Is energy from lava appropriate?

[Hydra]

People talk as if you HAD to use lava to power everything, if you think something is OP just use other things to get your BC power.
And people love to talk about how solars give free ad infinite energy, yet they forget how easy an automatic tree farm is, infinite charcoal and saplings (Biogas) for your BC engines.

I'm talking about SMP and how it creates problems on servers. FTB is a pack for servers afterall, not just for single player. What you do in your single player world is up to you. But if you pump lava from the Nether it's affecting anyone on that server, unlike a forestry setup (unless you spew craptons of entities into the world but that's another matter).

I'm not saying infinte renewable energy is a problem. You need it, especially on servers. But in in my opinion solars and lava are too easy and too 'fire and forget'. Don't forget that for a forestry farm you still need to create humus. It's possible to fully automate it but it's not completely trivial, unlike creating solars is. Sure, solars cost a lot of resources but that's not an issue with quarries and stuff. The point is that it's easy to set up a system that, once created, keep generating free energy forever. If you don't agree that's an issue, fine, but that is my opinion.

I don't think it's the biggest problem (if you remove gregtech especially) but it certainly does show some bias. He mentioned in the IC2 forums that he likes to use lava energy and I think it may just be an unconscious preference that does indeed seem to make this issue more prevalent. Either way it does go the other way from his goal of balance, in my eyes.

If he just wants to build neat stuff that he thinks is just cool, fine with me. But if he completely disregards the balance implications of the stuff he creates he should not be in the default modpack (the one we're all still waiting on, *sighs*).

 

[Chrono]

I'm talking about SMP and how it creates problems on servers. FTB is a pack for servers afterall, not just for single player. What you do in your single player world is up to you. But if you pump lava from the Nether it's affecting anyone on that server, unlike a forestry setup (unless you spew craptons of entities into the world but that's another matter).

I'm not saying infinte renewable energy is a problem. You need it, especially on servers. But in in my opinion solars and lava are too easy and too 'fire and forget'. Don't forget that for a forestry farm you still need to create humus. It's possible to fully automate it but it's not completely trivial, unlike creating solars is. Sure, solars cost a lot of resources but that's not an issue with quarries and stuff. The point is that it's easy to set up a system that, once created, keep generating free energy forever. If you don't agree that's an issue, fine, but that is my opinion.



If he just wants to build neat stuff that he thinks is just cool, fine with me. But if he completely disregards the balance implications of the stuff he creates he should not be in the default modpack (the one we're all still waiting on, *sighs*).

Since server admins can use the config files of the several mods, they can nerf lava into uselessness, keep in mind that the magma crucible is there to avoid all the nether pumping.
And since there are several wikis and video tutorials step by step on how to automate things I think fully automation of a tree farm is indeed trivial.

 

[Daemonblue]

People talk as if you HAD to use lava to power everything, if you think something is OP just use other things to get your BC power.
And people love to talk about how solars give free ad infinite energy, yet they forget how easy an automatic tree farm is, infinite charcoal and saplings (Biogas) for your BC engines.

The problem most people have with solars isn't so much the free energy as much as it is how much free energy you can get with a single block. As mentioned, this is more of a problem with advanced/compact solars than vanilla ic2. All forms of infinite renewable energy can be said to be trivial to make, but it's the backbone required to run such a system that gets to people. As an example, why bother with a boiler or nuclear reactor when you can plop down a solar panel that gives 512 eu/t in one block.

 

[Hydra]

Since server admins can use the config files of the several mods, they can nerf lava into uselessness, keep in mind that the magma crucible is there to avoid all the nether pumping.
And since there are several wikis and video tutorials step by step on how to automate things I think fully automation of a tree farm is indeed trivial.

I think you misread what I wrote. I think lava should not be 'nerfed' into oblivion, I think the energy values that it has now are just fine, as long as it is the finite amount of lava you can find under your base.

And if you think setting up a fully automated treefarm is as trivial as setting up a nether pumping station, well, the first takes me a lot more time and effort than the second, especially if you skip the enderchest transporting part which you don't really need (just jumping through the portal to pick up 10 stacks of lava filled cans is hardly an effort).

But again, it's all a matter of opinions. If you think it's 'fine', fine with me

 

[Hydra]

The problem most people have with solars isn't so much the free energy as much as it is how much free energy you can get with a single block. As mentioned, this is more of a problem with advanced/compact solars than vanilla ic2. All forms of infinite renewable energy can be said to be trivial to make, but it's the backbone required to run such a system that gets to people. As an example, why bother with a boiler or nuclear reactor when you can plop down a solar panel that gives 512 eu/t in one block.

Exactly. The idea behind solar panels is that they provide free energy but take a LOT of space and also require a LOT of resources (and thus time) to create. Advanced solars goes against that because instead of using massive amounts of space you don't need any anymore (issue 1) and instead of using massive amounts of relatively cheap materials (iron and copper) it instead uses a little bit of stuff that's just more 'expensive'). Compact Solars are 'better' than the Advanced ones because atleast compact solars scaled properly with the enormous amounts of iron you needed.

Advanced solars try to 'bottleneck' you by requiring Iridium. You either have it or you don't. That doesn't make Iridium hard to get, it just makes it tedious. And people tend to solve 'tedious' by just letting quarries do the work for them anyway.

 

[raiju]

The problem most people have with solars isn't so much the free energy as much as it is how much free energy you can get with a single block. As mentioned, this is more of a problem with advanced/compact solars than vanilla ic2. All forms of infinite renewable energy can be said to be trivial to make, but it's the backbone required to run such a system that gets to people. As an example, why bother with a boiler or nuclear reactor when you can plop down a solar panel that gives 512 eu/t in one block.

I think a few 64 eu/t blocks are more comparable... 512/t blocks really are extremely costly to make in advanced solar compared to nuclear reactors.

You will need mass fabricator/matter fabricator for advanced solars by the way, hybrid and ultimate hybrid both use sunnarium. This does lock them out of early-mid game as I'd say you are well into midgame by time you are powering even a mass fabricator enough to get the uu-matter (6 per sunnarium)

 

[TheLoneWolfling]

People are welcome to set the config values in their own files, but the defaults need to reflect my intent.

I thought your intent was to help SMP lag from people doing massive nether lava pumping operations?

 

[Abdiel]

Maybe it's just the programmer in me speaking, but wouldn't it make sense that to fix lag created by pumps, one should look at pumps first and optimize them? Not essentially create another power source which obsoletes them?

 

[Hydra]

Maybe it's just the programmer in me speaking, but wouldn't it make sense that to fix lag created by pumps, one should look at pumps first and optimize them? Not essentially create another power source which obsoletes them?

The programmer in me understands how those pumps work and why it's not easy to fix this issue. They find the farthest away block, and that's actually the most efficient solution anyway.

The way they work is fine for how they're used outside the nether anyway. It's only when you use them to pump from large bodies of fluids that they require a rather high amount of CPU.

 

[Abdiel]

I am assuming they use a depth-first search or something like that. In which case it shouldn't be a problem to cache, say, 30 furthest blocks, and only redo the calculations once those are all pumped. The only time you really need to recompute it again is when liquid gets added anyway, so assuming nobody pours more lava in the lake a much higher number could be used. Or change the algorithm entirely to pump in a reverse depth-first order. For the user it will have much the same effect (all lava in an area will get pumped), but you can go from one pumped block to the next deterministically without having to iterate over the entire body of liquid.

 

[Hydra]

I am assuming they use a depth-first search or something like that. In which case it shouldn't be a problem to cache, say, 30 furthest blocks, and only redo the calculations once those are all pumped. The only time you really need to recompute it again is when liquid gets added anyway, so assuming nobody pours more lava in the lake a much higher number could be used.

Doesn't work if there's more than one pump (of any type, don't forget that Forestry and IC also have pumps) pumping away blocks.

Or change the algorithm entirely to pump in a reverse depth-first order. For the user it will have much the same effect (all lava in an area will get pumped), but you can go from one pumped block to the next deterministically without having to iterate over the entire body of liquid.

And that doesn't work because you'd have to traverse through all air block too to find the nearest unpumped block. Aside from that, it would look incredibly ugly.

Anyway; the pumps use a rather straightforward approach when it comes to pumping up blocks, which would not be an issue if they weren't used in the Nether. And they should not be used in the Nether because easy and free energy is a bad thing.

 

[TheLoneWolfling]

easy and free energy is a bad thing.

Reasoning?

 

[Golrith]

Just a thought for an alternate approach to Lava Energy.

Instead of it being a pumpable liquid, instead you have a block like a pump that extends a "probe" into the lava that heats up the probe. The amount of heat is based on the number of lava source blocks within a radius of the probe (divided by the number of probes within this area, so setting up a load of these generators next to each other lowers their efficiency). Now, as mentioned earlier this heat can be used with water to generate steam and thus power.
Over time, a random lava source block will turn to cobble as the heat is exhausted.

No lava is then being pumped, no lag from flowing lava, and since you can't normally get water in the nether, the nether won't be the source of your geo-therm plants.
The mods need to get away from the idea that Lava is a Fuel that get's burnt up and back into the realms of it being liquid rock that gives off gas and heat, and turns back to rock as it cools.

A simple approach is to have an option where all lava collection systems in mods have a config option that disable their function in The Nether. Thus players are limited to the overworld for lava.

 

[Hydra]

Reasoning?

Because it makes most of the stuff in most mods in regard to energy generation completely obsolete?

No lava is then being pumped, no lag from flowing lava, and since you can't normally get water in the nether, the nether won't be the source of your geo-therm plants.
The mods need to get away from the idea that Lava is a Fuel that get's burnt up and back into the realms of it being liquid rock that gives off gas and heat, and turns back to rock as it cools.

I kinda like the idea but only if the lava would actually cool and turn into obsidian overtime. Without it would just make an even easier limitless supply of power and people would just mass produce those systems.

 

[Antice]

Just a thought for an alternate approach to Lava Energy.

Instead of it being a pumpable liquid, instead you have a block like a pump that extends a "probe" into the lava that heats up the probe. The amount of heat is based on the number of lava source blocks within a radius of the probe (divided by the number of probes within this area, so setting up a load of these generators next to each other lowers their efficiency). Now, as mentioned earlier this heat can be used with water to generate steam and thus power.
Over time, a random lava source block will turn to cobble as the heat is exhausted.

No lava is then being pumped, no lag from flowing lava, and since you can't normally get water in the nether, the nether won't be the source of your geo-therm plants.
The mods need to get away from the idea that Lava is a Fuel that get's burnt up and back into the realms of it being liquid rock that gives off gas and heat, and turns back to rock as it cools.

A simple approach is to have an option where all lava collection systems in mods have a config option that disable their function in The Nether. Thus players are limited to the overworld for lava.

I really like this idea.... but instead of turning it into cobble, why not turn it into something else? you know how gregtech allows the centrifuging of lava into resources. this new block could then be treated as a special ore that would have to be crushed to powder first, then either electrolyzed or centrifuged to maybe get some resoures out. (less than what centrifuging lava currently gives ofc)

 

[Hydra]

Personally I think lava turning into anything but cobble or obsidian completely rediculous. I don't understand how a centrifuge could all of a sudden 'magically' conjure metals out of lava.

 

[Golrith]

Not a gregtech user myself, but having it turn into an ore, that if you macerate/pulverize/whatever gives you random dusts (based on the mods you have installed).

So, first, get that geo-therm plant established over a RP volcano, then once it's finally cooled down, quarry it for extra goodness.


That would then feel more like a real geo-therm plant. Maybe Good Old Thermal Expansion could do something with this idea....

 

[krasoft]

The problem is that lava is scarce in the overworld, but abundant in the nether (+ crucible method).
If it was just the overworld lava, then it would be balanced. But once you add the nether and the crucible it becomes a lot less balanced.

Given the nether is in the game, I don't think lava should be balanced for only the overworld. I'm not entirely sure how to bring it a bit more in line with other energy sources.Reducing its power generation rate is definitely an option so that it can't contend as an easy end game energy source.

 

[Golrith]

Personally I think lava turning into anything but cobble or obsidian completely rediculous. I don't understand how a centrifuge could all of a sudden 'magically' conjure metals out of lava.

Well, the idea is that you are dumping a load of lava into the centrifuge, and extracting from it the trace minerals from within the rock.

 

[raiju]

Personally I think lava turning into anything but cobble or obsidian completely rediculous. I don't understand how a centrifuge could all of a sudden 'magically' conjure metals out of lava.

Just think about all the times you've died in lava and your stuff burned up ^_^