I know I'm probably beating a dead horse here but.. Dartcraft.

[PierceSG]

Yes, starting out is boring as hell. Telling people to run in creative is the same as those people telling you to disable the mod.

I like most mods, even some of them are taking the path which I do not like. What I will do is either igore working with the mod or if must be, disable it.

I might engage in suggestions and arguements on how bad the changes are but I will never tell the mod authors how to balance their mods. I will probably ask for them to include a config so the players and/or server admins can tweak to their preferences.

As for Force Engine itself, I have never used it. I used the gems for making tools and feeding the Infuser early on.

By the time I can automate a multifarm/SC2 Galgadorian Woodcutter farm and squeezer for liquid Force, I would have already got a solid power grid and have no use for it.

 

[Zenthon_127]

I find that I really don't need force engines for anything besides my Magma Crucible for the first Energy Cell. Once you have that then you can just have Magmas power your base until you have a tree farm at which point force engines are obsolete anyways. Magmas are sooooo easy to automate too.

 

[Hydra]

Just as an aside, I don't believe the force engine removes that choice at all... at the risk of sounding soooo very clichée for this forum... you don't have to use it.

It is a cliché and should therefor be avoided. If someone gets a choice between a cheap, easy engine with 8mj/t or a less cheap, more hard to set up engine for 2-4mj/t it's not really a choice at all.

 

[Dorque]

It is a cliché and should therefor be avoided. If someone gets a choice between a cheap, easy engine with 8mj/t or a less cheap, more hard to set up engine for 2-4mj/t it's not really a choice at all.

Here I have to disagree. I ran my last base entirely on BC fuel and Railcraft steam turbines... because I wanted to do a steam system. Efficiency is never all in a game that's all about doing what appeals most to you personally.

 

[Hydra]

Here I have to disagree. I ran my last base entirely on BC fuel and Railcraft steam turbines...

So am I, but I was talking about starting out remember?

 

[Hoff]

It is a cliché and should therefor be avoided. If someone gets a choice between a cheap, easy engine with 8mj/t or a less cheap, more hard to set up engine for 2-4mj/t it's not really a choice at all.

So then why does anyone use anything other than the BioFuel generator?

The only thing the force engine completely replaces in terms of its engine type is the combustion engine, and really the combustion engine has remained an eye sore of an item in buildcraft for far too long. It's been fairly worthless for awhile.

 

[PierceSG]

So am I, but I was talking about starting out remember?

For starting out, I like using Clockwork Engines. I'm a miser and a hoarder. I like keep 'em shinies.

 

[Flipz]

PERSONAL OPINION INCOMING:
Some relevant quotes to this discussion:

"'The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too certain that it is right." --Learned Hand

"The truth does not exist as one thing; rather, it is a tension between opposites." --Anne Bogart

I've always said there are as many different definitions of "balance" as there are players of Minecraft--it's simply not possible to match every single person's definition. That said...

Honestly It's not about balance it's about fun

This. This right here. Minecraft, at its core, has never been about competition. Sure, there's the natural human tendency to want to "keep up with the Joneses", but from the beginning it's been more about "I want to show you what I've done" than "I want to get everything before anyone else". Heck, the myriad videos of Minecraft on YouTube stand testament to this mentality. Minecraft was never meant to be "balanced"--heck, how would you even define that in Vanilla, especially given all the inherently-non-egalitarian randomness mechanics (i.e. access to dungeons/spawners/strongholds/villages/biomes and related resources via worldgen, enchanting, etc.)? Every successful competitive Minecraft experience is built around some mod, map, and/or gameplay mode that exists within the Minecraft "engine", not within the entirety of Minecraft survival alone. No, Minecraft multiplayer is a social experience more than anything else. As Zeal said, it's not about "balance", it's about fun.

That said, if something is crazy, it should be fixed (i.e. the stacking Luck on Force Armor, drop rate of loot bags, etc.). But I think the community at large is far too obsessed with "balance" at the moment than we should be. We should be focused on fun.

 

[Dorque]

PERSONAL OPINION INCOMING:
This. This right here. Minecraft, at its core, has never been about competition. Sure, there's the natural human tendency to want to "keep up with the Joneses", but from the beginning it's been more about "I want to show you what I've done" than "I want to get everything before anyone else". Heck, the myriad videos of Minecraft on YouTube stand testament to this mentality. Minecraft was never meant to be "balanced"--heck, how would you even define that in Vanilla, especially given all the inherently-non-egalitarian randomness mechanics (i.e. access to dungeons/spawners/strongholds/villages/biomes and related resources via worldgen, enchanting, etc.)? Every successful competitive Minecraft experience is built around some mod, map, and/or gameplay mode that exists within the Minecraft "engine", not within the entirety of Minecraft survival alone. No, Minecraft multiplayer is a social experience more than anything else. As Zeal said, it's not about "balance", it's about fun.

That said, if something is crazy, it should be fixed (i.e. the stacking Luck on Force Armor, drop rate of loot bags, etc.). But I think the community at large is far too obsessed with "balance" at the moment than we should be. We should be focused on fun.

Amen.

I know I'm repeating myself, but Minecraft MP is all about showing the other people "what I've done". For me sometimes, that's more about gathering than building since I'm not the world's greatest builder, and as such I do dislike (by way of example) EE2's generators which utterly trivialized having... anything, really. But beyond that, it's all about seeing what you can do with what you've got.

I'll go to Community for my quote of choice here:

Jeff: How much stuff do you have here, and what can we make with it?
Abed: That depends.
Jeff: On?
Abed: On what you can imagine.

 

[Zealstarwind]

snip

The challenge at the beginning of the game for me is fun, it's the struggle to survive that first night without a death and if death happens that first night I head in an opposite direction and make a new base (If I already started one) It's all about the fun of that first night that usually determines for me what the world will be like.

@Others I did not say that making something in creative was anything less it's just that doing it survival will garner much more attention due to this game's main goal. To build. It doesn't matter what you build as long as you've built, are proud of what you built and wanting to show others of your accomplishment. My builds are nothing spectacular either but just today at least 4 people thanked me for showing them my build because they all got ideas from my build.

It's fine to see massive factorized systems that run autonomously but for most who dont dedicate as much time or maybe have trouble putting together the pieces of such a massive build like to see builds on a smaller scale. My bee's AE system is simple, doesn't use a MAC yet is more specialized and easier to manage then a full fledged AE system. People just like to see what others build for more ideas.

Showing something in creative is still showing something, showing someone the same thing in survival will garner more attention because A: it confirms that it is doable without a massive working knowledge of the game and B: It's easier for one to wrap their head around.
I taught someone the other day that transition planes are a simpler and more effective means of harvesting melons/pumpkins as it'll grow on them, harvest them instantly then you can always set them up to go to a cyclonic assembler for turning into seeds, autofeed into a squeezer and bam, you've got yourself an automated bee production line that cost you less materials and made it much easier to handle then a system using BC pipes or other methods as the system will be simple to understand.

 

[MigukNamja]

So then why does anyone use anything other than the BioFuel generator?

The only thing the force engine completely replaces in terms of its engine type is the combustion engine, and really the combustion engine has remained an eye sore of an item in buildcraft for far too long. It's been fairly worthless for awhile.

Combustion was/is mostly balanced with RC steam power. RC steam power is safer and more efficient in the long-run (ex. chunkloaded server). The combusting of the combustion can be avoided with simple gates available from the BC laser / assembly table. 6MJ/t used to be a lot of power for on-demand, quick on-off power. I believe the modding community has mostly moved beyond the exploding mechanic, so perhaps the exploding mechanic is dated, I'll grant you that. A shutoff and cooldown period similar to the Peat or just a simple shutdown like the TE steam would be more appropriate.

But, to say the Combustion even in its current form is "worthless" is a broad-stroke overstatement.

However, the Force supercedes more than just the Combustion. It supercedes pretty much every other form of MJ engine that uses resources, all the way from the starter Stirling up through TE Steam, all of the RC steamies, and the Peat and Biogas Forestry engines. And, the Force doesn't do this with different mechanics or a different tech tree, just bigger numbers.

 

[Runo]

To those trumpeting the "its about fun" argument, you are right and wrong at the same time. Yes, its about fun, but thats not the issue. The issue is you are using "its about fun" on something that makes the game LESS fun for a large chunk of people. Your OPINION of fun does not an argument make.

See, a challenge is fun for a very large number of people. If you think they are in the minority and their opinion should be written off, you are wrong and are simply isolated to a group of like-minded peers. Thats why SMP is so popular in the first damn place, the challenge and the risk/reward is higher than creative.

edit: to expound on this a little and be more clear, my intent is not to deride those who enjoy dartcraft. Some people think dartcraft is fun regardless of the balance upsets. Others see the balance upset reducing the challenge of the mod pack and resulting in a less fun and less diverse game.

Those opinions arent worth fighting or changing, they simply are and are worth recognizing. The issue is that these play experiences are NOT mutually exclusive! You can have a balanced and challenging game without reducing the fun level of dartcraft! Stop treating each other as the enemy and discounting their opinion as the 'enemy,' it gets no one anywhere.

 

[MigukNamja]

The issue is that these play experiences are NOT mutually exclusive! You can have a balanced and challenging game without reducing the fun level of dartcraft! Stop treating each other as the enemy and discounting their opinion as the 'enemy,' it gets no one anywhere.

Say it with me brother : better configs !

DartCraft is a great, fun mod, but needs better configs.

 

[Siro]

Say it with me brother : better configs !

DartCraft is a great, fun mod, but needs better configs.

It has better configs. They're just not available in 1.5.2.

 

[snooder]

Really? I like that part, starting out with a clean slate, getting your first power supply going. Thinking if you want to go for magmatics, charcoal or biomass. I think it's a shame the force engine removes that choice.

Not really.

You still have a choice. If you are pumping lava, then magmatics are a better power choice than Force Engines. They produce more power from lava without needing a separate fuel line for throttle. And pumping nether lava is a lot easier to set up than any sort of tree farm or automated mining that you need to do for force gems or force logs. If you are playing at the really early game and don't have access to a constant supply of milk, you may want to choose a couple of steam engines instead because coal and charcoal are more plentiful than force gems. Biomass has never really been great, and you've always been better off refining it into biofuel first. Which, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, is very competitive with force liquid on a energy density basis. A bucket of biofuel is worth 200,000MJ in a biogas or combustion engine, a bucket of liquid force is worth 100,000MJ in a force engine with milk. Then there's the choice to skip the whole tree farm thing and find an oilfield for your early game power.

And that doesn't even get into the benefits of using IC2 generators and converting the energy in an energy bridge. IC2 machines have inherent on-demand capability, so you don't have to set up a gate and pipe wire system to prevent fuel waste.

 

[TheAbstractHippo]

Goodness this is a fun discussion. I'm bringing up another point: BALANCED != FUN. No matter what. You can link the two, but I actually like the things that a lot of people tend to call "OP". You can have fun without balanced things.

In fact, I don't actually think anything is "OP". It's just a matter of what I like, and how much fun I have. I'm pretty sure I'll have fun with any mod, but some mods will be more fun to play with than others.

EDIT: Whoops, someone else already brought it up. Oh well I'm stating my opinion on it, then.

 

[LazyKat]

I guess I'm too early-game right now (and I don't research deep into the mods because I like 'discovery' as it were), but I find the Force Engine... just okay? I had force gems lying around, so it's nice I have a use for them, but my tree farm and coke ovens seem more useful. I use a force engine to run a default quarry when I'm low on resources, but upstairs I use biofuel engines and creosote for MJ, 'cause I don't want to put crazy pipes everywhere or lug around buckets of force. For EU I'm still using generators and charcoal. So far I haven't been like "Oh man, I wish I wasn't forced to use a force engine for this situation!" It's a part of my energy infrastructure, but only just barely. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

 

[MichaelAbbott]

I would just like to point out to the people (person?0 stating that modders shouldn't write their mods with other mods in mind, that's more or less true, if I wanted to, I could make a mod that gave you 64 diamond blocks by placing one cobblestone in the crafting grid. Maybe someone would find that "fun", would it be included in the mod pack? No. Because it'd bypass most of the mods around to boost and automate ore returns such as TE and BC.

DC was written with other mods in mind, hence the squeezer requirement for liquid force, and emitting BC power. I know the "convenience is king" mentality when the mod was designed, it does seem to me that it was designed for a tech pack like FTB. However, my point is more consideration should be taken (and, whatever you say about the mod writers not being forced to bend their mod for mod packs, look at the changes DC is making for 1.6? Tell me they're not bending to comments made about DC's power..) before adding the mod to the pack, about whether or not it's going to cause such controversy.

Yes, there's "fun", but from where I stand, mod packs and mod writers have a "target audience", and if the mod writer doesn't have the same target audience as the mod pack, maybe it just shouldn't be added, no matter how good a mod it is, without config. Some people are playing with GT because they enjoy a more challenging tech pack and some people will praise DC to high heavens because they love how it makes things easier, but just like some people liked only some parts of GT, they could config it. That's what we need, and no, I don't want configs on every single mod, because some just add content that is 100% fun, but some add content that takes us towards creative, some, like GT, do it slowly and allow you to speed it up to suit you via config, some, like DC, just speed it up in the default pack. It's either in or it's out in 1.5.2, yes, I'm incredibly happy with 1.6 adding configs (if that's true) for DC, I'm just saying, it should have been left out of 1.5 because it lacked configs. Or it should have been with powerconverters in the "we like this mod in our tech mod pack but we think it's still a WIP as to fitting in" kind of situation.

 

[Dorque]

It's either in or it's out in 1.5.2, yes, I'm incredibly happy with 1.6 adding configs (if that's true) for DC, I'm just saying, it should have been left out of 1.5 because it lacked configs. Or it should have been with powerconverters in the "we like this mod in our tech mod pack but we think it's still a WIP as to fitting in" kind of situation.

Sooooo.... since it's either in or it's out, you should have to choose whether it's in or it's out?

I don't understand your point here. "I only have the choice of playing with it or disabling it, so you should remove it or disable it for me." I'm sorry, but that's seriously what I'm taking away from this.

If you don't like it, don't play with it, you have the power to disable any mod you so choose.

 

[RedBoss]

And thus the dead horse has been kicked, punched, shot, run over, resurrected, killed again, cremated, put on display, lost, found, mixed into cereal, eaten, pooped out, fertilized grass, eaten by another horse, that horse has been killed and kicked, and hopefully we're done.

DC in 1.6.2 is different. Vanilla is officially on 1.6.4 and we have snapshots for 1.7. Let's move on.