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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Kinda depends, if it’s a popular something, there’s usually a model online that someone else has been kind enough to share (generally on Printables and/ or Thingiverse). My most recent experience with that was the shift knob on my mixer cracked and fell off, a quick download, a few grams of filament, 20 minutes, a few persuading taps with a mallet, and everything was good to go.

    Beyond that, it’s a bit of personal preference and a bit of you’re trying to do, something like a dial cluster in a car is going to be far more complex that something like a mounting bracket. The stuff I tend to fix/ replace tends to be fairly small, so personally, it’s a matter of sitting down with a pair of calipers to measure the object and replicate it in CAD (Autodesk got me young, so I’m on the Fusion 360 train at the moment). One of the most amazing things about 3d printers is that you can go from design to prototype extremely rapidly, which allows you to iterate the design and make it better each pass. Got a hole doesn’t quite line up, a wall that’s too long, an arm that doesn’t quite reach, etc? tweak it and try again. It’s a little bit of trial and error, but with experience it becomes more of a controlled process as you figure out what works and what doesn’t.




  • Enh, I’m not so sure about that, one of the most unique parts of RimWorld is that the primary goal is to tell a story. Even the best stories need a bit breathing room for the action-y bits to have weigh. RimWorld is filled with stories about colonies that ran out of food in the dead of winter, lone survivor types that either bleed out or later died of infection after a freak hunting mishap, or trying to hide from the flames and wait out the raiders/ murder machines. It may be waiting, but I find that more often than not (especially in the early game), it’s either a welcome break after a hectic day or an edge-of-your-seat fight-for-survival kind of waiting.


  • Everyone plays a bit different, personally I’d recommend playing the vanilla game for a bit and using mods to flesh things out or iron out any rough edges in how you experience the game. The modding scene for the game is absolutely phenomenal, if at any point you’re going “gee, there’s got to be a better way to do X, deal with Y, or add more Z”, there’s probably a mod that does it, for example I like designing my colony fairly early on (so I have something to build towards), but since the existing mono-color plan gets confusing pretty fast (what was wall and what was workbench, tool cabinet, light, etc), I find More Planning to be a bit of a must have. As a blanket statement, the Vanilla Expanded mods are very well done and integrate neatly into the game (that said, they aren’t necessary meant to all be run at once, so you can pick and choose what you want and go from there).

    I have a pretty decent list going, but if we’re just talking a short list of personal favorites, I really love Megafauna, Frozen Snow Fox’s Bionics, and Cyber Fauna. (Oh and a shameless self-plug for my own mods)







  • I’m not quite the person you originally asked, but I’ve also got a Steam Deck, maybe I can help? Full disclosure, I primary use my steam deck as hand held (switch killer), so I can only kind of speak the big picture performance, but I really like my steam deck. It’s probably my new favorite way to kill time while traveling (assuming I can keep it charged or find somewhere to plug it in). Under the hood it’s a remarkably capable computer, but it does have limitations, so I hesitate recommend it for everyone. It really depends on what you plan to play on it and your expectations. Its handled pretty much every game I’ve thrown at it (Hallow Knight, Lego Harry Potter, Slay the Spire, Ara Fell, Baba is You, Vampire Survivors, Spiritfarer, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, and West of Loathing) very well, but I’ve mostly stuck to verified titles from my library of mostly indy games. That said, it can be quirky sometimes. It’s hard to explain beyond just general Linux weirdness, but it’s stuff like the mod manager for Slay the Spire being fully functional, except for the part where you can’t see it (if I recall correctly it only draws when java redraws the window, like when a touch is registered), but after the modded game is launched, it runs perfectly fine. I have also heard that the steam deck can struggle a bit with more demanding games, especially on higher settings.

    If you’re looking to get 4K 60+ fps max settings on the latest AAA title, I’d probably steer you towards a custom build, but if you aren’t looking to push those kind of frames and are okay with some occasional software tinkering, then it’s hard to go wrong with the steam deck.