A Journal of a Determined Soul (Infitech2 Let's Journal)

Found a sulfur deposit. Made my first electronic circuit. Next step is a machine requiring an LV hull... which is eight steel plates, or sixteen steel ingots.

Yea, I'm done. Sorry, Pyure. Yes, I know that it gets easier later on as you get various machines. Yes, I know that once I get LV power going I can try to run an electric blast furnace which beats the hell out of my bronze one. I also don't much care at this point. Maybe it is just my play style, I don't like building up just to do a couple of important steps to render all that buildup obsolete. Even 'recycling' only returns a fraction of your stuff back, and I'm not a huge fan of building up infrastructure for just one or two steps.

I'm not a fan of the 'resource production choke point' you have put in now several times that I've run into. To me, this is either 'spend your way to a solution, KNOWING that it will be obsolete as soon as you are done with these two steps', or 'spend the next decade waiting for your resources to get done', both are bad choices. This isn't difficult, it is tedium at its worst, and one of the key problems with Continuum. At this point, these resource chokepoints are almost exactly like EFab's half hour timer on various chokes in Continuum. Not only that... and here's my real problem... I can't really do much away from my base while it happens, because if I go too far away, the whole thing just up and stops working. So I can't go to the nether and mine up some more redstone and sulfur, I can't just go explore, I don't have everything I need for the automated alchemy thing for that method of steel production... this is just grinding my experience down to a halt, and it isn't particularly fun for me.

Here lies Shneekey, Lvl 12 Machinist, who died in the Steam Age, killed by Steel Production chokepoint. Try again? Y/N ___

 

Thanks dude, it was a fun read while it lasted I'm actually glad you stuck with it as long as you did.

Infitech is a funny old soul. Its got a classic GT grindy feel, with a few minor workarounds, and it absolutely isn't for everyone.

I don't agree with the general statement "its not difficult, its tedium at its worst" in the slightest of course. This is the standard argument against a grind-pack. Lots of players have lots of fun overcoming it, so we know objectively its not objectively tedious (nobody actually enjoys tedium).

On the other hand, what I totally would agree with is a slight rephrasing: "Its not difficult for me, its tedious at its worst for me." Which would be 100% objectively sensible. I know for a fact you're a clever player, so its not "difficulty" that's blocking you, you're just not drawn into the existing problem-solving scheme itself for reasons that aren't unusual.

Out of curiosity, what did you mean by "the whole thing just up and stops working" ? Its very standard to start processes and then go do some mining or exploring. Did you not use chunkloading?

And early-game alchemy isn't automatable (or easily automatable anyway), but that's not weird. You'd need buff golems or AE2 for that.

 

RIP Shneeky

This was a fun thread, and you cleared the steam age- which is a pretty cool achievement. In truth you made it a lot further than I would have playing an SSP world.
(I had the privilege of playing this on a server; having a couple of folks to ping ideas off and prod each other along helps a lot).

I guess its a bit late;

Spoiler

but theres a bypass for the sulphur deposit- as the IC2 basic circuit can be crafted with red alloy cable (paper insulation- no rubber needed). I think a lot of people miss it since its on page 2 of NEI.

Correct me if I wrong- but I'm fairly certain chunkloading isn't available/viable early on. Unless you use the vanilla home chunks, or do the Buildcraft Pipe trick you'll have issues with unloading if you're not local.

 

I accept this and agree that this would be a better way of stating it.

Was there chunkloading available to me at that stage? No mention of it was made anywhere in any of the provided resources, and figured that because it was a Hardmode Pack that this would be gated behind something ludicrous. If that isn't the case, then this is something to point out to players.

And yea, I realize that it's a play style difference here. There are those who wouldn't mind building up four or so furnaces. In fact, I had actually drawn up plans for making a 2x2 'block' of blast furnaces to minimize material consumption to quadruple my steel production, then I calculated just how much bronze it would take, and just... wow.

Well, by 'automated' I meant "Having a furnace to break down candleberries, having jars for the Ordo and a Void Jar for the Mesis, and being able to swap them over to the alchemical construct thing that will efficiently use the jarred ordo to turn Wrought Iron into Steel", so that the only real manual parts would be a) putting candleberries in to be melted down (and the fuel as well, so setting up a quasi-automated Alumentium production as well), b) moving jars of Ordo over to the alchemical construct when the previous jar runs out, and c) providing the alchemical construct with wrought iron to turn into steel. While not *fully* automated, it's at least able to get stacks worth of stuff done without having to micro-manage, and swapping out is pretty straightforward. Because screw using a normal basic-tier cauldron.

I think I kind of screwed myself over by giving myself two options to produce steel almost at the same time. Either I put in a metric ton of bronze to get 4x production (which would still be slow as heck, but at least be able to get the steel going for the machines in my immediate future), or I get the aforementioned alchemical setup going, but neither was an attractive option to me for their own reasons.

Also, the whole smelting/converting nuggets thing just seemed pointless to me. Okay fine, you increase time and fuel cost by a factor of 9x. Good job. What did this actually and practically DO for the player? It made them spend nine times the fuel, which isn't really a problem since you'll have a manual tree farm and a GregTech axe that can chop it down rapidly, and a large charcoal pit (I had upgraded my pit to be 9x9x3), so fuel wasn't a problem, it was just a pure timesink.

Again, timesinks aren't necessarily bad, but timesinks wherein there really isn't anything to do because you are leashed to the immediate area or everything stops working is an issue. Granted, in 1.12.2 era, you can use FTBUtils and use the chunkloading/ownership system to let the players be able to DO things while letting their machines run, and like you said finding deposits is easier because they have surface nuggets indicating what lies below, so I see several improvements that would have SIGNIFICANTLY mitigated several of my sources of frustration that you can trivially implement that you have at least considered to be on your roadmap, so I am actually looking forward to your next project.

Also, I think part of the problem I had with the obsolescence thing is that a) it happens almost immediately after the big resource sink/timesink, and b) it is SO MANY resources that are now obsolete. If it was like SevTech, wherein getting to the tech level might've been a challenge, but setting up your infrastructure was fairly straightforward, and without arbitrary time/resource sinks designed as chokepoints, it would've been a lot more enjoyable for me personally. There are so many more interesting ways of challenging players than simply volume throughput.

Finally, I think I'll give one last piece of advise based on my personal experience: Give the player something to do to be engaged while waiting on things to finish. One of the best time periods that I had was actually late bronze/early steel age after I got the diamonds down. Why? Because yes, I was waiting forever for steel... but I had all the lovely Thaumcraft stuff to do. Not simply Scan All The Things (tm), but doing the research, working on my arcanum sanctum, that sort of thing. I had something to DO while I was waiting for my blast furnace to return my steel ingots. It was once that ran out that I started getting frustrated again.

That's probably going to mean opening up branching side-quests at the same time you have production/time sinks. They can be purely optional, if you want, that's fine. But give me something to do while I wait. For example, once you make your Blast Furnace, it unlocks the quest for the first steel... AND it unlocks, say, the Ember Rekindled chapter, and gives you a whole 'nother thing to look at. Maybe include some side-mods that provide some age-appropriate utility that are optional, but give you things to do while waiting for your main quest to proceed. Or maybe it unlocks the start of the EFab chapter, which is the key to production for several infrastructure things going forward, but you can start on getting it set up ahead of time now. Say you need to unlock EFab to be able to make Drawers, or make Treated Wood, or Lava Wood, or whatever. Basically, any recipe which is item(s) plus fluid(s) can go straight to the EFab, because it is ideally suited to being able to do that sort of crafting. And so here's this whole new crafting mechanic that is opening up to you while you are waiting on your steel to cook.

 

Re the chunkloading - on SSP there's absolutely no reason not to get a chunkloader - as I said before, I cheat one in. Different for SMP of course. That completely solves one of your main problems with the pack.

Re obsolescence - I think you're overstating this. You can carry on using the BBF(s) to make steel long after you've passed into the LV era. Same with the other steam machines, even if you've got the electric versions. Having two machines macerate is always better than one. Of course once you've got other methods to process, they will become obsolete but not straightaway.

On a general note, something Pyure said (a long time ago) that stuck with me was to try and scale up every process you could, as quickly as you could. So 4 BBFs is always going to be a good choice.

Even with making components - you need 10 right now, but make 30 instead.

 

That kind of defeats the purpose of playing the pack. The intent and goal is to provide a player's experience to the developer to provide him with effective feedback on the end-user level. Cheating in items not accessable normally at that stage of the game might have made the pack less frustrating, but that in and of itself would have covered over the point of potential frustration which needed to be addressed to the pack developer so it can be taken into consideration for every player who DOESN'T solve his problems by turning on cheat mode...

Effective communication between end-user and developer intentions is also something which is a key point to be addressed for a pack being launched. The developer can't be there to hold everybody's hand, there needs to be a way to communicate 'No, seriously, even if you think you are over-building, you aren't... trust me' to the player within the game structure. This is actually a failing of MANY 'hardcore' packs, and something that Pyure can do to help his pack stand above the rest.

 

I get what you're saying about cheat mode, but I really think the chunkloading issue is a special case for SSP. We'll have to disagree about it.

There's only so much that can be crammed into a quest book, but I agree more general advice would be exceedingly helpful.

 

This is an area where I feel GT got it right. What does it do? Its just trickier, pure and simple. Did you find a way to automate that process? Having furnace->hopper to turn lots of iron into wrought iron would have been simple. Trying to get the same thing done with a nugget intermediary is a lot harder.

And yes, there are "better" iron -> wrought-iron processes you can earn soon (once you get your first tier EBF working)

I agree that that's important but you sort of invalidated this feedback a bit by virtue of never chunkloading. Now that lack of knowledge of chunkloading may be a very valid separate issue, but...most people just ask or look around rather than assuming it doesn't exist, right?

 

How is it any harder to fill a hopper with nuggets than ingots? It just takes nine times as long.

Is there any early-game chunkloading?

 

Because you need to restock the furnace with nuggets (or hopper-in a bunch) and recraft the smelted nuggets back into ingots.

If you can't find a way to mini-factorize it (with extra furnaces, crafting tricks, hoppers or whatever you fancy) and some way to easily get ingots out the other end, you're liable to just scratch your head and wonder why its there. Its less about the time and fuel costs really, and more about the extra-steps.

For the chunkloading: Yessir, the classic chickenchunks is present.

 

So... since you've stopped playing, that means I can tell you that you've been playing the easy version of the pack?

Also I tried playing this pack as well. I have 4 episodes of it on my channel, and I have a 5th sitting on my Harddrive.

Honestly I got it easy, because my base spawned on top of an exposed Stronghold, with all the chests and loot that entails. Upgrading from a Flint sword straight to a Sharpness V Damascus blade makes the whole not dying to mobs thing much simpler. And then there's me hauling three or four villages worth of goodies back by a manual train. And by manual I mean sitting in a regular cart linked to a bunch of chest carts with a found crowbar, and holding W to drag them slowly along the length of the tracks available, stopping every so often to pick track up behind me so I could lay it back down in front of me. I didn't even have an issue with chunkloading, because I was doing base stuff, but a Railcraft Anchor is surprisingly cheap. 8 Gold, two diamonds, an ender pearl, and two Obsidian. I always change the config for no enderpearl usage in single player though.

 

I loaded up my old save for old time's sake...

Unfortunately, ChickenChunks might exist, but you can't craft chunkloaders until you get an Assembler, which is well beyond my capabilities at this point. Also, they're only spot chunk loaders, you can't craft a regular one at all.

I might start doing this again at some point. Step one is to quadruple my steel production. The first boiler required a half a stack of bronze-plated blocks, the second and third will only need 20, so significantly cheaper, only around 120 plates or 240 bronze ingots. The final one will only need 12 blocks to complete the square. Plus the three controllers, of course. To compensate for the charcoal consumption, my charcoal pit is now a 9x9x3.

 

'...only around 120 plates or 240 bronze ingots.'

The Gregification of Schneekey has begun.

----

Sorry to revisit - yet again - the chunkloading issue, but I feel you may have misunderstood my previous arguments for cheating a regular one in.

The main point is that this pack was designed with SMP in mind. I could go and find Jason's references to this if need be, but Celestialphoenix actually alluded to it in his last post above - to get through even to the LV age in SSP is an achievement in itself. Fun fact - in Jason's last video series, he has a player (er ... slave) running around gathering resources for him while he works at his base.

For myself, I found the initial requirement of having to do extensive exploration early on in the game only meant that, once I had found resources, there was a whole lot of time just standing around or AFK-ing - something that I have absolutely no interest in doing (I never build AFK farms of any kind, in modded or vanilla). The amount of time needed for early steel production is a case in point, but there are other examples. There's only so many other things you can do around your base while you wait for your next ingot or your next piece of charcoal.

Therefore, after having played through the early game a few times, I realised that the whole experience was made much more enjoyable and didn't break the spirit of the pack in SSP by allowing myself one free chunkloader.

For me, it was a design choice to correct an issue in SSP and wasn't just 'oh that's hard, I'll cheat'.

 

Just a quick heads up that a decent Gtech axe works wonders in the charcoal pit. Diamond (or equivalent mining speed) will instantly break the blocks.

(needs to be a Gtech axe, as charcoal blocks don't drain the durability as much).​

 

I totally 100% support cheating in chunkloaders or adding in your preferred mod.

Chunkloading is a meta/hardware issue. It has nothing to do with modpacks. I failed in my attempts to reduce the price of the recipe, but if it had been my choice, they'd be essentially free in single player. Players are free to tie up whatever resources they want to tie up.

 

Seriously though, the Railcraft world anchor is stupidly cheap.

 

Oh yes, I've already discovered that, and I'm using a Wrought Iron axe to do the job, mostly because it is the most readily available material with decent durability. Which I find myself needing more and more of to chop down trees to fill said charcoal pit.

Also, in making the bronze plates, I have discovered that I was right to make a decent sized Iron Tank for steam buffering, because I went through a good chunk of it, while production was still going full-blast mind you, producing it all. The Alloy Smeltery was in constant use, 3 Copper + 1 Tin Dust (didn't bother smelting it into ingot form) = 4 Bronze recipe. And of course, the steam macerator grinding the tin (not cassetterite ore) into the crushed ore which went into the hammerer for turning into impure dust, which went in a stack at a time to a cauldron. That was a lot of steam usage, and that was just a single machine each. I don't think I'd have the throughput, even with large bronze pipes, to support much more.

Fortunately, I am pushing into an actual steam turbine for actual power generation which should significantly assist me in being a bit more precise in calculating throughputs. My biggest problem with steam generation is that I simply don't know how much steam each action is consuming per time interval, as that information is not provided to me in any way. However, one can measure power consumption fairly easily in EU/t, unless GregTech changed things significantly. This will permit me to expand my facilities much more easily once I have established myself fully in the LV era.

 

I think its 2 litres of steams makes 1Eu?
It'll give you the minimum power draw, no idea how much more the HP steam machines need.

 

Journal Entry: I'm not dead yet!

While despondency set in when I realized just how much work was ahead of me, never let it be said that I am not a particularly determined, or at least stubborn, individual.

Right. So, we need steel production. To this effect, I decided to expand upon my steel production. And right now, the easiest way to do that is to build more blast furnaces. The first blast furnace took 32 bronze plated blocks, but the second and third will only need 20 and the fourth a mere 12. Fortunately, I have large deposits of tin and copper uncovered, and I do have the ability to ore-double now, and the ability to get 4x bronze from 3x copper and 1x tin from the alloy smelter. At the moment, my throughput prohibits me building more steam-based machines, as they would doubtless get choked on steam, but they aren't too bad for my needs at the moment. I also increased the size of my charcoal pit to compensate for the increased consumption by having multiple blast furnaces.

Completing the Basic Steam Turbine unlocks several directions to go. First off are alternative energies, which while interesting aren't really what I'm immediately looking for. I already have a robust steam generation system, and can use it to bootstrap myself quite handily. Second is the metal bending machine, which is of keen interest to me in order to halve the amount of steel I need per LV machine chassis, which is no small thing. But perhaps even more important than that is a means of storing the electrical energy, which means batteries.

While I've found a few galena deposits, actual lead is surprisingly rare, and Galena is a Tier 3 ore. Furthermore, I have no way of refining Galena ore at this time, other than putting it in the blast furnace for a rather lackluster output. Ironically, the Stibnite is something I've found in the Tetrahedrite deposit I'm exploiting for the copper, so wasn't a major issue to source, the first time in a very long time that I've actually had a resource before I've needed it. Fortunately, I found enough lead ore to produce the empty battery hulls. That was also when I realized that the depleted acid batteries that I had purchased from my book could be put in the Extractor for more empty battery hulls, which simplified things moderately. But now I am faced with a choice between solid or liquid batteries. Both options, no surprise anymore, require more LV machines. Which requires, as previously mentioned, substantial quantities of steel plates. Despite increasing my steel production fourfold, it still doesn't necessarily grow on trees. Which makes me consider the bending machine to begin with.

I'm also considering how I might store the energy in bulk. Battboxes apparently are impossible to construct, poking around I do see a series of 'battery buffer' machines which might be viable, if I can figure out how they work. But that implies that they need to hold batteries, which returns me back to how to produce them. Hmm... I shall ponder which direction I should go while my steel smelts up, but unless some stroke of brilliance comes to me, I'm leaning towards the bending machine as my first actual energy consuming machine.

 

Journal Entry: Get Bent!

Got my metal bender up and running! Finally, metal plates for only one ingot each! In addition, it seems to have other uses, specifically in making of small gold springs which is needed for the Goggles of Revealing! Perhaps I can now produce the goggles, and stop relying so heavily on my thaumometer to find nodes and such.

My manual is telling me to make a magnetizer, which does make sense, except I already have a small supply of electric motors from my component bags obtained from completing previous rewards, and feel a far greater need for wires and rods to be produced more inexpensively. There is a wiremill and a lathe that can be used to do so, but I also found an interesting machine called an Extruder which might prove extremely versatile, if expensive. In short, if I am reading this right, one machine might do the job of many, with the right plates installed. These plates are not inexpensive, but are reusable. However, the Extruder seems to require FAR more electricity to perform the same task than either the lathe or the wiremill, and my power generation is not generous at the moment. Thus, it seems, the wiremill and the lathe are on my list of 'machines to create'. Another one which caught my eye is the ore washer, which seems to increase the yield of materials, which is also of interest to me. It seems I must also craft and use a small amount of tin wire, properly insulated, but I really need to minimize the amount I use, as the current degrades over the distance of the wire traveled.

The other machine which has sparked my interest is the Assembler, which appears to be a way to make circuits far less expensively, which is certainly relevant to my interests. However, this seems to be a more complex machine, and I'm unsure if I am able to appropriately utilize it at the moment. While earmarked for future development, it sadly does not make my immediate list.

My only concern is that if I craft a machine before the manual asks it of me, that it might not appropriately register the crafting and I shall have to do so again to progress, thus making the magnetizer may make sense after all. The component bags are certainly mitigating the costs of producing these machines, so it certainly seems like a viable route to go and will see a significant savings in redstone going forward when producing magnetized parts.

I have also discovered that Cassetterite is quite bountiful, producing twice as much tin as the regular tin ore does once fully processed, although it does need to be smelted into actual tin to be useful. But since I need tin ingots anyway for the production of wire, this is not a major imposition at this time, like it was when I was producing bronze en masse.

A strange thing... in addition to the component pouch and the credits I received for producing the metal bender, I also managed to acquire a Chunkloader, which, if it is to be believed, will act as a dimensional stabilizer, permitting the machines to function while I am away. Overjoyed by the prospect of adventuring and exploring while large bulk production orders are queued up, especially in the smelting of steel, I did not inquire overmuch as to the mouth of this particular horse.