So i'm watching vids on AE2, I haven't touched this mod yet, and as I watch I really just get turned off from this mod, everything feels so convoluted and unnecessarily complex, from having to find meteors, to growing crystals in water, as well as pressing 20 things just to get one full item. I really wish there was a good alternative to this mod. Anyone else just really dislike AE2?
AE2
- Thread starter Nefroz
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I personally like it more than AE1. The crystal thing is a little bit annoying, but is easily fixed once you get some growth accelerators and chargers running. I've heard a lot of complaints about the channel system that was added, but I feel it helped balance the mod out quite a bit and encourages engineering things a bit more.
The Channel thing doesn't bother me much, other than I'm not sure how complex of a network I could make as I'm not an engineer, but yeah.
I love the channels as it makes you think about what you're building without being all that restricting. P2P and Sub-networks make management pretty easy. I also like the meteors, though I do wish that all the meteors contained all 4 presses. You really don't need that much sky stone for even a large system. The only things that really bug me is the I-sidedness of the press machines, the crystal growth mechanic, and the stupid nuggets. Why? Why put nuggets in loot chests? Of all things, Nuggets? Why not Certus, Charged Certus, Nether quartz, Fluix crystals, certus or fluix seeds, or just straight up Ingots. Freaking nuggets.
AE1 was the first mod I saw that made me say "You can do what?". I was sold on modded Minecraft forever. Once I got into mods a bit and got a feel for the scene (1.6.4 Monster) I began to realize how powerful AE really was, and then I started to understand how cheap it was to get off the ground and set up compared to anything remotely similar. It wasn't an alternative, it was the alternative. In my second play through our Monster server, I had my ME set up as soon as I had power (I had to put a piece of charcoal in the furnace generator any time I wanted to access it, at first). Others had a room full of chests, but I had a crafting terminal hooked to four 4k drives. A ton of fun, but not particularly balanced with the rest of the scene.
I still love me some AE now that they've updated and added complexity and setup work. I find the meteors to be a bit much (they are occasionally cool, but scar too much of the landscape for my tastes), but I don't mind having to explore a bit to get started. I don't mind the presses as a process, as it does help gate the mod a bit. The growing of crystals is painfully slow at first, but it is easily sped up once you get started, and its not too hard to automate once you know how. Otherwise, I like the in-world crafting by growing different crystals in water.
The channel system did add a ton of complexity to the mod, as suddenly you have limits (sort of) as to how far you can stretch your network. Again though, with a little knowledge and ingenuity, those limits fade away, and you actually feel like you accomplished something. It adds a proper balance that was lacking before.
Honestly, my only real complaint is the RNG on charged certus crystal. Sometimes it just doesn't show up. I know I'm not the only one who has mined entire chunks clean without a trace if it. Its amazingly frustrating when all you need is one piece to get going, and its nowhere to be found.
I still love me some AE now that they've updated and added complexity and setup work. I find the meteors to be a bit much (they are occasionally cool, but scar too much of the landscape for my tastes), but I don't mind having to explore a bit to get started. I don't mind the presses as a process, as it does help gate the mod a bit. The growing of crystals is painfully slow at first, but it is easily sped up once you get started, and its not too hard to automate once you know how. Otherwise, I like the in-world crafting by growing different crystals in water.
The channel system did add a ton of complexity to the mod, as suddenly you have limits (sort of) as to how far you can stretch your network. Again though, with a little knowledge and ingenuity, those limits fade away, and you actually feel like you accomplished something. It adds a proper balance that was lacking before.
Honestly, my only real complaint is the RNG on charged certus crystal. Sometimes it just doesn't show up. I know I'm not the only one who has mined entire chunks clean without a trace if it. Its amazingly frustrating when all you need is one piece to get going, and its nowhere to be found.
What I did was disable meteor world gen completely, and then add recipes for IC2 to make the presses using MineTweaker. Having infinite world gen with a fairly significant impact (no pun intended) just for 4 items doesn't really make sense to me.
The rest of the stuff is fairly easily/quickly automated and channels are more or less made a non-issue using P2P, quantum network bridges and sub-networks for storage. You can even disable them completely in the config now.
One tip is to hold off trying to set your ME system up until you've finished a quarry, it will more or less guarantee you have the charged crystals etc. It's a bit of a heavy setup, when done right out of the gate.
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Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
I enjoy having an excuse to go for an adventure, so for me it's a case of "Get some food and a meteorite compass, pack the sleeping bag, let's go see the world". Everything is easily automatable, and for a basic starter system you don't even need a huge amount of stuff anyway.
There's always Logistics Pipes, which has been around for a lot longer and basically does the same thing, just with pipes instead of a multiblock.
With the 1.7.10 LP I found that even with just using gold pipes, the items take forever to got the destination. Was kind of a bummer once I set that system up, and had to realize that it was nowhere near as fast as I remembered it.
But on the other hand, I love the LP autocrafting, I even prefered it over the AE1 one :b
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
I much prefer AE2s complexity over the AE everything which is AE1, if you dislike the seed stuff there's an addon http://www.curse.com/mc-mods/minecraft/225194-ae2-stuff which adds a crystal growth chamber.
I got a love/hate relationship with AE2. If it wasn't for the storage, I would get rid of it ASAP. I was a very big fan of AE1 and I used it in every single 1.6.4 world I have ever done. (incoming rant)
My problem is that my first step in any world (after basic pulverizer) is to set up a ME storage system since I just cannot stand dozens of disorganized chests which you have to waste so much time going through, fixing up, and all that jazz. Neat storage is always my first goal since it makes automation and doing mods in the future a ton easier and more organized. AE2 takes way too much time to setup initally... I mean I literally stand next to a puddle for 2+ friggin hours and watch Youtube videos. After that, I gotta do some bogus like charge up some quartz using some incredibly slow and rage-inducing machines. I don't care enough to automate anything in the mod because you need to go through the slow parts to do that and I do not need to get that far into the mod.
I know opinions and all that, some people like the new AE2. Well, to me I have to re-learn the entire mod just to accomplish what I was already doing before. That is just aggravating to me. Nowadays, I utilize every way that can take me around using AE2 as much as possible. (Also, f*** meteors. I learned too far into my game that I could turn them off and I have at least 6 craters within 500 blocks of my base)
I gotta say though, if it weren't for the mod irritating me so much, I never would have utilized so many of the other mods in my mod pack. So in that regard I actually thank AE2 for pissing me off
My problem is that my first step in any world (after basic pulverizer) is to set up a ME storage system since I just cannot stand dozens of disorganized chests which you have to waste so much time going through, fixing up, and all that jazz. Neat storage is always my first goal since it makes automation and doing mods in the future a ton easier and more organized. AE2 takes way too much time to setup initally... I mean I literally stand next to a puddle for 2+ friggin hours and watch Youtube videos. After that, I gotta do some bogus like charge up some quartz using some incredibly slow and rage-inducing machines. I don't care enough to automate anything in the mod because you need to go through the slow parts to do that and I do not need to get that far into the mod.
I know opinions and all that, some people like the new AE2. Well, to me I have to re-learn the entire mod just to accomplish what I was already doing before. That is just aggravating to me. Nowadays, I utilize every way that can take me around using AE2 as much as possible. (Also, f*** meteors. I learned too far into my game that I could turn them off and I have at least 6 craters within 500 blocks of my base)
I gotta say though, if it weren't for the mod irritating me so much, I never would have utilized so many of the other mods in my mod pack. So in that regard I actually thank AE2 for pissing me off
What @Zarkov said pretty much. Excessive worldgen is a poor mechanic in general, imo. Then, do as he did and either create a recipe for the presses, or, if you're lazy like me, just pretend you're on a server and throw away some iron blocks (what it takes to duplicate them) and cheat them in. I actually like the channels, and once you wrap your head around recursive sub-networks (as well as p2p), they really aren't a burden.
I got a love/hate relationship with AE2. If it wasn't for the storage, I would get rid of it ASAP. I was a very big fan of AE1 and I used it in every single 1.6.4 world I have ever done. (incoming rant)
My problem is that my first step in any world (after basic pulverizer) is to set up a ME storage system since I just cannot stand dozens of disorganized chests which you have to waste so much time going through, fixing up, and all that jazz. Neat storage is always my first goal since it makes automation and doing mods in the future a ton easier and more organized. AE2 takes way too much time to setup initally... I mean I literally stand next to a puddle for 2+ friggin hours and watch Youtube videos. After that, I gotta do some bogus like charge up some quartz using some incredibly slow and rage-inducing machines. I don't care enough to automate anything in the mod because you need to go through the slow parts to do that and I do not need to get that far into the mod.
I know opinions and all that, some people like the new AE2. Well, to me I have to re-learn the entire mod just to accomplish what I was already doing before. That is just aggravating to me. Nowadays, I utilize every way that can take me around using AE2 as much as possible. (Also, f*** meteors. I learned too far into my game that I could turn them off and I have at least 6 craters within 500 blocks of my base)
I gotta say though, if it weren't for the mod irritating me so much, I never would have utilized so many of the other mods in my mod pack. So in that regard I actually thank AE2 for pissing me off
Someone sucks at AE2. Growth accelerators...
Getting your inscribers from the meteorites is a pain, in fact, it's the only time when I regularly consider cheating in a critical resource, but from that point onwards things are usually running smoothly.
Here a few hints how to proceed without being tempted to bash your head against a wall:
(1) Process things in batches if they're not automated yet. Don't make one or two Logic Processors, make a stack or two. You'll need them anyway at some time. The same applies to crystals. Growing a pair is way too much work for too little benefit, make them in stacks. And annihilation and formation cores as well.
(2) Use the components of the system to make it easier to expand itself. Do autocrafting early, it will save you a lot of pain. Automate the crystal and processor production with the highest priority of all. Also, automate sand and glass production. AE2 needs tons of that.
(3) Plan big. Even if you don't know for what you'll need hundreds of channels *now*, there will come a time when you will need them. You don't need to build several controllers now, but to avoid the pains of cleaning up a mess (see DW20's latest video) plan for the time when you will need them.
(4) You may want to start early - I know I do - but by all means don't start *too* early. My personal guideline: if you think you can't spare the diamonds to make half a stack of engineering processors, wait until you feel you can. AE2 eats up a lot of resources. It's way more fun to play with it if you already have them when you start out.
(5) Don't start with AE2 until you can generate a few hundred RF/t continuously. The system itself is not all that hungry in its early stage, but the machines necessary to run it efficiently are - most notably the crystal growth accelerators.
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Charging the crystals is easy to automate, however. Pump uncharged quartz into the Charger through one side, pump charged quartz out from the other. You need to experiment which sides will work (I don't recall atm) but it is very, very easy. All you need is the Charger, a chest and two conduits. And (regular, non AE-ized) power, of course.
LP is great for logistics and autocrafting, but not so much for storage. For me the main attraction was always the compact way I have to store the countless different item types added by dozens of mods.
The last version I played worked perfectly through teleport pipes. That was in 1.6.4 though.