from talking to npc's in the branch areas and the computers you find there. You can check how many you've found in the records/lore menu.
As for armor, I need to do the math, but I think even one small piece will have a large effect on capturing overflow damage and preventing critical hits.
Good luck!
So I don't know where you're at, so I'm just going to info dump a few things that have increased my scores recently:
Materials
The first few floors are all about giving you time to prep a starting build. Even if you intend to go flight, start with some storage and clear these floors completely to gather any good loot. You don't have to kill everything, but check everywhere for any good items and get some hacks going. Fill up your storage with your entire flight build before switching to flight, and honestly, it's good to try and keep the storage after transitioning so you can keep extra flight units and armor.
Hacks
Swarmers are a pain, but if you manual hack
analyze(swarmer), then you get +5% accuracy towards them and they get -5% towards you. There are only 3 main models of swarmers, so any time you seen the next level of swarmer, hit this hack. Really,analyze(...)everything! It's like having a free reaction control system and target analyzer on at all times. There are also some seriously usefultrojan(...)hacks.Armor
Always try to carry some armor to switch on if you're getting shot at. It absorbs all overflow damage, protecting all your vital bits. I was massively undervaluing armor, assuming I was never supposed to get shot at as a stealth-flight build, but it'll happen, and armor can let you get away clean.
Other than that there's chopping through walls with melee weapons, standing inside doorways to minimize enemy fire, knowing when to hit side branches for good loot, scanning your equipment for little bonuses, checking enemies when you see them for damage resistances. The dev puts out videos of him playing (and streams), and watching him do the first few floors really showed what important factors I was missing.
I remember reading through the oral arguments from the US house of representatives Office of the Clerk website for a bill about banning aerial photography near meat processing plants . The republican speakers only talked about "national security", and how drones could be used to target our nations vital factory farming infrastructure, while the dem speakers talked about this being a push to hide factory farm conditions from customers. Neither side seemed to consider the possibility of scaring cattle to do damage a relevant matter in this case, especially considering that intentionally causing damage to equipment and cattle is already a legal offense, so there would be no need for further regulation. So it does seem like the intention is to hide the conditions around the welfare of factory farm animals.
CoQ is an example of a game that gives you so much when you invest time in it. If you're into that, I would also recommend Cogmind. It's similar in that the world has so much texture, both in lore and mechanics. We're lucky have so many great roguelikes to choose from!
Caves of Qud is one of my favorite games of all time! The writing got a Hugo award last year. The story is developed algorithmically for each playthrough, with historical events that affect the towns and factions within the game. It's tone is amazing, I can't recommend it enough for people who enjoy roguelikes.
O positive is the most common blood type, and apperently O-neg folk can handle O-pos once, so O-pos is generally the most commonly used for a crisis. Source: MD partner just checked openevidence Edit: O-pos is 40% of the population, O-neg is 6%, so they prefer to use O-pos. The real risk is just not having enough blood. Reading more, some 2019 source says only 1 in 2 million O-neg would die from O-pos blood. So really, almost everyone can use O-pos
I was just about to make a post about The Word for World is Forest! I just finished it and I'm still thinking about the last lines.
I have a graduate degree in statistics and use it heavily in my job. I always tell people that mathematicians study math, but statisticians just use math the study data.
And DuckDb for columnar data storage
This article mentions "writing by hand" but I've gotten a lot of value out of using project specific markdown files for keeping track of project info, logging discussions and decisions, and generally keeping a small knowledge base. These have been wildly useful for remembering small details and project histories, and if you sync them between devices, you always have access to your project notes!
Just in case, I have to share this great explanation of the term "everything is a file": https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/141016/a-laymans-explanation-for-everything-is-a-file-what-differs-from-windows#141020
This really helped clear things up for me, the main idea is that everything is represented by the filesystem, so you can use the same file-manipulation tools on a ton of systems.
Honestly, I'm fine if it takes time to get the game right. Hopefully it's good on the steam deck like their first game was.
Oh man, thats terrifying. Critical systems running without a backup
This is wonderful! I'll have to look back through the last 35 years
I can speak to the value of a community fridge, I've been helping pick up food donations once a week for the past few years. Our town has a few locations downtown and a small network of people manage them (I'm only there to help with heavy boxes). The fridges are all posted outside of churches, which provide electricity and extra storage space, and it's mostly retired folk who handle the logistics. Whenever we run into someone who's there to pick up food, they're always so thankful (if they want to talk, some people aren't comfortable interacting). We often hear of medical issues putting people out of work, families having to take in kids from other places, and all manner of difficult situations.
Here's a short impact assessment from 2019 with some numbers (not my town). But these places end up having hosts of network affects that benefit their communities.
Oh fun! 3 groups writing essays over 3 sessions, llm assisted, search assisted, or raw brainpower. Generally the llm assisted group had more accurate essays, but were less cognitively engaged and couldn't remember their own writing. All the stuff I think one would expect, but the NLP section went way over my head.
Ohhhh I like the step by step compiler build, could be a good time! I've always wondered what makes a lisp a "lisp", this would probably elucidate that pretty fully.
Tremors 1 seems like it set out to be a B movie creature-feature, but had such good dialogue and acting that it overshot the mark.
Ah that's a classic! I haven't read it in years, but if you enjoy it it, Gibson has a collection of short stories that you may like: Burning Chrome