I'll also note that you're a huge RoC fan and very vocal on his forum. You tend to go out of your way to help others there, and probably take a fair deal of annoyance off Reika's shoulders. I want to be clear that I tip my hat to you in this regard and I strongly appreciate that you've been a factor in helping Reika's mods move forward.
But being such a fan, folks will wanna take your enthusiasm and GT-nay-saying with a bit of salt.
As an on-and-off fan of both mods, I want to clarify a few things:
I wouldn't say HUGE fan. I'm definitely a fan, but there are plenty of things Reika does that make me shake my head and wonder who spiked his morning coffee when he had THAT idea.
Besides the helping people with complicated mods thing is literally what I do. Check my REALLY old posts on the MCF. Back in Beta 1. ... ... 4? I think? (Don't really feel like checking) I was doing the same thing for IndustrialCraft. It was my first mod, and will likely always hold a warm fuzzy place in my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles.
Boiled down, your statements apply to RoC and GT equally. GT has more machines, and more of these steps, but it's also existed far longer and has had time to flesh out those steps. Instead of just a few resources, such as tungsten, it has hundreds of the damn things, for scores of machines.
Which is actually a downside for me. Excepting Reactorcraft (and probably Chromaticraft) Reika doesn't really add new materials, he merely adds new ways to USE the materials you've already got. Lots of new components to MAKE out of those materials. Something I haven't touched on is that RoC is self-contained. Gregtech was not (might be now but see "it crashes/locks my game"). This is a problem. In a mod that modifies a "Public Utility" mod as... that... um... damn it's late. CovertJaguar! phrased it; Gregtech is a mod I NEVER. EVER. Start with if there's another option. Why would I? All it does is make me grind and grind and grind to get to the point where his stuff is actually good at what it does.
And to be clear, no, you could not build a fusion reactor in a "few hours" in GT before, and you definitely cannot now. You need to build all the requisite gating machines, similar to Reika's requirements for tritium, blast glass, etc. I challenge anyone to build a GT tokamak substantially faster than they can build a ReC one. @Iedra has an amazing walkthrough on how he produced all the resources, infrastructure and assembly for his first Tokamak, and it would be an excellent benchmark.
I said with Infinite raw materials. Plop down some Creative Strongboxes and Portable Tanks with Iron, Sticky Resin, Tin, Ruby, and Copper; probably lava and water in the tanks; in the 1.4.7 version of GT and build a fusion reactor. If it takes you much more than 5 hours I'll be shocked. And that's from 0 in the tech tree, and not being familiar with the mod... also probably with some form of autocrafting... because... yeah... a bazillion intermediate bits.
Reikas is significantly faster than that... which is a GOOD thing. It's not complex or time-wasty for its own sake. Which is something I've NEVER been able to say about GregTech. I like RoC, I like TFC, I even like BTW (In concept and observation, though not through direct experience... I haven't played it yet... I really REALLY need to remedy that). Gregtech is the only other "hard" mod I really see mentioned that's "complex" and not "Jadedcat" (Her stuff is difficult because the environment is given even more ways to kill you... basically disadvantaging the player. Not my cup of tea, but hey. Nintendo Hard is still hard). It's also the only one that I consistently dislike, strongly.
This is in fact the same as Reika's bedrock dust and tungsten mechanics. You need ruby dust to create a machine, which requires a centrifuge. You need blast glass or tungsten to build a machine, which requires pulse jet furnaces and extractors.
I wasn't talking about the... component cost? Basically the direct result of progression gating. You need X machine to get Y product to craft Z. That's fine. In fact I wish more mods did that.
I totally meant something else there. With what I said you are totally correct (note that I don't mind the resource costs in RoC because Reika gives you tools to mitigate that... last time I checked GT he went up to like 3x duplication, with no autominer? Reika uses a TBM that can go to absurdity with enough power... I mentioned self-contained earlier, here's an example where I think GT fails(ed).
You make the misleading implication that RoC is somehow incredibly different in its gating system. Its definitely not so. Many other mods, GT among them, have similar but more fleshed out systems that work on the exact same principle of "earn this machine before you earn that machine", and yet it doesn't have this restriction. This is Reika's choice based purely on his preferences, and not a magical property of the mod itself.
It's not different in the gating system. It's not different in the presence of tiers, or the methods of gaining those tiers. It IS unique in the level of... interweaving relations with those tiers? Basically it's a relatively delicate balancing act where removing or shifting nearly any machine or component up or down the tier system can make the mod un-progressable or make it horrifically OP. Show me an example of the same thing from GT. I haven't played it in forever, and when I did, I could use vanilla IC2 to produce whatever I felt like in GT at basically every tech tier he had. From the word "go". Which means until you hit the 5th tier stuff that was all the fusion reactor stuff? GT effectively had no tiers, it just made me grind more to get the stuff I wanted. It had no "jet fuel too expensive" oh wait, I can get t4 Magnetostatics and skip 85% of the mod and get a borer and the extractor going now? (Note I don't have the gating memorized I have gotten so little time to play it's not even funny. But I hope my point comes across. I actually WANT to be converted on this one. I don't like hating Greg or his mod. It's got SO much potential, and so does he.
If I make a pack that allows the vanilla furnace to transform dirt into RoC jetfuel, Reika shouldn't give a damn. It has zero impact on him. It has zero impact on the apparent or actual quality of his mod. It only bothers him if he allows it.
Now that's being silly. I've been on the content provider and moderator side of things. I know just how much hate mail and crap one person can recieve and when you probably have to tech support 50 people, if you give them bad advice because some chucklenut edited your mods and you said "sure that's fine". YOU CANNOT IGNORE THEM. You absolutely positively cannot "allow" someone to affect you. They will simply by existing and forcing you to sludge through them to get to things you actually need/want to see. The same precise argument can be made about junk/spam mail. What Reika has implemented is effectively a spam filter. If you modify his mods, you don't get anything, and he can dismiss you readily with an actual reason that any sensible person will look at and should agree with. You broke the licensing terms of the mod, he's under precisely 0 obligation to tech support for you in a pack where you can t5 magnetostatic from day 1 and the microturbine runs on water... but he STILL has to deal with you, even if it's only to stick you on "ignore" and souring his mood for all the legitimate concerns and ideas that his users produce.
Sorry to rant at you for this one, but the precise kind of people Reika is trying to avoid having to deal with I used to have to deal with on a daily basis. I'm so firmly on his side on this one because I've BEEN him, I know what the holes in his shoes are, how the wear pattern affects footing. People. Are. Idiots. This is a universal truth, and one that you MUST protect yourself against in some way or go INSANE.
GT gets a constant line up of people complaining about its difficulty, but I have never seen anyone say "y yer iron pickaxes require ghats teers on my frenz server, IT MAKES NO SENSE". Likewise, the number of people harassing Reika about pack-specific recipe changes is going to be so small as to be irrelevant.
Perhaps, but what if it happens once per 100 packs... or someone makes a tutorial on one of those packs and everyone points at the tutorial and says "WHY THIS NO WORK? The TUTORIAL SAID SO!" Nobody will be able to help them beyond saying "use better tutorial next time", and people will be horribly dissatisfied with his mod. Maybe they switch versions and they can't use RoC in Monster because this guy mucked with the tech tree and the player didn't know it. Heck he has a lesser problem with the OFFICIAL tutorials because of the ever-changing nature of his mods, imagine if people made tutorials on modpacks with modified versions of the mods. I've screwed that up with TC addons before. I've made a few guides that I had to revise multiple times because I wasn't playing vanilla TC as people sent in issues like "there is no Tempus aspect" and I went "derp, that's MagicBees. Fixed!"
Misleading metaphor due to implication of harm caused. A more apt one might be "I recommend against using paint sprayers in your clone of my building, you might unknowingly discolor the carpet. And please try not to bother me if you do."
Maybe "be careful with that mercury. My floorboards are aluminum, if you spill my floor will become weak and you might hurt yourself... and it'll make it all ugly". It's not a cosmetic problem, you can fairly easily brick Reika's mod with certain changes if you don't understand the ramifications of the products of the block or item.
This hints at the prevailing problem here. We're talking about modded minecraft. Its unfortunate when a modder takes a stance that we may adjust our mods around his, but not vice versa. (Yes I'm aware we can tweak his mods privately).
{
Edit: Reika, I'm trying to think of a way to re-word this so its not antagonistic. My interest with this phrase is perspective, and not offense.}
I hope I've fully and 100% convinced you around to my way of thinking. Because that's what always happens on the internet right?
Heh, always happens doesn't it?
I can see where you're coming from and a LOT of my problems with GT are opinion about the modder and his history. There are plenty of things that I find distasteful about his mods that I would overlook if I liked Greg. But there are distinct design problems that I think are actually objective. Or at least significantly less subjective. Things that I consider to be VERY bad design. Heck there are things Reika does that I keep wanting to sit him down and lecture him about (packaging API's... grrrrrr). But at least we're keeping it civil... for "very heated" definitions of civil
. What can I say? I'm passionate
Tangentially: Immibis' revived/classic version of IC2 is something I'm hoping gets more addon support. I'm not a big fan of the direction Player is taking the mod. Which... is rather Greggy IMO, and not the good bits. I make no secret about my distaste for many of the decisions GregoriousT has made, nor the person himself. Time and time again he's shown himself to be the kind of person that I don't like and make content that looks amazing and sounds amazing but plays with large swaths of "let's have my 6 year old grind me the materials for me so I can actually enjoy the mod". Gregtech has a few new tweaks to the "classic" IC pitfalls like the rain thing and the minimum voltage/rate. But his middle game is grindy (not complex or hard), and his end game is grindy... and I can't comment on the difficulty because the last time I actually booted GT was in... 1.4.7? Every other time it's crashed my game. Also the... not-nice things that happen occasionally with other modders and his reactions to certain "balance" decisions and peoples desire to change them.
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Holy crap @
Omicron. That is awesome! I so wish more people with suggestions thought through them as carefully as you obviously did. You stated your problem, why you think it's a problem, the required ideas to demonstrate that, and even logically thought out suggestions. I wish I could like a post more than once!