Thanks! About 5 hours into a new playthrough of BL2 with my wife, so this is awesome!

Yup, if you use mods, it’s a good idea to set the game to update on launch through the game’s properties menu in its steam library listing.

Since a F4SE nodded game is going to launch through the script extender’s launcher, that keeps the game from updating automatically when starting a play session.

I also like to make a copy of my game folder and save it off in another drive so I have a backup.

Could be - tbh it’s been a minute since I looked into those. Either way, a low mileage pull is an excellent option and will last the life of the car if well maintained…

Meant to mention those and forgot! As long as it’s got some kind of decent guarantee that’s a great way to go. Should be plenty of them out there, as I’d imagine most of those vehicles end up getting totaled in accidents of varying severities rather than dying from engine problems. I do believe the Japanese engines are available as a result of their having stricter emissions requirements, BTW…

As someone who is seemingly constantly working on computers and has done a ton of engine building and other deep car stuff, in addition to the garage mentioned previously, I’d recommend buying a buildable engine core for your subaru, getting that built (either do it yourself - recommended, or by a machine shop - will probably work well, but will cost a lot of $$) and having it ready to install rather than trying to pull the existing engine out and rebuilding it - especially if the current engine still runs.

Unless your plan is to make a hobby of having exploded cars in the yard, this’ll go a long way towards putting an end in sight for an engine rebuilding venture.

Also fuck all car subscriptions - that’s some gross profiteering right there…

A) I applaud you for your masterful continuation of the pelagic theme of this discussion about Elon porpoisely allowing this project to flounder into Davy Jone’s locker.

B) TIL that an anglerfish lure is called an esca and that a sufficiently literate person can seamlessly weave such an unusual word into this net of fishy discourse… Bravo!

Sent you a dm with some info. TMI and off topic to post here, in my humble opinion.

I’m already playing with around 175 mods, which has eliminated a lot of the stupider issues with the game (e.g. broke merchants that make it impossible to conveniently sell off loot, crazy high ship registration fees, those mind bogglingly awful crowd NPCs, etc. etc.).

TBH, the main quest is incredibly uninteresting to me (never completed the Skyrim main quest either, though I’ve had a blast playing a 2500+ modlist for many hours in both SE and VR) but I’ve been having a lot of fun scanning planets and taking on random quests in various locations.

I think if it weren’t for the mods that already exist I’d find Starfield to be too dull and grindy to play for more than a few hours, but with them I’m staying engaged enough to buy the modding community more time to work its magic. Guess it’s kinda sad that this game needs mods to pull its bacon out of the fire, but cool that the modders have already accomplished as much as they have.

Maybe he’s trying to trigger the Canadian Air Force into bombing the Baldwins…?

This is the way. Win is already activated, no need to pirate anything. Just get a >= 8gb flash drive, download the installer creator app from Microsoft, and reinstall Windows. It will activate based on the licensing level the machine came with, minus the crapware, which is from the manufacturer’s OS image, not Microsoft’s.

Same. I love my Plex server - I rip all of my physical media audio and video to it and can watch/listen on all of my devices. Music is especially fun on Plex, as it pulls in great bio info for most of the artists, which makes organizing my decent sized music library a fun bit of zen…

Same. Just explored a planet where I found some chatter on the terminals about organisms living in a cave system and then got to explore the cave system and see them after discovering the airlock - style door in the complex that opened up to it.

Finding that the procedural generated buildings are pretty boring, but the surrounding proc-gen landscape is actually pretty cool. Lots of variation in landscapes per planet depending on latitude I land at, etc, and the variation extends to changes in animal coloration, which is a cool bit of attention to detail.

Put together a fairly heavily modded no man’s sky just to compare and couldn’t get into it. Seems pretty cool but just not engaging.

That being said, I’m finding Starfield to be brutally bland in some ways, but I’m still enjoying it. Running with 65-ish mods so far, so some of the stupider stuff that vanilla version does is mitigated, really ally looking forward to when the esp mods start coming out.

Agreed. Been finding the main story, dialog, companions, etc. to be spectacularly unengaging, but have found myself to be surprisingly addicted to surveying life and resources on planets, which is typically not my kind of gameplay loop.

Just hit a planet with one predator and one prey species - the prey species were these Dimetrodon - looking lizard things the ended up one shotting me a bunch of times by breathing fire. Seeing a little bit of repetition with the animals but in general I’ve really been enjoying this aspect of the game.

Sounds like you may want to look into reshade. There’s a ton of reshade presets up on the Starfield nexus, many of which may make the improvements you’re looking for.

Sounds like a solid plan! Note that you can also get BlueIris apps on Android and ios for a fairly low cost - still need the server + BlueIris server software, but being able to roll over in bed and check the cams in the middle of the night on your phone or tablet is indispensably convenient.

Been using Reolink IP cameras ever since I was robbed at gunpoint on my front porch in 2015. No complaints, though I wouldn’t use one of their NVRs or give them my info and sign into an app of theirs

I find used servers are cheap, more maintainable, and more configurable than proprietary hardware like an NVR.

A POE switch and BlueIris will run Reolink cams using the generic ONVIF protocol with no need to give Reolink personal data they don’t need.

I would avoid their zoom cameras - I bought a couple thinking they’d be a good supplement to the 6 standard 1440p Reolink cams I also have and tbh I really hate the zoom cameras. They go out of focus or zoom weird and it’s a bit of a PIA to get them dialed back in. Good luck!

+1 for reolink. Works great with blueiris and has its own app as well. I’d recommend the basic 1440p model, which should run around $50 US on Amazon. You’ll need ether net cables and a POE switch to run them, also not very expensive. Stay away from the zoom versions - in my experience they kind of suck. Been running 8 of these for about 8 years now and they’ve been very reliable. Running both the native reolink app and blueiris on Android, Ipads, and PC, and they kick the dog out of that Ring junk - works great and easy/cheap to add cams and really place stuff when needed.

It’s the smartphones. I’m in TN, and every time I’m out on the road I see a ton of people devoting most of their attention to their phones while driving. I’ve even seen the cops here driving and texting 😐.