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It's just a more realistic and in my opinion extremely well done approach to power generation in the early to mid game stages, Then there is Reactorcraft after that. But I know how much people love there bigreactors
While RotaryCraft is more realistic and better fits the modpack than Thermal Expansion, @Reika (the mod owner) is... a bit protective of it. BnB heavily modifies almost all of it's mods, and RotaryCraft does not allow that. A copy of the important paragraph's from his forum post are below, in the spoiler.
Regarding third-party modifications:
Due to techtree dependency and "learning curve" concerns, RotaryCraft, ReactorCraft, and ElectriCraft must not be modified in any way, including disabling items and changing recipes, and providing alternate means to obtain various items and materials.This includes the use of MineTweaker and other similar tools! In cases of instability, contact me to obtain a temporary exception. Config options native to the mod are of course free to be modified.
Public packs must obey the following:
The pack must not use external mods to significantly change the way my mods work, such that a guide for the default setup would be misleading or useless for the pack (or vice versa), or that the mods' techtrees, if applicable, are radically altered, or that features are missing. This includes the use of MineTweaker and other similar tools to remove recipes or items!Config options native to the mod are of course free to be modified.
While RotaryCraft is more realistic and better fits the modpack than Thermal Expansion, @Reika (the mod owner) is... a bit protective of it. BnB heavily modifies almost all of it's mods, and RotaryCraft does not allow that. A copy of the important paragraph's from his forum post are below, in the spoiler.
Regarding third-party modifications:
Due to techtree dependency and "learning curve" concerns, RotaryCraft, ReactorCraft, and ElectriCraft must not be modified in any way, including disabling items and changing recipes, and providing alternate means to obtain various items and materials.This includes the use of MineTweaker and other similar tools! In cases of instability, contact me to obtain a temporary exception. Config options native to the mod are of course free to be modified.
Public packs must obey the following:
The pack must not use external mods to significantly change the way my mods work, such that a guide for the default setup would be misleading or useless for the pack (or vice versa), or that the mods' techtrees, if applicable, are radically altered, or that features are missing. This includes the use of MineTweaker and other similar tools to remove recipes or items!Config options native to the mod are of course free to be modified.
There are reasons for this besides "Reika is protective".
One, RotaryCraft is balanced completely differently from other mods. Instead of doing it the traditional way, where higher tiers of machinery just cost more and more resources, RC machines are (usually) fairly cheap in raw resource costs but require having progressed through the techtree leading up to it in order to obtain certain components or other supplies. What that then means is that changing the recipes such that those critical items are no longer required is going to make that machine as obtainable early-game as actual early-game machines. For example, the only thing stopping you from crafting a compactor on the first day is the fact it requires bedrock dust to make.
Two, the reverse is also true. Innocently trying to make a machine more expensive runs the large risk of making it actually impossible to obtain via a dependency loop. For example, say you, unaware of the techtree and power costs, decided that the Extractor (5x ore multiplcation) was too cheap for what it did and decided to make it require bedrock dust in its recipe. That sounds fine until you work it through and realize that bedrock dust can only be obtained with a bedrock breaker and 2MW of power, the former of which requires tungsten. Tungsten in turn, requires a similar power level and a functioning Extractor. So to make the extractor require bedrock actually makes it impossible to obtain. And if you try to make the bedrock breaker cheaper to solve this problem, you immediately run into problem #1.
Furthermore, because of this same dependency tiering, making one machine impossible to obtain will make everything else that depends on it also impossible to obtain, and the problem quickly spirals out of control.
Three, the techtree design of RotaryCraft goes beyond balance. It is explicitly and specifically designed such that progression is done through learning the various mechanics and processes. Furthermore, every tier is designed with the assumption that you have "legitimately" progressed through the previous tiers and now know and understand everything that was required, be it torque/speed manipulation, extreme heat generation, or anything else.
If the recipes are modified and a player gets to a machine without learning its prerequisites, one or both of the following will happen. If they are lucky, they will lack the understanding of how to run/manage the machine and it will simply fail to work, and they will become frustrated. If they are less lucky, they will succeed in activating the machine but not setting it up properly, and it will soon fail, usually violently.
Four, in my experience, changing recipes is done less for "let's try and tweak this so it fits better" by knowledgeable server owners and more for "let's ban machine X" or "let's make machine X for donators only" or "machine X is OP!" by uninformed owners who often make the decision before even installing the mod, let alone getting to know it well enough that the aforementioned RC techtree is even apparent. Additionally, as explained in #2, banning a machine has the side effect of indirectly functionally banning several others.
You may ask why I even care what happens to individual players or on individual servers.
The altruistic answer is that I do want my content to be enjoyed by the users; I want them to have fun playing RC and not spend time getting upset because of a problem that should have never happened.
The second, more personal answer, is that these things spread. More often than not, when a player has a machine fail to work, I am the first to hear about it, in the form of a "bug" report whose solution is something like "the machine must be at temperature X". This is depressingly common and wastes a great deal of my time, and makes it harder to identify legitimate bugs. It also leads to exasperation which more than once has manifested itself as responses that are less than polite.
It gets worse than that, too; if enough of the problems listed above start to happen, word soon starts to spread about how a machine is "bugged" or how "RotaryCraft is broken"/"way too hard"/"way too OP", or so on, and that manifests itself as a general negative attitude towards the mod, something I have seen before and wish never to repeat.
There are reasons for this besides "Reika is protective".
One, RotaryCraft is balanced completely differently from other mods. Instead of doing it the traditional way, where higher tiers of machinery just cost more and more resources, RC machines are (usually) fairly cheap in raw resource costs but require having progressed through the techtree leading up to it in order to obtain certain components or other supplies. What that then means is that changing the recipes such that those critical items are no longer required is going to make that machine as obtainable early-game as actual early-game machines. For example, the only thing stopping you from crafting a compactor on the first day is the fact it requires bedrock dust to make.
Two, the reverse is also true. Innocently trying to make a machine more expensive runs the large risk of making it actually impossible to obtain via a dependency loop. For example, say you, unaware of the techtree and power costs, decided that the Extractor (5x ore multiplcation) was too cheap for what it did and decided to make it require bedrock dust in its recipe. That sounds fine until you work it through and realize that bedrock dust can only be obtained with a bedrock breaker and 2MW of power, the former of which requires tungsten. Tungsten in turn, requires a similar power level and a functioning Extractor. So to make the extractor require bedrock actually makes it impossible to obtain. And if you try to make the bedrock breaker cheaper to solve this problem, you immediately run into problem #1.
Furthermore, because of this same dependency tiering, making one machine impossible to obtain will make everything else that depends on it also impossible to obtain, and the problem quickly spirals out of control.
Three, the techtree design of RotaryCraft goes beyond balance. It is explicitly and specifically designed such that progression is done through learning the various mechanics and processes. Furthermore, every tier is designed with the assumption that you have "legitimately" progressed through the previous tiers and now know and understand everything that was required, be it torque/speed manipulation, extreme heat generation, or anything else.
If the recipes are modified and a player gets to a machine without learning its prerequisites, one or both of the following will happen. If they are lucky, they will lack the understanding of how to run/manage the machine and it will simply fail to work, and they will become frustrated. If they are less lucky, they will succeed in activating the machine but not setting it up properly, and it will soon fail, usually violently.
Four, in my experience, changing recipes is done less for "let's try and tweak this so it fits better" by knowledgeable server owners and more for "let's ban machine X" or "let's make machine X for donators only" or "machine X is OP!" by uninformed owners who often make the decision before even installing the mod, let alone getting to know it well enough that the aforementioned RC techtree is even apparent. Additionally, as explained in #2, banning a machine has the side effect of indirectly functionally banning several others.
You may ask why I even care what happens to individual players or on individual servers.
The altruistic answer is that I do want my content to be enjoyed by the users; I want them to have fun playing RC and not spend time getting upset because of a problem that should have never happened.
The second, more personal answer, is that these things spread. More often than not, when a player has a machine fail to work, I am the first to hear about it, in the form of a "bug" report whose solution is something like "the machine must be at temperature X". This is depressingly common and wastes a great deal of my time, and makes it harder to identify legitimate bugs. It also leads to exasperation which more than once has manifested itself as responses that are less than polite.
It gets worse than that, too; if enough of the problems listed above start to happen, word soon starts to spread about how a machine is "bugged" or how "RotaryCraft is broken"/"way too hard"/"way too OP", or so on, and that manifests itself as a general negative attitude towards the mod, something I have seen before and wish never to repeat.
I can completely understand you not wanting things changed by third parties due to the problems/frustration it can cause, and how those things can come back to cause problems for you. A couple weeks ago I had been looking into if RotaryCraft would be a good fit for BnB pack after playing with it in the Monster pack (enjoyed the mod a lot) and I actually ended up reading most of the stuff you have posted concerning this(you certainly have good examples of how the internet can overreact on there).
Most of the problems seem to arise from people doing things wrong, or just being plain idiotic. Surely there are some instances where a trusted person could get permission to modify things though? Using this pack as an example: Blood n Bones is made by @Eyamaz (who is certainly trustworthy when release dates aren't involved ) and is fairly well known to be heavily modified.
Most of the problems seem to arise from people doing things wrong, or just being plain idiotic. Surely there are some instances where a trusted person could get permission to modify things though? Using this pack as an example: Blood n Bones is made by @Eyamaz (who is certainly trustworthy when release dates aren't involved ) and is fairly well known to be heavily modified.
I doubt Eyamaz has the patience or time to do that level of testing.
Also, it is a logistical impossibility to start scanning through each "change request" to approve the sensible ones.
Furthermore, that will inevitably lead to accusations of playing favorite, or, as has happened before, accusations of bribery.
I doubt Eyamaz has the patience or time to do that level of testing.
Also, it is a logistical impossibility to start scanning through each "change request" to approve the sensible ones.
Furthermore, that will inevitably lead to accusations of playing favorite, or, as has happened before, accusations of bribery.
I don't suggest that you scan through each "change request" to approve sensible ones. Just that there are some people who can be trusted to make custom changes to RotaryCraft within a modpack without you checking over every change. Is it playing favorites? Of course! Why does "playing favorites" matter though? It's a normal part of society. You don't let someone with no flight training borrow your jet.
As for bribery.... The internet is dumb. You can't be bribed. You are not a public official.
I don't suggest that you scan through each "change request" to approve sensible ones. Just that there are some people who can be trusted to make custom changes to RotaryCraft within a modpack without you checking over every change. Is it playing favorites? Of course! Why does "playing favorites" matter though? It's a normal part of society. You don't let someone with no flight training borrow your jet.
Tell that to the internet. And be prepared to duck.
Compounding the problem is that most of the "illegitimate" edits I describe in point four come from very entitled people who would say something along the lines of "yes, you can play favorites, as long as you favor me."
Tell that to the internet. And be prepared to duck.
Compounding the problem is that most of the "illegitimate" edits I describe in point four come from very entitled people who would say something along the lines of "yes, you can play favorites, as long as you favor me."
The internet certainly has massive amounts of people who feel extremely entitled for no reason. They can be banned/muted/ignored/blacklisted/deleted/blocked quite simply most times. I don't feel like the "bad"(I can't think of a better word) people's actions need to ruin it for good modpack creators though.
I suppose someone could say I fit the "you can play favorites as long as you favor me" category, as by suggesting that people with experience who can be trusted (such as JadedCat and Eyamaz) deserve permission, I'm basically suggesting it for myself by proxy, as I do ASM work for Eyamaz.
The internet certainly has massive amounts of people who feel extremely entitled for no reason. They can be banned/muted/ignored/blacklisted/deleted/blocked quite simply most times. I don't feel like the "bad"(I can't think of a better word) people's actions need to ruin it for good modpack creators though.
I suppose someone could say I fit the "you can play favorites as long as you favor me" category, as by suggesting that people with experience who can be trusted (such as JadedCat and Eyamaz) deserve permission, I'm basically suggesting it for myself by proxy, as I do ASM work for Eyamaz.
I had an idea. I could theoretically set up a "sanctioned" hard mode where I choose new, harder, but still compliant recipes and/or behaviors. That way modpack creators need only set the config option.
I had an idea. I could theoretically set up a "sanctioned" hard mode where I choose new, harder, but still compliant recipes and/or behaviors. That way modpack creators need only set the config option.
I imagine that quite a few people would like that. The only real problem I had when I first tried the mod was it seemed to just require a lot of iron and not much else. Might be nice to require some rarer mats. Would be quite a fair amount of work for you though.
Unfortunately wouldn't work for BnB as we tend to put certain materials inside other dimensions in order to give people a specific tech progression. What would be extra cool (and be an even larger amount of work) would be a hard mode mod compatibility option which made RotaryCraft recipes require various materials from another mod(metallurgy 3 being the best I can think of for it). Would give modpack creators the extra option of being able to use the oregen/mineability options from the other mod to put the starting of RotaryCraft behind any pickaxe/dimension barrier they want. Something like this might work better as an addon.... I suppose a third party addon which did this would break the no modifications rule though.
For a start, provide more details... Post the logs and someone more knowledgeable than me might be able to decipher them.
You might try deleting the folder and re-downloading the pack, see if that helps.
Possibly allocate more RAM to FTB, but depending on how much you already have allocated and which version of Java you're running, that may or may not help.
I imagine that quite a few people would like that. The only real problem I had when I first tried the mod was it seemed to just require a lot of iron and not much else. Might be nice to require some rarer mats. Would be quite a fair amount of work for you though.
Unfortunately wouldn't work for BnB as we tend to put certain materials inside other dimensions in order to give people a specific tech progression. What would be extra cool (and be an even larger amount of work) would be a hard mode mod compatibility option which made RotaryCraft recipes require various materials from another mod(metallurgy 3 being the best I can think of for it). Would give modpack creators the extra option of being able to use the oregen/mineability options from the other mod to put the starting of RotaryCraft behind any pickaxe/dimension barrier they want. Something like this might work better as an addon.... I suppose a third party addon which did this would break the no modifications rule though.
To end the argument, RoC will not be in BnB and it has nothing to do with Reika's license (I can work around licenses.) The endgame capabilities far surpass what I would like, regardless of recipes.
I played around with RotaryCraft in Monster, and for the most part loved it. I don't think it would fit in the BnB pack though. For a couple of reasons:
First off, that it relies on primarily iron, seems kinda easy. Especially for 5+x on most ores. I understand why, the idea is that it can be plugged into any mod pack or vanilla because it doesn't require any special ore gen.
Second, 5+x ores is quite a bit for something like BnB where it seems like things are supposed to be much rarer. Granted this kinda takes part of the issue away from the first issue, but not really. Iron isn't THAT hard to get. So it would still be fairly easy to set up and run the system. Normally part of the balance is time. It takes a lot longer. It might not be possible (or at least as easy to do) to do in BnB, but in Monster it was rather easy to automate the whole process, taking ores out and putting them in to any stage. I know you kinda tried to stop that, but there are items that make it really easy to do.
Third, gravel gun. Need I say more? I mean anything that can kill a wither boss in 1 or 2 hits (especially at range so that there is no real risk)... yeah... that's a bit OP.
When the 1.7 packs were first announced, and they said that they would mostly be based on RF, you seemed disappointed/worried about what that meant for your mod. Do you make your mod for you, and because you want to make it? Or do you make it because you want it to be super popular and/or part of FtB? And can you really expect your mod/s to stay super popular if they are unable (or you are unwilling to have them) adapt to the ever changing game that is Minecraft?
And for the record, no, I'm not trying to be an ass, or troll, or anything like that. I'm just stating my thoughts and opinions.
Edit: I was typing this post before Eyamaz's post showed up...