EMC - EE - Energy Condenser

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Eh, there were just too many ways to break the game completely for minimal resource investment with EE2. If your preferred playstyle includes infinite of any resource desired for effectively nothing, I suggest Creative Mode as a vanilla way to achieve this.

For those of us who want to try and survive, on the other hand, balance is an important aspect. One which was completely absent in EE2. Hence why Pahimar is making a clean break and starting over from scratch.

 

[Tolgrimm]

Those people are welcome to chose to play exclusively with others who share their feelings about balance. They still don't get to tell everyone else the right way to play. For many people, myself included, Minecraft is a mode of relaxation and creative expression. It's fine to play with a competitive mindset if that's what you enjoy, but not fine to insist that everyone else do the same.

Considering that mods are explicitely rejected for being "overpowered" or "unbalanced" in the FTB packs, I don't feel badly when I point out serious flaws in mods.

FTB in itself was a "challenging" map by creation before it became a mod pack. So yeah, everyone can play however they want, but I want to point out that FTB is being put together with some kind of "balance" in mind.

 

[Golrith]

Plus also remember that FTB map relied on EE2's system of "something from nothing". You were given the basic's to get you started, and then it was up to you to work how to how to build the items for the Beast, with the rewards usually being items that you couldn't make with EE2, or needed to teach EE2.

Personally, I loved the condensor, was perfect for getting junk out the way, and if I could get a diamond out of it every now and again, even better. I never purposely fed the condensors tons of "fuel(EMC)" to get another resource. I did feed them pumpkins and chicken eggs, but that relies on a "natural" system, and couldn't really be classed as reliable. For me, they allowed me to make more interesting builds.

EE2 could easily be more "balanced" for server play. Reduce the rate of energy collected by a factor of 10, remove EMC from crafted items, reduce EMC values on plants/dyes/mob drops and that would have eliminated most EMC gathering systems, making dark and red matter a long process to gather.

If EE2 could have put all the EMC values in config file, then servers could have configured it to the server owners preference.

 

[Katrinya]

Plus also remember that FTB map relied on EE2's system of "something from nothing". You were given the basic's to get you started, and then it was up to you to work how to how to build the items for the Beast, with the rewards usually being items that you couldn't make with EE2, or needed to teach EE2.

This. I don't really get how people can say EE has no place in FTB, given how reliant the FTB map was on transmutation with EE2.

Anyway, the EMC system in EE3 is supposed to be fully configurable. If you find the exchange rate too forgiving, you can always nerf it into oblivion by tinkering with the config. Or, you know, just disable the mod. No one's forced into playing with a mod they don't like.

 

[Katrinya]

Eh, there were just too many ways to break the game completely for minimal resource investment with EE2. If your preferred playstyle includes infinite of any resource desired for effectively nothing, I suggest Creative Mode as a vanilla way to achieve this.

For those of us who want to try and survive, on the other hand, balance is an important aspect. One which was completely absent in EE2. Hence why Pahimar is making a clean break and starting over from scratch.

I respectfully disagree. Achieving rapid EMC generation in EE2 took... a really long time. A single collector required a diamond block to build and wasn't exactly speedy in building up EMC. By the time I fully developed a collector array, I'd hit the endgame with other mods anyway. Me, I start out scrabbling in the dirt and punching trees like everyone else, but I liked being able to slowly work my way up to a post-scarcity lifestyle over time (with my play schedule, this took a couple of months). It gave me the freedom to quickly progress with ambitious projects on a large scale, extending the life of my endgame by quite a lot. I never felt like it compromised the appeal of surviving. Otherwise, there's not much to do once you've built all the machines you need.

Given how much effort it takes to reach that point, I find it completely unfair to say that "balance" was absent in EE2. (When people say "balanced", 9 times out of 10 what they really mean is "tedious and time-consuming", in my opinion.) Plus in the early game, EE did a fantastic job of eliminating menial tasks. Being able to convert my cobble into marble facillitates the construction of an aesthetically pleasing house without spending a boring half an hour digging up marble in a cave.

That's how I like to play. I'm sorry, but being told that I'm having fun the wrong way is a personal pet peeve. Similarly, "you might as well turn on Creative" comes across as dismissive and patronizing.

 

[Hydra]

I respectfully disagree. Achieving rapid EMC generation in EE2 took... a really long time.

Throw in some useless Tungsten ore or some gems you were pretty much swimming in and hey presto; craptons of EMC. It wasn't balanced at all and if you claim it was you're just trying to fool yourself.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I respectfully disagree. Achieving rapid EMC generation in EE2 took... a really long time. A single collector required a diamond block to build and wasn't exactly speedy in building up EMC. By the time I fully developed a collector array, I'd hit the endgame with other mods anyway. Me, I start out scrabbling in the dirt and punching trees like everyone else, but I liked being able to slowly work my way up to a post-scarcity lifestyle over time (with my play schedule, this took a couple of months). It gave me the freedom to quickly progress with ambitious projects on a large scale, extending the life of my endgame by quite a lot. I never felt like it compromised the appeal of surviving. Otherwise, there's not much to do once you've built all the machines you need.

Achieving rapid EMC generation took... about ten minutes. Collector arrays were for chumps. You start off with the Destruction Catalyst. Mine out everything nearby, and it all gets dumped in. At this stage, you don't have a BHB, so you'll just be making more trips. Make sure to teach your trans tab about everything. Set up a 'dark room' and have that auto-load into it while down on your next trip. By the time you come back, you should have a couple pieces of DM. Proceed to snowball from there.

Given how much effort it takes to reach that point, I find it completely unfair to say that "balance" was absent in EE2. (When people say "balanced", 9 times out of 10 what they really mean is "tedious and time-consuming", in my opinion.) Plus in the early game, EE did a fantastic job of eliminating menial tasks. Being able to convert my cobble into marble facillitates the construction of an aesthetically pleasing house without spending a boring half an hour digging up marble in a cave.

I just thought you said EE didn't exist in the early game because of the long buildup? Also, if it takes you that long to mine out marble for a building, either you are making something the size of Minas Tirith or you really ought to be using at least a gem pickaxe at this point.

That's how I like to play. I'm sorry, but being told that I'm having fun the wrong way is a personal pet peeve. Similarly, "you might as well turn on Creative" comes across as dismissive and partonizing.

That's nice. Unlimited resources on demand? Smells like Creative to me. Takes all the 'try to survive' out of Survival Mode.

Mind you, I'm not trying to knock Creative mode. It's there for a reason. Some people like that game play style, which is why that mode is still around. But don't try to kid yourself into thinking that EE2 didn't completely overpower anything and everything else and give you creative-mode to your survival mode.

 

[Mero]

That's nice. Unlimited resources on demand? Smells like Creative to me. Takes all the 'try to survive' out of Survival Mode.

why do people act like survival is just so hard? Anyone who can't survive in survival mode has some serious issues.

You can stick me in a sea level flat world with no villages, no passives and only 1 tree on hard mode access I will not only survive, I will thrive.
Survival on minecraft if trivial at best.

Telling people that they should just play creative is just ignorant and immature.

 

[Katrinya]

I just thought you said EE didn't exist in the early game because of the long buildup? Also, if it takes you that long to mine out marble for a building, either you are making something the size of Minas Tirith or you really ought to be using at least a gem pickaxe at this point.

That's nice. Unlimited resources on demand? Smells like Creative to me. Takes all the 'try to survive' out of Survival Mode.

Mind you, I'm not trying to knock Creative mode. It's there for a reason. Some people like that game play style, which is why that mode is still around. But don't try to kid yourself into thinking that EE2 didn't completely overpower anything and everything else and give you creative-mode to your survival mode.

I said resource generation is insignificant in the early game, not that EE was useless. As for kidding myself.. you know what? Screw that sentiment. I'm describing the mod as I experience it. No one can tell me that my experience is less valid than theirs.

Well, of course you can tell me that, but I reject it as the snide, absurd nonsense that it is. You enjoy the game your way, and that's fine. But the beauty of mods is that you can customize the game to your liking. I have just as much right to my preference as you have to yours. The difference is that I won't act like my way is somehow superior.

 

[Chocorate]

This. I don't really get how people can say EE has no place in FTB, given how reliant the FTB map was on transmutation with EE2.

Anyway, the EMC system in EE3 is supposed to be fully configurable. If you find the exchange rate too forgiving, you can always nerf it into oblivion by tinkering with the config. Or, you know, just disable the mod. No one's forced into playing with a mod they don't like.

Well thanks for the info on EE3. I just want to disable the durability on whatever tool is the replacement for the Transmutation Tablet. I never really liked the big machines of EE2, but I hope EE3 kind of keeps the whole "equivalent exchange". I know, I know, turning dirt to sand without paying 6 diamonds each is way too OP, but whatever.

 

[Battledonkey]

Just stating facts. If anyone wants to contest that EE2 was pointlessly easy and boring go ahead and try. As for the blocks, if I can find the quote I'll link it but it was stated they were removed.

The problem is, none of what you said is fact. Technically, it's personal opinion. Don't be so pretentious.

 

[Hydra]

The problem is, none of what you said is fact. Technically, it's personal opinion. Don't be so pretentious.

I can have the opinion that the moon is made of cheese but that doesn't make it any more valid just because it's an opinion. Yes the condenser made getting the right building materials easier. That was convenient. But allowing you to turn anything that was limitless (cobble, chicken eggs, saplings) into stuff that is supposed to be rare (diamonds, gold, etc.) or even turn completely useless ores (tungsten) into a lot of rare stuff is simply breaking all form of balance when it comes to the rarity of items.

Mods are balanced around the rarity of some vanilla items. This gives players an incentive to solve the problem of the rarity of those items by building farms for them. Especially on servers it forces people to pool their resources and set up stuff like ender pearl and blazerod farms. People cooperate in finding Nether fortresses etc. to make sure they have a proper supply of these items.

What happened on servers that had EE2 enabled is that pretty much everone just got a condenser, set up some flowers and from then on just fabricated whatever they needed. And after a week or so a server was deserted because no one could be arsed to build anything but their flower setups because it was completely pointless.

And that is why EE2 was broken: it does not remove other mods, but makes them pointless. And that's pretty much just as bad. That EE2 was broken inside a modpack like Tekkit or FTB isn't an opinion, it's a fact.

 

[Katrinya]

That's still opinion, predicated upon the idea that all players find the game pointless once they had a condenser and collector array set up. That isn't universally true. Look, "the moon is made of cheese" is statement which, upon testing, has a binary outcome. Either the moon is made of cheese or it isn't, and that's easy to test. "EE is unbalanced" is, based on the rest of your post, a reflection of your personal experience that Equivalent Exchange causes people to grow bored with a server too quickly. The latter is on a continuum, as there is no universally agreed-upon standard for how long people should stay interested in a server. Furthermore, given how frightfully disparaging some tekkit players have been on the MCF thread for EE regarding the removal of collectors/condensors, I'm betting that not everyone got bored with their EE2 server within a week. So yeah, the idea that EE is unbalanced is still opinion, no matter how strongly you feel that way.

As an aside, most of my experience with EE is single player, whereas the most vocal haters of the mod all complain that it breaks their server. If "balance" is defined as a mechanism which reduces the longevity of a given world-save, then it's entirely possible that EE2 was better balanced for single player than for multiplayer. And before you go insisting that multiplayer is all that matters, FTB is meant to facillitate both SSP & SMP.

 

[Golrith]

I think Pahnimar (spelling), did mention once in the MC forums that EE2 was not balanced for servers, just single player.
Compare your EMC gain via collectors playing single player for a few hours a day/week, compared to a system that's on a server and constantly chunk loaded, and it's no surprising that servers were "drowing" in EMC.

But, that issue along with others could have been solved if the energy collecters and the EMC values were available to modify in a config file.

Personally, I don't think that all of EE2 should have been scrapped, that's a bit drastic, instead, it could have been updated to allow config changes THEN change approach to EE3.

 

[Hydra]

That's still opinion

No. For server-play EE2 throws all sense of game balance out of the window. It's obvious you never played on a tekkit server. EE2 basically turned any Tekkit server where it was enabled into creative mode. That's not an opinion it's a simple fact.

If people 'complain' about how mods are unbalancing the pack it is ALWAYS about servers. Please understand that no one cares one little bit about how you play singleplayer. Cheat in your diamonds if you want, I could not care less. The problem with mods in modpacks is that they tend to be left to 'default' on most servers (because which mod to enable with what settings is an endless discussion server admins don't want to get into) and that's why the discussion about mod balance is an important one because it will influence anyone who wants to play SMP.

 

[Katrinya]

No. For server-play EE2 throws all sense of game balance out of the window. It's obvious you never played on a tekkit server. EE2 basically turned any Tekkit server where it was enabled into creative mode. That's not an opinion it's a simple fact.

If people 'complain' about how mods are unbalancing the pack it is ALWAYS about servers. Please understand that no one cares one little bit about how you play singleplayer. Cheat in your diamonds if you want, I could not care less. The problem with mods in modpacks is that they tend to be left to 'default' on most servers (because which mod to enable with what settings is an endless discussion server admins don't want to get into) and that's why the discussion about mod balance is an important one because it will influence anyone who wants to play SMP.

I see you're still failing to grasp the difference between opinion and fact, and further failing to internalize the idea that not everyone who played on a Tekkit server felt that EE ruined the game. Just head over to MCF, there are like 100 pages of "Y U REMOVE COLLECTOR NOW MY TEKKIT IS BROKE", so clearly for some people, EE was an essential part of having fun on a server.

Ugh, I don't know why I bother. Arguing with Minecraft puritans is a lot like arguing with... well, actual Puritans.

 

[Golrith]

Calm down folks.

Both sides of the coin are indeed valid, and all depends on the persons playstyle. Some people would powerflower and abuse the EMC system, while others would be more restrained and use the system more creatively.

 

[Chocorate]

But allowing you to turn anything that was limitless (cobble, chicken eggs, saplings) into stuff that is supposed to be rare (diamonds, gold, etc.) or even turn completely useless ores (tungsten) into a lot of rare stuff is simply breaking all form of balance when it comes to the rarity of items.

That was really the point of the core of the mod. It was trying to introduce the idea that with enough iron, if you tried hard enough, you could create a diamond. It got rid of luck, and was balanced. Other than the power blocks like the catalyst and solar array (I think we can all agree those were ridiculous ). And tungsten ore? Why is that EE2's fault? Sure you could say that it shouldn't have such a high EMC value, but if it has no use at all it shouldn't even be in RP2. That's just free EMC there, and when that's its only use, people are only going to turn it into EMC.

 

[Hydra]

That was really the point of the core of the mod. It was trying to introduce the idea that with enough iron, if you tried hard enough, you could create a diamond. It got rid of luck, and was balanced. Other than the power blocks like the catalyst and solar array (I think we can all agree those were ridiculous ). And tungsten ore? Why is that EE2's fault? Sure you could say that it shouldn't have such a high EMC value, but if it has no use at all it shouldn't even be in RP2. That's just free EMC there, and when that's its only use, people are only going to turn it into EMC.

I don't understand why I have to keep repeating myself: as a standalone mod EE2 definitely had it's merits. But in a pack (like Tekkit or FTB) it breaks the balance. So I don't understand why you bring up EE2 as a standalone mod; that's not what it's about. If people complain that EE2 isn't in the packs, the reason is simply that even the author of the mod itself thought it was breaking the balance in those packs. And since he wanted to make a mod that would fit into FTP/Tekkit like packs he decided it would be best to just start over.

Also: RP didn't decide that Tungsten would be worth 2 diamonds or did it?

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Calm down folks.

I'm quite calm, don't worry.

Both sides of the coin are indeed valid, and all depends on the persons playstyle. Some people would powerflower and abuse the EMC system, while others would be more restrained and use the system more creatively.

That's not what happened on servers. Sure some people tried to resist but when your neighbour builds a huge base in the time it takes you to melt a stack of cobble to smoothstone you generally WILL build a condenser yourself.

 

[Chocorate]

That was really the point of the core of the mod. It was trying to introduce the idea that with enough iron, if you tried hard enough, you could create a diamond. It got rid of luck, and was balanced. Other than the power blocks like the catalyst and solar array (I think we can all agree those were ridiculous ). And tungsten ore? Why is that EE2's fault? Sure you could say that it shouldn't have such a high EMC value, but if it has no use at all it shouldn't even be in RP2. That's just free EMC there, and when that's its only use, people are only going to turn it into EMC.

If people 'complain' about how mods are unbalancing the pack it is ALWAYS about servers. Please understand that no one cares one little bit about how you play singleplayer. Cheat in your diamonds if you want, I could not care less. The problem with mods in modpacks is that they tend to be left to 'default' on most servers (because which mod to enable with what settings is an endless discussion server admins don't want to get into) and that's why the discussion about mod balance is an important one because it will influence anyone who wants to play SMP.

So, rather than ruining one of the only mods that actually introduces a new mechanic instead of just making new items and going down a tech tree (why we have EE3 which is going to be nerfed until you need 7 diamonds to turn dirt to stone) you could just have server owners turn it off. Server owners don't want to? that's their fault. That's like saying my mom won't let me drink alcohol so I should ban it for everyone.