Mod Feedback [By Request] RotaryCraft Suggestions

[Pyure]

...It does?

In testing it did but I totally allow that I may have busted my own test, it was late.

The rods were operational; they went up and down using the GUI. But they didn't activate automatically due to temperature. I'm also a few versions out of date which I should have mentioned in the last post but didn't.

 

[keybounce]

Each player (or group of players working together) that wants to do ChC will need sixteen pylons, one of each color

So far, those are sharable -- that's 16 colors for power generation. Now, you might not like the rate of recharge if there's a dozen people using the same 16, but it is possible.

, plus anywhere from a few to a few dozen more to disassemble, depending on whether or not they use the item fabricator to duplicate the blocks that cannot otherwise be crafted and only generate in pylons.

This info is a few versions old: apparently, you needed to destroy at least 2 if not 3 of each color by the endgame. Now, there are other options, and destroying pylons is just one option.

In addition, each player will need access to a variety of different biomes and the various worldgen plants and structures contained within.
...
Each player who wants to reach the end of ChC's tech tree must find and claim one of each worldgen structure (and once a structure is claimed, nobody else can claim it unless the chunk is regenerated), so each player will need a sizable amount of ocean, desert, and plains all their own.

Hardly.

A single desert blob will typically have 2-3 of the desert structures; ocean structures are everywhere in vanilla oceans. I don't know the frequency of the other two, but it only takes a few biomes to satisfy everyone.

Now, that's assuming that your players are actually *willing* to share. I can easily see someone going on a desert clearing spree, and if you are using non-vanilla worldgen, such as RTG, the ocean structures become very hard to find.

Bottom line: Co-op players can work in fairly limited space; greedy players want more space. Reika did 5K by 5K zones on his server just to avoid any problem with people having shortages. It was excessive for everyone except the one person that took a bunch of islands, and wound up with no white pylons in his zone at all.

 

[Pyure]

Folks,

I'm looking at Reactors for the first time in a couple years. You may recall I was once fervently involved in ReactorCraft and initiated several discussion threads on the various mechanics. Now I'm out of date and looking to re-discover.

During some testing with standard fission reactors I couldn't help but notice that they seem more forgiving than before. I genuinely had a hard time getting a reactor to explode in testing with designs I'd used before (in particular, 16-core reactors made of 4 quads, surrounded by neutron reflectors)

I'm wondering:

• Was fission itself slowed down a bit in general?
• Were max-temperatures of fuel cores and/or boilers increased? (I see 1800 and 2000 for those respectively in the code, not sure what they used to be)?
• Was heat transference tweaked somehow?

If any of these are true, I think I appreciate the change.

 

[RavynousHunter]

Shameless plug, but I made a thread (below as I'm on mobile) detailing ReC mechanics.
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/reactorcraft-rec-mechanics-thread.164904/

 

[Pyure]

Shameless plug, but I made a thread (below as I'm on mobile) detailing ReC mechanics.
https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/reactorcraft-rec-mechanics-thread.164904/

The plug two weeks ago was shameless. This one is a bit more shameful

 

[Reika]

Folks,

I'm looking at Reactors for the first time in a couple years. You may recall I was once fervently involved in ReactorCraft and initiated several discussion threads on the various mechanics. Now I'm out of date and looking to re-discover.

During some testing with standard fission reactors I couldn't help but notice that they seem more forgiving than before. I genuinely had a hard time getting a reactor to explode in testing with designs I'd used before (in particular, 16-core reactors made of 4 quads, surrounded by neutron reflectors)

I'm wondering:

• Was fission itself slowed down a bit in general?
• Were max-temperatures of fuel cores and/or boilers increased? (I see 1800 and 2000 for those respectively in the code, not sure what they used to be)?
• Was heat transference tweaked somehow?

If any of these are true, I think I appreciate the change.

I have no memory of changing anything.

 

[Pyure]

Thanks Reika.

As always, I'm inclined to allow for faults in my own questionable memory. It could very well be I'm simply recalling Plutonium reactors or Ammonia-moderated ones.

 

[RavynousHunter]

The plug two weeks ago was shameless. This one is a bit more shameful

SHAMEFUL DISPLAY!

 

[Pyure]

@Reika, now that I've had a chance to go through the magnetostatic engine tweaks, couple overall thoughts:

• Nitrogen addition in lieue of lubricant feels natural and adds an interesting twist to logistics. But I'm glad I have the ability to send fluids "wirelessly" or this would be less fun. FWIW.
• Final magnetostatic tier upgrade seems a bit off with only requirement being 1800C; previous tier felt more expensive.
• I kind of expected the worktable to have AE2 support by now. Does it and I simply failed? I've been having not-fun doing all RoC transactions manually during the "digital age" of my world.
• Related to above: Are we able now to make Minetweaker scripts to supplant most worktable recipes?
• By any chance have you already considered an additional magneto-tier that leverages reactorcraft? Possibly one that rewards users for accomplishing fission and/or fusion and/or proper waste disposal? (Not sure how you'd manage that last, but a decay-isosope might be amusing.)

 

[RavynousHunter]

The worktable can be automated with crafting patterns, but only one pattern per table and it doesn't round robin its inputs. To truly automate it, you'd also need a redstone timer or somesuch to tick it. I think there's also a config option to disable worktable recipes. As far as I am aware, only the autocrafting machines can be put on an ME network.

 

[Pyure]

The worktable can be automated with crafting patterns, but only one pattern per table and it doesn't round robin its inputs. To truly automate it, you'd also need a redstone timer or somesuch to tick it. I think there's also a config option to disable worktable recipes. As far as I am aware, only the autocrafting machines can be put on an ME network.

Ravynous, this is excellent info, thx. I wasn't aware/had forgotten that you could pulse a workbench to execute it.

Can you explain what you mean by one pattern per workbench? Wild guess: you pre-load items onto the workbench, and redstone pulses will always execute the pattern so long as there are >= 2 items in each required slot.

 

[RavynousHunter]

What I meant was the bench only has space for one pattern and will, as far as I am aware, consume the last of the inputs if given the opportunity. As for the inputs themselves, take TRISO fuel, for example (technically a blast furnace recipe, but the principle is the same): you'd need 4 stacks of graphite and at least one uranium dust if you're using auto input from an empty table, not just 4 graphite and a uranium dust.

 

[Pyure]

@Reika, now that I've had a chance to go through the magnetostatic engine tweaks, couple overall thoughts:

• Nitrogen addition in lieue of lubricant feels natural and adds an interesting twist to logistics. But I'm glad I have the ability to send fluids "wirelessly" or this would be less fun. FWIW.
• Final magnetostatic tier upgrade seems a bit off with only requirement being 1800C; previous tier felt more expensive.
• I kind of expected the worktable to have AE2 support by now. Does it and I simply failed? I've been having not-fun doing all RoC transactions manually during the "digital age" of my world.
• Related to above: Are we able now to make Minetweaker scripts to supplant most worktable recipes?
• By any chance have you already considered an additional magneto-tier that leverages reactorcraft? Possibly one that rewards users for accomplishing fission and/or fusion and/or proper waste disposal? (Not sure how you'd manage that last, but a decay-isosope might be amusing.)

I've begun tinkering with the tiers themselves in realistic applications. I don't want to over-do magnetostatics in my base, but they do make for more interesting logistical solutions (particularly power-on-demand scenarios).

Less positive feedback here, but constructive nonetheless:

• Low-tier RF->RoC transform feels too cheap. For this one, I respect that its fundamentally based off of some specific mathematical comparisons, but it still feels off.
• Tier efficiency efficiency-dropoff feels way too high at the top end. I don't really see that this contributes anything to my appreciation of the mod, and in scenarios where I want power-on-demand (and we don't use ElectriCraft, not my server)
• Related to above, oddly-scaled efficiency lends itself to an unfortunate side-effect where 4 magnetos of tier X-1 are spammed instead of a single magneto of tier X. This is still a minor issue.
• A tier 5 magneto running at 1 rad/s doesn't seem to start working unless it receives enough power to run at full-speed. Do the RF costs not scale with the power output?

Given the Nitrogen requirement, is the high-end efficiency drop-off still beneficial and desirable? Is this worth further discussion or reassessment?

 

[RavynousHunter]

I believe the reason for the LN2 requirements, as well as their large curve, is twofold:

1. LN2 is harder to get early on than lubricant. This gates magnetostatics (as well as the other converters) further into the tech tree. The reasoning is that people were abusing magnetostatics, using them as a workaround for the normal tech tree, ultimately defeating the purpose of having all the other engines. After all, RF is trivial to produce in mass quantities, whereas shaft power is an actual logistical challenge to produce in mass amounts.
2. Without the (I believe exponential) LN2 requirements, there would be more abuse of the converter engines than there is by RoC's users. Though its further down the line than lube, LN2 is still fairly trivial to produce with pure RoC, with a good setup. Producing 10mB/t (as an example) of LN2 is easy. Producing 1,000mB/t is more difficult and challenging.

 

[Pyure]

I believe the reason for the LN2 requirements, as well as their large curve, is twofold:

1. LN2 is harder to get early on than lubricant. This gates magnetostatics (as well as the other converters) further into the tech tree. The reasoning is that people were abusing magnetostatics, using them as a workaround for the normal tech tree, ultimately defeating the purpose of having all the other engines. After all, RF is trivial to produce in mass quantities, whereas shaft power is an actual logistical challenge to produce in mass amounts.
2. Without the (I believe exponential) LN2 requirements, there would be more abuse of the converter engines than there is by RoC's users. Though its further down the line than lube, LN2 is still fairly trivial to produce with pure RoC, with a good setup. Producing 10mB/t (as an example) of LN2 is easy. Producing 1,000mB/t is more difficult and challenging.

Agreed all around here Ravynous, although you misunderstood me a tiny bit (I was unclear?): I didn't reference the LN curve at all, just the RF consumption curve.

Agreed regarding abuse of Magnetos. Reika has been fighting against this ever since he introduced them, and I really like the primary solution: The tiers force you to get through the RoC progression properly. You essentially have to learn how to (safely) set up Gas Turbines in order to get Bedrock dust in order to get high-tier magnetostatics. Thumbs up as far as I'm concerned.

The curve is indeed exponential (or logarithmic depending on whether you're discussing high costs versus low efficiency). Since we're essentially talking about overclockers here, an exponentially increasing cost of use is completely warranted. Its the precise exponent being used that feels off to me. I'm missing an adjective here...it feels "inappropriate" or "disconnected" is the closest I can manage.

 

[RavynousHunter]

The problem is that the conversion rate itself is actually a flat 520:1 (note: data may be out of date), but RoC's own power system is, itself, exponential. That means that the conversion rate ends up being exponential as a side effect of converting to/from RoC shaft power.

 

[Pyure]

The problem is that the conversion rate itself is actually a flat 520:1 (note: data may be out of date), but RoC's own power system is, itself, exponential. That means that the conversion rate ends up being exponential as a side effect of converting to/from RoC shaft power.

At a glance this doesn't actually make sense. That ratio is a flat linear ratio. There's no exponential graph to be drawn from the numbers you've provided. The power system isn't exponential at all (although some of its systems certainly are with respect to how they perform with varying amounts of power)

 

[Braidedheadman]

I think that he meant that the power delivered by various engines in the tech tree do so exponentially, which requires any imported RF sources to scale along the same curve (the lossy RF >> Shaft power conversion rates notwithstanding).

 

[RavynousHunter]

At a glance this doesn't actually make sense. That ratio is a flat linear ratio. There's no exponential graph to be drawn from the numbers you've provided. The power system isn't exponential at all (although some of its systems certainly are with respect to how they perform with varying amounts of power)

Put it like this:

S(x) = 2^x
R(x) = 2x

C(x) = S(x) / R(x) = 2^x / 2x

The resulting equation is flatter, but still exponential no matter which way you go. The only way to make it not exponential would be to make the conversion system far more complex and likely non-configurable, which the current system happens to be.

 

[Pyure]

I think that he meant that the power delivered by various engines in the tech tree do so exponentially, which requires any imported RF sources to scale along the same curve (the lossy RF >> Shaft power conversion rates notwithstanding).

I think you're misunderstanding which curve we're talking about. 510:1 is a fixed rate. You're totally right that the RoC engines tend to produce on a (usually quadrupling) curved graph of sorts, but the conversion rate itself remains the same. So what we're actually talking about is the item where you said "notwithstanding".

That said: the more I look at the math, the less I'm convinced my original math was correct. According to wikis, the tier 5 engine actually outputs as much as a Gas Turbine at 67MW. The "ideal" RF cost using Ravynous's ratio would be approximately 131600 RF/t. The user actually pays 258110 RF/t. That's a 50% loss or so. My original calculation was orders of magnitude worse. (I'm not at home atm, can't triple check how I got my original numbers)

So instead of buying 510W with every RF, you buy 260W.

Which, btw, makes me think the ratio is actually 520W:1RF, not 510W, because the numbers work out a bit more elegantly.

I'm going to scratch out the majority of that concern above. I don't really think it withstands scrutiny.