No name-calling
Quick intro: If you are too moronic to not read this post and choose simply to shout and complain in the comments below, feel free to do so. The rest of the civil, and literate people will understand that you are a total asshole and are most likely incapable of reading sentences with words longer than two syllables. Moderators, feel free to chime in and lock this thread as necessary, if it indeed, lives up to its name.
Also note that this is by no means a complete and objective guide on what happened and why we should care. I did my best, but feel free to comment on anything that I missed.
So. Recent events have sparked the need for a full blown discussion.
Railcraft and Forestry are going away from MJ for their power systems. It appears that after long last, the RF system introduced by Thermal Expansion is about to take over the world. People run, screaming, back to their homes and hide their children.
Well, maybe I should be careful to make this thread not live up to its name.
Anyway, all of this stuff swirling up around the so-called "survival" of MJ is getting some people very happy and others quite angry. I, personally, do not like RF as a system. I love actually thinking about things, worrying about whether machines will receive enough power, or how to properly set up a factory so that things run smoothly. In its current state, with the current set of mods using it, RF simply does not allow that. MJ, before the current implementation without power loss, required compact systems (or really powerful ones). In the current implementation, however, it goes for a different approach (which I quite like) where systems can sprawl without power loss, yet you need to consider the placement of power hungry machines and what machines accept what power. MJ is simple, yet requires thought and care to set up a system. This is also why I prefer EU/GT eNet over RF as well, because I don't like lossless cables that can handle pretty much anything and that require very little thought or effort to set up.
That being said, most of that was my opinion. More on that later.
Now on to the facts:
https://github.com/ForestryMC/ForestryMC/issues/161
CovertJaguar put this up on the Forestry GitHub two days ago. He writes:
Ok now back to opinion. I hate RF. I am bored with RF. RF is shallow and dull to me. KingLemming and all those who worked on RF are brilliant, the API is solid, and I understand that people love their Redstone flux, but I, alongside plenty others, do not like it.
I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like it Sam I am.
For me, the fun part in power systems is the act of putting them together in such a way that you have to consider a few main things:
Loss
Storage
Danger
Efficiency
In a system that doesn't model electricity (like RF and MJ), these are important. Does the system have loss? How do you store power? Is there danger to doing it wrong? Is there incentive to be efficient?
I feel that RF does not deliver on those ends in terms of incentivising efficiency and thought while building. Therefore, I feel that the transition to RF is a net loss for the community. Although RF:MJ is a simple 10:1 conversion, and that MJ no longer has power loss, MJ still requires thought and setup. You need gates and different sets of pipes to make a build work properly and still be efficient. Therefore, I feel that since the Buildcraft API's current implementation of MJ as a power system is deemed insufficient and that Redstone flux is the way forward for systems not modeled on electricity (mostly), we need to consider what this entails. We are potentially losing a very interesting power system and replacing it with a robust, yet simple one. I hope that we do not forget this and that people at least recognize this. Whether you like to just plug in a magical cable and play or not, losing MJ could mean a serious loss for the Modded Minecraft community.
--
This was not my finest writing, but I got tired of rewriting things over and over again. Therefore, that was my two cents. Now give me yours. Do you like RF? Do you like MJ? How could we approach this problem? Can we build mods to model MJ, yet still built off of RF? What does this mean for Buildcraft? Buildcraft pipes? Where do we go forward from here?
Also note that this is by no means a complete and objective guide on what happened and why we should care. I did my best, but feel free to comment on anything that I missed.
So. Recent events have sparked the need for a full blown discussion.
Railcraft and Forestry are going away from MJ for their power systems. It appears that after long last, the RF system introduced by Thermal Expansion is about to take over the world. People run, screaming, back to their homes and hide their children.
Well, maybe I should be careful to make this thread not live up to its name.
Anyway, all of this stuff swirling up around the so-called "survival" of MJ is getting some people very happy and others quite angry. I, personally, do not like RF as a system. I love actually thinking about things, worrying about whether machines will receive enough power, or how to properly set up a factory so that things run smoothly. In its current state, with the current set of mods using it, RF simply does not allow that. MJ, before the current implementation without power loss, required compact systems (or really powerful ones). In the current implementation, however, it goes for a different approach (which I quite like) where systems can sprawl without power loss, yet you need to consider the placement of power hungry machines and what machines accept what power. MJ is simple, yet requires thought and care to set up a system. This is also why I prefer EU/GT eNet over RF as well, because I don't like lossless cables that can handle pretty much anything and that require very little thought or effort to set up.
That being said, most of that was my opinion. More on that later.
Now on to the facts:
https://github.com/ForestryMC/ForestryMC/issues/161
CovertJaguar put this up on the Forestry GitHub two days ago. He writes:
Ok now back to opinion. I hate RF. I am bored with RF. RF is shallow and dull to me. KingLemming and all those who worked on RF are brilliant, the API is solid, and I understand that people love their Redstone flux, but I, alongside plenty others, do not like it.
I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like it Sam I am.
For me, the fun part in power systems is the act of putting them together in such a way that you have to consider a few main things:
Loss
Storage
Danger
Efficiency
In a system that doesn't model electricity (like RF and MJ), these are important. Does the system have loss? How do you store power? Is there danger to doing it wrong? Is there incentive to be efficient?
I feel that RF does not deliver on those ends in terms of incentivising efficiency and thought while building. Therefore, I feel that the transition to RF is a net loss for the community. Although RF:MJ is a simple 10:1 conversion, and that MJ no longer has power loss, MJ still requires thought and setup. You need gates and different sets of pipes to make a build work properly and still be efficient. Therefore, I feel that since the Buildcraft API's current implementation of MJ as a power system is deemed insufficient and that Redstone flux is the way forward for systems not modeled on electricity (mostly), we need to consider what this entails. We are potentially losing a very interesting power system and replacing it with a robust, yet simple one. I hope that we do not forget this and that people at least recognize this. Whether you like to just plug in a magical cable and play or not, losing MJ could mean a serious loss for the Modded Minecraft community.
--
This was not my finest writing, but I got tired of rewriting things over and over again. Therefore, that was my two cents. Now give me yours. Do you like RF? Do you like MJ? How could we approach this problem? Can we build mods to model MJ, yet still built off of RF? What does this mean for Buildcraft? Buildcraft pipes? Where do we go forward from here?
