[0.12.0] 1.7.10: Technomancy Discussion Thread

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How to use condenser :(
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I know it's been kinda quiet lately, but thus far this has seemed to be a pretty stable build, so I have been quietly working on other development in the background.

A couple of issues have been filed, which I am looking into and may release fixes for in the near future. Just wanted to let everyone know the project isn't dead, it's just there has been quite a bit going on behind the scenes, and I'm trying to keep releases to a minimum until theflogat gets back!

Morden.
 
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I was under the impression that this was Flogs project anyway. That being said you have given this mod a shot in the arm.

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Bit of a double post. But I think this mod needs to give the other magic mods some love. I have a few ideas;
Transfusion kit: A portable blood extraxting device much like the Blood letters vest but more sophisticated. Works the same way only doesn't need be worn (or you can make it a bauble? Maybe a belt). It will also only take max 1 heart at a time if charged with RF, but if not tbe blood pressure regilator circuit fails and it drains past that 1 heart and applies weakness and mining fatigue.
It's emptied in the same manner as a Blood letters vest by clicking it on a idle altar.

HTMTS (Hi tech mana transmission system): Using a mana spreader, 2 pylons, a focus lens and a few mana coils you have figured out how to make a rf powered mana spreader that can turn mana in to a concentrated beam. This leads to an efficient method of transmiting mana long distance 16-32 (whatevet seems balanced). However mana pools struggle to capture this mana as it would from a regular spreader. So you need a special Photonic spark on a mana pool to convert the beam in to something useable mana. However, there are some limitations to this technology. The delicate arrangement of the focusing lenses don't handle any orientation that isn't horizontal, so no up or down transmission. Also a flat % of mana loss (5-10 or whatever seems balanced) is incurred converting the mana in to a beam but this is irrelevant to distance. Also the machine needs rf to run, no rf and tbe thing stops.

Mana cart analyzer: A cart detector that is more sophisticated then using the old comparitor dealy.

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Azzanine said:
Bit of a double post. But I think this mod needs to give the other magic mods some love. I have a few ideas;
Transfusion kit: A portable blood extraxting device much like the Blood letters vest but more sophisticated. Works the same way only doesn't need be worn (or you can make it a bauble? Maybe a belt). It will also only take max 1 heart at a time if charged with RF, but if not tbe blood pressure regilator circuit fails and it drains past that 1 heart and applies weakness and mining fatigue.
It's emptied in the same manner as a Blood letters vest by clicking it on a idle altar.

HTMTS (Hi tech mana transmission system): Using a mana spreader, 2 pylons, a focus lens and a few mana coils you have figured out how to make a rf powered mana spreader that can turn mana in to a concentrated beam. This leads to an efficient method of transmiting mana long distance 16-32 (whatevet seems balanced). However mana pools struggle to capture this mana as it would from a regular spreader. So you need a special Photonic spark on a mana pool to convert the beam in to something useable mana. However, there are some limitations to this technology. The delicate arrangement of the focusing lenses don't handle any orientation that isn't horizontal, so no up or down transmission. Also a flat % of mana loss (5-10 or whatever seems balanced) is incurred converting the mana in to a beam but this is irrelevant to distance. Also the machine needs rf to run, no rf and tbe thing stops.

Mana cart analyzer: A cart detector that is more sophisticated then using the old comparitor dealy.

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Click to expand...

Seems like good ideas. We'll see what we can do.


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You should make a tech knife. Maybe it holds a certain amount of life but it will draw blood when you are at full health and then wait till you have full blood and draw again and then you empty it into the altar
 
Might want to make the mana transmission laser lossless or longer distance. I'm pretty sure I can get a mana burst to go at least 16 blocks with a spreader and have no mana loss at all. That's not even considering spreader/pool chains (spreader/spreader chains have innate mana loss) or spark systems. If I can do better, with no upkeep cost, using basic mechanics in obvious ways, methinks that balance point was missed in the initial proposal :)

Edit: That's not even touching the warp lens and force relay... because with those you can transfer mana ANYWHERE at the basically the speed of whatever your best available spreader (plus warp lens) can...
 
My mana laser idea is just throwing a concept out. All .the numbers are just place holders, note I stated that if Flog was to implement something that he choose numbers that he finds balanced.
Tbh I think that the 32-64 range would be ideal. Id say longer if not for the fickle chunk loading mechanics of minecraft.


Another idea. I kind of forget which magic mods this adds to.
Witchery. Spellfy Stick; A technological advancement to the mystic branch. Essentially it's a tablet pc tacked to the end of an infused ent twig... It remembers the last 3 gestures programmed in to it. It lets you cast effects without having to remember the directions.
For the tech savvy hedge wizard or witch who's to busy to think or remember junk.

Be warned though, it may not be endorsed by apple but it certainly drains the juice like an apple product and certain gestures need more processing power and drain more juice then others. Utility effects seem to be ok, damageing effects are not exactly spammable but manageable and crowd control effects really zap your batteries. It needs rf to function otherwise it's just a twig with an expensive peice of kit tacked to it.
Also the strange natural power utilized by witches seems to somehow not appreciate (like it was sentient or something...) technological shizzle whizzle tacked to it and seems to weaken the effects. Some are negligible but the crowd control effects seem to have their effectivness halved.

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I like the idea of the improved bloodletters pack. That is something I think we should look into.

As far as the witchery wand, I don't think that is going to happen. Witchery has no API last I checked, so no real way to properly interface with it.

On the Mana transport idea, I like it, but also think we probably shouldn't do it. It seems tinkering with Mana generation or transportation causes some heartache for some devs.
 
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Umm I assume you mean Vaskii here, if so he/she would probably already be annoyed by the mana fabricator that's been in the mod for a while. Even though it requires a big reactor hooked up to it to make it compareable to some Endoflames (which is a good thing). It's still a RF> mana conversion.
If you are worried about pissing Vas off you guys have probably done enough already. Lol.

Vaskii should be fine with the mana beam so long as it doesn't obsolete regular mana spreaders like that liquid mana idea. My idea was to make a rigid but effective way to transport mana long distance, I was originally thinking it should be restricted to cardinal directions only.
Needing the photonic spark to convert the beam was also a way of bringing it back to Botania. Bear in mind the beam should not directly power things and the photonic spark would acts like it's isolated. It's not an improved mana spreader its a purpose built one you'd have to use a regular spreader to the beam receiving pool to get it in a useable form.

Actually that's an other idea, technospark augment; sparks that are more sophisticated with their mana distribution. Like you can tell it which pool (restrict it to one pool at a timd) and how much to fill. It would also need rf per unit of mana moved, but plonking a cable to it sound silly so you'd transmit rf to it with a special coil that would attach to a cable. ill call it an energon coil. If it's not powered it acts like a regular dominant spark. Make the recipy require pixie dust though to gate it behind Elven lore.

Another idea Alfheim Gate dialer; lets you toggle the Alfheim gate on and off with a press of its button or a redstone signal. I mean a technomage is above such things as sticky pistons. (The current workaround is to have a sticky piston remove and replace a block effectively breaking the connection.)

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Azzanine said:
Umm I assume you mean Vaskii here, if so he/she would probably already be annoyed by the mana fabricator that's been in the mod for a while. Even though it requires a big reactor hooked up to it to make it compareable to some Endoflames (which is a good thing). It's still a RF> mana conversion.
If you are worried about pissing Vas off you guys have probably done enough already. Lol.

Vaskii should be fine with the mana beam so long as it doesn't obsolete regular mana spreaders like that liquid mana idea. My idea was to make a rigid but effective way to transport mana long distance, I was originally thinking it should be restricted to cardinal directions only.
Needing the photonic spark to convert the beam was also a way of bringing it back to Botania. Bear in mind the beam should not directly power things and the photonic spark would acts like it's isolated. It's not an improved mana spreader its a purpose built one you'd have to use a regular spreader to the beam receiving pool to get it in a useable form.

Actually that's an other idea, technospark augment; sparks that are more sophisticated with their mana distribution. Like you can tell it which pool (restrict it to one pool at a timd) and how much to fill. It would also need rf per unit of mana moved, but plonking a cable to it sound silly so you'd transmit rf to it with a special coil that would attach to a cable. ill call it an energon coil. If it's not powered it acts like a regular dominant spark. Make the recipy require pixie dust though to gate it behind Elven lore.

Another idea Alfheim Gate dialer; lets you toggle the Alfheim gate on and off with a press of its button or a redstone signal. I mean a technomage is above such things as sticky pistons. (The current workaround is to have a sticky piston remove and replace a block effectively breaking the connection.)

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Click to expand...

Again, interesting ideas.

And yes, we have annoyed vazkii some already. I think it is in both mods best interest to avoid doing that any further.

I can't speak for theflogat, but I don't think I will be adding any more support for anything Botania. Vazkii wants nothing to do with anything RF related, and this is an RF based mod.

I especially think that anything to do with Mana generation, transportation, or distribution should be avoided.

As far as the liquid mana idea obsoleting spreaders... it doesn't, not in the slightest. It is expensive and slow, on purpose. Its only real usefullness is cross dimensionally, and for large scale storage. But, it still pissed Vazkii off.

I'm no fool, I get the message... "This is my mod, and I'll be a good dev and publish an API. But god help anyone who tries to get their Peanut Butter (Tech) in my Chocolate (Botania).". Hey, thats fine, I'm sure we can find other things to do with our Peanut Butter... ;)
 
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Liquid mana would only obsolete spamming mana pools for mass storage and those newish mana carts for long distance mana. It has already been mentioned in this thread what vaz thinks of it.
I think I'm cool with it so long as you aren't able to just pump mana In to things with a duct. And it's just for transport.

Im sure you and Flog have kept balance in mind here though.
Tbh unless mana tabs can't be tesseract'ed you can already use "4th dimension" teleportation to transport mana. I can see an open crate setup on a tesseract dropping an empty/ full tab in to a pool and a timer mechanism giving it enough time to fill/ empty.
Making mana a fluid would just streamline it probably making it a little easier but not by much.

Also it's a little fresh Vass being concerned about other mods messing with balance. What about poar WayOfTime, Fallen kanades (and now incence sticks) despite the hunger effect thd altar gave you, it still skews the balance of blood magic. You just have to move the flower a little further away. Or staunch through the hunger effects with a tonne of baked taters. (This is hard when you have spice of life though)
Way had to think up a new system to make self sacrifice less broken but still rewarding with the incence system. Which is fine as that new system is pretty neat.

I suppose that's why Technomancy is kind of thaumcraft heavy. Azanor either encourages these addons or is at least ambivalent towards them to not speak out against them. Also might explain why Thaumcraft has like a bajillion addons.

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The difference is the Fallen Kanade (and potentially incense?) breaking Blood Magic was an unintended side effect of something not inherently designed to interact with Blood Magic at all. It was simply a feature and ill cross-mod interaction that, IIRC, was at least partially blocked out by the two of them for the more egregious abuses.

These features, on the other hand, are explicitly designed *for* Botania and, thus, should respect the wishes of Vazkii when it comes to balance.
 
SynfulChaot said:
The difference is the Fallen Kanade (and potentially incense?) breaking Blood Magic was an unintended side effect of something not inherently designed to interact with Blood Magic at all. It was simply a feature and ill cross-mod interaction that, IIRC, was at least partially blocked out by the two of them for the more egregious abuses.

These features, on the other hand, are explicitly designed *for* Botania and, thus, should respect the wishes of Vazkii when it comes to balance.
Click to expand...
I agree, except for your conclusion. It is not a matter of balance.

An artificial flower that outputs significantly less Mana than a 2nd tier flower (endoflame) and requires a potentially larger, more complex infrastructure to support (some kind of large scale RF generation) in no way breaks Botanias balance. It is just as easy to automate charcoal production as it is to automate your power generation. And the charcoal will generate more Mana.

This is not a case of breaking Balance, but instead of providing an alternative (not even a very good one) that uses a power source the mod author doesn't like. If it actually broke Botanias balance I would be all for doing something about it, but the only evidence of that is a statement from Vazkii saying that in #rr the belief is that the best Mana generation method is RF. This is not a sign of broken balance, but a sign of users who have either dumbed down the configs, or have no clue what they are talking about.

Much the same applies to the Mana Exchanger. Being able to store more mana in a smaller area, or to not have to build mana production at every site you might need it does not affect balance, it reduces "make work". It is a matter of convenience. "I want it to be inconvenient" is not a good enough reason to remove the exchanger. More tedium does NOT make something more challenging or fun. (Unless your name is Greg)
 
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Balance is subjective. What you deem to be balance isn't necessarily what Vaz does, or even what I, myself, may hold as balance.

Yes, if you delve into the mod then you'll find that Botania may be *far* more efficient than any alternative in Technomancy for RF generation. But that's the thing. The desire is that people actually *play* Botania and not just use a few things from it while boosting/bypassing the generation aspect with surplus power from another mod that it wasn't designed for such interplay with. At least half of Botania *is* the generation and distribution aspect and mechanics. When those get negated or bypassed, even if not as efficiently resource-wise, then it impacts the feeling of the mod itself.

And on the default configs for Technomancy requiring absurd amounts of power, I don't know if you're aware but the current 'meta' in modpacks with RF is default Big Reactors which makes the exact kind of absurd power that would lead Vaz to believe what she does.

As for the Mana Exchanger, I get that it's supposed to be convenient. But it does bypass the intention Vaz has. Botania is supposed to be automatable, but not *easily* automatable. I've *twice* now tried to suggest non-wasteful farming but she isn't interested in such. Her idea of balance is a bit harder than the balance in most packs when it comes to automation.
 
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SynfulChaot said:
Balance is subjective. What you deem to be balance isn't necessarily what Vaz does, or even what I, myself, may hold as balance.

Yes, if you delve into the mod then you'll find that Botania may be *far* more efficient than any alternative in Technomancy for RF generation. But that's the thing. The desire is that people actually *play* Botania and not just use a few things from it while boosting/bypassing the generation aspect with surplus power from another mod that it wasn't designed for such interplay with. At least half of Botania *is* the generation and distribution aspect and mechanics. When those get negated or bypassed, even if not as efficiently resource-wise, then it impacts the feeling of the mod itself.

And on the default configs for Technomancy requiring absurd amounts of power, I don't know if you're aware but the current 'meta' in modpacks with RF is default Big Reactors which makes the exact kind of absurd power that would lead Vaz to believe what she does.

As for the Mana Exchanger, I get that it's supposed to be convenient. But it does bypass the intention Vaz has. Botania is supposed to be automatable, but not *easily* automatable. I've *twice* now tried to suggest non-wasteful farming but she isn't interested in such. Her idea of balance is a bit harder than the balance in most packs when it comes to automation.
Click to expand...

I understand completely, but it doesnt actually change the balance of anything. If i want to power my entire Botania ecosystem off a few endoflames I can do that. In fact, on most servers I find the players build a bunch of hydrogengas, plop them next to infinite water, and that is their Botania power forever. They never progress any further in generational plants, you even see youtubers doing this. There is absolutly no requirement for progression in Botania Mana generation other than a drive for larger, more efficient Mana generation, which the Mana Fab doesnt really alter. If the desire is to drive progression in the mana generation then spreaders and mana pools need to go, and things just wont work if there is not a generation flower with a high enough throughput nearby.

As far as the big reactors argument, I guess its possible, but to date the best reactor/turbines combo I ever built was about 200,000 RF/t. Assuming all the power from that reactor went to the mana fab, that would still be pretty slow compared to a bank of generation flowers.
 
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