[1.7.10] Survival industry [rotarycraft based tech]

[reteo]

It's true that RotaryCraft is an acquired taste. The problem is that there's been no modpacks that have actually tried to help people acquire that taste. This isn't the first I've seen (That honor goes to the ATLauncher game "Revolution"), but I quite prefer this one.

This is also the answer to those people who complain that RotaryCraft is OP. Just try finding the OP in this pack!

Speaking of OP, in one of the future updates, I'm going to be adding "Manyullyn Bedrock Ingot," an alloy that serves as the gating material for the mad science machines. In order to acquire this material, the player obviously needs to be able to mine cobalt and Ardite in TiC and make bedrock ingots in RotaryCraft. I'm working out the specifics for forming this metal. We can't make insanity too easy to achieve, right?

The mods (or components of mods) that I'm thinking of gating are:

• Applied Energistics (RFTools can handle midgame storage management, and "matter to energy" is a pretty "mad-sciency" thing)
• Fossils & Archaeology (Resurrecting the dinosaurs are a staple of mad science)
• RFTools Dimension Technology (Creating your own universe is as mad as science can get)
• Advanced Genetics (Abominations of genetics are pretty mad)
• Invasion Nexus (Summoning abominations from other dimensions? Pretty nuts)
• MineChem (Not necessarily mad science, but OP on its own, and actual science requires reactions and equilibrium... we'll call this unstable science)

At the moment, this is what I am considering. Comments/questions/criticisms?

 

[gerb82]

so, are we waiting on this for the 1.1.3 or will we add this later on?

 

[reteo]

Probably 1.1.4 at the earliest. I'd like some opinions first.

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[gerb82]

so pretty much it's like in blastoff galgadorian but it's more balanced and only gates thing you can survive without and actually do something?

 

[reteo]

Maybe? I've never played Blastoff Galgadorian.

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[gerb82]

blastoff's galgadorian*
blastoff is the pack
galgadorian is the super hard to get and really important materiel.

 

[reteo]

Pretty much proves my point. But the key here is that I want input before I make the scripts to add the material and alter the appropriate recipes. Mainly, I just need to decide which parts of what mods will be gated. For example, MineChem's analyzer shouldn't be gated, but the synthesizer should. There's no good reason to gate AE's grindstone, and I'm on the fence with the ME chest, but the network controller is especially important to gate.

I was originally planning on gating the portals and sync tank, but the former is instrumental in preventing Nether portal shenanigans, and the latter would be really valuable as a reward for the hardcore player who gets past the survival stage.

Aside from that, Manyullyn Bedrock Ingots require that you make it through the two major mods' progressions (TiC and RoC), in order to collect the appropriate materials (or, at least, make it far enough to construct bedrock tools, a not-insignificant task).

 

[Rewyn]

To be quite honest, if you got to obsidian mining level in ticon, it takes roughly 10 minutes to get manyullium. And that far you'd want to be anyways to have decent tools n stuff. Well, at least I do.
So yea, it's mainly the rotarycraft progression you'd need.
Apart from that, sounds great.
Sadly, my knowlegde of mods aside from rotarycraft/ticon is fairly limited (as in content wise, read: what they offer lategame), so I'll have to trust you on which one to gate

Still got some complaints about the mobs btw. After playing for a bit, I still haven't seen a single "siege"mob. Only things I've seen are a bunch of different kinds of zombies, a few skeleteons, creepers and spiders. And about 3 endermen for the whole game yet. Was even outside for a whole bloodmoon night to level my weapons. So yea, kinda missing the boss mobs that came with InfernalMobs or smthg for example.
Oh, I'm by no means far in anything else than TiCon. got a slime crossbow+manyullium bolts and chest+boots of the traveller gear. helm+legs are usually just what the mobs drop. So I'd consider myself by no means overgeared and I'm getting bored with most mobs unless I'm stupid and run into a creeper.
Also, about the Invasion mod you meantioned before. It was said it has some kind of "event" that occurs randomly, where the griefing mobs spawn. Well, I had roughly 7 or 8 bloodmoons by now and didn't saw anything like that yet. So either the chance is pretty damn low/I'm having ridiculous luck, or something is wrong? Or I completely misunderstood something and I got that wrong? Just shortly read something about it, and couldn't find what it does aside from the "forced" invasion by building a nexus? Also, not sure I'd gate that one. I mean, why? Aside from the "it fits into the mad science theme". I mean, if someone wants to test how long they can hold out after a set time played, regardless how far they are (as in some kind of challenge "a set time to build up and then who can defend longer" or something), why would you want to stop that?
Got some more thoughts on it, but can't remember most and having trouble putting the rest into words
Edit: Oh, what about some mod like Better or Roguelike Dungeons, so offer more ways to find some dungeon loot? Didn't find a single temple/dungeonthing/mobspawner yet. (granted, wasn't exploring THAT much yet. should've found 1 or 2 things at least however)

 

[reteo]

The invasion mod has options in its config file that enables these mods for nightly spawning. This is disabled by default, mainly because I consider mobs that can tear your base (even to the level of obsidian) apart chasing you pretty hardcore... it's way more difficulty than I want to play. :-/ The same also applies for Infernal Mobs and Mutant Creatures. You can add them if you want that extra oomph to your combat, but I'm not going to have them in this pack by default.

Without the nightly-spawning invasion mobs enabled, the only time they'll appear is when you build an invasion nexus, and apply a catalyst to the device. Once the catalyst has been applied, the invasion will begin, and operate in waves of increasing difficulty. The objective of these waves of mobs is to destroy your nexus. The invasion ends when the nexus is destroyed. If you successfully hold off the waves, you get rift flux. I know it can be added to a couple things to make some pretty powerful weapons and such, but since bedrock tools are already available, it didn't seem all that important at the moment. Perhaps a future update can add content gated by the rift flux, but I'll save that for another time.

As for not gating the nexus... meh, I guess you're right. Anyone who builds one of those things are asking for trouble, right?

As for the dungeon mods, I'm of two minds about it. I would like to add Roguelike Dungeons or ChocolateQuest to the mix, but the oregen takes a lot of the chunkloading time doing its work; too much more worldgen may slow the game down to unplayable levels for people without beefy systems. That's why I've also foregone biome mods, despite the fact that I would have loved to add Highlands.

As for Manyullyn, it makes the perfect complement to bedrock dust; once you've reached the pinnacle material in the RotaryCraft progression, then you have to find cobalt and ardite. I'm hoping the changes I did to the oregen made them suitably rare again. If so, finding the ores in enough quantity to smelt into manyullyn should be enough work to make the mad science that much sweeter to reach.

 

[gerb82]

i have been looking into chromaticraft reteo, and i think we might be able to add it and that it will work. anyway it's really cool so that's that. other than that, i was really tired yesterday so i couldn't update. i will do it today and i will also be looking for a way to do it from school when i have some time off.
will update later today when i get home.
back to chromaticraft videos i guess.

 

[reteo]

Chromaticraft is a magic mod, though. It really doesn't fit the theme of a tech pack. If you must, I highly recommend making it disabled by default, so only those who want magic in their game can have it.

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[gerb82]

i know, i mean if it fits than why not? we will just have to check (on the server perhaps) and there is a lot of cool reika mods i found so maybe we will look into that.
and someone asked me about chicken chunks, so yea.

 

[gerb82]

and again, all editions will be checked before they are added.

 

[reteo]

How does Chromaticraft fit, other than being from the same author? Yes, it's compatible with RoC, but so is Thaumcraft. However, it's a magic mod, and this is a tech pack. CC doesn't fit the theme of the game.

As for chicken chunks, I felt that was unnecessary as RoC now (as of v7) has its own chunkloader, as does Railcraft, so there's no need for one more chunkloader, especially one that has no cost to maintain.

Also, I've looked into the other Reika mods:

• Chisel allows GeoStrata stone to be replaced with other, rarer GS stones. Don't want sandstone? Chisel it into hornfel or granite.
• MeteorCraft looked interesting, but eventually, those meteors add up, leaving the world a mess
  • Also, while it doesn't break progression, it certainly removes the need to search for the ore that advances the progression.
• Useful TNT can break progression.
• Territory Zone can be useful for server operators, so I'm okay with that.
• Cave Control is worldgen, meaning it can slow chunkloading.
• Critter Pet is a little silly for my tastes, but okay.
• Void Monster's just annoying after a while.
• LegacyCraft is pointless, since we don't need to roll back anything; we're expanding existing changes.

 

[gerb82]

Ok

 

[reteo]

Ok

What, no debate? You're no fun.

Seriously, though, I'm not completely closed to other mods, but I need a good reason to include them in the game. Otherwise, we run the risk of turning this into a "kitchen sink" pack; that's why I've tried to maintain the 'one block per function' rule. I will consider two, if they're tiered, or if they have a significant difference in usage. But either way, I want to keep this pack focused on a specific theme. In this case, technology progression.

 

[keybounce]

Chromaticraft is a magic mod, though. It really doesn't fit the theme of a tech pack. If you must, I highly recommend making it disabled by default, so only those who want magic in their game can have it.

There is no such thing as "disabled by default" for ChrC on a server. It generates worldgen that will hurt you. It's kinda like the purple stuff on a thaumcraft server, but not as visible/obvious. ... so, I guess more like a hungry node that you can't turn off.

What you can do is make dimension zero not the "Starting" dimension. Let ChrC run worldgen in dimension zero; lets those that want to use it go off to Dim0 and do their magic, and then use world rifts to bring the magic into the home dimension.

 

[reteo]

Of course there is. Just add ".disabled" after the ".jar"

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[keybounce]

So how do you deal with RF power? As I understand it, only RotaryCraft's power generators work, right?

My issue with setting up something similar is the whole "additive" nature on the RF side. Multiple RoC dynamos producing RF can just add trivially. Even without RF conduits, putting 4 dynamos next to an RF consumer makes things that should be hard into trivial.

What do you do to actually make people climb the RoC tech ladder before getting into mid to high-end RF?

 

[reteo]

So how do you deal with RF power? As I understand it, only RotaryCraft's power generators work, right?

My issue with setting up something similar is the whole "additive" nature on the RF side. Multiple RoC dynamos producing RF can just add trivially. Even without RF conduits, putting 4 dynamos next to an RF consumer makes things that should be hard into trivial.

What do you do to actually make people climb the RoC tech ladder before getting into mid to high-end RF?

First of all, when I add a new mod, I go through NEI and look for anything that is a generator or an engine. If it's not in the RoC/Rec/EC tree, I disable it, either from the mod's configurations, or using MineTweaker. I even add a message in the NEI tooltip saying it was disabled for this modpack. If I configure it right, you will be literally unable to use any other kind of generator. This alone should force the use of the RotaryCraft progression.

As for using rotational dynamos, I'm not too worried; each rotational dynamo uses more torque, and I have designed the pack in such a way that there are no mods installed that can completely replace RotaryCraft's machines. No Thermal Expansion. No Minefactory Reloaded. Buildcraft's factory module is not added, and the quarry has been Minetweaked out. Even EnderIO isn't in the modpack. If someone can get around using Tinker's Construct or RotaryCraft altogether, then I consider that a bug that needs to be fixed.

All in all, I like to think I'm pretty successful at enforcing a progression without the need for mods like Hardcore Questing Mode.

There is also the mad science mods to consider. At this time, they are not gated, and this is something I want to change. When I get some free time to work, however, I plan to add a composite of Manyullyn and Bedrock dust that will function as a gating material for the mad science tech.