Useless Distractions

[MahrinSkel]

Code:

Meat Mutation		6.69Qa	Drones are 663.65% more productive.
Lepidoptera Mutation	10.0B	Increases energy generation by 100.00%.
Clone Mutation		10.0Qa	Increases Clone Larvae's maximum by 2,250.00%.
Bat Mutation		10.0Qa	Increases power of all abilities by 1,400.00%.
Hatchery Mutation	10.0Qa	Increases larvae production by 1,500.00%.
Mutagen (Inactive)	525Qa	

Larva Rush
Instantly give birth to 109.857 sextillion new larvae.

Clone Larvae
Clone 107.568 septillion new larvae.
You produce 2.85454 quintillion larvae per second, allowing you to clone up to 107.568 
septillion larvae. You have 126.374 septillion larvae and cocoons available to clone

I'll probably try to make it to over 4 quintillion mutagen before I ascend again, I'm a little stalled right now but I am just about to go exponential on Hive Networks, which should be enough to pump out a bunch of mutagen in a hurry.

If you have your Lepidoptera maxed out (and the mutation maxed), you need a bit over 16 minutes to generate 2K energy, 40 x60 = 2400, so that's about 150 to 1 time acceleration. I need a bit under 2 hours to get 12k energy for the Clone Larva, which pumps out 10,467 hours worth of Larva, or roughly 6,000 to 1. Now, I don't get the other benefits of Swarm Warp, but when I blow through a level transition on sheer mass of larva, my production tends to leap by as many orders of magnitude as there were between the levels.

The whole reason you tend to blow through all the stages you had already been through before an Ascension is the larva from mutagen, which tends to be an order of magnitude below what you had before the ascension. I'm just doing the same thing on the back end. On the other hand, I've run out of mutations to stack together to increase my larva production.

--Dave

[Polysorbate80]

Swarmwarp may not be quite as effective for raw larva production, but you don't have to fiddle with cocooning/stockpiling larva, and you get meat/territory production as well.  I just find it simpler to do.

After just hitting 8 ascensions, with 1NVI in all mutations except Lepidoptera and frequency (which are capped), and currently no bats (waiting on energy for the 5th nexus currently), swarmwarp bumps me forward 166 days.  Add in 500 or so bats, and that will be about almost 200 days per warp.

Currently producing Overmind Vs, haven't got enough for a VI yet.

[ezrast]

How the fuck do you guys function without scientific notation.

[MahrinSkel]

How the fuck do you guys function without scientific notation.

Scientific notation is for calculators, like all math that you can't do in your head.

--Dave

[ezrast]

If you need 2e13 things that each cost 3e9 other things, than you need 6e22 of the other things. You don't need a calculator for that unless you're expressing those numbers in quinquabajilliawhatsits.

[schild]

WHATEVER EINSTEIN

[pxib]

Yeah, yesterday I had somebody complaining about the water jets on Ceres. He said it was impossible for a body with the surface area of India to have been spewing out 21 tonnes of water per hour for billions of years. Scientific notation (and bold approximation) made the calculation trivial:

Ceres masses 9e17 tonnes (thank you Google), there are 9e3 hours in a year. The solar system is 5e9 years old.

So 2e1 tonnes x 9e3 hours x 5e9 years = 90e13 which is 9e14

9e14 / 9e17 = 1e-3

So if it had lost 21 tonnes of water per hour, Ceres would have been one one-thousandth larger at the origin of solar system. Big whoop. Starting with the mass of Ceres as 895,800,000,000,000,000 tonnes would have done nobody favors, even if we called it 900 quadrillion.

It's not about being Einstein, it's about being a pedantic dork. Big numbers abuse the imagination.

[Polysorbate80]

Up to e300 or so, the game uses its fancy-schmancy terminology, and I'm too lazy to figure out just what most of those terms mean.  Play it for a while and you get a feel for what at least the abbreviations are supposed to be, and that's good enough.

Although I can't see SxTg without thinking "Sex Tag" 

[ezrast]

It's not about being Einstein, it's about being a pedantic dork.

Someone who understands me. 

[Polysorbate80]

The meat ladder appears to stop at Overmind VI.

[Goreschach]

The meat ladder appears to stop at Overmind VI.

The meat ladder stops whenever you want it to stop.

[Merusk]

There is no end to the meat.

Meat is Delicious. Meat is Life. Meat is all.

4th Ascension and I hit Hive Queen in about an hour at the house. Didn't realize what a huge difference it would make.

[RhyssaFireheart]

It really is surprising how much more quickly you grow after ascending.  I've only done it once because I tend to leave it for long periods of time, but I can see the difference after one ascension.

[IainC]

It really is surprising how much more quickly you grow after ascending.  I've only done it once because I tend to leave it for long periods of time, but I can see the difference after one ascension.

I ascended yesterday with ~4.6 quintillion mutagen. For the first 20-30 minutes I couldn't click on upgrades fast enough to keep up with spending larvae and meat. I went to about 100 expansions in less than a minute, had Hive Neurons within seconds and was at level 6 territory units pretty much from the outset.

[Bzalthek]

So, I feel like the last few pages are a damning indictment towards the state of modern gaming.

Or something.

[Paelos]

I played Clicker Heroes last week more than anything. So yeah.

[MahrinSkel]

With my sixth ascension I crossed some kind of threshold, and I am now producing so much mutagen (currently in the hundreds of undecillions) that when I ascend again, I'll have thousands of times more larva from mutagen when I start than I had from normal production before I restarted. (Currently in the tens of nonillions).

And yes, this game has convinced me that somewhere along the way, we lost something important in modern games.

--Dave

[pxib]

Turns out humans don't actually want gameplay, we just want appropriately spaced progression and rewards.

[Samwise]

Gameplay is good too, but what dumb "games" like this teach us is that things that go "ding" can cover a LOT of gameplay sins.  The actual gameplay of most RPGs is such crappy crappy crap crap that removing it entirely in favor of a single button to click is an improvement.

[Merusk]

Modern gameplay overthinks things because, "It's all been done before and we have to be different."  That's what I've come to think of it, at least.

[Trippy]

http://agar.io/

[Ironwood]

Eaten in about 2 minutes.

The kind of time I only previously managed in Amsterdam.

[Goreschach]

So it's basically Capitalism the videogame?

Yeah, no.

[Merusk]

I made it about 6 or 7 minutes by hanging around some of the bigger cells until I was large enough for them to bother eating me.  Was amusing to bait other folks into the behemoth's path.

[Samwise]

Much like real life, the flaw with FFA mode is that it's easy for trusts to monopolize the board.

[Samwise]

Okay, I think I'll count this as a win so I never have to play this again.



Pro tip if you want to exact vengeance against something much bigger than you: feed the green spiky things.  Dear god is it terrifying to see somebody feeding those things when you're giant.

[Draegan]

I was playing this earlier today. Wasted a good hour or so on it. I hit #1 for a hot moment. Also had an unnamed cell hit the #1 spot.

[Samwise]

[Paelos]

Welcome to Erf.

[Draegan]

[Bungee]

So it's basically Capitalism the videogame?

Yeah, no.

I think that's the ultimate PvP game.

[Xanthippe]

How do you feed the green spiky things?

[Samwise]

Point at them and push W.  (Bet you were wondering why the hell anyone would ever voluntarily surrender their precious lifestuff and why there was a button for that.  It confused me for a while too.  Now you know!)

[Shannow]

This game is very good.

[Samwise]

I'll be honest, as frustrating as it is sometimes, it's grown on me and I keep firing it up for a quick game every now and then.  There are a lot of times when you're dead and there's nothing you can do about it, but there's a surprising amount of non-obvious tactical depth too.  I can get to the top of the leaderboard pretty often now.