1.6.4 Liquid Fuel Boiler fuel changes.

[Hoff]

You always repeat the same thing : "I hate these changes, they're for a niche". But do you have actual evidence on what you say ? And don't you have better arguments ? Honestly, from an objective point, it just seems like you're having a bad time with the mod changes.

No I'm not going to find a formal source or even make one myself considering I would have to, to get any kind of reasonable data. Instead I will rely on the mods more people seem to enjoy not only on these forums but most other places you can find players; servers included. Honestly? The mods are easy. Even with these nerfs it's relatively easy to power game nearly as hard as you could before. Which is all these nerfs serve to combat is power gaming. Ironic enough because sfPlayer is a power gamer(read he's interested in stopping himself from being one through force changes[read this is an opinion]).

You should just chill out and go play with other mods. If you hate the BC family and IC2 so much, you shouldn't care about what they become. Besides, Alblaka probably doesn't care about the mod anymore and went on with his life, soooo...

Believe me I won't be when I get around to 1.6. I won't be going anywhere near the mods.

Sooooo .... he could still come back tell them to screw off and remove the changes.

PS : calling changes "shit" isn't right. You don't like them, but that doesn't mean they are shit. Obviously a lot of people here either like it, or deal with it, changing their habits. Refreshing ways to play FTB is a good thing in my opinion

"Shit" in that sentence was synonymous with "stuff" merely a harsher tone. Forcing people to "deal with it" is not refreshing. Players should want to play and use the mechanics. It is a game after all.

 

[zilvarwolf]

Refreshing ways to play FTB is a good thing in my opinion

Just curious: in as much detail as you can spare, what is refreshing about the changes to BC, Railcraft, and/or IC2 that you are referring to?

I intend this as an honest question. I am not seeing whatever it is.

 

[noah_wolfe]

What an interesting discussion. Here's what we know:

1. People will overreact to changes, despite evidence that the changes make for better gameplay (seen in every game patch discussion since the beginning of ... message boards).

2. The "Ethanol closed loop" compared to "Charcoal closed loop" argument is a bit misleading. Yes, you need to breed better trees to improve ethanol production - that's the point. But .... the multifarm gives you both.

Real world example with Forestry 2.3.0.6 / RC 8.2.0.0:

I have 2 Multifarms, both 4x4 (Medium-Large). One is manual, providing me Rubber, Potatoes, and the almighty Papaya. The other is the Arboretum, farming a tree that isn't even that great or difficult to get:

The Charcoal 36HP runs the base, from the cherry wood. At a surplus.

The Ethanol 36HP runs a pair of turbines for my IC2 ore processing (whether semi-fluids would be more efficient is unlikely, but I haven't tested - they should now be equal to the Biogen).

In addition to the boiler, the Ethanol is filling a pair of Biogens.... and the fuel behind all of this is still at a surplus and increasing. I could easily run another solid boiler if I needed .... I'm not sure how much more "closed loop" you want. It is still infinite free energy, costing nothing more than a handful of fertilizer.

The sky isn't falling, really. If anything, the fuel balance is saving me materials on another storage disk.

 

[Sarda]

What an interesting discussion. Here's what we know:

1. People will overreact to changes, despite evidence that the changes make for better gameplay (seen in every game patch discussion since the beginning of ... message boards).

2. The "Ethanol closed loop" compared to "Charcoal closed loop" argument is a bit misleading. Yes, you need to breed better trees to improve ethanol production - that's the point. But .... the multifarm gives you both.

Real world example with Forestry 2.3.0.6 / RC 8.2.0.0:

I have 2 Multifarms, both 4x4 (Medium-Large). One is manual, providing me Rubber, Potatoes, and the almighty Papaya. The other is the Arboretum, farming a tree that isn't even that great or difficult to get:

View attachment 8199

The Charcoal 36HP runs the base, from the cherry wood. At a surplus.

The Ethanol 36HP runs a pair of turbines for my IC2 ore processing (whether semi-fluids would be more efficient is unlikely, but I haven't tested - they should now be equal to the Biogen).

In addition to the boiler, the Ethanol is filling a pair of Biogens.... and the fuel behind all of this is still at a surplus and increasing. I could easily run another solid boiler if I needed .... I'm not sure how much more "closed loop" you want. It is still infinite free energy, costing nothing more than a handful of fertilizer.

View attachment 8200

The sky isn't falling, really. If anything, the fuel balance is saving me materials on another storage disk.

But why even bother making the Ethanol, tree breeding, fruit juice, the garbage multifarms ect. You could just put down a MFR planter/harvester with some jungle tree saplings and you'd have all the charcoal you needed with none of the effort for 1/10th the power used and that's considered fair and balanced.

 

[PierceSG]

Even though I myself doesn't use any of those liquid fuel (not even lava, I prefer charcoal), I too do find the nerfs are a little over the top.

The amount of infrastructure you need for fueling liquid boilers when compared to solid fueled boilers is just unreal. Multiple steel tanks, tree breeding effort, multifarm with fertilizer, either you go out and find apatite or use a MFR sewage + composter + some auto-crafting device, I might have missed out some more devices but it is too much work when you compare it to the solid fuel alternative.

 

[noah_wolfe]

But why even bother making the Ethanol, tree breeding, fruit juice, the garbage multifarms ect. You could just put down a MFR planter/harvester with some jungle tree saplings and you'd have all the charcoal you needed with none of the effort for 1/10th the power used and that's considered fair and balanced.

Well that's simple .. I enjoy Forestry (which you clearly don't). The power isn't necessarily a means to an end. If it is for you, by all means, make and burn charcoal by any number of numerous methods possible. But in that case, it wouldn't exactly make sense to complain about Ethanol.

As for the complaint on Fuel / Oil, that's a different story - I agree that resource didn't need quartered due to its scarcity (barring cheesing up a Myst ocean full of it) but oh well. A better solution there would be to disallow Mystcraft to generate oceans of it, and return its value to normal.

 

[Hoff]

As for the complaint on Fuel / Oil, that's a different story - I agree that resource didn't need quartered due to its scarcity (barring cheesing up a Myst ocean full of it) but oh well. A better solution there would be to disallow Mystcraft to generate oceans of it, and return its value to normal.

If mystcraft is their main reason for the nerf they're idiots anyway.

 

[Yusunoha]

But why even bother making the Ethanol, tree breeding, fruit juice, the garbage multifarms ect. You could just put down a MFR planter/harvester with some jungle tree saplings and you'd have all the charcoal you needed with none of the effort for 1/10th the power used and that's considered fair and balanced.

because people have their own opinions. some people like to take the easy way of doing things, others like a more challenging way of doing things
when you compare MFR with Forestry, MFR is the easyway, and Forestry is the challenging way. both are good at what they do, people just have their own opinions on them

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

The core of the problem here for me is that the massive effort of setting up the liquid boilers now produces less power than the tiny effort required to set up a solid fuel boiler. I'm on 1.5 (so pre-nerf) with an SC2 treefarm. The charcoal I get from this is running 4 36HP boilers and the entire infrastructure I needed for it was to place steam ovens next to the boilers. That's it...

Once converted to ethanol the saplings produced from this treefarm are barely enough to run one 36HP boiler but the infrastructure required for that is 2 iron tanks, 3 stills, fertilizer autocrafting, 3 fermenters and a constant power draw. The simple fact is that more effort/infrastructure should yield more power. I like the fact that tree-breeding results in higher ethanol content (more effort=more power) and in this view the 1.6 nerf is a good thing, forces you to do something to get large amounts of power.

However this has to be balanced against the solid fuel boilers first!!! This nerf has indeed made liquid boilers completely useless compared to their charcoal cousins. Instead of standardizing the liquid fuels first, charcoal should have been dropped to a 1/4 of it's value and then the liquid stuff adjusted to that. The simple fact is that solid fuels require less effort therefore should produce less power than the liquids.

 

[desht]

just a quick and simple stupid question from me, but are you using the spectacles?

Yes, I am. Got a bunch more saplings yesterday, still no willows though.

 

[noah_wolfe]

However this has to be balanced against the solid fuel boilers first!!! This nerf has indeed made liquid boilers completely useless compared to their charcoal cousins. Instead of standardizing the liquid fuels first, charcoal should have been dropped to a 1/4 of it's value and then the liquid stuff adjusted to that. The simple fact is that solid fuels require less effort therefore should produce less power than the liquids.

Sure, CJ could nerf the value of charcoal in the boiler as well. To what end? Expanding a tree farm to handle the burn rate is a trivial exercise, and then you have the issue of diminishing the intended efficiency of a boiler over a standard engine setup. The problem with looking at liquid in comparison is that Forestry is giving you a second renewable free energy source from the same resource (trees). I think its fine to demand infrastructure to gain that second fuel, personally.

Again, in traditional oil rig setups, I believe the continued effort in harvesting oil and creating fuel warrants top-of-the-power-chain efficiency and should get a second look. But I don't agree Ethanol should be part of that discussion. Apples and oranges. Or papayas.

 

[hotblack desiato]

currently I'm playing with 1.5.2 and a small modpack containing mods like IC2, TE, RC, BC, MFR and a few others (no forestry), and in order to prevent spoiling my fun with this world: no automated mining (quarry, miner, exception: RC-tunnelbore, because that's a side effect that it can mine) and no teleporting stuff around (means no tesseract, and therefore no netherlava).

I have a few oil wells around, and I might set up a way to get oil to my base, but therefore I need a railway (I have already a few for other purposes), and one

so, by not teleporting oil around, I just can't get such a huge amount of oil into my base. on the other hand, I run a IC2-reactor together with the proper shielding made of reinforced stone in my base.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Sure, CJ could nerf the value of charcoal in the boiler as well. To what end? Expanding a tree farm to handle the burn rate is a trivial exercise, and then you have the issue of diminishing the intended efficiency of a boiler over a standard engine setup. The problem with looking at liquid in comparison is that Forestry is giving you a second renewable free energy source from the same resource (trees). I think its fine to demand infrastructure to gain that second fuel, personally.

Again, in traditional oil rig setups, I believe the continued effort in harvesting oil and creating fuel warrants top-of-the-power-chain efficiency and should get a second look. But I don't agree Ethanol should be part of that discussion. Apples and oranges. Or papayas.

I just personally think the amount of HP boilers you can run off a simple tree farm is just way too high. I concede the point about seeing the Ethanol as a secondary 'extra''fuel though. Never thought about it that way, always used my treefarms for ethanol and just stored the wood before this world The nerf on fuel I can only imagine is due to Mystcraft oil ages and is completely and utterly retarded, fuel boilers finally gave a use for oil again and in one hit it's been made useless.

 

[zilvarwolf]

I just personally think the amount of HP boilers you can run off a simple tree farm is just way too high. I concede the point about seeing the Ethanol as a secondary 'extra''fuel though. Never thought about it that way, always used my treefarms for ethanol and just stored the wood before this world The nerf on fuel I can only imagine is due to Mystcraft oil ages and is completely and utterly retarded, fuel boilers finally gave a use for oil again and in one hit it's been made useless.

Omnicron actually covered the fuel issue in an earlier reply and his answer is probably more correct than Mystcraft.

Oil used to be rare. Oil is not rare anymore. You still have to pick up and move those pumps, but you will easily find new sources of fuel on any given world...and if you happen to find one of BC's own Oil Field biomes, you're set for months (real months, chunkloaded) with the old values.

 

[Sarda]

Omnicron actually covered the fuel issue in an earlier reply and his answer is probably more correct than Mystcraft.

Oil used to be rare. Oil is not rare anymore. You still have to pick up and move those pumps, but you will easily find new sources of fuel on any given world...and if you happen to find one of BC's own Oil Field biomes, you're set for months (real months, chunkloaded) with the old values.

At the rate you using oil now your constantly moving pumps even if you do find a oilfield there so much more babysitting in the Fuel system then there used to be that the Oil Ocean really feels like the only real alternative if you can actually make one (and this isn't the greatest idea either because your looking at lots of CPU/Server lag from all the moving liquid animations when you drain huge areas out like when water fills in quarries.). Not to mention this only works for either example under the assumption you have Liquid Tesseracts, lots of them, at the ready and we don't even have a working TE atm. So under the current system your not only moving pumps, your moving the oil manually as well and in such large amount that's incredibly difficult.

 

[zilvarwolf]

At the rate you using oil now your constantly moving pumps even if you do find a oilfield there so much more babysitting in the Fuel system then there used to be that the Oil Ocean really feels like the only real alternative if you can actually make one (and this isn't the greatest idea either because your looking at lots of CPU/Server lag from all the moving liquid animations when you drain huge areas out like when water fills in quarries.). Not to mention this only works for either example under the assumption you have Liquid Tesseracts, lots of them, at the ready and we don't even have a working TE atm. So under the current system your not only moving pumps, your moving the oil manually as well and in such large amount that's incredibly difficult.

I don't use liquid tesseracts for liquid transport. I use ender tanks. EnderStorage is already ported to 1.6.4, so that's not much of an issue. (for that matter, I wouldn't use railcraft tanks for anything other than prepping a boiler...those ender tanks move liquid plenty fast, but ymmv)

You've obviously got a more massive infrastructure than I'd care to try to support. A single oil spout lasts me for a very, very long time. An oil FIELD might as well last forever.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

At the rate you using oil now your constantly moving pumps even if you do find a oilfield there so much more babysitting in the Fuel system then there used to be that the Oil Ocean really feels like the only real alternative if you can actually make one (and this isn't the greatest idea either because your looking at lots of CPU/Server lag from all the moving liquid animations when you drain huge areas out like when water fills in quarries.). Not to mention this only works for either example under the assumption you have Liquid Tesseracts, lots of them, at the ready and we don't even have a working TE atm. So under the current system your not only moving pumps, your moving the oil manually as well and in such large amount that's incredibly difficult.

Agreed, with all the set up required even without having to move pumps oil should be pretty much a fire and forget. Again my basic point of more effort=more power is not being applied, you have to put a LOT more effort in(moving pumps, massive flow rates) to get a lot less power out... That's shitty balancing

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Too be honest- regardless of how common/rare it is, fuel fields and spouts are non-renewable. Where's ethanol you just plop it down and go.
(I know theres other renewable sources, but those take a fair bit to setup)

What I'm saying is the balancing would work a lot better in the refining of oil to fuel.
(be honest- the relative cost of a refinery now is trivial compared to when it was first added)

Bascially keep fuel values the same, but drop the 1:1 oil-fuel processing. (refinery gives 4:1- the 'same' nerf)

Then the upgrade of advanced distillation giving higher efficiency, or the option of purifying fuel for a cleaner burn (giving 4x the energy per 'clean' fuel bucket)​

 

[MigukNamja]

Note this nerf is neither permanent nor imminent. Any of the following could happen:

1. Player, CJ, and/or Sengir reconsider this change entirely or else re-implement it differently
2. Mod pack makers/assemblers like FTB, Tekkit, Slowpoke, DW20, Resonant Rise, etc.,. use different values in the config file to fully or partially roll back this nerf
3. Server admins and/or players perform the above function

#2 and #3 are great examples of why we have configs. But, in the mean-time, what we are doing in this thread is constructive. We're debating the merit of the change and discussing ways to adjust to it.

 

[Sarda]

Note this nerf is neither permanent nor imminent. Any of the following could happen:

1. Player, CJ, and/or Sengir reconsider this change entirely or else re-implement it differently
2. Mod pack makers/assemblers like FTB, Tekkit, Slowpoke, DW20, Resonant Rise, etc.,. use different values in the config file to fully or partially roll back this nerf
3. Server admins and/or players perform the above function

#2 and #3 are great examples of why we have configs. But, in the mean-time, what we are doing in this thread is constructive. We're debating the merit of the change and discussing ways to adjust to it.

1. I would hope so, but considering both Player and Sengir's love for 'Greging' their mods (aka needless complexity) I doubt it. CJ seems to just be going along with it, we can thank him for being the one who added configs for the mods but sadly if he just opposed this their plan would be dead in the water and we can go back to normal.
2. I would be perfectly happy if the FTB Unleashed/Ultimate equivalent of 1.6/1.7 came with the config values set back to pre-nerf values by default and they left this just for the Unhinged people; since only they would like something like this in the first place.
3. Having to go through half a dozen more configs every single time a pack is updated on top of the ones I already have to go, then go thru it for the server and then telling/teaching everyone else how to change theirs for personal use doesn't thrill me, especially if this 'balance' spreads to even more mods.