Feedback on Colony Modpack and Other Questions

[Type1Ninja]

So I'm interested in some larger-scale feedback on my modpack, Colony. I'll detail each of my questions, then give a little bit of extra information.

Question 1: Have you tried Colony? Do you like it?

Question 2: Should I add Forestry and it's addons? Give me reasoning and which addons you suggest.
Some addons are Gendustry, Extra Bees, etc...

Question 3: Should I remove Extra Cells?
My reasoning for doing so is that it is one extra mod in the pack and it isn't totally necessary. I'd like to add a couple other mods, and I need to remove some to prevent lag.

Question 4: Should I add Matter Overdrive (I'd really like to)? If I do, should I remove Minechem?
Again, the fewer mods the better, and Matter Overdrive is a different means to a similar end: item re-synthesization.

Question 5: Should I add OpenModularTurrets?
This is a mod I'd *kinda* like to add, but I'm really on the fence, and while more people are FOR it than AGAINST it in the poll, the people who are against it are more vocal. My reasoning is that it doesn't really have an effect in single player if you don't use it, but on multiplayer it can both protect you from other players and mobs AND make your base more badass. Who wouldn't want more badass, right?

Question 6: Are there any other mods I can remove? Like I said, I'd like to remove a couple unnecessary mods so I can add others without inducing more lag, but it's really hard to do. Halp me!

Old questions, preserved for posterity:

Spoiler

Question 1: A fairly simple yes or no - have you played Colony?

Question 2: Another simple one. Do you plan on playing Colony?

Question 3: I suppose MOST of these are simple, but still... If you've tried it, do you like it?

Question 4: This is a little longer. So, I'm thinking of beginning to nudge the pack in the direction of a "Space Race" theme as opposed to just easy survival. Tech-Defense is a must, and OpenModularTurrets seems like a great, RF-powered way to go about it. For those of you who have tried either this pack or that mod, what do you think? Note that including this wouldn't mean an immediate transition to PvP only; it's also useful for PvE and no evil lair is complete without merciless guard turrets (don't worry, they actually give players a warning message before someone enters the range if set to attack players, and you can have a "trusted players" list).
I do ask that you at least glance at the page for this mod before voting no.

Question 5: In a similar vein to number 4, should I add the IronMan mod? I'm leaning towards not doing so, but it might be nice in a PvP-centered environment. On the other hand, it adds a bunch of new crafting stuff, and we already have Flux Armor and Tinker's and such. So, I'm asking for feedback.
I do ask that you at least glance at the page for this mod before voting no.

To elaborate on the Space Race idea: ideally, there would be regular competitions between multiple teams of whatever size (1 person per team, or even 20). The goal would be to get to the moon and set up a moonbase the fastest, while sabotaging/pranking the enemy team(s). I'm curious as to what others think of this. Perhaps I could release a separate pack as "Colony: Space Race Edition" with all the PvP-centric stuff.

Any other feedback on Colony is welcome as well. Thanks for responding!

 

[Awerick11]

Firstly, the pack is awesome! There's finally a pack not focused on hard stuff- or just kitchen sink.

But, I have a few problems:

A. The quests: The storyline is practically nonexistant. Quests are great tutorials- but a lot of people know these mods. I for one, ignore the quests. If there were more developed quests, they would be much more appealing. For example: Add a story behind the pack that you uncover through quests. The quest description should be something explaining what to do with the items needed for the quest. And rewards. They need to have something to do with the quest, and be an incentive to do the quest. A cookie is a bad incentive. Some resources or a mod item, or reward bag is a good incentive.

B. Buildcraft. This pack seems to rely heavily on buildcraft. A lot of people love BC, but I don't. The mod's great, but I think there are better mods. I know you don't want to add Extra Utilities, but I think it will turn out perfect for the pack with some minetweaking. It's pipes should be more expensive and some generators removed. The main problem with BC for me is the quarry. It causes way more lag, can only be 64*64. Ender quarries you can upgrade for silk, fortune, speed, pump liquid, and make a hole instead of placing dirt. They aren't that OP since they are not very early-game by recipe and require a ton of power. But you dont have to change quarry sites every 2 days or so. You get a mining dimension and builder's wands, both made with an unstable ingot from a ritual. You think rituals are not techy? Change the recipe for unstable ingots to use something like enderium instead of a division sigil. In general, it would be useful, with some minetweaking it will not be OP and still fit the pack's style.

 

[Type1Ninja]

Firstly, the pack is awesome! There's finally a pack not focused on hard stuff- or just kitchen sink.

But, I have a few problems:

A. The quests: The storyline is practically nonexistant. Quests are great tutorials- but a lot of people know these mods. I for one, ignore the quests. If there were more developed quests, they would be much more appealing. For example: Add a story behind the pack that you uncover through quests. The quest description should be something explaining what to do with the items needed for the quest. And rewards. They need to have something to do with the quest, and be an incentive to do the quest. A cookie is a bad incentive. Some resources or a mod item, or reward bag is a good incentive.

B. Buildcraft. This pack seems to rely heavily on buildcraft. A lot of people love BC, but I don't. The mod's great, but I think there are better mods. I know you don't want to add Extra Utilities, but I think it will turn out perfect for the pack with some minetweaking. It's pipes should be more expensive and some generators removed. The main problem with BC for me is the quarry. It causes way more lag, can only be 64*64. Ender quarries you can upgrade for silk, fortune, speed, pump liquid, and make a hole instead of placing dirt. They aren't that OP since they are not very early-game by recipe and require a ton of power. But you dont have to change quarry sites every 2 days or so. You get a mining dimension and builder's wands, both made with an unstable ingot from a ritual. You think rituals are not techy? Change the recipe for unstable ingots to use something like enderium instead of a division sigil. In general, it would be useful, with some minetweaking it will not be OP and still fit the pack's style.

Hmm. You make some good arguments.
About Buildcraft: Errr... It doesn't rely heavily on it? There's really nothing you BC can do that you can't do with other stuff. Most notably, you can use Thermal Dynamics, MFR's Conveyors, Refined Relocation's Relocators... There's a myriad of ways to move stuff around.
For the quarry: you could use Steve's Carts and it's mining setup. It's actually really nice. You could also use Mining Lasers, or just say "Hammer Time!" and mine manually (though that's an absolute pain, come to think of it...).
For the rest of Extra Utilities: I'll have to look at it again. Your idea of minetweakering Unstable Ingots is a good one. On the other hand, I'll probably end up disabling energy nodes and all the generators, and anything even magick-y (lookin' at you, angel ring!). I'll probably also minetweak anything requiring the QED thingy.

Thanks for the feedback! It's been really helpful.

EDIT: Actually, could you provide me with a link to something that can show me everything XU adds? The forum post wasn't updated last time I checked.

 

[Cptqrk]

Firstly, the pack is awesome! There's finally a pack not focused on hard stuff- or just kitchen sink.

But, I have a few problems:

A. The quests: The storyline is practically nonexistant. Quests are great tutorials- but a lot of people know these mods. I for one, ignore the quests.

Please, do not ignore the new players of your pack. One of the best things of Agrarian Skies was the quests were simple and easy enough for a total noob to mods pick up.

 

[pizzawolf14]

I have not tried it. As a matter of fact, I haven't even heard of it. Now that I have heard of it, I think I'll have a late night tonight trying it out. As for your pack, I am personally not a fan of the iron man mod.

To say something on the post above me, I'm completely lost when it comes to mods that aren't magic, building, or gregtech, so the quests will be a godsend when I get around to playing.

 

[Type1Ninja]

I should make it clear that the quests were always intended as a tutorialset/guide. Unfortunately, I haven't yet got material for basic Tinker's/Thermal Expansion, but the general gist of the pack is covered. I never intended the pack to have a story; I wanted to preserve the open-endedness Modded MC had before HQM came around. The new story-type gameplay we see so much isn't a bad thing; I just think it's been overdone recently.
So, there won't be a story to Colony, though I may make one for "Space Race Edition" if that ever gets off the ground.

I also have an idea that I could reduce manual mining in the PvP version by making a quest that resets every day, which gives you small amounts of each ore (depending on rarity). You'd need manual mining to build anything worth it, but for small things and starting out you'd have a steady supply of stuff. It's also non-automatable, so it's not really exploitable. Depending on circumstances, I could have a quest for each ore, although that might be a pain.

I'm glad you guys plan on playing the pack!

 

[Type1Ninja]

I have not tried it. As a matter of fact, I haven't even heard of it. Now that I have heard of it, I think I'll have a late night tonight trying it out. As for your pack, I am personally not a fan of the iron man mod.

To say something on the post above me, I'm completely lost when it comes to mods that aren't magic, building, or gregtech, so the quests will be a godsend when I get around to playing.

A quick note:
There's a bug in the current version where trying to create a new world crashes. This will be fixed in the next update; in the meantime, there's a workaround, as follows.
When you download the pack, download the second most recent version. Generate the world in that.
Exit, upgrade to the newest version, and play. There's no new worldgen, so you'll be fine. Don't worry about the "Missing Blocks and Items" message; that's normal.

 

[alphadeltablue]

View attachment 19461
So I'm interested in some larger-scale feedback on my modpack, Colony. I'll detail each of my questions, then give a little bit of extra information.

Question 1: A fairly simple yes or no - have you played Colony?

Question 2: Another simple one. Do you plan on playing Colony?

Question 3: I suppose MOST of these are simple, but still... If you've tried it, do you like it?

Question 4: This is a little longer. So, I'm thinking of beginning to nudge the pack in the direction of a "Space Race" theme as opposed to just easy survival. Tech-Defense is a must, and OpenModularTurrets seems like a great, RF-powered way to go about it. For those of you who have tried either this pack or that mod, what do you think? Note that including this wouldn't mean an immediate transition to PvP only; it's also useful for PvE and no evil lair is complete without merciless guard turrets (don't worry, they actually give players a warning message before someone enters the range if set to attack players, and you can have a "trusted players" list).
I do ask that you at least glance at the page for this mod before voting no.

Question 5: In a similar vein to number 4, should I add the IronMan mod? I'm leaning towards not doing so, but it might be nice in a PvP-centered environment. On the other hand, it adds a bunch of new crafting stuff, and we already have Flux Armor and Tinker's and such. So, I'm asking for feedback.
I do ask that you at least glance at the page for this mod before voting no.

To elaborate on the Space Race idea: ideally, there would be regular competitions between multiple teams of whatever size (1 person per team, or even 20). The goal would be to get to the moon and set up a moonbase the fastest, while sabotaging/pranking the enemy team(s). I'm curious as to what others think of this. Perhaps I could release a separate pack as "Colony: Space Race Edition" with all the PvP-centric stuff.

Any other feedback on Colony is welcome as well. Thanks for responding!

1. No

2. Yes… At least when I can get java working. :C

3. Yes…

4. No. It seems a bit OP. Several turrets/base, along with the fact that applying upgrades to the base applies them to the turrets… Well… Things can get OP fast.

5. No. I generally dislike mods that are based on IP. This one is no exception.

A fun idea would be to add either Ruins or GenCreator as sources of resources. Or as partially-built bases. I'm willing to create structures for use.

BTW, posting the configs and the other stuff on Github means that we can have an easy way to work on the configs and other stuff, where other stuff is the stuff I was thinking about writing the sentence about originally.

I believe that a separate PvP edition should be made, if only to provide a separation between the PvE edition and the PvP stuff.

Also, if you add XU in, do not mine tweak the recipe to give Stable ingots. Have it give unstable ones, 'cause Nerf. Maybe add a recipe for a stable ingot with an unstable ingot and a diamond, or something. Mine tweak the recipe to require diamonds, enderium, yellorium blocks/ludicrite ingots, and TNT. Maybe add in a Resonant Flux Capacitor, and a singularity from AE. That seems balanced.

If you look at the regular recipe for Stable unstable ingots, it requires 9 stable unstable nuggets, which are produced by dividing a Gold ingot by diamond.

While unstable ingots are hard to craft, they are intended to be late game, so the recipe should stay late game.

3 Diamonds, 2 enderium, 1 ludicrite ingot/yellorium block, Resonant flux capacitor, and two singularities sounds nice. Or replace the singularities with max-compressed cobble, and the ludicrite with bedrockium ingots.

 

[goth_child67]

Honestly the only part i really intend on using XU for is the quarry because of the way it runs. The BC quarry strips the entire area layer by layer and keeping the entire area loaded, where the XU quarry does it chunk by chunk top to bottom digging straight down to bedrock before starting the next block so it only loads 2 chunks at a time and can be any size.

 

[Harvest88]

Honestly the only part i really intend on using XU for is the quarry because of the way it runs. The BC quarry strips the entire area layer by layer and keeping the entire area loaded, where the XU quarry does it chunk by chunk top to bottom digging straight down to bedrock before starting the next block so it only loads 2 chunks at a time and can be any size.

Agrees it would lower servers' CPU considerably while permitting players to make a large quarry for fewer "maintenance cycles".

 

[alphadeltablue]

Agrees it would lower servers' CPU considerably while permitting players to make a large quarry for fewer "maintenance cycles".

Downside though, is that if it gets destroyed, it has to rescan everything. So if a creeper blows it up, or you derp and accidentally break it with your way-too-fast pick, it has to spend a good amount of time reprocessing the already-processed chunks. Which is why I still prefer the BC Quarry.

 

[goth_child67]

Downside though, is that if it gets destroyed, it has to rescan everything. So if a creeper blows it up, or you derp and accidentally break it with your way-too-fast pick, it has to spend a good amount of time reprocessing the already-processed chunks. Which is why I still prefer the BC Quarry.

if that happens just move the quarry outside of the already processed area and no having to deal with that issue.

 

[Type1Ninja]

I'm still on the fence about XU; there ARE other ways to mine, including Steve's Carts (which is now much cheaper) and MFR's mining laser (which, to be fair, is expensive, but still). If one of you guys could compile a list of XU's features, I'll go through it and see how many I would keep, how many I would need to change dramatically, and how many I would just trash. Depending on how many I would need to trash or change, I might put it in.

I don't like downloading an entire mod for just one or two items, which I would be doing with XU.

 

[goth_child67]

I'm still on the fence about XU; there ARE other ways to mine, including Steve's Carts (which is now much cheaper) and MFR's mining laser (which, to be fair, is expensive, but still). If one of you guys could compile a list of XU's features, I'll go through it and see how many I would keep, how many I would need to change dramatically, and how many I would just trash. Depending on how many I would need to trash or change, I might put it in.

I don't like downloading an entire mod for just one or two items, which I would be doing with XU.

Tema does have a pretty good description of most blocks on his MCF page but give me a bit and i will compile a list of them for you.

• generators that use anything from furnace fuels to nether stars.
• several compact versions of redstone contraptions from vanilla. namely the block update detector and a redstone clock.
• compact liquid storage in the form of drums/bedrockium drums which hold 256 and 65,356 buckets respectively
• angel block which allows it to be placed anywhere without the need for a connecting block (great for building a base in the sky or over an ocean without having to cobble pillar all the way up to where you want it)
• a low lag pump/quarry for smaller computers
• a way of making a compact mob farm in the form of cursed earth, conveyors, and spikes.
• the trash can to delete items without having to throw them into lava or wait on them to despawn.
• rain and sound mufflers to stop yourself from hearing your herds of animals or the rain which is obnoxiously loud.
• compressed cobble to save our chests from the insane amounts of cobble early game.

i think thats most of the blocks covered but i may have missed a few. the forum post from tema is located at http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...mods/wip-mods/1443963-extra-utilities-v1-1-0k

 

[Type1Ninja]

Tema does have a pretty good description of most blocks on his MCF page but give me a bit and i will compile a list of them for you.

• generators that use anything from furnace fuels to nether stars.
• several compact versions of redstone contraptions from vanilla. namely the block update detector and a redstone clock.
• compact liquid storage in the form of drums/bedrockium drums which hold 256 and 65,356 buckets respectively
• angel block which allows it to be placed anywhere without the need for a connecting block (great for building a base in the sky or over an ocean without having to cobble pillar all the way up to where you want it)
• a low lag pump/quarry for smaller computers
• a way of making a compact mob farm in the form of cursed earth, conveyors, and spikes.
• the trash can to delete items without having to throw them into lava or wait on them to despawn.
• rain and sound mufflers to stop yourself from hearing your herds of animals or the rain which is obnoxiously loud.
• compressed cobble to save our chests from the insane amounts of cobble early game.

i think thats most of the blocks covered but i may have missed a few. the forum post from tema is located at http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...mods/wip-mods/1443963-extra-utilities-v1-1-0k

Thanks. I know most of the items are listed there, but the last time I checked (which was a long time ago, admittedly) it wasn't complete. The new stuff wasn't covered. I'll look at it again if I have time.

I don't like most of those features, though, for reasons I'll list:

Spoiler

Generators: I just think they're OP and boring. Have random crap? Stuff it in a generator for RF! That's what windmills and solar panels are for.
Redstone Contraptions: Project Red. 'Nuff said.
Compact Liquid Storage: Meh... I'm more likely to download a dedicated iron tanks mod (if one exists).
Angel Blocks: Yeah those are actually pretty nice. So's the builder's wand.
Low Lag Pump and Quarry: I'm on the fence about these. The pump would be tweaked to be much more expensive. The quarry, I'm not sure.
Compact Mob Farm: I think I prefer MFR's system (which I realize is interlink-able). RFTools has a version as well, I just don't know how it works yet. I'm on the fence about this and the division sigil as well.
Trash Can: That can be something you automate early game.
Mufflers: That's what sound controls are for. (we have those in 1.7.10, right?)
Compressed Cobble: Barrels!

I know there's other stuff, but I don't remember it either.

 

[asiekierka]

About Buildcraft: Errr... It doesn't rely heavily on it? There's really nothing you BC can do that you can't do with other stuff. Most notably, you can use Thermal Dynamics, MFR's Conveyors, Refined Relocation's Relocators... There's a myriad of ways to move stuff around.

There's tons of things you can only do with BC gates. Assuming computers or factory managers don't exist.

 

[Awerick11]

A. Buildcraft. Keep it in! Just add XU, both will do fine.

B. Unstable ingots should be crafted with a electrum block, division sigil, and diamond block. Division sigils should be gotten by putting 10,000 mb of enderium onto a nether star.

 

[Type1Ninja]

There's tons of things you can only do with BC gates. Assuming computers or factory managers don't exist.

Well, we have SFM, Refined Relocation, and Project Red. But most mundane uses for BC (like quarries, item/liquid/power transport) can be easily reproduced with other mods.

A. Buildcraft. Keep it in! Just add XU, both will do fine.

B. Unstable ingots should be crafted with a electrum block, division sigil, and diamond block. Division sigils should be gotten by putting 10,000 mb of enderium onto a nether star.

As I said, I may or may not add XU. It depends on how much stuff I would end up disabling.
... Your recipe is evil. XD
I don't know what I would do about the unstable ingot. I can't stop the Wither from dropping the Division Sigil, and if I change the recipe/name nobody will know what to do with it. This struggle is part of why I don't want to add XU.

 

[asiekierka]

Well, we have SFM, Refined Relocation, and Project Red. But most mundane uses for BC (like quarries, item/liquid/power transport) can be easily reproduced with other mods.

I still believe that other mods do it in an overpowered OR boring OR oversimplified manner

 

[Type1Ninja]

I still believe that other mods do it in an overpowered OR boring OR oversimplified manner

Well... SFM is overpowered, but not simplified. Refined Relocation *might* be overpowered, but it isn't simple or boring. Project Red is just useful.
I totally know what you mean, but I'm happy with how this is. It doesn't rely heavily on BC, but it's still useful for pumps/quarries, and logic gates if you want. There are also alternatives, if you want to use them. Don't worry, I'm not removing it.