Useless Distractions

[Ironwood]

The Kittens one ?

[Samwise]

Yeah, similar to swarmsim.  Kittens doesn't have the auto-save feature though.

I'm up to 40 kittens and having fun exploring the tech tree.  About to build my first printing press, because fuck making these manuscripts by hand.   

[Viin]

It in settings or options or something. With an import/export button and a dropbox link (haven't tried it yet).

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, it's in Options, clicking "Export" will bring up the save text string, with a link at the bottom for exporting to DropBox. I think the "save" link only stores it locally, you have to export to really be safe.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

Cheers.  I seem to be ahead of Sam, which seems unlikely in the extreme...

[Engels]

Huh, on my linux box running Chrome I closed the browser (fully), reopened it, and went back to the link and all my stuff is still running.

[Samwise]

It saves to a cookie if you aren't in paranoid privacy mode, I think.  But unlike Swarm Sim I don't think it continues "running" in the background when the browser is closed (note that swarm sim doesn't actually run when it's closed, it's just clever and timewarps you based on your system clock).

[Ironwood]

Yup, that's my experience also.

Note, that there are REASONS for an inprivate session.  So shush.   

[MahrinSkel]

I'm at 59 kittens, with 4 steamworks, about to build a 5th. Since you take the same Coal production penalty regardless of how many steamworks you have running, more is better (Griffins appear to be the best source of blueprints). Unfortunately, I can't roll my own Blueprints until after Physics, and I am still way short on my Science cap for that.

--Dave

[lamaros]

This is so much more fiddly, like an actual game...

[Ironwood]

I'm at 59 kittens, with 4 steamworks, about to build a 5th. Since you take the same Coal production penalty regardless of how many steamworks you have running, more is better (Griffins appear to be the best source of blueprints). Unfortunately, I can't roll my own Blueprints until after Physics, and I am still way short on my Science cap for that.

--Dave

I get quite a few blueprints from hunting.

Have I just been lucky ?

[MahrinSkel]

You can get them from hunting, but trading "out of cycle" (at the times of year when the trade partner is giving the worst deals) and with less friendly trade partners (with the risk of getting nothing at all) will give more. Currently at 67 kittens and 6 Steamworks (with enough blueprints for 2 more).

--Dave

[Ironwood]

As with all games of this type, the cockblocks just make it obnoxious.

[Pennilenko]

If you want to see what a swarm looks like after ascending 20 times and getting all the cheevos, here's my save data.

Jeesus dude, I loaded that up in another browser so as not to screw over my own game, but holy shit how long did it take you to get to that point. It's almost impossible to click fast enough to be efficient you grow so fast.

[Samwise]

If you want to see what a swarm looks like after ascending 20 times and getting all the cheevos, here's my save data.

Jeesus dude, I loaded that up in another browser so as not to screw over my own game, but holy shit how long did it take you to get to that point. It's almost impossible to click fast enough to be efficient you grow so fast.

I suspect it mostly comes down to ascending ASAP.  When I first started I held off on ascending because I thought it'd be like Cookie Clicker where it takes you a while to recoup the losses -- but no, in this one the return on ascending is HUGE and you get past where you were before ascending very quickly.  So you want to ascend ASAP all the time and you'll hit the cap in no time.

[Ironwood]

A single mislick murdered sooo many kittens.

You don't appreciate how much levelling your kittens helps until you have to use fresh ones.  Jesus.

[MahrinSkel]

Okay, Cargo Ships lifts the ceiling on storage cockblocks (for everything except Oil, I'll need Tankers for that). Each of your ships adds 1% to your Harbor storage capacities, and ships are not on an exponential, they always cost 100 Scaffolds. If your Workshop efficiency times your number of Harbors exceeds 100, every click on "Trade Ships" adds the equivalent of another Harbor to your storage.

--Dave

[Pennilenko]

Okay, Cargo Ships lifts the ceiling on storage cockblocks (for everything except Oil, I'll need Tankers for that). Each of your ships adds 1% to your Harbor storage capacities, and ships are not on an exponential, they always cost 100 Scaffolds. If your Workshop efficiency times your number of Harbors exceeds 100, every click on "Trade Ships" adds the equivalent of another Harbor to your storage.

--Dave

What game?

[MahrinSkel]

Okay, Cargo Ships lifts the ceiling on storage cockblocks (for everything except Oil, I'll need Tankers for that). Each of your ships adds 1% to your Harbor storage capacities, and ships are not on an exponential, they always cost 100 Scaffolds. If your Workshop efficiency times your number of Harbors exceeds 100, every click on "Trade Ships" adds the equivalent of another Harbor to your storage.

--Dave

What game?

Kittens, sorry, thought it would be clear. Ships do also cost 25 star charts, which means that Observatories (for automatic star chart generation) it probably going to be my next chokepoint. But I'll probably have an order of magnitude more storage by the time I hit that.

This really shouldn't be fun....

--Dave

[Ironwood]

Observatories are utter cunts for the scaffolding.

[NowhereMan]

I'm finding resource gathering to be a general massive time block. Maybe I just need to concentrate on getting more kittens? Currently I have 24 and seem to be comfortably hitting the resource cap on catnip anytime that isn't winter. Haven't really bothered with trade much though as people only seem willing to buy my rarer resources to sell me back ones I can get faster (eg. wood for catnip or iron for minerals).

[Ironwood]

I'm not sure kitten amount actually makes all that much difference.  I have 50 of the furry fuckers and I seem to still have to wiggle a lot of things about to get the rates up.  Mind you, I keep my kittens in the job of choice and leave them there.  It may be that it makes significant difference if you pool them for large jobs or summat.

Currently cockblocked at Compendiums, which is apparently a common problem.  It pretty much sucks.

[Goreschach]

Currently cockblocked at Compendiums, which is apparently a common problem.  It pretty much sucks.

You could always decide to win the game.

[IainC]

Jeesus dude, I loaded that up in another browser so as not to screw over my own game, but holy shit how long did it take you to get to that point. It's almost impossible to click fast enough to be efficient you grow so fast.

it took about a month but I wasn't optimising my returns at the beginning so I had a slow start and at the end I only cared about getting to the point where I could generate and spend energy as fast as possible to ascend again.

I think I said it before but it's impossible to grow with maximum efficiency when you have that many ascensions. Stuff goes so fast that you'll just be playing whackamole over three different tabs. Also if you try and do the optimal growth with swarmwarp and max everthing out between each one you'll be there all day. My flow for the last 7 or so ascensions goes like this.
Buy max drones.
Buy unit and hatchery upgrades as they become available
When twins upgrades are at 200 or so, hide that upgrade and buy max Queens.
Repeat those steps until you are at Overmind VI. (takes about an hour, a few Swarmwarps at the last few tiers will help you get there faster). Once you've got 200 twins for any unit, hide the twins upgrade and just buy the faster upgrades as they appear.
Buy Nexus and upgrade it as it becomes available. At Nexus IV drop all of your energy into Nightbugs. Come back the next day for the level 5 upgrade and then drop all your remaining energy into Lepidoptera.

Once you have Overmind VIs, upgrade all of your territory units. You should be able to go to level 60 or so with each immediately. Buy the max number of the unit about four spots from the top of the list. Wait for the game to finish shitting itself as it applies about 2k upgrades to your larvae generation.

From that point on you are just popping back a couple of times a day to drop all of your energy into Bats and Lepidopterae until you can ascend. Upgrade stuff if you want to but the only ones that matter are larvae generation (and therefore Mutagen) upgrades.

[Ironwood]

Currently cockblocked at Compendiums, which is apparently a common problem.  It pretty much sucks.

You could always decide to win the game.

ooookay.....

[lamaros]

I'm finding resource gathering to be a general massive time block. Maybe I just need to concentrate on getting more kittens? Currently I have 24 and seem to be comfortably hitting the resource cap on catnip anytime that isn't winter. Haven't really bothered with trade much though as people only seem willing to buy my rarer resources to sell me back ones I can get faster (eg. wood for catnip or iron for minerals).

Making efficient decisions in this game is fucking impossible.

I'm generating over 200 catnip a second in a (normal) spring, and I'm constantly at cap. With 58 cats nothing much takes forever to build, but I'm blocked by it requiring so much micro-management, and not running in the background without leaving my PC on overnight (which I won't do). But when I come back and everything capped (everything gets to cap in about 15 mins), knowing what to spend it on most efficiently is very tricky.

It's annoying to be blocked on so many things requiring titanium, when I'm so far off it.

I have 58 kittens, but I'm being held back by manuscript generation and science cap mostly, and working out how to best raise those in the long run is tricky when pretty much everything can be raised always (apart from Huts and the catnip ones).

[Ironwood]

Fuck Compendiums.

Seriously.  What the fuck.  Give a brother a building that will actually help out.  And I don't mean Mints, because Mints are a fucking balancing act.

[lamaros]

I'm only cockblocked by titanium and science now, as the mints and steamworks do enough.

Do the Zebras always hate you? Makes trading for titanium annoying as fuck.

[Ironwood]

What stage are you at that Compendiums aren't buttholing you ?  Because I'd really, really like to get to that stage.

Edit :  Oh.  Steamworks are cumulative.  Oh.

Don't I feel like a fucking fool.

[Samwise]

I'm pretty far behind most of you because I tend to play these things in the background rather than actually hovering over them, and this one tends to want you to check on it fairly regularly -- but I really like how as you progress through the tech tree, more and more things get automated.

I just now built my first Mint and am delighted by the fact that it essentially automates my hunters, so now when I leave the game running, rather than maxing out my catpower and stopping, it's just infinitely producing fur and ivory, and all my kittens are kept at full happiness so I don't end up with overnight death spirals because my farmers ran out of furs and stopped producing enough food (that's happened a couple of times now and it makes me sad).  And of course as long as my miners and woodcutters keep going, my Steamworks will keep infinitely producing beams and slabs -- I just wish it'd do the same with steel and plates so I wouldn't come back to capped-out coal and iron stores.  Working on building more Observatories now since I can see a lot of things that want star charts and the "auto-success" thing lets me get those while AFKing...

[Ironwood]

Good News then.  It eventually DOES that with plates.

But you should never have your kittens starving.  Even in the coldest winter my 8 farmers do the do.  I've not needed any more yet and I'm at 66 Kittens.

That said, while I see what you're saying about Mints, I find that hunts will give you MORE of those nice resources.  So while it's good to have them trundling along with a small income, I prefer to have less mints and some catpower for the hunts....

I now have Chemistry and Geology and Gotham Sucks Balls.  Not sure why I put that last one in there, but Jesus Christ, it's really, really a bad show.

I wish I had more observatories to automate this star chart shite.  I only have 16 and it doesn't seem to proc as much as the 16% suggests it should....

[Samwise]

Yeah, I feel dumb for the couple of mass starvation incidents -- it looks like I've got things balanced nicely to leave them with lots of catnip surplus, then I come back after letting it run for 12 hours and everyone's dead.  I'm not positive it's because the balance was upset by having them run out of luxury goods, but that seems like the most likely variable.  I like that mints just knock that out of the equation entirely.

I finally got so I can get titanium from zebras and build a few titanium upgrades, but it's the most obnoxious thing ever.  I'm assuming that Geology will lead toward something that'll produce titanium more steadily and automatically; can't wait for that.

[lamaros]

Luxury goods are worth 10% each to morale. Build more tradeposts so the you never run out of luxury good. I have about 100k ivory at this point and with the mint that will now never go down.

Provided you get enough steamworks and the mint lots more becomes automated, to the point you only really need to focus on keeping your science up and increasing storage to maximise gains while afk.

Mass trading with the Zebras has yielded 25 titanium to this point, so all I'm doing now is trying to boost science as fast as possible to get through the research and workshops caps there.

Also getting more kittens isn't always the best move. You get a morale penalty with each one and need to get enough multipliers on what you have them working at to justify the hit.

Also my religion is capped now, so I'm just getting the faith productivity from it now

[Ironwood]

I have calciners, so Titanium is no longer zebra reliant, but it's still fucking slow.

[MahrinSkel]

I have the feeling I'm a fair bit ahead of all of you, I have a dozen steamworks, 5 calniners, about 10 mints (but I never turn those on, just extra gold storage).

Trade posts and amphitheaters help a lot with keeping morale up, I have 142% morale, I have more titanium than I can use, coal is my recurrent chokepoint. I trade a *lot*, what depends on my particular building target but what I really want is the spice and the blueprints. I'm building biolabs and quarries right now, along with steamworks when I get the chance. Observatories really crank out the starcharts when you have over 30 of them.

--Dave