Is Ore processing and sorting disappearing?

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KirinDave

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The majority on this forum also isn't near vast enough to represent the whole of FTB players(much less modded MC as a whole) in a significantly relatable way. Where you and many others enjoy taking cogs and putting them together in to a working "machine", Zorn and others enjoy getting all the resources for the "machine" and allow the mod to come in for that part. Both are valid.

I agree. It is valid. I just note that I clearly lack the equipment in my head to see the appeal.
 
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Dorque

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Imagine some crazy, hyper-expensive, massive multblock reactor that consumed a bucket of both Blazing Pyrotheum and Gelid Cryotheum per second to run, but produced something absurd like 10000 RF/t. It would be awesome to behold and incredibly hard to set up.

The problem there is that we're right back to staring the balance problem in the face. After a certain point, resources are trivial, no matter how many are required, but to make a hugely expensive/complex machine means that you also have to give that device equivalent value; that is to say, whatever I am making has to have a concomitant return on investment, or I just won't be making it... and the kind of ROI you would need at that point just adds to the problem. You think people cry "OP" now...

I agree. It is valid. I just note that I clearly lack the equipment in my head to see the appeal.
I lack the equipment in my head to see the appeal of guys, yet I am given to understand that, to many people, it is a thing ;)
 

zorn

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Sorry but that thread is a bit meh as a source. The best thing to site would have been that Ultimate is still the most downloaded pack on the FTB launcher. One might argue though that's due to the amount of time it's been around. Neither answer is strictly telling of what most people prefer.

The really telling evidence is that the TPPI pack is repeatedly referenced to being ultimate, AND the pack is basically similar to all other FTB packs... and has gregtech. Its really the main difference, and every thread about it has lots of discussion about gregtech specifically. And to be honest, people dont want it to be too hardcore. They want a more fun gregtech. Like ultimate had.



My suggestion for this, for now, would to be gathering like minded, determined people that are willing to work on that together. Each person that you're able to gather would cut the load by a large amount. There are also those that you might be able to ask help from without them being involved in the development of the pack.


E: That was quite a bit of text e.e

Im just adding gregtech to a pack and starting from there. After messing around with magic farm for days and spending days before that looking at mods and packs, I really think the issue is just to change 3 main mods. Add Gregtech. Remove EE3. Remove Computercraft. In one stroke you have a massive balance shift, but most players are happy. The 4 people on my server have crazily different playstyles, and I could not figure out how to make them all happy. JUST changing these three mods to the DW20 pack does about 95% of what I wanted to do. Instead of spending all next week trying to make a perfect pack, im going with this so we can just start playing again.
 

Aidan

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AE and late-game thermal expansion (optimal power and ore processing) and late-game MFR are superior in complexity and depth to most of the modern GT content. What they do not require more of is brute resources. Which is the most agonizing, silly, bruteforce and uninspired mechanic out there.

What I don't get is why people crave that. They seem deeply in need of a good slap to the face when it comes to resources. "Come back after my machine has run for 600 hours and you have about 5000 redstone, kid." Zorn seems to want this, and I cannot even begin to speculate on why. I simply know I would find it deeply unsatisfying. The way he describes his game makes me thing only of the most tedious and monotonous parts of Minecraft and none of the parts I sincerely enjoy.

I also see that evidently I am in his sig as someone lamenting the lack of balance w/ Mekanism, and I'm somewhat irritated that this point is being used to try and prop up the argument. Balance does matter, inasmuch as some players cannot help themselves. But the problem w/ Mekanism is related to design flaws in power consumption models and a first cut of a new mining mechanic that the author admits is not correctly balanced right now. He agrees that it needs to be changed, and even asked me to rebalance it for him (I actually have commit rights to Mekanism's repo, though I have not exercised it yet). My

Balance is a matter of opinion, but it's a matter of opinion about what is fun. The majority opinion on these forums is that building big, complex, perhaps unique things is what's fun. Zorn seems to think that building something that simply time consuming is fun (since the mods he claims to add stress the addition of signifiant time investments).

KirinDave, I just want to make clear that I did not ask you to rebalance these new mechanics for me, I simply suggested that you push your own changes since you had some pretty decent ideas. Commit rights are also not anything to brag about :)

In regard to design flaws, I actually don't see problems at the moment. I have both lowered speed and bumped up the power requirement many times of the Digital Miner, so many times that several users complained that it was becoming too expensive to maintain. In the long run, you can still edit the config files which allow you to change the effect upgrades have and how much energy is required for the miner (or any other machine) to operate. As these configs are forced by the server, I think balance is really not an issue anymore.

Aside from this...I haven't read any other responses in this thread, so the OP's questions may have already been answered. However, I would just like to say that ore processing and sorting are most certainly not disappearing from my line of sight; Mekanism's newest additions all revolve around advanced means of ore processing that are balanced by contraptions revolving around complex chemistry that I don't even understand. The day ore processing dies is the day Mekanism dies.

Zenthon_127, you're very right about Mekanism being weak late-game, and I can guarantee this is at the top of my list right now. In the meantime, enjoy the balloons!
 
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Zenthon_127

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Zenthon_127, you're very right about Mekanism being weak late-game, and I can guarantee this is at the top of my list right now. In the meantime, enjoy the balloons!
I almost fell out of my chair from the balloons lol. That's just awesome.

It's really not that Mek is weak late-game per say. Having the title of "most powerful furnace" kinda automatically rules that out, and actually Mek is pretty much even with TE3 in most regards (combined, they pretty much cover all bases in our current top tier for needs). The point I was getting to is that, well, frankly there aren't any tech mods aside from 1.4 GT (and even then, it was still GT) that have truly reached that mythical state of "hyper-late game". Magic mods have done it many times now, with EE2, Blood Magic and now TTKami (I maintain that if you actually completed every piece of TC4 research and have dozens of Nether Stars lying around, you deserve stuff that powerful). I also doubt we'll be able to pull this off in just a flat tech mod such as Mekanism or Thermal Expansion, but in a serious add-on like Thaumic Tinker or GregTech.

The question is: can someone pull off that level of power without going full Steve's Carts on us?
 

zorn

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I agree. It is valid. I just note that I clearly lack the equipment in my head to see the appeal.
I lack the appeal of Rube Goldberg machines. But hey if you enjoy them, go ahead.

For me its fun because it makes you need 'more'. My players used hand mining with TiC tools. So... no power needs. Ive said it 100 times here I think... one guy ran his base off of one multifarm on the saplings alone. he put the wood into a DSU. He had a full mps suit and processed all the stuff he needed on just a few biogas engines. No quarry, no real power need. TiC hammer and a turtle was all he needed.

A quarry makes you need to jump up in power. If the power needs to process the stuff is low, then you can set up 3 combustion engines, run teh quarry fairly well, then shut if off and process everything on just those 3 engines. You can get a TON of resources with just 3 combustion engines, id say 1 quarry per day. Outside of gregtech... no need to even run a quarry per day outside of making iron towers or gold block houses.

So if the resource requirements go up, you need to keep the quarry going AND process it. You cant log in the next day and then turn on the processing machines, ou need to reset the quarry. Now what do you do? You add more infrastructure, whcih is fun to make. Gregtech goes even further by slwoing down cycle times and increasing power draw. Id wager the slow cycle times affect the total power you need more than what greg set for the machines themselves. Power and electrolyzer but have it cycle like a pulverizer and it still isnt that bad. And the real key is... I had to keep the electrolyzer(s) going around the clock if I wanted to run a quarry a day, or start really fielding the more-op-than-any-other-option turtles en masse. Now i cant just run my machines while the quarry is idle. It will slow me way down, I need to have it all run at once.

So for me its just the idea that if I own an MPS suit, i will not get as much satisfaction out of making a rail system to a friends house or a quarry site as I would if I *needed* to. I had fun building, but I did not feel the accomplishment of growth, of improving my world, and really feeling that I solved a problem. I just get to ride in a car and watch the blocks roll by. It doesnt hold much appeal for me unfortunately. BUT if that rail system is solving my problem of quarrying away from my base and solved the issue of getting the stuff back to my base... now I feel good. Its the only way I can explain it.

Zorn seems to think that building something that simply time consuming is fun (since the mods he claims to add stress the addition of signifiant time investments).

Seems to think? That sounds dangerously close to declaring that I am *wrong*, but its just my opinion. Right? wait..."Claims to add"? What are you getting at here?

Ideally a mod like TE3 that everyone loves should, IMO, have made another tier of machines that gave you ore tripling. But one other thing greg does is he adds a lot of complexity. FUN complexity, for me anyway. Sodium Persulfate requiring lots of steps to fully automate and keep the grinder going? Thats fun for me. Forced me to automate new cells in my system, compressed air, etc. It forced me to automate.

If you go back to the beginning of the thread, the hoppers my friends used meant they were NOT forced to automate anything. Unless you call Chest/Hopper/Pulverizer/InductionSmelter/Chest with not one pipe in there at all 'automated'. IMO this is what greg goes, he forces you to automate. You just couldnt do it all by hand, so it forces you to do what most people feel is fun in the game: automate complex systems. And IMO this is why people get so upset with the mod, they love that aspect, but hate the tedium (i didnt see it, but i guess crafting took awhile). If someone made a mod that got you away from teh crafting grid somehow (greg actually does this with the asembling machines that let you automate some crafting) but gave you higher tier machines to shoot for... id bet it would be in ever pack anyone put together.
 
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utterablehawk675

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After spending waaaaaay too much time thinking about game balance, I would just say two things:

1: EE3 is really the biggest issue in game balance of any mod. EVER. Remove it, and most of the newer packs I think will be a lot more fun to play. Turtles are second. The new packs are better than 1.5 by not having EE3 in them. Much better for players like me. Remove turtles, add gregtech, im fairly happy. If there are more people like me out there reading this, just removing those two mods will make the game much more fun for you. Why does Dan200 refuse to offer TE3 recipes with his mod? It would be like if MPS had force people to only use the vanilla recipes. Its stubborn, and OpenComputers shows that many people want something different, and if MPS had acted like CC has... id say another MPS type mod that offered different recipes would already be in use and popular.

2: Ultimate seems to be the pack that holds people's hearts. Reddit is making its own pack (why? fewer people are happy with the default packs.) and its billed as 'the new ultimate'. People post asking 'what was your favorite pack ever?' and Ultimate wins the voting and people go on and on about how much fun they had.

3: IMO this really shows that most players might not want the uber hard pack I might try to make, but I also think they want something to sink their teeth into also, which is what Ultimate provided.
?

The whole ultimate thing is nostalgia speaking.

Unhinged was a gregtech modpack. It was also one of the least played FTB pack.[DOUBLEPOST=1389506188][/DOUBLEPOST]After reading this thread you seem like the biggest gregtech fanboy out there.
 

KirinDave

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KirinDave, I just want to make clear that I did not ask you to rebalance these new mechanics for me, I simply suggested that you push your own changes since you had some pretty decent ideas. Commit rights are also not anything to brag about :)

Sorry if you feel like I stepped over the line, but like I said I'd just use a PR anyways.

But yeah, that's poorly worded. You asked me to suggest rebalancing for energy consumption, upgrades and the digital miner. I was writing in a bit of a huff and it came out wrong. Please accept my apology and I'll edit the post.

But you know my opinion on your digital miner. I'm pretty sure it's "too good," in that in the entire history of modded minecraft only one system has ever come close to generating that many resources that quickly, and that was EE2 power flowers. :)
 
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SonOfABirch

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Maybe gregtech added to a new pack is not the answer, but some sort of pack like Ultimate (which had a big End Game mod of some type) would, I think, blow any other pack ftb offers out of the water in popularity. It had something for everyone, IMO.
It would have to be on the FTB launcher, as an FTB branded pack to do so. Something like Resonant Rise shows that it's not the quality of the pack but where you get it from that matters. RR is of a very high standard (and imo, better than any FTB pack, ESPECIALLY in the 1.5.2 era) but it's popularity is miniscule compared to FTBs because... well... FTB.
So yeah, if you make a pack, you add what you like, pop it on some launcher or other (probably ATL) it may get popular, but it will never "blow any other pack ftb offers out of the water in popularity"
 

Aidan

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Sorry if you feel like I stepped over the line, but like I said I'd just use a PR anyways.

But yeah, that's poorly worded. You asked me to suggest rebalancing for energy consumption, upgrades and the digital miner. I was writing in a bit of a huff and it came out wrong. Please accept my apology and I'll edit the post.

But you know my opinion on your digital miner. I'm pretty sure it's "too good," in that in the entire history of modded minecraft only one system has ever come close to generating that many resources that quickly, and that was EE2 power flowers. :)
Apology accepted, and I completely understand ;)

The DM is certainly bound to change in the future, and I assume some balance changes will be featured as well.
 

GPuzzle

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zorn, please, stop thinking you are part of a really big group - you are part of a very VOCAL group, that's different.
Real life example time!: Muslims are a really big religious group, but you barely see news involving Muslims other than terrorism or Israel (which is understandable in the latter). Muslim terrorists are a very vocal group. Not that I'm comparing people like you to terrorist, but, putten on scale, both of you make more noise than anyone else, and thus you seem stronger under the spotlight.
 

quantumllama

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I like how Gregtech forces you to have a vast array of machines and resource gathering systems. I dislike most of the obnoxious changes but when I play without it ( like I do right now ) I just seem to choose whatever is the easiest method for ore doubling and sorting and leave it at that. There isn't much point to having vast resources when you don't have all that much to spend it on. Gregtech fixes this problem ( admittedly, a problem only a small group of players seem to have ) by giving clear goals that require those resources.

The arguments seem to come down to two sides of the same coin. Those who say Minecraft is a game about building and we shouldn't worry about goals and build intricate systems for the joy of building, and those who say we should have Gregtech because clear goals and the requirement for vast resource gathering and processing systems is what drives them to build those intricate systems.

I don't see why we can't all be friends, really. It comes down to the same thing.
 

MCKerrnel

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Jul 29, 2019
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zorn, please, stop thinking you are part of a really big group - you are part of a very VOCAL group, that's different.
Real life example time!: Muslims are a really big religious group, but you barely see news involving Muslims other than terrorism or Israel (which is understandable in the latter). Muslim terrorists are a very vocal group. Not that I'm comparing people like you to terrorist, but, putten on scale, both of you make more noise than anyone else, and thus you seem stronger under the spotlight.

This is probably the worst example anyone could have come up with for so many reasons and I find it distasteful. "I'm not comparing people like you to terrorist, but..." Sounds to me like you are. Not even sure where you get that he thinks he's part of large group (he already said his server has four or five people). It's hard to be vocal, let alone heard, when it seems most on this thread seem to shout you down that your opinions are wrong.
 

abculatter_2

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You have perfectly described the exact reasons why I love Gregtech. It seems like so many other mods out there are so focused on the 'More is Better' mantra, that everything is just ridiculously easy and you reach the end of the game within a few days and go, "Oh. Is that it?" And then you have nothing to do but build giant penises castles or what-have-you, which you might as well do in creative with all the resources you're given.

Gregtech gives you a whole slew of things that you have to make, and they tend to be DESIGNED to be automated. It encourages you to build more things, and to automate those things, and you know what that means? Gameplay.
And yes, things will take longer with Gregtech, but again, that's there to encourage you to build more. Instead of making just one assembling machine, why not four? Or instead of one plate bender why not two? Or three? And then obviously all of these machines need to be powered, as Gregtech machines are rather big power hogs, so that's even MORE things for you to do. And what's more, you HAVE to do these things if you wish to progress, so you're not left asking, "Why should I do that if there's no point?"

PREEDIT: Aaaaand now I notice that there's 15 pages in this thread, and this has probably been mentioned somewhere...

EDIT: Oh hai there GT discussion right there above me
 
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Golrith

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Zorn, instead of EE3, which I agree makes things waaaay to easy, try the Energy Manipulator mod. It will need to be configured though, as default recipes are vanilla based, and much too easy for us Tech users, for such a powerful block.

I use it on my server, and use my own EMC values (Cobble is 2, Diamond is 78k, Iron Ingot about 9k, Ender Pearl 79k, apple 72 - values based on rarity and usage) and configs (80% efficiency, you loose 20% value in the conversion) and recipes (The basic block requires 4 Naquadah Ingots (rarest resource in the pack), 2 TE3 Platinum Ingots (again, awkward to get a lot off easily), a ME chest, an Emerald Upgrade and a TE3 Hardened Energy Cell). This basic block can only process up to values of 20k which means you can't convert gold. Using the energy containers expands this limit by 40k per containter attached to the manipulator. But each container requires another 2 plantium ingots, 4 naquadah, plus various other things.
A maxed out EM system is a heavy resource investment that would give you EE3 style capabilities but requires you to have done a of mining, exploring and infrastructure setup first. It's taken the server players a good 2-3 weeks to get to the point they can make just the basic block.

For yourself, you could make it require gregtech type components instead.
 

SonOfABirch

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This is probably the worst example anyone could have come up with for so many reasons and I find it distasteful. "I'm not comparing people like you to terrorist, but..." Sounds to me like you are. Not even sure where you get that he thinks he's part of large group (he already said his server has four or five people). It's hard to be vocal, let alone heard, when it seems most on this thread seem to shout you down that your opinions are wrong.
he said that a pack he wanted to make could "blow any other ftb pack out of the water in popularity"
 

zorn

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he said that a pack he wanted to make could "blow any other ftb pack out of the water in popularity"

No, I said if someone made a gregtech type mod with big end game items that required lots of resources and power to make and it was added to a current ftb pack I would bet it would be the most popular.

I did not say a pack I would make.[DOUBLEPOST=1389542347][/DOUBLEPOST]
zorn, please, stop thinking you are part of a really big group - you are part of a very VOCAL group, that's different.
Real life example time!: Muslims are a really big religious group, but you barely see news involving Muslims other than terrorism or Israel (which is understandable in the latter). Muslim terrorists are a very vocal group. Not that I'm comparing people like you to terrorist, but, putten on scale, both of you make more noise than anyone else, and thus you seem stronger under the spotlight.

Dont assume im part of a small group. You have no real data and neither do I. You are just part of the vocal MINORITY here on this forum... a few dozen very active posters out of tens of thousands of players. I offer some evidence as to why my feelings might be a common feeling with the popularity of Ultimate, Reddit making its own pack that is really the current ftb packs plus gregtech. Do you have any evidence to back up your assertions? Are you really saying that a couple dozen people here show what the community as a whole enjoys?