SkyezOpen

Dipped my toes into Linux maybe 10 years ago. It was awful and turned me off of it. Also the fact that I occasionally have to deal with some bespoke bullshit distro at work that does nothing that literally any tutorial I google says it will.

But I finally gave it another shot. Girlfriend got a smart TV. I got sick of ads. I had an old Intel nuc laying around that I bought for a dedicated DDR machine but it didn't go great, so I stuck dietpi and pihole on it. Was still a mild clusterfuck and had dozens of open tabs trying to figure out what was breaking, but by 5am I had pihole configured and running, a plex server set up, and a desktop. Today I got the ftp server up so I can move stuff into plex without messing with flash drives. Still haven't figured out desktop through ssh but that's a later problem.

Bad news is youtube ads come from the same domain as the videos so pihole is useless there, but I'm still having fun and very excited about what I can do with a cheap piece of hardware I thought was useless. For the next project I'm thinking maybe trying to de-google my Google home minis and have a locally hosted assistant, but that would probably take a ton of research beforehand.

Suggestions, encouragement, and harassment welcome.

Tree was up for a day and it already has its first resident.

Was gaming. He made himself comfy.

Deploy the jaegers!

Carrots are NOT doing great. May have failed to thin enough.

On the plus side, beans are THRIVING.

First garden project so we didn't know quite what to expect; thinking we should have given them a little more space. They've completely grown over the basil and in the past 2 days shot out of the netting. It's exciting they're doing so well though.

Bonus first harvest pic

Us: Leaves a spot empty because we ran out of plants/seeds.

Strawberry plant in the next bed:

You know the ones. Old faithful, when you aren't feeling spicy and just want to spread managed democracy as hard as you can.

Bugs

• Incendiary breaker: great impact damage, burns. Kills everything below a charger easily. Perfect for sweeping across waves of chaff and letting them burn.

• Grenade pistol: perfect for closing bug holes alone and from a distance.

• Incendiary impact grenades: closes bug holes, area denial for chaff, good damage against bigger bugs.

• Light armor with + grenades: speed is important for kiting, and can never have too many incendiary grenades against bugs.

• Orbital gas strike: shuts down breaches, low CD, simple as. Used to stan orbital airburst but it doesn't last as long as the breach.

• Orbital railcannon: sometimes you need a charger dead now. This will do the trick.

• Shield pack: protects from incidental damage and slows from hunters and stalkers. Lets me gamble a bit more on letting bugs burn to death and conserving ammo.

• EAT: slaps everything, low enough CD to stockpile or share. Combined with the orbital rail, you can handle a lot of heavies at once.

Criticisms of my own build: The shield is kind of a crutch, but it really comes in handy when running light armor, saving your ass from incidental stunlock deaths and getting wrecked by an unseen charger. Also saves from friendly fire, especially rovers and turrets. I recently switched from mining orbital airburst to gas for breaches, but I do think airburst is much easier to use for cleaning up massive waves. The incendiary breaker is one of the easiest weapons to team kill with due to the fire and insane spread it has. Running it alongside the grenade pistol basically means I am unable to support allies from a distance without being very likely to murder them. This is very much a "do everything yourself" build and not a team oriented one. I switch it up with friends in comms, but randos get this build.

Bots

• Scorcher: Hits hard, pens medium, explodes. Takes out devastators and walkers alike.

• Redeemer/verdict: Both delightful, depends how I'm feeling. Definitely necessary to run something with high damage output because the scorcher has a small magazine.

• Impact grenade: Tricky to use on fabricators, but takes down walkers and group chaff like a charm.

• Medium armor with explosion resistance: keeps mobiity while preventing you from getting wrecked by a stray rocket.

• Eagle airstrike: Hands down favorite strategem on bots. Hits multiple fabricators, takes out tanks, heavy patrols, can do decent damage to a factory strider if hit right.

• Autocannon: Should need no explanation but I will anyway. Kills fabricators from a distance, 2 shots devastators, cripples hulks, kills static guns/mortars, basically does everything. If there's already 2 acs in a group, I'll run the spear instead for more direct murdering of hulks and striders.

• Eagle cluster bomb: Big wave clear.

The last slot is flexible. On lower difficulties I might run orbital gas because it can actually kill fabricators as long as the strategem is on top of or touching the building, and the gas will wipe out a small factory easily. Airburst might do the same but it just occurred to me that I have no idea if it destroys fabricators. On higher difficulties I might take orbital rail, especially if I'm running autocannon because sometimes those hulk face shots are hard to hit.

Criticism: I should probably run stun grenades over impact to deal with hulks, but the instant results of the impact are great. If I have to reload facing down devastators or walkers, impacts clean up quick. This build is more tuned towards larger enemies. The bug build has the advantage of the incendiary breaker being a glorious wave clear weapon, while the scorcher is single target and very low ammo. The eagle cluster sort of helps there, but I rely on secondary weapons fairly often.

Feel free to share your builds, suggestions, and criticisms. I will die on several of these hills.

Crushing gravity isn't that big a deal, once you get used to it.

So the game lets you finish mission sets even if the planet is liberated (or destroyed, I guess) so I was able to visit Meridia and dive again even though the planet is gone.