Mods decided to make it impossible to make solar power!!!!

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Revemohl

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Jul 29, 2019
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All you need are 7 UU-Matter, that shouldn't be too hard to obtain by powering your stuff with other sources. Unless you're using GregTech I think
I don't, and I had 5 Geothermal Generators powering my Mass Fabricator which was being constantly fed by 3 Igneous Extruders + Recyclers, which works well enough and even gives me a surplus of power because of how beautiful Structure Pipes are. In the end I got a few more Scrap setups because why not.
Solar panels are too OP! Be creative!
But I thought the beauty of modded Minecraft was finding creative ways to be as lazy as possible!
 

earthmage7

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Jul 29, 2019
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It will takes weeks until I can find enough iridium to make a matter fabricator. I just stated on a new server map. And even when I have a matter fabricator what will I use for power? It just will take forever just for one advanced solar panel. It is not worth it any more[DOUBLEPOST=1363222259][/DOUBLEPOST]I am on the mindcrack pack. It has Gregtech on my server
 

Exasperation

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Jul 29, 2019
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Man, I do not know what you're talking about here. That's just trivially false. Advanced Solars are so freakin' good even with the new recipes.
With the default settings in the ultimate pack, if you play 3 hours a day, an advanced solar will pay for 2 uum + 1 iridium in a little over 5 months.
 

WayofTime

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Jul 29, 2019
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With the default settings in the ultimate pack, if you play 3 hours a day, an advanced solar will pay for 2 uum + 1 iridium in a little over 5 months.
Dat math.

In all seriousness, the main use of a solar panel is the ability to have a small source of power for a small structure - such convenience should be expensive. I only use solar right now for convenience, or suplimental energy. And if you think that iridium is difficult to get, look towards the stars...

(The End asteroids, for people who don't get it.)
 

Guswut

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Jul 29, 2019
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Modular Powersuits eats crazy sums of silver in GT mode.
Arg! I guess I'll have to start keeping silver instead of just considering it like lead: Useful in a few specific situations, but for the most part, stocking stuffers.


Or like some other people have said (Myself but totally not taking the credit), instead of making things harder to craft, just make them more complicated than pointing them in the sky or putting them in water or putting them up high.

The same principle is included in the concept of making things harder to craft. Your suggest is a less-direct method to do exactly that, though, but one that can be considered more entertaining at times.

Make solar panels accumulate dust.

It'd be more logical to require that you replace the photoreactive cells inside the unit. Dust, while an issue, is not something that can be easily balanced.

Although in either regard, automation will still be a factor.

Make water mills and windmills into multiblock structures that don't restrict you to put them on a huge cable pole, and let us make aesthetic changes. Make watermills into a 3x3x3 with the middle layer only 1 block. The water should have to flow past that block to power it, not just be submerged in water.

Perhaps for some sort of advanced variant, but the standard ones are pretty much staying as is unless he disallows them entirely.

That aside, why would you bother with all of the work to make a watermill or windmill as a multiblock structure when you could make a simple Steve's Cart tree farm, and get more wood than you'll ever need? Mixed with a generator farm, that's pretty much the endgame on power. Or go with thermal generators, and get yourself a flood of nether lava, and you're golden.

Rather than make solar harder to obtain (but not actually nerf it) they should just improve on the overall design so you can't just be lazy with them.
All actions will lead towards people going to the easiest/laziest system for power production. Now that advanced solar panels have finally been nerfed to the point that they're endgame and fairly worthless at that, Steve's Cart and nether lava in thermal generators will take the forefront fully and completely, along with whatever else steps up as useful.
Making something less-lazy-friendly just means that things that are more lazy-friendly will end up becoming popular. And there is not a single thing that mod authors can do to stop that.
 

Chocorate

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Jul 29, 2019
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The same principle is included in the concept of making things harder to craft. Your suggest is a less-direct method to do exactly that, though, but one that can be considered more entertaining at times.
It'd be more logical to require that you replace the photoreactive cells inside the unit. Dust, while an issue, is not something that can be easily balanced.
Yeah, idk. I just want the wind/watermills to be more fun, you know? And I really like your idea with the carbon plates in the solar panels, I think that's great because they're easy to produce and still require maintenance. Hopefully IC2 authors will give the automatic power sources a much needed facelift. I've always wanted to build a big hydroelectric dam that can hold its own when compared to solar panels and such. Having maintenance required would make the game a lot more fun, too. :)
 

DoctorOr

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Jul 29, 2019
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With the default settings in the ultimate pack, if you play 3 hours a day, an advanced solar will pay for 2 uum + 1 iridium in a little over 5 months.

With the default settings in the ultimate pack, you find the iridium in the ground, just like all the other resources.
 

Exasperation

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Jul 29, 2019
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With the default settings in the ultimate pack, you find the iridium in the ground, just like all the other resources.
If you assume iridium is free, then it will pay for itself in a little over 1 month (still too long, in my opinion)... but that's a pretty big assumption considering how rare iridium is (in my experience you can't depend on mining to provide large quantities of iridium), and how many other uses it has. Uses that are generally more rewarding than what amounts to 1/2 of a basic generator.
 

noskk

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Jul 29, 2019
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With GT, If you are playing SSP or any non 24 hours server with 3 hours playing time a day, and you insist to use the mod for your power system, then you probably want to decrease the uum/eu to 1,666,666. and Iridium is free for me with beeesss :D.

If you are playing in 24 hr server, 1 ASP with free iridium takes 5 RL days to pay itself. Actually, even lesser uum/ (eu/t) is needed if you only build HSP, ..will take you like..2.4 days to pay itself. (USP is even cheaper).

Overall, if you really like to spam solar that much for your power system, you are better with compact solar. I personally only use it for GT automation when I don't want to pull wires from my main power system.
 

Exasperation

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Jul 29, 2019
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I actually don't spam solar... I liked to have a small group of advanced solars as baseline energy, with burst generation (and matter fabrication power) provided by other sources (personally, I liked to go primarily for methane in gas turbines in midgame: about the same net power gain per mB as geothermals, but more interesting to get fuel for). And I actually prefer that uum be expensive. Given how powerful it is, I feel that it's reasonable that it should be hard to get and sparingly used. But this change has made it so that I can't have both uum that's as hard to get as it is powerful, and solars that are easy enough to get that they're worth having at all. Which is to say that the new recipes have caused a gross imbalance that simply wasn't there before (although the hybrid and ultimate hybrid recipes were always pretty terrible). I suppose I could make it balanced again by increasing the energy output by a factor of 8 (so that advanced solars are effectively the new hybrid solars), and just building 1/8 the number, but by the time it's reasonable to build advanced solars with the new recipe there still wouldn't be any point to doing that instead of just going for the really high end stuff - I'll already have enough power generation to hold me over until I can get an automated fusion reactor going, which making advanced solars would just delay needlessly.

And yes, since advanced solars have effectively obsoleted themselves with this update, I would be better off with the better balanced (although somewhat less interesting) compact solars. That doesn't make it less disappointing that the cost/benefit analysis for advanced solars, which I had previously liked, is now large cost/no benefit.

Also:
1 ASP with free iridium takes 5 RL days to pay itself, and then the second one takes half of it since you already the first one free for you, the third is one third of the first and so on
This is just incorrect. On your 24/7 server (I don't play on one, so it's not applicable to me), the second one takes the same amount of time as the first to pay for itself, and so does the third, and so on. The ones that have already paid for themselves are producing energy, yes, but that is unrelated to the time it takes for a newly built panel to generate the same amount of energy that it took to make. 2.5 days after making the second panel, you still have less energy (more likely, less uum) than if you hadn't built it, as it will still have another 2.5 days to go before it pays for that 2 uum it cost.

Edit- as to the bees, lucky you. The best I've ever managed to get is free bauxite dust (which is admittedly still pretty decent).
 

noskk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hmm, Bees are easy now with XBee machines and soul frames :D. I mean who need big power system if you can make iridium from platinum bees. Ok, I'd probably still need to get some uums so I can make the ultimate solar helmet :(.
 

crazy_fab

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Jul 29, 2019
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To me passive energies source such as solar windmill or watermill(not so passive if you use it in a manned way) should have drawback. For the default one it is pretty obvious that due to their low power output you need hundreds of them and you need to design a nice power network able of carrying this power with the less loss possible to your base. Plus windmill have a random wind value need to be high (but not too much or they will break) soar only output on nice sunny day, that mean you need to design energies storage to be sure your machine will work all the time. With advanced solar all of that is already integrated in the generator itself that's why it should remain that expensive.
It is so convenient that lot of peoples power their quarries with solar + electrical engine. To do that with any other power source would be unrealistic you would rather produce fuel or MJ a your base and carry them after.
INHO that why solar should that expensive they are too convenient you should rather look at other power source to fuel your matter fabricator to make solar(if you wish to use them) and then use solar as the easy power source when you are not at your base.
 

Katrinya

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen!

I am proud to announce I have slain the troll. I wanted to give him an extra point on his record for making me attend to his mess instead of attending to my mother in the surgical ICU for a few moments, but he earned all the requisite strikes on his own.

You guys did a great job of not making more mess for me to clean up, but in the future try to respond to them even less. Report strong and carry on! :)

Dude! Next time, forget the forum, forget the troll, and attend to your mother instead!
 

earthmage7

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Jul 29, 2019
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What is a good source of power early in the game? I will eventully probably setup lava power or steam but what about in the beginning? Should I make a water tower, regular solar panel field or wind mills?
 

tehBlobLord

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Jul 29, 2019
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What is a good source of power early in the game? I will eventully probably setup lava power or steam but what about in the beginning? Should I make a water tower, regular solar panel field or wind mills?
Generators with a blaze shard is amazing, otherwise you can use a zombie or cow shard to make methane.
Personally I use a turtle to get tons of wood and charcoal and use that until I'm better set up somewhere.