JakenVeina

The number of issues I've been having with Bazzite, due to its immutability and my lack of experience, has finally reached the point that I'm no longer willing to deal with.

But I like basically everything about Bazzite, aside from its immutability, and I'd like to preserve as much of it as possible. In particular, I like KDE/Plasma (right?) way more than I liked Cinnamon on Mint, and the whole reason I gave Bazzite a try over Mint was that it supposedly was better for NVidia gaming. Which has absolutely been true, all the minor performance issues I was having on Mint vanished under Bazzite.

So, thoughts and recommendations? Thanks in advance.

Since I'm sure some nerds like me will want to know WHAT issues I've been having, the most significant ones would be....

• I've hit a dead-end with trying to setup multiple audio sinks, so I can do what's been standard behavior in Windows for decades and use both my speakers and headset separately, at the same time, per-application. There's basically only ONE source of info on how to do this, and it's written for mutable distros, as it apparently involves doing some firmware config mods or something.

• I've had quite a lot of issues with getting JetBrains Rider and the .NET SDK to work properly with each other, ranging from the inability to get .NET 10 installed, since Rider's flatpak only includes up to .NET 8, and there IS no flatpak for the .NET SDK itself, to getting .NET CLI tools to run properly from Rider, due to the sandboxing.

• I was looking to install GameMaker to continue a little side project I started on Mint, and it's not available on flatpak, nor can I find any wisdom on how I might work around that fact.

On to the next build.

I'm really not sure how I want this to shake out, except for one single idea: I want the "road" to turn 90 degrees and run partway through the middle of the building. Just cause that sounds kinda cool.

So, here's a rough outline of that, with as much foundation space laid down as I could place, without clipping into ground or other non-removable obstacles.

Actually, there was ONE other idea I had, and that was that I shouldn't have independent machine lines (I.E. line of furnaces, line of constructors, etc.). At least not fully. That's because for the 2 products I'm making, I need both Foundries and Constructors, and the number of each that I need is ALMOST equal. So, I actually want all of these machines to be 1:1 paired.

From that, I realized... I haven't built machines stacked on top of other machines in a LONG time.

So, yeah, I'm gonna build Foundries stacked on top of the Constructors they feed to. I built out a few little prototype ideas of what that might look like.

Ultimately settled on this. Just a standalone elevated platform above each set of Constructors, supported by pillars, and with catwalks for traversal. Very tightly-packed, as it turned out.

Also need a line of Iron Ingot Furnaces to feed both sets of Solid Steel Ingot Foundries, and at this point, I realized that if I elevate those as well, that leaves me with plenty of space to fit Storage Containers and Dimensional Uploaders underneath them. So, that reduces the footprint of the whole building quite a bit.

With those all laid down, I added some interconnecting catwalks, and a main staircase to get up to them, at the back.

Some close-ups of the center structure.

And since the Steel Pipe line of Constructors is shorter than the Steal Beam line, that leaves a perfectly-sized corner of the building to fit the overflow sink. I decided to go ahead and cut open the main floor to have it sit on the maintenance floor, and make this the maintenance access point as well.

Wide shot.

And that's the Iron Plates factory finished. I sorta "rest of the owl"d it, but there's still plenty of room for glamor shots.

Nighttime.

Logistics floor.

Main floor.

Also, the Iron Ore mines that I left 'till the last minute. The ones I showed before are actually for the next factory. Only the two sliver-colored ones here are for this factory.

Nerd docs, as usual.

So, first factory to build up here is just Iron Plates. I think there's enough room here between the walkway and the big plateau.

Don't have enough room above the ground, from where the walkway is placed, to lower the bottom floor, so I had to build the machine floor a little higher, to leave enough room for logistics underneath. Thus, we get a little staircasey entrance.

And it's just Iron Plates so.... that should be all we need.

Logistics.

This is a walkway design I used in the previous save, but it was one of my favorites, by far, so I decided to just reuse it here. Still love it.

Also particularly happy with this little, uhh..... balcony?

Beltwork and power lines added in.

Built out a new elevator for climbing up the cliff.

Plus a rough outline for a beltway/walkway.

So, previously, I setup these 2 of the 4 Normal Coal nodes down by Coal Lake, for running the Coal Power Plant. Now, I realize I need 2 more Coal nodes, for a Steel factory, and.... I actually want the 2 nodes that I used for the Power Plant. Because what I'm going to DO with those two nodes is run them up the cliff, to where there's a ton of Iron nodes.

So, today's effort is to extend the little platform here across to the other 2 Coal nodes, wire them all up, and then swap the Power Plant over to those.

Nothing too crazy, just more of what I already did for the first 2.

And with the Power Plant now running on the 2 new nodes, I'm free to tear the first 2 down, in preparation for re-running them up the cliff.

Forgot I actually had a whole day's worth of screenshots sitting in my folder that I never posted.

Not a whole lot to show, just me finishing up the Hypertube connection for the Concrete Factory.

I think it came out rather nice. The one cable flying off to the side is annoying, but that's just a temporary line to make sure I don't kill the whole grid, while I'm working here, since the main trunk dead-ends here. It'll probably be a while yet before I finish running it down to the main HQ.

Looks pretty nice going off in the other direction, though.

Fully operational now, and just about finished with cosmetics.

Honestly, not a huge fan of it, but I don't regret trying to be a little weird with it. I'll take this over just duplicating the one I had in the last save, despite how much I really liked that one.

With the Coal power plant complete, we can go ahead and lay down a more permanent path out of the gorge.

As far as where we're gonna TAKE that path, well...

The biggest problem I had while building the power plant, BY FAR, was Concrete. So, I went ahead and setup a rough floorplan around the only Pure Limestone node in the area. Hopefully, I can avoid having it be too similar to the Concrete factory I built in the last game.

Machines laid out.

Power lines built.

Beltwork all built.

I went ahead and setup 2 Dimensional Uploaders. This'll probably be the only factory that uses 2.

Alright, let's get this trunk finished up, so we can work on booting up the power plant.

This is what I ended up with for the junction. I realized I don't actually HAVE to have the two branches merge together right away, that can happen farther down the line, where it looks less weird.

So, that's what we end up with.

Back at the facility, I snuck the coal belt and power lines in beneath the entrance.

And of course, to bootstrap the thing, I need some power from my starter base. This is actually my first time ever the giant Power Towers.

That should do it! Let's charge up those batteries!

Oh. Batteries can't be charged from Biofuel Generators. Somehow, I never encountered this.

Well, I guess we just prime up the water instead.

And the coal.

Generators didn't take long to reach full efficiency.

Batteries connected in and charging up.

And connected to the main grid! Biofuel is officially obsolete.

So, after ending yesterday with a failed attempt to put a Hypertube junction on the ceiling of a piece of my belt trunk, and realizing there's not enough room, my first thought was to just widen the trunk from single-width to double-width, as it approaches the junction. I figured since I already want to implement double-width trunks later, it was a reasonable solution. So, I made the above blueprint.

Somehow, after finishing this, I realized..... I don't actually need to build Hypertube junctions the way I did in the last save, I.E. I don't have to squeeze in both an exit and entrance, inside the trunk. I can just..... only have junctions. Not having junctions for so long has really screwed up my brain.

So, I hopped into creative mode again and prototyped a few different versions, to make sure I'm understanding correctly how they'll work.

Unfortunately, I don't like the way the first two look, and the third one (just a plain junction) doesn't behave the way I want. What I want is to have paths coming off of the main trunk, but have those paths be "opt in" only. So, if you just want to travel the main trunk, that requires no inputs at all. The standalone junction doesn't give you that. So, I really hope I can think of something to make the "triple-branch" junction look nice.