Could you explain that to me. I see TE as high tech but have never understood the magic label.
Why do people like Thermal Expansion so much?
- Thread starter immibis
- Start date
Could you explain that to me. I see TE as high tech but have never understood the magic label.
I think it's because of redstone, which has a slightly magical flair. All TE is kinda redstone based. That and it's appearance, block-wise, is more steampunk with the conduits and magitech with the machines.
I, also, firmly place TE in steampunk/magitech tech level. Not high-tech. That belongs to mods like IC2, GregTech, Mekanism, and UE mods.
The customizable worldgen is key for any modpack.
I like it because it is done with care. You can always tell when someone goes above and beyond in their attention to detail, and Team CoFH does so with TE3. The small things, like the NEI interface dynamically wrapping around machines' config tabs instead of overlaying, are what I look for. Maybe NEI deserves credit for that, but I haven't seen another mod doing it. Plus KingLemming is quick to respond to requests and bug reports and even joins in conversation.
I like Thermal Expansion because it was the first mod to give me the option to pick up my power and take it with me. Yes, RP2 did that as well, but I didn't get into that until I'd already learned TE. I like being able to use Pulverizer/Furnace as a multiblock, just by pumping ore into the pulverizer, and getting ingots out of the furnace, without any intervening space. And since I can configure outputs, I can direct sand into the furnace, and gravel for other processing or disposal within one interface. No need for sorting after it leaves the machine.
Plus Tesseracts are awesome.
Plus Tesseracts are awesome.
I love the versatility TE3 brings in term of machines, it offers a lot of useful ones that are easy to use and doesn't require 1000 steps to get for example a single solar panel from IC2 compared to any Dynamo from TE3...
Love the configuration options especially all the machines have a redstone tab to allow us to configure how we want the machine to work and react to redstone or not react to any redstone signal that could be close enough to interfere with it...
Love the configuration options especially all the machines have a redstone tab to allow us to configure how we want the machine to work and react to redstone or not react to any redstone signal that could be close enough to interfere with it...
My two cents why I happen to really like Thermal Expansion 3:
- Very self-informative. From holding shift for tooltips that has crazy amounts of information to descriptions in NEI, this mod does a good job of telling you about things. For example, when you hold shift while mousing over the Steam Dynamo, it tells you that it produces RF and that it requires water and solid fuel t orun, and that it can even accept steam from outside sources. So there is no guessing what items do.
- Very intuitive, and it is faithful to the internal 'rules'. If it is a machine, there is a machine block in the middle. If it requires power to run, it will need a Redstone Reception Coil. If it produces power, it requires a Redstone Conductance Coil. If it does not need or produce power, it requires a Servo. It sets expectations, and it follows through with those expectations. It makes it very intuitive to make and use things.
- GUI. I could deliver a thirty page thesis on how amazing the GUI's are. As highlights, it gives you all the information it needs, the Config tab, the Redstone Action tab, the RF tab.. these things are HUGE.
- It will tell you if you need something. For example, if you click an Itemduct with a bare hand, it will TELL you that 'you need a servo for that'. Which then tells the ignorant individual that using a servo on an itemduct does something!
- Many of these things boil down to 'Conveyance' (how a game/mod conveys information to the player), but I'd like to explicitly state this. This mod has probably the best conveyance of any mod currently in existence. This makes it exceedingly intuitive and enjoyable to play.
- Designed from the ground up for low-lag and minimal resource requirements. Speaking as a maintainer of a minimalist mod pack, this alone would give it a prime spot. Server maintainers will rejoice at how it won't lag out the server.
- Configurable inputs and outputs. Will automatically output to an available pipe/itemduct/inventory/machine. Makes for a much more compact automated system.
- Upgrade system. Nothing ever gets obsoleted, because all of your 'starter level' stuff can be upgraded to mid and then to high tier items. For example, Leadstone Conduit is upgraded to Hardened Conduit. So you won't have a situation where you don't want to build a lot of infrastructure before hitting the Next Tier because all your current stuff will be obsolete and sit around in a chest gathering dust. I *LOVE* this, because it means even my old leadstone conduits are still viable, even in an end-game scenario, because I can always upgrade them to Hardened. Ditto with Strongboxes, Tanks... yea.
- It is not punishing. By punishing, I mean punitive and harsh consequences for screwing up. It might not work, but it won't blow up half your base if you screw up. The setups are pretty hardy as well, you don't need to worry about things like 'machines explode when they get wet'.
- New mechanics are intuitive based on the machine names. For example, Pulverizing is used to process ores, it is used to make pulverized Obsidian, it can pulverize ingots back into pulverized metal... these are concepts which are intuitive because they all involve the same mechanic, and produce something that is 'crushed' or 'pulverized'... just what you would expect from a machine called a Pulverizer.
- All the mechanics are integrated and cross-referential. For example, you need a Pulverizer to make Pulverized Obsidian to make Hardened Glass in the Induction Smelter to make Empty Conduits to fill with Energized Redstone from the Magmatic Crucible and filled in the Liquid Transposer. But it doesn't require all that just to make basic components, so you don't feel like you have to get seven or eight machines down just to start processing ore.
I personally like several things about TE, the main one being the ability to have very fine control over everything. You can use TE to setup either very simple effective systems or very complex highly effective systems and there is the potential to make certain scarce resources less scarce via more intensive processing methods but you don't have to use them. Another is certain "bulk" resources can be maintained at set levels (via AE but the creation is via TE) very easily allowing me to not worry over much about usually somewhat tedious gathering of very boring crap (snowballs\ice\cobble\gravel\obsidian\stone) all of which are very useful but damn you really don't want to have to go mining for cobble and gathering obsidian is easy but it is very very tedious via normal methods.
My server loves TE because I can do what I always do and overdo everything (140 dynamo's in my base currently and more planned) and the server doesn't have any reason to hate me (but it still does I'm fairly sure but not due to TE
)
My server loves TE because I can do what I always do and overdo everything (140 dynamo's in my base currently and more planned) and the server doesn't have any reason to hate me (but it still does I'm fairly sure but not due to TE
)Because we love King lemming..
For instance, because his automation relies on colours to work, that's a problem for colour blind people..
Wrong! there's a colour blind mode in the config.
Just little nifty things like that which are small, but show lots of thought and help out so much.
For instance, because his automation relies on colours to work, that's a problem for colour blind people..
Wrong! there's a colour blind mode in the config.
Just little nifty things like that which are small, but show lots of thought and help out so much.
Redstone energy conduits. They look nice, they don't explode, they don't mysteriously stop working.
I had lots of problems in 1.4.7 with gold pipes popping when my refinery ran out of oil during moments of distraction. I tried out the conduits, and was shocked that anyone ever uses the conductive bc pipes for anything.
Then I tried the liquiducts. Pretty! Reliable! No need for annoying, mismatched pipes and space-eating external 'motors'. I enjoy creating massive generator structures using lava and fuel, and I don't want to babysit my plumbing.
Energy cells. Very fetching, and they work exactly as they should. High capacity batteries with an integrated dimmer switch that let me apply power to far away devices. They also make for terrific capacitors for generators that have long and expensive warmup times.
Tesseracts. I avoid teleporting stuff generally, but oilfields and quarries are too temporary for rail transport to be much fun, and these attractive things are now critical, reliable components of my plop and process plans.
I enjoy some of the unique mechanics too. Configurable auto-eject, configurable red stone behavior, the melter and liquid transposer. Over time, the general design of everything continues to improve in my esteem, always enhancing my game without ever frustrating me.
Everything is reliable. No exploding machines ( I HATE that ), no breaking machines when you want to move them. The item ducts are an extremely well made basic item pipe and sorting solution for most processing purposes.
The latest version isn't absolutely perfect. Opaque item ducts are perhaps a little too cheap for how good they are. Likewise, the leadstone conduits seem a little inexpensive. I can create an ore processing and sorting room a little Too easily -- two minecraft days and a single trip into a deep ravine on a new world. The lack of hardened glass ( no obsidian, therefore no diamonds, no induction smelter ) in the recipes for these basic pipes means they are super easy to make.
I also wish a configuration option could enable animation for the dynamos. A tower of thrumming, moving machines in my generator room is fun to watch.
I had lots of problems in 1.4.7 with gold pipes popping when my refinery ran out of oil during moments of distraction. I tried out the conduits, and was shocked that anyone ever uses the conductive bc pipes for anything.
Then I tried the liquiducts. Pretty! Reliable! No need for annoying, mismatched pipes and space-eating external 'motors'. I enjoy creating massive generator structures using lava and fuel, and I don't want to babysit my plumbing.
Energy cells. Very fetching, and they work exactly as they should. High capacity batteries with an integrated dimmer switch that let me apply power to far away devices. They also make for terrific capacitors for generators that have long and expensive warmup times.
Tesseracts. I avoid teleporting stuff generally, but oilfields and quarries are too temporary for rail transport to be much fun, and these attractive things are now critical, reliable components of my plop and process plans.
I enjoy some of the unique mechanics too. Configurable auto-eject, configurable red stone behavior, the melter and liquid transposer. Over time, the general design of everything continues to improve in my esteem, always enhancing my game without ever frustrating me.
Everything is reliable. No exploding machines ( I HATE that ), no breaking machines when you want to move them. The item ducts are an extremely well made basic item pipe and sorting solution for most processing purposes.
The latest version isn't absolutely perfect. Opaque item ducts are perhaps a little too cheap for how good they are. Likewise, the leadstone conduits seem a little inexpensive. I can create an ore processing and sorting room a little Too easily -- two minecraft days and a single trip into a deep ravine on a new world. The lack of hardened glass ( no obsidian, therefore no diamonds, no induction smelter ) in the recipes for these basic pipes means they are super easy to make.
I also wish a configuration option could enable animation for the dynamos. A tower of thrumming, moving machines in my generator room is fun to watch.
I have personally played with a lot of varied mods and one of the biggest things for me is the idea of uniformity in the mod, everything seems to fit, the textures make a workshop based on TE look GOOD, like really good. FMP puts some of the icing o the cake for that. There are recipes that are difficult without being grindy (think of the liquid infuser thingy). There are really cool uses for vanilla mechanics (actually needing silk-touch for the ore). Team COFH pulls of the magitec really well, with the florbs, the vanilla liquids, the cinnabar etc. The recipes all make sense and are actually fun to make. It does a lot without ever becoming tedious.
On another note, immibis seems rather silent in this thread for the one who opened it...
On another note, immibis seems rather silent in this thread for the one who opened it...
That would be simply because they asked the question and are reading the responses. They were asking the question because they didn't know why there was such love for TE.
Very true, I also hope that I hadn't seemed like I was trying to poke at immibis, it was honestly just an inquisitive thing. Anyhow, at this point I think anyone reading this has an abundance of reasons why TE is loved
.It's strange that many of the reasons also apply to IC2. Example:
I can get the macerator and furnace and have my ore doubling done. Add a few hoppers or wooden pipes and I am set. I won't have the resource output of a thermal centrifuge but it'll do the job at the beginning level. If I want more output I can use the ore washer and thermal centrifuge.
Or just aren't actually problems:
I've never had a problem with IC2 or BC causing lag. Yes, an IC2 macerator might take 50 times as much CPU as a TE3 pulverizer, but it's still not a problem until I have 10000 macerators (or 500000 pulverizers).
Or are contradictions:
In response to your contradictions part, With Thermal expansion, it's the higher tier machines/items that require the 'machines to make machines' type crafting, but for all the earlier game parts of it, they do not.
That's what is different about TE vs IC2 machines to make machines, the early game machines require other machines or pay a resource cost penalty in IC2. whilst in TE it's used as a balance point for high end items only, and not too much either, it utilises machines you would already have (provided you started with TE) and adds one or two machines.
Please quote the entire passage or not at all. Out of context partial quotes is reserved for the media taking shots at politicians. The full quote you half-quoted was:
Bolded for emphasis. This is what IC2 fails at. Also, none of those machines require other machines (other than possibly the pulverizer for Invar) to make. Which is another place IC2 fails at.
Yeah, it may not be your problem, but there are plenty of people who have this problem. Some people, like myself, need this extra CPU in order to make modded Minecraft playable.
Again, in the CPU usage area, a few hoppers that are constantly moving items around does make a nice spot of lag. It's surprising how bad they get. Even pipes get rough sometimes. TE3 handles items in "packets" so to speak saving your CPU another breath.
Except you don't even need the Redstone Conduits anymore unless you're running a ridiculous amount of engines. General setups with Hardened Conduits only are fairly easy to craft.