Ascension of the Technomancer - a chronicle

[TomeWyrm]

Well, firstly I was only agreeing with your agreement to Ieldra's idea to ditch GT . I had my own reasons why I thought it was a good idea.

Secondly? I haven't found a mechanic or piece of content yet that GT does that couldn't be done with an afternoon in minetweaker, or with another mod. I'm not saying it's a BAD mod. It's just got some very glaring downsides that make the meh and neat parts of it really exceedingly frustrating to a notable number of players. I'll admit, I haven't played through GT5 (last time I got reasonably far in GT was the... 1.4.7 FTB pack with it? Maybe the 1.5 NGT/WGT pack.), but I've heard many different descriptions and done some research. Reika's mods have some downsides, but the vast majority of them are from inability to tinker and the lack of user sympathy. The latter of which is shared by GregoriusT... though I've always gotten a sense of trollishness from Greg that I've never gotten from Reika ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm going to (after I figure out what I broke to make DragonAPI think its ASM transformers disappeared) try to make the pack work in a *mostly* intact state. Insofar as the content itself is concerned it should be very much intact, though the exterior experience will be quite changed because I'm not a fan of the annoyance-as-difficulty that a worryingly large portion of the community seems enamored with. I've had some ideas for a heavily cross-mod integrated "expert" pack that tries very hard to avoid the pitfalls of aggravation common to most expert packs. The general vein of: I can't punch wood or sleep the night away, I need to eat a varied diet, and can freeze/overheat, need to purify my water and my ores, and... I need to mine a chest full of cobble with wooden tools... yeah, I'm going to go play not-minecraft now; this wasn't fun. Hopefully I'll get some more ideas for how to integrate without overly affecting the mods themselves, as well as a technique I saw in Age of Engineering: Making the early method of obtaining stuff obnoxious, and then make it easier and easier as time goes on.

 

[Ieldra]

The Gravel Gun is seriously stupid for cheesing the crap out of Nevermine/AoA. If I recall correctly, one of the original design triggers for the gun was something along the lines of those AoA bosses in a "Why the @^&$# does this thing have Infinity+1 health?!" kind of way, also the whole "motor control issues" thing.

Call me stupid, but I never figured out the gravel gun. Wind a spring, craft it with the gun, have some flint (or was it gravel) in your inventory and you should be able to shoot, right? That didn't work for me, ever. Not even if I cheated in a fully-loaded gun. How do you shoot this thing?

The Railcraft machines can be used pretty well to tech-gate some stuff. Also if you provide an easy source of Ender Pearls, the Anchor Cart is very nice (IIRC you can load it with automation). If you make cables and pipes later tier, and item/fluid teleportation REALLY late tier, you could probably incentivize rail networks.

As I see it, rail networks are mainly for medium-distance transporting. They're not a substitute for conduits and pipes. Some applications exist, but as I see it that goes against the theme - and that's important to me. And as for medium-distance transportation, as Pyure said, that application has always been hampered by chunkloading problems. I recall my first rail network I built way back in the beta days when I didn't know about chunkloading and wondered why my carts never arrived. That problem has never been resolved, for the economy of chunkloading a chunk for nothing but 16 blocks of rails is still very much questionable. We'll see, but in the end, a mod has to carry at least some weight in a pack.

I concur with Pyure. Ditch the GT. It doesn't provide many real benefits for its MASSIVE downsides. There are other mods to provide interesting oregen, ore progressions, and the like. Just look at All The Mods Expert Mode (and Remastered). They did a pretty decent job of making ores more interesting... at least in the processing. The mining is pretty much "baseline and 5 types of iron-that-aren't-iron".

Was there anything about GT you *did* like with its inclusion in the pack? Because I know a lot of alternatives for its functions.

In AotT? No. GT is very good at what it does - mainly, providing the tools to build a very logistically complex processing and production system - but it also has a lot of grind, meaning repetitive tasks - including a lot of crafting - that you get thoroughly sick of long before you can automate them, if you can do that at all. The latter can be mitigated by autocrafting systems like AE2, so I can appreciate GT's good points more in packs where AE2 is present and available comparatively early. Which is not in AotT.

In the end, it comes down to playstyle. Do you appreciate the kind of complexity GT offers? Sometimes I do, but not usually at the price of such grind. I also dislike GT's approach to power generation. I appreciate RotaryCraft's kind of complexity more, especially since it comes with a decided lack of grind, most of the time. Also, GT is just too dominant in any pack. It has to be, since otherwise you'd walk easier paths. RotaryCraft is also somewhat dominant, but more because of its power. The same applies to ChromatiCraft. IMO GT and Reika's mods are designed along opposing design principles, and that's why they're not working together well in packs without heavy adjustment on both sides. I don't know GT all that well, but while that shouldn't be difficult for RotaryCraft if you can get Reika's permission for those adjustments, it seems extremly hard to do, if at all possible, for ChromatiCraft.

 

[Pyure]

Well, firstly I was only agreeing with your agreement to Ieldra's idea to ditch GT . I had my own reasons why I thought it was a good idea.

To quote, well, me: I never said you said it; I implied that you implied it (paragraph breaks are awesome for preventing this!)

Secondly? I haven't found a mechanic or piece of content yet that GT does that couldn't be done with an afternoon in minetweaker

As someone who is LITERALLY trying to build a GT pack with no GT in it (1.12) I can promise you you're absolutely, fundamentally wrong on this one my friend. I had the same initial notion, but I'm only able to replicate a small part of the cleverness.

...or with another mod.

Meh, you can make similar arguments about any mod. I can replicate the Reika's Extractor, Boring Machine and fission/fusion reactors with other mods too.

I'm going to (after I figure out what I broke to make DragonAPI think its ASM transformers disappeared) try to make the pack work in a *mostly* intact state. Insofar as the content itself is concerned it should be very much intact, though the exterior experience will be quite changed because I'm not a fan of the annoyance-as-difficulty that a worryingly large portion of the community seems enamored with. I've had some ideas for a heavily cross-mod integrated "expert" pack that tries very hard to avoid the pitfalls of aggravation common to most expert packs. The general vein of: I can't punch wood or sleep the night away, I need to eat a varied diet, and can freeze/overheat, need to purify my water and my ores, and... I need to mine a chest full of cobble with wooden tools... yeah, I'm going to go play not-minecraft now; this wasn't fun. Hopefully I'll get some more ideas for how to integrate without overly affecting the mods themselves, as well as a technique I saw in Age of Engineering: Making the early method of obtaining stuff obnoxious, and then make it easier and easier as time goes on.

Some of this stuff can be fun. I mean, it was hard NOT to enjoy Crash Landing when it first came out (that pack was stupidly popular) and, somewhat tangentially, Agrarian Skies (even more popular). But now people keep trying to pile on the survival genre, and nobody's ever really pulled off the same decent balance since.

What MC version would you make your pack in? I'd play a tomewrym pack.

 

[TomeWyrm]

Ieldra:
The grind and modification/integration are my problems with GT. It hasn't yet provided anything that makes it worth the hassle for me. I'm giving it a shot here, but GT has a lot of flaws that (at least to me) overshadow its benefits.
The Gravel Gun is hitscan, and will not waste ammo. So try using the flint/gravel and pointing it at something like a zombie.

Pyure:
The "from another mod" is rather required. Minetweaker can't create content from nothing, after all. There's a lot of duplication of features in modded Minecraft, and that's part of its charm and flexibility.

Have you considered that it might be a bit of the 1.12 mods being the problem in your pack? Namely that the released mods for 1.12 are an insufficient subset as compared to 1.10 and 1.7.10 (which is unfair on the part of 1.7, that was kinda modded's golden age). Not saying you can't have fun, just saying that there's not enough duplication of features yet to manage something that complex.

What version would my pack be in? Either 1.7 or 1.10... probably 1.7 as I do like me the Reika mods.

 

[Pyure]

Pyure:
The "from another mod" is rather required. Minetweaker can't create content from nothing, after all. There's a lot of duplication of features in modded Minecraft, and that's part of its charm and flexibility.

I believe you're missing my point sir. You seemed to imply that everything in GT could be done in other mods. I make the same claim about RoC, as an attempt to invalidate your point. ("Everything" is almost certainly brutally untrue in both cases, but likely to a similar extent)

Like I said, I really do like RoC. Just some parts of it drive me nuts in a way that GT seems to handle more pleasingly to me.

 

[Ieldra]

Like I said, I really do like RoC. Just some parts of it drive me nuts in a way that GT seems to handle more pleasingly to me.

Just out of interest, what would that be? I find this odd to hear, since it's often the other way round for me (The tool system that clutters up your inventory comes to mind, with special ire reserved for the fact GT picks are not enchantable). As for RoC, it does not have appreciable item logistics (irrelevant in most modpacks, but I still wonder why) and it does not support FMB. What are your "gripes"?

 

[Pyure]

Just out of interest, what would that be? I find this odd to hear, since it's often the other way round for me (The tool system that clutters up your inventory comes to mind, with special ire reserved for the fact GT picks are not enchantable). As for RoC, it does not have appreciable item logistics (irrelevant in most modpacks, but I still wonder why) and it does not support FMB. What are your "gripes"?

1) The magic-box energy sources in RoC:
a) DC Generators
b) Steam generators (don't consume any fuel)
c) AC Generators (chargeable magnet thingy but still defies thermodynamics)
d) Hydrokinetics (bucket of water = power forever)
Note that I don't mind the wind generator since its trickier to use well and

2) The hard-controls (some of which placed so that you don't abuse above) such as the 4-input-limit on duplicate power sources (I may be misremembering the exact count)

3) the lack of configurability (the mod makes a ton of decisions that should be entirely reserved to the discretion of a pack maker, particularly with respect to cross-mod compatibility)

Your own gripes about GT are all solid. I can add more: GT5 totally breaks "better is better" game design principals. e.g, its often more beneficial to use a "basic lv centrifuge" over a more sophisticated "EV centrifuge" because for some reason we get less efficient with our machine designs over time. Not sure if this is still true in GT6.

 

[TomeWyrm]

Well I did say I haven't yet found anything. Gregtech has very effective methods of making me not play it very long

What are some examples of things you're having trouble replicating in 1.12? Because I seriously haven't encountered anything in GT that would require GT to be in a pack, except possibly extreme-tier EU generation.

As for my gripes with RoC and GT? I agree with Pyure's third point for RoC. The lack of configurability is a massive pain sometimes. CrC's "in-crowd" obtuseness/obscurity is also frustrating. Also the constant intentional breaking of creative exploitation of mechanics (like nether boilers).

As for GT? The meddling in areas beyond the purview of the mod (vanilla mechanics is the big one, but the ore dictionary and auto-unification are others), and the artificial stretching of content through time-gates, grind, micro-crafting, and excessive multiblocks. I had actually forgotten about the further-progressed-is-better breaking.

Greg's design philosophy really comes off as distinctly anti-player; an impression not helped by his forum presence in the slightest. Whereas Reika is abrasive, fed up, and obsessive with the enforcement of his vision for his mods; but a rather nice and agreeable guy once you get past the initial defensive general hostility.

 

[Pyure]

Well I did say I haven't yet found anything. Gregtech has very effective methods of making me not play it very long

What are some examples of things you're having trouble replicating in 1.12? Because I seriously haven't encountered anything in GT that would require GT to be in a pack, except possibly extreme-tier EU generation.

As for my gripes with RoC and GT? I agree with Pyure's third point for RoC. The lack of configurability is a massive pain sometimes. CrC's "in-crowd" obtuseness/obscurity is also frustrating. Also the constant intentional breaking of creative exploitation of mechanics (like nether boilers).

As for GT? The meddling in areas beyond the purview of the mod (vanilla mechanics is the big one, but the ore dictionary and auto-unification are others), and the artificial stretching of content through time-gates, grind, micro-crafting, and excessive multiblocks. I had actually forgotten about the further-progressed-is-better breaking.

Greg's design philosophy really comes off as distinctly anti-player; an impression not helped by his forum presence in the slightest. Whereas Reika is abrasive, fed up, and obsessive with the enforcement of his vision for his mods; but a rather nice and agreeable guy once you get past the initial defensive general hostility.

Fun points. I'm surprised you didn't go for point 1 too, given that you're a highly-technical player to begin with (bearing in mind I've interacted with you on an off since RoC's inception so I can make this observation fairly). Point 2 is a purely subjective game design ideal. I prefer "soft controls", e.g "every generator after 4 reduces your energy efficiency by 5%" or some such. Adds complication, but also adds choice.

Stuff I can't really replicate:
I mean there's a ton of examples, but I'll provide two key ones:

1) Meta-tools. I can't find any mods whatsoever that let me do custom mining tools such as drills, jackhammers and such. ContentTweaker has, as a long-term project, the goal of allowing us to leverage forge energy capabilities in custom items, but that's a long way away assuming it happens at all.

2) Multi-dimensional power. Right now if you want multi-dimensional power, your options are: GT, IC2 (to which GT is tied), and (Interestingly) Reika's mods (true for both ElC and RoC). By multi-dimensional, I mean power comes as something along the lines of amps and volts, or torque and speed, or packets and energy units. I absolutely love trying to build a sensible energy network, deciding whether to centralize or decentralize it, figuring out if it makes more sense to up-transform my power to prevent loss (not so much in RoC), that sort of thing.

GT Meddling:
This is actually a fascinating discussion in terms of minecraft modding in general. Once upon a time, greg's modding was considered to be exactly how you describe it: meddling. But I feel it was the strongest pioneer towards steering that meddling into the hands of pack developers, where it belongs. Its worth noting that most of the GT meddling can be configured towards non-meddling if you so desire.

GT Grind:
People either like this or they don't, and it sometimes takes a fair amount of involvement with the mod to appreciate wtf is going on. Grind doesn't exist to artificially stretch the game. It exists to force you to make intelligent progression decisions.

 

[TomeWyrm]

I'm a lot less enamored than a lot of people with realism. The base game breaks all kinds of laws of physics all the time, and mods nearly always exacerbate the problem. I'm a supporter of intriguing content, interesting engineering opportunities, and especially emergent gameplay. Which is why something like the Steam Engine doesn't bother me (Which, does run appropriately, it's MC's fault for having infinite no-fuel-consumption fire. Steam engines run on steam pressure, and can often be hooked up to basically any high-grade heat source). Botania is fun for me because Vazkii gives you a bunch of relatively simple tools that will let you do all kinds of amazing things. RotaryCraft I enjoy because it provides me some fun knowledge-and-engineering based progression with a lot of payoff. Chromaticraft is similar for me in that it lets me do all sorts of useful stuff and has a neat progression that isn't a chore to go through multiple times (Thaumcraft is the perfect example of the kind of progression system that can make me abandon a mod). I don't like MFR style magic boxes that do absolutely everything, for no effort, better than most other options. They're boring and in my eyes overpowered. I don't have problems with passive powergen for instance. Because power generation is a simple task that provides me with a resource I can use for other things... and ultimately if you provide logistical/engineering challenges too far down? I get lost down the rabbit hole and nothing gets accomplished. I actually had that problem really bad with ATM:E; I would want to do something, and break it down into sub-goals... then do those sub goals and go "Wait, why'd I need to build a coke oven?" or "what was that crusher for?"

You'd have to elaborate a bit more on the meta-tools. Because to me that problem would simply be solved by "add TiCo, Actually Additions, Redstonic, Metallurgy, or any other mod that has tools". Good point on the 2D power, I really do wish more mods would do things with more interesting power systems... though you might consider Aura Cascade and Thaumcraft to have multi-dimensional power systems, depending on perspective.

I'm happy that Greg's meddling (and the support from other authors via a "greg mode") is configurable, and if that was a major impetus for things like minetweaker and the configurability of packs? I'm glad those things are around, but still dislike how... invasive... the defaults are, at least in the packs I've played (I don't recall ever installing GT in a personal instance, so I'm completely unfamiliar with the actual defaults). Though one result of the way he enables that meddling is those stupendous load times.

Greg's grind is so systemically pervasive though. The machines tend to be very slow, there's lots of microcrafting (many all-in-gui crafting steps, often with otherwise useless part items — defining microcrafting, not Greg's implementation), and things like the grind for rubies to make the fusion reactor. It comes off as a "you're going to suck until you put in hours and hours of work" that I find to be frustrating to a very high degree. I appreciate that more in an expert pack, but my perennial example is the centrifuge: if you don't know you're going to need it and thus don't set it up ahead of time? You're going to be stuck behind a processing time on the order of minutes. Not to mention that the time sunk into GT rarely feels (to me) like it was worth that amount of time. There's a balance, and for me Greg went orders of magnitude too far in many places.

 

[Pyure]

Yeah I don't really dispute any of that. At the end of the day, in a good GT pack, you're in it for the long haul. It caters to a specific crowd that knows, from the outset, that you're going to spend weeks or months trying to finish all the content. And you're bang on with the infinite rabbit holes: I actually keep notes (via in-game clipboard if possible) of what the hell I'm actually working on because I'm liable to forget by the time I'm 4 or 5 rabbit holes deep.

For the magic energy output boxes: I hope I didn't say "realistic" because it wasn't my intent. I was going for "immersion-breaking", especially when the mod itself describes itself as realism-first. It was just too annoying that I could theoretically generate infinite power with combined DC generators, which was then cut off by an arbitrary output-source limit. I could have accepted less-magic energy or less-arbitrary boundaries on how to access it.

For meta-tools: I specifically mean things like making any tool from any material. I don't just mean "pickaxes" vs "swords", but also non-traditional tools such as wrenches, hammers and such. And if I go and add TiCo, I also have to deal with the fact that a tico Hammer is better than freaking electric drills from most mods. More critically, afaik nothing lets me have customized "powered" tools at all (by which I mean I can have greg-like drills of virtually any kind of metal). Its not sufficient if a mod provides a single, powered pickaxe (e.g. Redstone Arsenal) or several unpowered picks (e.g. tinkers construct).

Funny you mentioned the magic multi-dimension power. I considered those and also decided you could include Botania sorta. But for this discussion I specifically mean "tech power that feeds machines."

 

[TomeWyrm]

Yeah, I was looking for an ingame clipboard in ATM... I was about to start using my tablet as a notepad until I updated to ATM:E Remastered and then kinda got bored because I had to reprogress through a similar (though not the same, they shook the early game up quite a bit) pack right after I had the funkiest bug involving BetterFPS (as far as I can tell) making the game unplayable. Hence the desire to play AotT... which I need to get back to fixing sometime... I somehow tricked DragonAPI into thinking its ASM handlers were gone... I should figure out the minimum modset to manage that so I can report it to Reika... blah I am not fond of debugging.

As for the "realism first" I need to go poke the dragon and have him fix that wording. He's going for verisimilitude not realism, using real physics and engineering (well approximations anyway in most cases, sometimes stuff needs to be changed slightly to fit the design and sometimes for gameplay reasons) as a baseline, but ultimately the gameplay design comes first. I wonder if he could implement the multiple-engine-joining failure as a ramping probability and explain it as resonance causing the shaft to slip from its bearings or something... There's got to be a better "lore friendly" way to implement the gameplay restrictions. As for the hydros, he's very much aware of the "place bucket -> infinite power" problem with them, but he's not found a performant way to restrict them to having only natural waterfalls, consume water blocks, or run on back-pressure in a basin.

I'm amazed there's not a metallurgy addon that does that kind of meta-tool thing. And now you make me want to pick up Java just to code that mod, because that sounds awesome! Take the TiCo/Thermal route of making all the things from all the stuff, have swords, axes, pickaxes, shovels, shears, wrenches, drills, scythe/sickles, excavators, armor, etc. Make it fully configurable and extensible... would be awesome.

I thought of Botania, but it's just "how fast can you dump in the mana" which I guess is a 2D power system in that it's power over time rather than just a flat consumption rate. Unfortunately for us, the community generally avoids multi-dimensional power systems owing to RF-as-implemented-by-TE kinda becoming the de-facto standard.

Edit:
I should have seen this coming, even on my reasonably beefy machine, running on an NVMe SSD, I can't play the pack.

Even at pretty low (like 4-6 chunk) render distances, I can beat world generation on foot. *sigh* back to the drawing board for an expert experience with Reika's mods that's less total-overhaul than Survival Industry or Revolution3.

 

[Ieldra]

1) The magic-box energy sources in RoC:
a) DC Generators
b) Steam generators (don't consume any fuel)
c) AC Generators (chargeable magnet thingy but still defies thermodynamics)
d) Hydrokinetics (bucket of water = power forever)
Note that I don't mind the wind generator since its trickier to use well and

While I understand your viewpoint, I don't really agree that these things are fundamentally undesirable, even where they really are "magic energy sources". Most notably, I disagree with the design principle of the "obnoxious earlyg game". I understand that the grind serves a purpose, but from my POV, it gets old once you've done it two or three times. I'd rather aim to give players some useful low-level automation tools easily and attempt to extend the mid-game, where it's all about building cool stuff (in new ways if the mods are designed well) rather than overcoming the boring grind. Of course, GT-like design has its place, but it is really a matter of preference what you prefer, even if you like building complex machinery.

Specifics:
(1) DC generators are indeed "magic box energy sources", but they have a very old predecent: the Buildcraft Redstone engine. Also, they are that easy early-game tool I appreciate.
(2) Steam engines... they exploit the Minecraft world's rules, and as such, are not really "unrealistic" even in the only sense the term can reasonably be applied to a fictional world. In that world, Netherrack fire burns forever, which is the basic thing that violates thermodynamics.
(3) Hydrokinetics. Well, I would, in fact, appreciate a rule that requires a sizeable body of water at the source of the falling water pillar used by the engine, but apart from that this replicates a design for renewable power that depends on Nature for the cycle of renewal, just like real-world water power does. I have no issue at all with that. And from a game-mechanical viewpoint, you could argue that these engines run on lubricant, not water, and do indeed consume some sort of fuel, even if it's not really fuel in the lore.

2) The hard-controls (some of which placed so that you don't abuse above) such as the 4-input-limit on duplicate power sources (I may be misremembering the exact count)
3) the lack of configurability (the mod makes a ton of decisions that should be entirely reserved to the discretion of a pack maker, particularly with respect to cross-mod compatibility)

I guess you are familiar with Reika's arguments in that regard. I agree that these aspects are undesirable, but I also understand Reika's viewpoint. I might mention that while he reserves the right to permit or deny changes a pack makes to his mods, it is, by his rules, very possible to make changes that facilitate mod interaction, and I can think of many which would, in my estimation, very likely be permitted. As a general rule, adding external mod dependencies would most likely be unproblematic. It's removing internal dependencies or replacing them with external ones where things get problematic.

Your own gripes about GT are all solid. I can add more: GT5 totally breaks "better is better" game design principals. e.g, its often more beneficial to use a "basic lv centrifuge" over a more sophisticated "EV centrifuge" because for some reason we get less efficient with our machine designs over time. Not sure if this is still true in GT6.

Oddly enough, in some sense RotaryCraft does something similar: thanks to the logarithmic relation between power and operation time, as long as you can't give a machine enough power for one operation per tick, it's more efficient to run a setup with many machines at minimal power than fewer machines at higher power, encouraging machine spam to a point.

 

[Pyure]

While I understand your viewpoint, I don't really agree that these things are fundamentally undesirable, even where they really are "magic energy sources". Most notably, I disagree with the design principle of the "obnoxious earlyg game". I understand that the grind serves a purpose, but from my POV, it gets old once you've done it two or three times. I'd rather aim to give players some useful low-level automation tools easily and attempt to extend the mid-game, where it's all about building cool stuff (in new ways if the mods are designed well) rather than overcoming the boring grind. Of course, GT-like design has its place, but it is really a matter of preference what you prefer, even if you like building complex machinery.

Specifics:
(1) DC generators are indeed "magic box energy sources", but they have a very old predecent: the Buildcraft Redstone engine. Also, they are that easy early-game tool I appreciate.
(2) Steam engines... they exploit the Minecraft world's rules, and as such, are not really "unrealistic" even in the only sense the term can reasonably be applied to a fictional world. In that world, Netherrack fire burns forever, which is the basic thing that violates thermodynamics.
(3) Hydrokinetics. Well, I would, in fact, appreciate a rule that requires a sizeable body of water at the source of the falling water pillar used by the engine, but apart from that this replicates a design for renewable power that depends on Nature for the cycle of renewal, just like real-world water power does. I have no issue at all with that. And from a game-mechanical viewpoint, you could argue that these engines run on lubricant, not water, and do indeed consume some sort of fuel, even if it's not really fuel in the lore.

Sorry, but I think you missed my point Ieldra. I never said or implied that these things were fundamentally undesirable. I said they were my gripes.
When hoping to challenge ourselves, you feel that its fun and/or immersing to have energy from a box. I feel that it isn't. Its not even just a case of "we're entitled to our opinions": we're also entitled to our preferences.

I also implied that I could tolerate these if it they were wrapped with soft controls.

I also said I really liked the mod: these aren't dealbreakers for me: they're gripes, they're things that eventually make me get bored and go elsewhere a bit sooner than necessary, and things I'd do differently if I were to "reborn" the mod. Even if only super-hardcore-mega-grindy-hate-themselves-expert-pack players like myself were interested in it

I guess you are familiar with Reika's arguments in that regard. I agree that these aspects are undesirable, but I also understand Reika's viewpoint. I might mention that while he reserves the right to permit or deny changes a pack makes to his mods, it is, by his rules, very possible to make changes that facilitate mod interaction, and I can think of many which would, in my estimation, very likely be permitted. As a general rule, adding external mod dependencies would most likely be unproblematic. It's removing internal dependencies or replacing them with external ones where things get problematic.

Absolutely, and he earned a lot of respect from me when he started moving in that direction. Its just unfortunate that it needed to start where it did, and that it didn't end with the same latitude other modders provide. I'm not anti-modding or anti-IP, I'm just pro-modding. (And for reference: a professional developer of 20 years, I'm not speaking out of my ass)

 

[Ieldra]

When hoping to challenge ourselves, you feel that its fun and/or immersing to have energy from a box. I feel that it isn't.

My concern in such things is always world integrity and identity. Immersion is when the things you can do integrate seamlessly with the world and its rules as presented. Most mods add to the world rather than change its fundamentals and thus are neutral in this regard, but one pertinent example of the latter are finite water mods. While they're undoubtedly realistic in real-world terms, they change a fundamental about the Minecraft world in such a way that it adversely affects its identity in my estimation. It doesn't necessary turn me off a pack that uses it, but it makes me uncomfortable. Meanwhile, some mods actually use these fundamentals in their gameplay, and that strengthens world identity. For that reason, I actually appreciate the RoC steam engine.

This is, of course, a typical worldbuilder's and storywriter's position. I don't really write stories (I have, but they were few, short, and far between) but I'm a roleplaying GM of several decades, thus it would be correct to say that I design worlds and stories. While some challenge and some balance are necessary, I don't look primarily for those, I look for story. Mods that provide me with something that can serve as a story framework will meet with more appreciation than those who can't. Both ThaumCraft and ChromatiCraft are excellent in that, and provide a strong aesthetic identity on top of that, thus I'm a real fan of them. It's also why I started with AotT, where Advent of Ascension provides the framework - except that I'm not looking for a fighting challenge rather than a building challenge. I have an idea about the primary goal of my pack - and it involves something for which you will need, among other things related to technology, magic and exploration, to run a reasonably well-designed ReactorCraft fusion reactor. I might need to get into modding though, since I need a few custom blocks with their own name and appearance. They won't need to do anything except exist, have a crafting recipe, look like floating crystal octahedrons and emit light, but that alone poses a challenge. I can code, but my aptitude for visual art does not exist.

Its not even just a case of "we're entitled to our opinions": we're also entitled to our preferences.

Then we agree....I said "it is really a matter of preference"

I also said I really liked the mod: these aren't dealbreakers for me: they're gripes, they're things that eventually make me get bored and go elsewhere a bit sooner than necessary, and things I'd do differently if I were to "reborn" the mod. Even if only super-hardcore-mega-grindy-hate-themselves-expert-pack players like myself were interested in it

LOL. I did not want to imply that you didn't like Reika's mods. Besides, I may not understand why anyone likes that playstyle, but of course I understand your desire for a pack that suits your playstyle better. After all, I'm in the process of making one for mine. I think I have gotten the biome and ore distribution mostly right the last few days (and man, is testing that time-consuming. Damn Reika for making his resource blocks invisible to XRay, so that I had to use "cofh clearblocks" for fairly large areas to find out if everything generates correctly and none of my mods interferes with CrC structure generation). I'm aiming for a biome and ore distribution similar to Reika's DragonRealm pack, except with ExtraBiomesXL instead of BiomesOPlenty, since the latter is (once again) incompatible with CrC V19.

 

[TomeWyrm]

If you still want to check underground worldgen? Use World Stripper.
DragonAPI also has a clearblocks-esque functionality that's pretty powerful but underdocumented (like most of the DragonAPI functions )

Wait... BoP is incompatible with v19? In the "you can't use the BoP worldtype" or the "you can't use the mod at all"? Because the first type is relatively easy to circumvent with something like Climate Control or just using the default world type and letting the biomes generate. The second one should be impossible because DragonRealm (Reika's Dev server) uses BoP.

 

[Ieldra]

If you still want to check underground worldgen? Use World Stripper.
DragonAPI also has a clearblocks-esque functionality that's pretty powerful but underdocumented (like most of the DragonAPI functions )

Thanks for the link. And yeah. I'd really like to know how the DragonAPI commands work. I tried /findtile but can't get it to work. At least I figured out /biomepng so I have a fast way to see if biome and landmass distribution work as I want.

Wait... BoP is incompatible with v19? In the "you can't use the BoP worldtype" or the "you can't use the mod at all"? Because the first type is relatively easy to circumvent with something like Climate Control or just using the default world type and letting the biomes generate. The second one should be impossible because DragonRealm (Reika's Dev server) uses BoP.

As I understand it, the CrC Luminous Cliff biome won't generate in BoP worlds, so it's most likely the former. I now have Climate Control installed (as I didn't when I started out), so I might be able to circumvent the problem. I like BoP biomes better than ExtraBiomesXL biomes for the most part.

 

[Pyure]

My concern in such things is always world integrity and identity. Immersion is when the things you can do integrate seamlessly with the world and its rules as presented. Most mods add to the world rather than change its fundamentals and thus are neutral in this regard, but one pertinent example of the latter are finite water mods. While they're undoubtedly realistic in real-world terms, they change a fundamental about the Minecraft world in such a way that it adversely affects its identity in my estimation. It doesn't necessary turn me off a pack that uses it, but it makes me uncomfortable. Meanwhile, some mods actually use these fundamentals in their gameplay, and that strengthens world identity. For that reason, I actually appreciate the RoC steam engine.

I completely agree, which is also why I'm really cautious when people start talking about "realism". So long as the rules in a mod and/or modpack are consistent, I can generally buy into it. Minecraftia is not Earth.

I think my concern is that consistency: virtually every technical mod now tries to do "better than redstone levers". In fact, this is why I got into mods in the first place: it irritated the hell out of me that redstone power was "free". Buildcraft and IndustrialCraft were instant-love for me: all power was either fuel based, or passive-with-caveats (windmills at y150, watermills producing crappy output, etc, and everything correlating to passive power we're familiar with.)

Now that we've set this precedent, it actually feels like the new rule is "power in mods is NOT magical", and therefore there's a dissonance (for players of my mindset) when a mod has, say, a gasoline engine (new design), but then also regresses to a dc engine (vanilla design).

 

[TomeWyrm]

Hmm... It's been too long since I was active on DragonRealm, I've forgotten the intricate details.

Pyure:
I see it more as a progressive change. It starts you out with simple "dumb" systems, and then adds more and more complexity on top. For me it's less important to go with convention in the introductory section of an experience. And the DC engine provides anyone (who has an analytic mind) an extremely simplified example of an engine to experiment with. They're also just this side of useless, which lets me excuse the free power angle a lot more.

I mean, Industrialcraft solar panels cost 3 coal, 8 cobble, 4 copper, 10 iron, 6 redstone, 3 sand, 12 rubber, and 3 tin. They're accessible after you have a macerator, and can be stacked practically infinitely with some basic engineering. They're not your first generator, but they're very much magic box. The DC engine compares favorably to me in that it's limited (thanks to the 4-engine limit), and at the start of progression.

 

[Pyure]

Pyure:
I see it more as a progressive change. It starts you out with simple "dumb" systems, and then adds more and more complexity on top. For me it's less important to go with convention in the introductory section of an experience. And the DC engine provides anyone (who has an analytic mind) an extremely simplified example of an engine to experiment with. They're also just this side of useless, which lets me excuse the free power angle a lot more.

Of course. And its a very good way to introduce the players to the systems. BTW: now, yeah, they're useless, but before the arbitrary 4-input limit, I used to chain tons of these together to do weird things.

I mean, Industrialcraft solar panels cost 3 coal, 8 cobble, 4 copper, 10 iron, 6 redstone, 3 sand, 12 rubber, and 3 tin. They're accessible after you have a macerator, and can be stacked practically infinitely with some basic engineering. They're not your first generator, but they're very much magic box. The DC engine compares favorably to me in that it's limited (thanks to the 4-engine limit), and at the start of progression.

I'm fine with that. These days that seems like pretty pitiful costs, but nowadays we can adjust those costs. And IC2 has always kinda tried to pretend that other mods don't exist

They also fit into my description above of passive power that we can immediately recognize. When I see an "engine", then without any other sources of information I (reasonably) expect an input. When I see a "solar panel", I intuitively expect crappy output and no input. Makes sense?