I have always assumed the basic generator works similar to a real life stirling engine and just converts the mechanical power into electrical. It would mean no water would be necessary and would explain why it is the base for many of the other generators.
An idea to prevent Nether lava exploitation
- Thread starter MrZwij
- Start date
I think the bigger issue is that, thanks to FTB putting a large spectrum of mods within reach of many communities, we're discovering balance problems. This gets to the heart of what an issue I've been thinking a lot about since a DW20 episode in which Azanor mentioned he balances against the Vanilla game, e.g. to what extent should modders be concerned with interaction imbalances in the context of other mods. The answer is probably not very concerned, though I do appreciate how proactive people like Sengir and King Lemming are with respect to dealing with these things. Heck, even IC2 tried that nuclear steam power experiment (which actually might work with liquiducts, I need to go retest).
At the end of the day, though, these problems are going to exist and modders aren't real likely to alter how they have things working based on forum posts. If you're extremely concerned about balance, your only real option is something like GregTech, which tweaks the progression cycle and 'length' of each tech tier to make exploits less meaningful.
I expected people would shoot holes in the idea. That's the scientific method - I'm pro-scientific method and my ego can handle it. 
Calling it an "arbitrary" change is unreasonable though. It has a logical foundation: Lava is very hot, and it makes sense to think it could overheat things.
The problem caused by this is real - if nothing else I hope it'll inspire a debate and hopefully raise the issue in devs' consciousness.
Love the idea of steam and cooling lava blocks.
Calling it an "arbitrary" change is unreasonable though. It has a logical foundation: Lava is very hot, and it makes sense to think it could overheat things. The problem caused by this is real - if nothing else I hope it'll inspire a debate and hopefully raise the issue in devs' consciousness.
Love the idea of steam and cooling lava blocks.
I expected people would shoot holes in the idea. That's the scientific method - I'm pro-scientific method and my ego can handle it.
The problem caused by this is real - if nothing else I hope it'll inspire a debate and hopefully raise the issue in devs' consciousness.
Love the idea of steam and cooling lava blocks.
The devs are aware of the issue - that's why magmatics got more expensive. The question isn't one of awareness but of whether or not they feel it's incumbent on them to fix it.
MrZwij, I'd really like to know exactly which problem you are referring to. Do you see this as a balance issue, or do you see this as a server performance issue? The thread you quoted was all about server performance, your posts seem to imply you feel there is a balance issue.
I expected people would shoot holes in the idea. That's the scientific method - I'm pro-scientific method and my ego can handle it.
The problem caused by this is real - if nothing else I hope it'll inspire a debate and hopefully raise the issue in devs' consciousness.
Love the idea of steam and cooling lava blocks.
With your scientific method.. LOL... Anyway ah have you actually played minecraft... Science has no place... Because there is no real world science in Minecraft... If your concerned about that... Don't look any closer into The world of minecraft and its gravity....Or its instant grown treess.. With selotons that shoot arrows.. Or The sexless animals that breed through food... Or its just hopeless...
By the way Im just messing with you.. You actually made me laugh with your last Post thats all..
How does one install Bukkit with FTB? I may be misinformed but I thought it was incompatible with Forge.
Both of those issues concern me, but of the two server performance is the one I care about more. There's a third issue too: The nether already isn't the most beautiful place, but seeing giant holes in lava lakes bugs me a lot. I guess I just see it as a "screw everybody else, I do what I want" mentality, and that irritates me.
The only way I think you can prevent nether pumping without removing it is to make using lava power inconvenient compared to other systems. Either increasing the cost of the machines that use it for power, such as TE did or lowering its value as fuel, like Railcraft. These changes affect how we use lava. Before railcrafts change people were creating closed looped systems for lava generation to a boiler. Magmatic engines being cheap but fairly powerful made them easy to spam in places, but I think steam power and biomass is really how most people are getting MJs at this point. The only reason people will still use nether pumping is for IC2 power. Geothermals and thermal generators and incredibly powerful compared to nearly any other generator for a similar cost. They are relatively cheap which allows for large setups for massive power. Aside from that there is gregtech allowing easy tin/copper/gold/silver/tungsten through centrifuging lava.
I thought ForgeBukkit had moved ahead but apparently it's dead now, so yea, disregard that suggestion.
Actually, redstone's odd properties can allow for some of the mod's crazier machines scientifically (king lemming wrote something about that if you want to read more) but your points on vannila are valid
I don't think balance is an issue you're going to be able to address well in a multiple-mod-interaction setting. The issue most people seem to have with lava pumping isn't the MJ side of the equation, but the EU side of things, and you're already into at least three mods for that to be an issue (BC, IC2, TE). When you look at the possibilities for infinite renewable EU and MJ with three mod interactions, the lava pump isn't that grand a solution compared to others. Off the top of my head, Steve's Carts can provide renewable power by creating an infinite charcoal chain with IC2 and BC. People speak of the lava pump as if you can have it going the instant you make a world, but the reality is that it requires about the same resource and time investment as an automated tree farm providing infinite charcoal. The ease of set up on the nether pump is currently low because it has been featured in a number of popular videos, and people would rather copy a system known to work than experiment with their own systems.
As far as fixing the unsightliness and the server lag, perhaps the pump could be modified to only extract half a bucket of lava per lava source block, and replace the source block with cobblestone when it does so. You could even take this a step further for balancing, changing the power requirement of the pump to perform this action to something in the thousands of MJ per block (4.5k would be a good starting point IMO, costing 9k per bucket and creating a 9k profit per bucket pumped), and perhaps requiring a water source to perform this function.
As far as fixing the unsightliness and the server lag, perhaps the pump could be modified to only extract half a bucket of lava per lava source block, and replace the source block with cobblestone when it does so. You could even take this a step further for balancing, changing the power requirement of the pump to perform this action to something in the thousands of MJ per block (4.5k would be a good starting point IMO, costing 9k per bucket and creating a 9k profit per bucket pumped), and perhaps requiring a water source to perform this function.
Solution to server lag would be to enforce users of nether pumps fix flowing lava periodically. If you start near the shore of a lava ocean and expand outwards every so often, you could dam up the area you pumped from and remove lingering flowing lava.
You pump it. you fix it.
You pump it. you fix it.
Can we seriously stop with the annoying fixes for things that aren't broken? This is a game not real life, not everything needs a balance, nerf, update, or what ever you want to call them.
Serious question, how does someone overusing lava as a form of power affect you? If you want it changed for you, then why don't you just not use it or use something to limit it's use...
I just don't get it...
I find it strange that so many people playing one game can have such inadequate self control.
Serious question, how does someone overusing lava as a form of power affect you? If you want it changed for you, then why don't you just not use it or use something to limit it's use...
I just don't get it...
I find it strange that so many people playing one game can have such inadequate self control.
It's simple, according to to the OP we're not having fun correctly and need to change.
Maybe i'm just lucky, but I have yet to need to set up nether pumping stations. Every world I've created thus far (modded or vanilla) has been filled with lava at the bottom of the mines and ravines I find. With teleport pipes and now the tesseract pumping to BC and now Railcraft tanks I've had no need to ever really touch the nether for lava. Yeah you have to move the pumps every now and then, but honestly out of ever three or four lava lakes I find 1 of those ends up huge, to the point it takes me a week or more to empty, but I'm also not centrifuging it either. They could nerf it down to almost anything above a negative energy gain and I'd still use it, cause it clears room to get more ores for me and makes a simple renewable (since world are for all intents and purpose endless) energy source.
I agree, I have so much lava from my IC2 Miner/pumps that I've ended up just centrifuging hundreds of lava cells to get rid of them.
Agreed, balance is very hard to deal with. I was hoping to get to the heart of the matter, which is really the fact that lava is available in practically infinite quantities in the Nether. By addressing it at the source (where you pump it), my thought was to make a small change that would have a cascading effect.
Many of the players on our server are abusing the hell out of this mechanic while we fight to reduce lag, so it makes me grumpy. One has THREE 9x9x7 tanks of lava and something like 80 geothermal generators. His transposer > ender chest system triggered a RP2 filter dupe bug, so now I have a filter in the nether that endlessly spews out cans that I have to deal with somehow. So I may be a bit biased against nether lava at the moment.
Many of the players on our server are abusing the hell out of this mechanic while we fight to reduce lag, so it makes me grumpy. One has THREE 9x9x7 tanks of lava and something like 80 geothermal generators. His transposer > ender chest system triggered a RP2 filter dupe bug, so now I have a filter in the nether that endlessly spews out cans that I have to deal with somehow. So I may be a bit biased against nether lava at the moment.
There's a legitimate technical issue here. Flowing lava is problematic for servers from a computational perspective. Additionally, we're talking about server communities primarily here (I think), which have a more vested interest in ensuring a balanced playing field, particularly if PvP or other competitive exercises are involved.
For SSP though, yea, who cares.