#Frostwort Mines

[msbarrows]

So, as of the latest time I've updated my video card drivers, the screen capture utility I've been using for ages is suddenly once again able to actually capture my screen properly in games such as No Man's Sky. There was a process by which I could force a screen capture prior to this, but it involved hitting the screenshot hotkey, toggling out of and then back into the game, and then screenshotting a second time. This process would get the second capture to be a largely unprocessed version of the screen; the toggling seemed to force the screen at the time of toggling out into a buffer that the screen capture software could then see and read from (the first screen capture is whatever was on screen the previous time you toggled, but if you don't create it the buffering doesn't seem to occur). This was not exactly a rapid process, and the image quality also wasn't noticeably any better than the game's in-built screenshot tool. It's only real benefit was that it preserved the in-galaxy address displayed in the lower left corner, so prior to this I only used it when grabbing shots of things like starships or particularly interesting multitools.

So I've now gone from only being able to get jagged low-quality screenshots that don't have things like anti-aliasing happening, to actual decent quality screenshots, with just one capture and no toggling required. You can see the very distinct difference this makes in image quality between the first two pictures shown here.

Which of course meant I had to run around my current WIP base and take good-quality screenshots of it to show off :D

This is a semi-randomly placed base on an ice planet; I found one of those spots with a base computer in the middle of a large flat area (legacy of back when bases could only be built in specific locations and were one per save, I believe - which was before my time so that's based off of old forum posts). There were a few cave mouths in the hillsides bordering the flat area, including one particularly round one that had a very strong "that's a mine entrance" vibe to me from the way it was set into a recessed slope.

I'd been thinking of doing an on-planet frostwort farm instead of making a big gardening area for them on my freighter, because harvesting from biodomes is more plants gathered at a time (7-8 instead of 4, though they are more spread out). I decided yeah, this would be a fun place to build something (despite its lack of a power hotspot or resource node nearby) and hence ended up with this small mining-town-inspired base.

It has three mine entrances (01 is the original mine-like location), a biodome structure, starship pad with adjoining structure, a bar, powerhouse, etc. One of the caves behind the mine entrances (03) is small and very pretty with a skylight opening over top so it gets good light, and I ended up deciding to plunk my portal in there, which looks great and is only mildly dangerous when the scant handful of toxic plants have regenerated (I can live with that).

Still need to dress the interiors of a couple of the buildings, and possibly build some more of them. Have been having fun working on it for a couple of days already.

[wumblr]

mushroom table!! yes that is a silver mine in the background yes i had to set up an entire production chain to support my weird housebuilding habit no i do not want to talk about it i'm chilling in a glass house in a radioactive supercell and not throwing any stones leave me olone

no i cannot set up an automated cytophosphate production chain to build the aquatic crystals. i have to harvest it from underwater plants by hand and it spawns abyssal horrors every time. nobody respects my dedication to building weird houses in space. planting a whole biodome of frostwort to craft glass over here like a fool

[briochespace]

94:32: (yeah!)

94:32

Aiotto’s still out! I would really like to do some world-searching this time!  UPDATE: distracted again. doing base quests!  I kind of spend so much time at MR-4 that I never really developed any of mine.  why am I doing base quests if i’m searching for a new base? 

[doodle of me drinking tea] 

weird day. I’m making a lot of spelling mistakes too. maybe I’ll make some tea.  I really like this tea! it’s kind of spicy and it has tiny blue flowers in it. frostwort buds, maybe? 

ok so I took a break and I thought about bases a LOT and I think. I’m gonna stick with more than halfway (yeah!) as my home base. I was looking for somewhere else bc clearest blue is sort of mostly gray but i realized. that just makes it the perfect backdrop for the shining rainbow eyesore i’m planning to build. you’ll be able to see it from 1000u away. 

and like. I think it’s a good way to live! sometimes the world is gray and you gotta be the surreal nonsense you wish to see in the world.

I have made a discovery: the available places for putting stickers in your base contains interesting choices. 

[Armorer Scout Ruannin’s excellent new facepaint] I put an OK hand on Armorer Ruannin’s face! they don’t seem to mind and I think it’s HILARIOUS  

[msbarrows]

Hahaha, YUP! I’d laid out my freighter on that save with four 4x4 rooms made of the plantable greenhouse tiles. Three of those rooms were set up with harvestable plants, and one of them had all 12 outside tiles planted with nothing but frostwort, plus there was 1-2 tiles of frostwort plants in each of the other two farm rooms as well, so roughly 64 plants in total (could have been a little more or less). Plus my starter base on that save had been built on a frost planet, close to two mid-sized patches of frostwort, which had me off to a good start on collecting frostwort even before the freighter. I need to get back to having a bulk farming setup like that again, because big builds can use so much glass. See also: why one of my first priorities on this save was setting up mines and farms for the most-used materials.

Actually was very disappointed a few days ago, I’d found a frost planet with lots of big frostwort forests, found a level enough spot in easy reach of three (!!!) of them, got out to do testing to see if there was any resource hotspots in range that I might as well build the intended base to include... immediately attacked by closest creature. On scanning (and some running around with frequent additional attacks) I found the planet had not one but three aggressive commonly occurring predator species, only one of which went away at night. Got one forest stripped, decided the predators were welcome to keep the rest, and took off again. Ah well, I’ll find a safely usable source sooner or later. Or build a decent freighter base with lots of farm space again (though that’ll also need tons of frostwort to plant it all in the first place).

Mind you the planet the Spindle is being built on has two aggressive predators (cat and t-rex types) but they can’t get to where the base is, and even if they could, they can’t get up into the tower. Actually it was kind of funny the first night, when I was building the start of it down at sandbar level - one of the cat predators was pathing around on shore nearby, and I could pretty much see the decisions the AI was making as it tried to get to me “Juicy target nearby, path towards it - whoops, water, get out of the water! - back on shore, start wandering again, check for... OH! A juicy target nearby! Path towards it...” over and over again.

Some shots of the base I’m currently working on; the free-floating column with large top structure I’d been starting on when my previous save slammed into the 20k total build item limit.

I was originally picturing something with a more broadly flared out solid top, but I wanted to keep it fairly close to circular, and the build pieces don’t really lend themselves to that beyond a certain point. So instead I’m trying out some trilateral symmetry using prefab units.

Calling it “The Spindle” since the overall shape reminds me of a drop spindle.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with progress so far, though there’s already some adjustments I want to make, like getting that biodome on top moved up a little higher so it fits into the top of the structure more neatly. Also I’m thinking I should hide a beatbox sound generator in the bottom of the spire, and try to have to set up to do a repetitive deep whooOOoommm-whooOOoommm sort of sound to represent whatever arcane machinery is making that little dangling light at the bottom keep this thing floating.

Need to take a bit of time to build a base somewhere close to a couple of big frostwort patches, this is using tons of glass. I am missing my freighter from my previous save with its extensive greenhouses, including large amounts of frostwort. Feeling very tempted to see if I can figure out how to copy it from there to here, actually, really not looking forward to trying to save up enough to replace my current crappy freighter from the expedition, and redo all the upgrades I’d done, and rebuild my freighter base from scratch again.