That sounds pretty similar to how I have my network setup:

• PiHole has conditional forwarding configured (true,192.168.0.0/24,192.168.1.1,lan note: .lan is optional here, I uss it for my internal TLD) to get device names from router
• PiHole uses Unifi as the upstream DNS and DHCP
• Unifi uses cloudflare as the upstream DNS
• Unifi hands out the PiHole as the DNS via DHCP config

That way I get stats in all the places and can use Unifi for DHCP.

I’m partial to Biotech. Mostly in the sheer versatility, depth, and replay-ability it adds to the game, have you ever wanted to:

• robot army? Sure!
• raise children? You got it!
• mess with genetics? Why not!
• diversity beyond the standard issue human? Done!
• become a vampire cult? It’s an option!
• weaponize pollution? Absolutely!

The other DLCs aren’t bad, but aren’t quite as impactful/ noticable compared to the banger that is Biotech. Quick rundown for the sake of fairness:

• Royalty: adds a Royal faction with advanced technology and access to psychic powers. Unique win con is hosting/ protecting the emperor at your colony.
• Ideology: adds religion/ beliefs, that can shape how your colonists feel about various things (being underground, what they eat, how they feel about technology, and more) and other people. Also adds trees that spawn a dryad helper when your colonists take care of the trees. Unique win con is a treasure hunt quest line that has you partially restart your colony a few times.
• Anomaly: adds a horror twist to RimWorld. Fight and study monsters, raise the undead, and uncover horrors beyond comprehension. Unique win con is a study of the void and the entities beyond it.

I haven’t had a chance to play with the new DLC yet (modder’s curse), but it’s looking to be a serious contender for my favorite. Odyssey lets you build a ship that acts as a mobile colony and you can travel both the planet and it’s orbit collecting upgrades for your ship and other unique items. Unique win con is an ultimate showdown with the mechanoids in space.

RimWorld is meant to tell a story, so “despite our best efforts, we all lied on the ground, bleeding and dying as we watched everything we built burn around us. While the world continued to turn, indifferent to our struggles.” Is a perfectly fine way for a story to end (though I will admit it doesn’t always feel great to watch a colony die).

On a general note, weapons in RimWorld tend to be suited to different roles and fighting styles, and very rarely is it just a matter of “get guns (or whatever research), win game” (I’m pretty sure some bows can out DPS a gun, depending on the quality/ range (be sure to take a look at the info window on your weapons).

That said, other than the blanket advice of looking at each story as a lesson, it might help to know what kind of external threats are wiping you out.

Currently slogging my way though the late game (or at least I was until more pressing things came up), there’s some slight automation towards the mid game that helps a bit, but the grind doesn’t really go away. Mostly due to the fact that you end up spending Faith/ corpses/ gold way faster than you can get them. I find myself in a waiting pattern fairly often- there’s still things to do, but progress on major quests feels super slow (and almost unrewarding). The DLC is mostly regarded as filler, but if you’re a completionist (or like what they offer), it’s not awful at the current sale price.

Note: there are achievements that are gated behind having the DLCs if that’s your thing.

It’s not strictly a bad game, but I’d almost rather play Stardew for the farming/ story or Factorio for the automation.

That’s kind of awesome! I have a bunch of home lab stuff, but have been putting off buying a domain (I was a broke college student when I started my lab and half the point was avoiding recurring costs- plus I already run the DNS, as far as the WAN is concerned, I have whatever domain I want). My loose plan was to stand up a certificate authority and push the root public key out with active directory, but being able to certify things against Let’s Encrypt might make things significantly easier.

Seconding the confused Voron noises. I mean, I’d be really curious to see the 3d printer firmware market share beak down, but I feel like anybody building a custom printer is going to have a far easier time with Klipper, just because of how much easier it is to get dialed in.

Oscar the Grouch in the first panel too

It’s so weird seeing one of my mods on the list. Like one of my lost little orphans grew up and went off to college… So long Setup Camp 🥲

Knights of the old Republic! I have a soft spot for the Infinity Engine games, but I really like that KotOR abstracts away most of the inventory management and lets you just focus on the story and characters. Plus props for being able to show the dice rolls so you can pick the extent to which you’d like to roll/role play.

I’m not in a place where I can compare it to the artists you’ve mentioned, but maybe check out Ben Prunty? He’s got a bunch of stuff in his catalogue (including an album that’s meant to be on the darker side), but I think he’s most known for the FTL soundtrack, which I’d probably describe as space, but pensive and curious.

Right? I tried to switch my primary computer (framework laptop) to Linux earlier this year and ended up going back to windows after I had absolute nightmares with my type-c KVM. Coupled with performance issues while gaming (and the absolute hassle of having to force games to use my graphics card). Add in whatever random issues I was getting trying to remote into other windows machines on my domain (for CAD work). My day job is in software engineering/ programming, so I’m not exactly a stranger to digging through documentation and fixing computer issues, but spending time fixing my computer instead of using it got old pretty quick.

Perfectly happy with Linux in my HomeLab and on my steamdeck though!

papyrus!

Not to burst your bubble (it’s super neat to see a major company starting down the road to repairability; fingers crossed they commit to the bit), but this was posted to this community relatively recently: https://sh.itjust.works/post/37825020

I’ve never been a super huge fan of orange, but there’s something about the white and orange color scheme that just looks sick as hell. I have a massive soft spot for the 07 - 09 Mars Mission line.

Jenkins!

Nah, eyelet is the hole that your lace (and aglet) goes through.

True, I knew that my Voron would work out to be more expensive than the leading competitor, but I also highly value the open source ethos and saw it as an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. No regrets and I’m happy to champion it, but I do try to present other options on the field.

My broke college student days aren’t that far behind me and I can appreciate the hell out of a value option. I’m very curious what route you have in mind.

Sure, happy to help! (Plus, I’d feel really bad recommending a Voron build and then just leaving you in the dark to figure everything out). Sorry in advance for the long post though…

Yes, Klicky Switch is the probe. Mechanically, it’s pretty similar to a BL-Touch, but is way cheaper (bonus points for also being harder to break and easier to fix) since it’s just a switch and some magnets.*

Clicky Clack is a replacement for the stock door (acrylic and some VHB tape), it makes a better seal with the printer frame. Nice to have (especially if you’re trying to keep fumes down), but by no means necessary.

Belt gauges are most handy for 2.4 builds, since they run 4 belts instead of lead screws (plus 2 for the Core XY platform) that you want to have all tensioned the same, so that every motor is moving it’s corner the same amount. Technically, you can do this by plucking the belt and using the mic on your phone to measure the frequency. (More info here). The gauge is mostly just to make it easier to compare the belts against each other rather than an empirical measurement tool. Again not a need, just a nice to have. I’ve never used the Amazon gauges since I went the kit route as it was “cheaper” (I’m also reasonably sure most of the gauges on Amazon are just modified tire depth gauges, which can be had for way cheaper and with a bit of quick modeling could be relatively easily be converted into belt gauges (or maybe someone’s already done that somewhere). There’s also printed models like this or maybe this that seve the same function. In short, haven’t tried them, but anything that can give you the same measurements repeatedly should do just fine (you can always sound tension one belt, measure it and make the others match the measurement).

Whoops typo, sorry extrusion backers. These guys: steel, titanium

Not super sure about the Tridents being self leveling, I think they are, but it would kinda depend on how they’re wired up (3 independent motors vs all 3 driven off the same control signal). The 2.4’s are absolutely self leveling though- they do a probe of each corner and adjust the gantry to be as parallel to the bed as you specify( example). From there, they’ll also probe a bed mesh, just to help deal with any deviations in the bed/ plate.

Octopus is the main control board, I think they were used for commonly for a while, but I’m not sure if they’ve been superseded by something else. Plus, I don’t have one and can’t speak to it. Mini123864 looks to be the display screen (used for Klipper Screen). You’d probably want to check the kit contents to see if a Pi is included, but based on those two alone, I’d say probably not.

(Personally, it’s a big part of why I went with the LDO kit, (this is the one I bought. More expensive, but came with high quality parts, minor upgrades, and everything short of the printed parts in the box, plus Fabreeko was running a sale when I bought mine (Voron folks like to Celebrate Clee day (was 5/25 last year) in honor of one of the outstanding community members/ Voron team members (?)/ I’m not actually entirely sure))

Uhh… Slice is not particularly well liked in Voron circles. They are very litigious with their patents, which doesn’t sit well with a crowd that is open source, well, everything (previous comment of mine with more info/ links). I think remember reading somewhere that there might be some bad blood between the Voron team and Slice, but I don’t have a link/ hard proof (beyond the fact that mounts for Slice hotends aren’t officially published with the toolhead files. If your deadset, user mods exist (and slice also sells parts)). Personally, I wasn’t all that impressed with my Mosquito Magnum, especially after I managed to irrecoverably jam the heatbreak (probably my fault. the cooling fan unplugged and heatcreap took care of the rest). Online reviews of Slice’s customer service are mixed mixed, but generally skewed negative, so I wrote the hot end off as a loss (also managed to strip one of the tiny ass m2 screws that hold the thing together trying to take it apart after the aforementioned heatcreap incident), and put Slice on my do-not-buy list. The heater and thermistor were fine- I stuffed them in a Phaetus Dragonfly though (less flow, but a solidly reliable hot end, especially on an Ender 3), and decommissioned them when I noticed that the insulation had worn though on the heater.

On the Voron, I’ve been pretty happy with the Revo High Flow that came with my Kit. Well, other than the fact that nozzle clogs are a nightmare (the HF variants are very difficult to clean/ cold pull), the cost for replacements, and general lack of availability (they exist, but my go-to vendors are almost always sold out). I haven’t decided to yet (because I don’t particularly want to recalibrate everything), but I have a Phaetus neXt G as a standby if I ever get fed up with the Revo. The Phaetus Rapido is also a popular option.

Haven’t used the Orbiter either. I don’t think I had any major issues with the stock Clockwork (it’s also been a while). I think I mostly swapped in a Galileo 2 (G2E) as a way to keep a spare extruder around in case of emergency. Overall, G2E has been pretty good- prints fine, just a bit annoying to service in the rare event of a jam (I was playing with TPU), and not known to play well with the Box Turtle MMU project that I’m working on, but that’s a problem from future me (after I get it built)…

* I can’t personally vouch for it, but in the spirit of overkill, I should probably also mention the Beacon probe, which is a stupid fast Eddy current sensor (more info here) (replaces the Klicky switch/ inductive probe).

Realistically, a good sale probably keeps you on budget (all in, after tax), but if we’re fudging that a bit in the name of upgrades, this is about the route I would go if I had to do my machine over (take this with a massive grain of salt since everyone’s goals are slightly different (and also since I bought mostly of my stuff before the tarrif nonsense started)):

Fabreeko:

• LDO 2.4 350 kit
• Backers, mostly for the discount with machine purchase, but also because I print mostly ABS lately and like not having to worry about heat soaking my machine (warm it up in advance so that any warping gets calibrated out) before each print.
• Printed parts, I tried to get the ender to print Voron parts, I really did (and was somewhat successful), but I ended up spending more time and money trying. If you don’t have a reliable source for ABS parts it’s absolutely worth the $150
• Aluminum carriage mount, significantly easier to work with the AB belts and get even lengths and tensions. Plus including in the initial build means that you don’t have the re-do the belts to install it (totally doable, just annoying).
• Nevermore Carbon, not really a mod, but a consumable that you probably don’t just have on hand. Helps cut ABS fumes (when in a filter like the included Nevermore or The Filter) and won’t corrode the nice new rails.

Pre-tax, MSRP: $1,713.21 (ideally on sale for a lower price (the kits don’t tend to get much of a discount, but sometimes they throw in free printed parts or other discounts) and maybe the Clicky Clack door + acrylic if it’s a really good sale)

AliExpress:

• PCB Klicky, x2 to put it over the free shipping limit and for spare parts

total ~$20

To answer your question, Slice stuff off the bat is probably unnecessary (if you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket, there’s better value to be had in other mods). The nice part about Vorons is that everything can be upgraded pretty easily down the road, hopefully because you’ve identified a specific need or reason to upgrade.

I believe the official Voron recommendation is to build the printer stock first and then upgrade/ mod from there. Which is solid advice, the stock machines are very competent and don’t need upgrades to print well.

The only real day-1 upgrade I’d recommend is called the Klicky switch (or the PCB variant so that you don’t have to do any soldering, just crimping). The stock BoM calls for an inductive probe, which works, but is prone to thermal drift (it gets less accurate as the printer heats up, so you have to do your bed mesh at the same temperature every time). Klicky replaces it with a limit switch- generally more reliable and accurate regardless of temperature.

I might also recommend a belt tension gauge (totally not needed, but more convenient than trying to measure the sound frequency). I use a remix of this one (assembled, kit), but realistically, anything repeatable will do the trick.

Everything beyond that is going to depend heavily on your kit, printer, and needs. For example, the LDO kits actually come with the mechanical parts for the Klicky switch among other nice to haves. Or alternatively, if you’re doing a 350 2.4 and planning on long running enclosed prints (ABS/ASA), extension extrusion backers for the flying gantry may be a good idea (the steel linear rails and aluminum have different rates of thermal expansion, which can cause them to bend as the internal volume of the printer warms up), but they’re not especially necessary if you have a smaller printer or only ever work with PLA (which you can leave the door open/ panels off for).

The official Voron discord is also a phenomenal resource. Plus most vendors run their own discord servers for help/ questions (I’m partial to Fabreeko, because their customer service is above and beyond, but West3D is also really good).

The new printer, hands down (unless your goal is to push the viper beyond its limits). That kind of budget puts you far beyond entry level machines, and usually comes with marked improvements in quality, reliability, and speed. For example, with 1.5k you could probably swing one of the big Vorons 2.4 kits on sale (+printed parts), a Trident kit at retail (also with printed parts), or go the out of the box route and comfortably pick up the Core One (or go Bambu if that’s your jam).

For context, I can run prints on my 2.4 what would take something in the neighborhood of 4 times as long on my old ender 3.