AE2 Discussion

Zenthon_127

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So, Dire just released his AE2 Spotlight:
Well, there's good stuff, bad stuff, interesting stuff, and OH GOD WHY stuff. My thoughts are as follows:
  • There's not really that much new content, but a lot of changes to how things work. Some are fairly interesting, some are "meh" and one in particular is extremely bad for SMP in its current state. I'll go into all of these in detail, of course.
  • In regards to actual new content, there's now meteors that randomly spawn throughout the world. They're made of a new material called Skystone that's necessary for the creation of ME Controllers and can easily be found via a compass item (do note that the compass can't detect whether a meteor has been mined). Skystone itself also looks pretty nice and comes in all of the main brick patterns. A few other decorative blocks were added, notably a small light (which I'm pretty sure can be placed on ceilings, unlike torches). There's also a new variant of Certus called Charged Certus, used in some recipes. In addition, Certus Dust doesn't drop anymore when a block is mined, instead you have to grind up crystals.
  • We now have channels for networks. If you need a short explanation to what this is, it's basically just a slightly veiled nerf to network sizes, which ends up forcing large controllers, mass P2P tunnels and tiered cables. It does mean that you can set up small networks of less than 8 channels without a controller, though. I will say, it does balance out AE1's massive networks well. The real question here is whether it needed to be balanced in the first place.
  • There are two new mechanics for creating key crafting items. The first revolves around throwing Certus "seeds" into water and letting them grow. Effectively, given time you can double Certus. And by "time", I mean several hours by default. Luckily, you can create machines that drastically increase this growth rate. In addition, you also now make Fluix Crystals by throwing Certus into water with Redstone and Nether Quartz, which takes a few seconds. Only issue with these processes, namely the latter, is that they're nigh impossible to automate fully, even assuming the existence of mods that haven't been ported like TE3.
  • The second new mechanic is easily the most heavily flamed aspect of AE2: presses. In short, to create the old Processering Units (of which there's a new type made of Purified Certus Quartz, only created via the doubling mechanic), you need to combine the base material with a press in a new machine. The bad part? The presses are only found in Skystone Meteors and only 1-3 of the four (determined by RNG) can be obtained per meteor. As the presses have no durability and can be cloned, duplicates are useless. Thanks to Murphey's Law, this will inevitably lead to absolute hell in almost any SMP environment (much like Soul Shards 2 did) and in SSP are considered by many to be annoying.
  • Spacial Storage can now be made more energy-efficient. It's still a cool concept, but the rule that mod authors must manually whitelist their blocks to work with spacial storage will unfortunately probably limit it from ever being truly useful. On the bright side, we still have the Pokeball Dimension!
  • P2P tunnels are more effective overall. The new ME P2P in particular helps with dealing with channel limitations, although that's kinda just solving a problem created by AE2 itself.
  • ME Controller mechanics have changed drastically. The old controller GUI is now accessed with a handheld device and controllers are now multiblocks. Every side of a controller can handle 32 channels total, so even 1 controller is pretty powerful honestly. On an unrelated note, they look absolutely badass.
  • All of the old buses and terminals, as well as the Interface, are now "parts". This means they're placed onto cables directly and up to 5 can be placed on 1 cable (assuming one connection is used for power). The Interface can swap between being a block and a part, which I really wish was true for all of the other parts as well. There's also AE facades, which are basically just FMP covers that can be removed with a wrench. A bit pointless, but neat nonetheless.
  • One of the parts, a quartz ring, essentially blocks communication with the main network but keeps power transfer. In other words, it's literally a subnetwork creator. Combined with P2P, this is INSANE.
  • AE has its own equivalent of a solid fuel generator. Also, external power can only be entered in via Power Relays (not controllers) and power can be directly stored in cells. Nothing too important.
  • Crafting isn't included yet! I'm a bit disappointing, really, considering that's practically half the mod, but it's understandable considering this is a full rewrite. Let's just hope it's out by the end of the 1.7 jump, otherwise people like me are going to be royally screwed lol.
Original thoughts, based on the first spotlight:
Good: A fairly interesting process for processing Certus Quartz, pretty-looking new stone that's basically Abyssal Stone on land, in-mod power generation, subnetwork buffs, cable parts. Sweet stuff here.
So-So: Increased complexity in creation of certain items with the addition of a new machine. Well, at least it's fast, unlike the Metal Former. Controller is now a multiblock, though honestly having more than 2 or 3 seems basically useless. Random meteor spawns, which could lead to server issues, although the meteors are pretty large so this might be negated.
Bad: Moderate nerfs to cables (now heavily tiered, which means CHAIN CRAFTING). EDIT: Channels aren't as bad with the buffs to P2P tunnels, which can transfer channels through them.
Irredeemably Godawful: Circuit Boards, required for almost every useful object in the mod, can only be found in RNG chests within meteors. This isn't even funny. Not only are all 4 needed, but repeats are useless and they spawn via FRICKIN' RNG CHESTS IN FRICKIN' RNG METEORS. This could SINGLEHANDEDLY kill this mod in SMP, and even in SSP it will be incredibly painful. This feature is so bad, I'm actually hoping it's an error or something because there's no way someone should think this is a good idea. It's like the equivalent of TE making Machine Frames require an item only found in dungeon chests.[/rant]
Well, what are your thoughts?
 
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ThatOneSlowking

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My thoughts?
So, Dire just released Part 1 of his AE2 Spotlight:
Well, there's good stuff, bad stuff, interesting stuff, and OH GOD WHY stuff. My thoughts are as follows:
  • Good: A fairly interesting process for processing Certus Quartz, pretty-looking new stone that's basically Abyssal Stone on land, in-mod power generation, subnetwork buffs, cable parts. Sweet stuff here.
  • So-So: Increased complexity in creation of certain items with the addition of a new machine. Well, at least it's fast, unlike the Metal Former. Controller is now a multiblock, though honestly having more than 2 or 3 seems basically useless.
  • Bad: Moderate nerfs to cables (now heavily tiered, which means CHAIN CRAFTING). Random meteor spawns, which could lead to server issues, although the meteors are pretty large so this might be negated.
  • Irredeemably Godawful: Circuit Boards, required for almost every useful object in the mod, can only be found in RNG chests within meteors. This isn't even funny. Not only are all 4 needed, but repeats are useless and they spawn via FRICKIN' RNG CHESTS IN FRICKIN' RNG METEORS. This could SINGLEHANDEDLY kill this mod in SMP, and even in SSP it will be incredibly painful. This feature is so bad, I'm actually hoping it's an error or something because there's no way someone should think this is a good idea. It's like the equivalent of TE making Machine Frames require an item only found in dungeon chests.[/rant]

Well, putting that last paragraph behind me, what are your thoughts?
 

Zenthon_127

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By the way, before anyone says anything about this being Part 1 of the spotlight, Part 2 is confirmed to be mostly old stuff (he'll probably go over the bus upgrades, etc.).
 

Zenthon_127

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Meteors are super awesome, quit whining :p
They are cool, that's why I listed Skystone in the Good section. The chest loot mechanic though is gamebreaking. Like, actually gamebreaking to the point that the mod is unusable on any even semi-decent public or private server (4 or more bases) and keyboard-smashing painful otherwise.
 

xbony2

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RNG is Satan. We are allowed to whine about Satan
I'm a wither skeleton from Hell. Me and Satan are BFFs. I don't know what you're talking about.[DOUBLEPOST=1397256497][/DOUBLEPOST]
They are cool, that's why I listed Skystone in the Good section. The chest loot mechanic though is gamebreaking. Like, actually gamebreaking to the point that the mod is unusable on any even semi-decent public or private server (4 or more bases) and keyboard-smashing painful otherwise.
"Random meteor spawns" is under Bad...
 
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Feniks

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Like:
1. The part that you can start relatively quickly with small network or create small subnetworks without the need for controller.

2. Growing crystals. Automating it shouldn't be difficult you could do it with simple vanilla hoper and some timer. To pick up crystals when they grow and I am sure there will be people out there who will easily solve this problem. With enough time you can grow infinite amount of this stones so easy thing to do. And when supplied power it grows quite fast under 2 min for each of them growing separate so you can just throw 5 stacks of this seeds in a water and be sorted for a long time.

Dislike:

1. I hate new cable system. It will make automating of big base near impossible even 32 channels with controller isn't really that many. Automating 1 stupid furnace takes 2 channels, possibly more. If you have bigger needs and you want to automate few of those + few other machines you will end up with hundreds of cables all over your base. Imagine automating tesseract on that stupid system or similar complex items.

2. Meteors are the killer as well. On the server if you join later that few days after start you will be forced to walk 1000's of blocks before finding what you need and you have no guarantee that the chest will contain the items you need. More over you cannot really start playing with a mod for real without this items. I have to problems with them if they are too rare they will be difficult to find if they too common they will be pissing you off as they take a huge chunk of the land replacing other valuable ores. Why can't we just craft bloody thing? Or if it has to be meteors why can't they be like the one from ars magica randomly doping from sky within certain radius of player so even if you join server later you aren't on disadvantage.

3. New processor crafting thing will be difficult to automate as it has 3 different input slots so making processors is going to be very grindy task.
 

TheCupcakeisaLie

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I love nearly everything that changed, it makes it more realistic (lol) and cool to have 32 channel cables hanging from the ceiling and have 8 channel cables branching off. But wtf with the press crap. Where the flying fuck did these sophisticated circuit presses come from. Aliens? Spontaneous generation? It would be fine if a magic mod did it but this is technology. Not some crap u find in a dungeon.

Sent from my RM-917_nam_usa_100 using Tapatalk
 

trajing

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I just thought.. so each side can output up to 32? What if I used the transvector stuff?
FZ has meteors? I've only seen meteors from Ars Magica.
I believe he's referring to FZ's Logic Matrix Programmer, where you have to find the first one in a dungeon chest somewhere to start making more of them.
Yes, I was talking about the Logic Matrix Programmer.
 

Bevo

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I just thought.. so each side can output up to 32? What if I used the transvector stuff?
Each face can handle 32 channels and you can have a LOT of faces. People seem to not realize the controler is a multiblock. (can't remember if Dire mentioned that). Also I think a lot of people are forgetting about p2p, which I am pretty sure wasn't mentioned in the spotlight. You can have an absolutely absurd number of channels. More than any base I've ever built would need and I have built some ridiculous bases. Over 20,000 channels in one network. That is a lot of chest and buses!

Additionally subnetworks are now super easy. They could not possibly be any easier IMO. They are far, far, .... FAR more powerful than in AE1 and they were crazy powerful (and rarely ever used) in AE1

I highly suggest anyone concerned with AE2 play it and get an understanding of it before judging it off one part of a spotlight. There is a lot more to AE2 than he showed in part 1.

This is not at all like the IC2 nerf. The possibilities of what can be done in AE2 far exceed AE1. It is a huge buff, IMO in that you can now do some truly epic new things and not bring your server/computer to its knees in the process. The IC2 nerf, didn't add much to the actual game other than just complicating things. That isn't the case with AE2. AE2 adds lots of new things, and many many more possibilities to what you can do.
 
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ThatOneSlowking

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Each face can handle 32 channels and you can have a LOT of faces. People seem to not realize the controler is a multiblock. (can't remember if Dire mentioned that). Also I think a lot of people are forgetting about p2p, which I am pretty sure wasn't mentioned in the spotlight. You can have an absolutely absurd number of channels. More than any base I've ever built would need and I have built some ridiculous bases. Over 10,000 channels in one network. That is a lot of chest and buses!

Additionally subnetworks are now super easy. They could not possibly be any easier IMO. They are far, far, .... FAR more powerful than in AE1 and they were crazy powerful (and rarely ever used) in AE1

I highly suggest anyone concerned with AE2 play it and get an understanding of it before judging it off one part of a spotlight. There is a lot more to AE2 than he showed in part 1.

This is not at all like the IC2 nerf. The possibilities of what can be done in AE2 far exceed AE1. It is a huge buff, IMO in that you can now do some truly epic new things and not bring your server/computer to its knees in the process. The IC2 nerf, didn't add much to the actual game other than just complicating things. That isn't the case with AE2. AE2 adds lots of new things, and many many more possibilities to what you can do.
Meteors
That is all
 
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Bevo

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Meteors
That is all
Not sure if this is sarcasm or not. But ya the surface ones are epic right!? :)

Not sure why people are concerned about finding them or the patterns like mentioned in the op. They are all over the place and you can even craft a compus to find them. Lol. What other mod provides a compus to find its world gen? Heh. And like any world gen in Minecraft it is basically infinite. I will start worrying about world gen in a mod when Kurt reaches the Far Lands. (No time soon)

Edit: just reread the op, and he is wrong about circuits. The presses are in the chest and they can make infinate circuits. You just need to find one of each type. Ever. They don't have durability.
 
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