Can the intrusiveness of GregTech be reigned in?

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noobbyte

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Jul 29, 2019
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how do you set up the machine casing?

also i nei'd the recipe and it says industrial diamonds idk
 

raiju

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Jul 29, 2019
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Machine casing for implosion compressor is 3 3x3 levels below the implosion compressor - S is standard casing, R is reinforced casing, X is empty

Implosion compressor on top middle
Top level 3x3
SRS
RRR
SRS

Mid level 3x3
RRR
RXR
RRR

Bottom level 3x3
SRS
RRR
SRS

You should be able to see this on the diagram on the left if you place the implosion compressor.
 

noobbyte

Active Member
Jul 29, 2019
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oh that's what it meant lol. ya i can't exactly afford that much reinforced casing yet, a bit low on resources in general (really need to get some mining done). which brings me back to the point that i want to silktouch diamonds for the extra mining output
 

HeffronCM

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Jul 29, 2019
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On the topic of free energy, players will always find a way to get what they want, even when working within the constraints of a given game and/or mod(-pack). If GregTech somehow, magically, fixed every known infinite energy bug in FTB tomorrow, I can pretty much guarantee you that, by that time next week, someone will have found a new way to get endless power again. Its not a question of if, but when.

The very instant someone in this thread mentioned that GregTech had to fight hard to remove cheap renewable energy, a horrible idea sprung to life in my brain. A Steve's Carts tree farm of massive proportions, feeding wood into a huge wall of electric furnaces, which feed charcoal into a huge wall of generators, all automated with RP2. Or, for maximum poetic value, Greg's own electric item movers.

Bottom line? As long as a tree can be chopped down and turned into charcoal at an EU profit, you can't stop renewable energy. You can only make it more convoluted and inelegant.

I suppose the value of charcoal could be edited such that it's an energy loss to use it for EU. And you could scratch the Forestry Bio Generator, or make it cost iridium or some bullshit. Then I'll have to set up that Tier 5 Soulshard Blaze farm to use blazerods for free EU. Or I could get really saucy and set up a tier 5 skeleton drop farm in the Nether, and use the infinite coal to feed generators.

The point here? There's a certain threshold where you're no longer creating an enjoyable hard mode. Instead, you're adding complexity for the sake of complexity, and time sinks for the sake of time sinks. And, if GregTech really does work long and hard enough, EU generation is likely to become such a pain in the ass that people just won't use the mod, or won't use anything IC2 related with it installed.
 

Honza8D

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Jul 29, 2019
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how do you set up the machine casing?

also i nei'd the recipe and it says industrial diamonds idk
well thats weird, it says normal diamonds to me. but even if it gives you industrial ones, just put it into crafting grid and you can get normal diamonds out of it
 

raiju

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Jul 29, 2019
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The very instant someone in this thread mentioned that GregTech had to fight hard to remove cheap renewable energy, a horrible idea sprung to life in my brain. A Steve's Carts tree farm of massive proportions, feeding wood into a huge wall of electric furnaces, which feed charcoal into a huge wall of generators, all automated with RP2. Or, for maximum poetic value, Greg's own electric item movers.

Bottom line? As long as a tree can be chopped down and turned into charcoal at an EU profit, you can't stop renewable energy. You can only make it more convoluted and inelegant.

I suppose the value of charcoal could be edited such that it's an energy loss to use it for EU. And you could scratch the Forestry Bio Generator, or make it cost iridium or some bullshit. Then I'll have to set up that Tier 5 Soulshard Blaze farm to use blazerods for free EU. Or I could get really saucy and set up a tier 5 skeleton drop farm in the Nether, and use the infinite coal to feed generators.

The point here? There's a certain threshold where you're no longer creating an enjoyable hard mode. Instead, you're adding complexity for the sake of complexity, and time sinks for the sake of time sinks. And, if GregTech really does work long and hard enough, EU generation is likely to become such a pain in the ass that people just won't use the mod, or won't use anything IC2 related with it installed.

Almost all forms of energy are renewable in minecraft, that's not what Gregtech attempts to change. gregtech attempts to balance different outputs based on the power they give and their complexity. The moment you mention anything which requires complex large and mats consuming methods of automation, you already lose to say... solar panels.
 

RavynousHunter

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Jul 29, 2019
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Almost all forms of energy are renewable in minecraft, that's not what Gregtech attempts to change. gregtech attempts to balance different outputs based on the power they give and their complexity. The moment you mention anything which requires complex large and mats consuming methods of automation, you already lose to say... solar panels.

Perhaps, but there are those of us who enjoy making over-engineered Rube Goldberg devices to supply our energy desires, lol.
 

HeffronCM

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Jul 29, 2019
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Almost all forms of energy are renewable in minecraft, that's not what Gregtech attempts to change. gregtech attempts to balance different outputs based on the power they give and their complexity. The moment you mention anything which requires complex large and mats consuming methods of automation, you already lose to say... solar panels.

If this is the case, then why do so many people seem to have a hang-up with lava power from the Nether? It's not like moving lava from the Nether to anywhere else is a one-block drop it and leave it.

Complexity is also relative. For people like me that have been delving deep into these mods for a long time, the builds I listed above don't seem complex. For my roommate who's only foray into IC2 involved multiple electrocutions and one voltage explosion before he swore off the mod forever, a solar panel is super complex. Then you've got the in-between, my other roommate who looked through everything GregTech had to offer, and decided to rebuild his Wind Mill farm for power. I guess Wind Mills need more nerfing?
 

raiju

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Jul 29, 2019
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If this is the case, then why do so many people seem to have a hang-up with lava power from the Nether? It's not like moving lava from the Nether to anywhere else is a one-block drop it and leave it.

Complexity is also relative. For people like me that have been delving deep into these mods for a long time, the builds I listed above don't seem complex. For my roommate who's only foray into IC2 involved multiple electrocutions and one voltage explosion before he swore off the mod forever, a solar panel is super complex. Then you've got the in-between, my other roommate who looked through everything GregTech had to offer, and decided to rebuild his Wind Mill farm for power. I guess Wind Mills need more nerfing?

Strawman
 

Bluehorazon

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Jul 29, 2019
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Perhaps, but there are those of us who enjoy making over-engineered Rube Goldberg devices to supply our energy desires, lol.

Well such people should not have a problem. If you build machines just for building machines you normally don't touch solars anyway. For such people GregTech might even offer new challanges since his machines are a bit more tricky to automate, since if you silk-touch the ores you need to seperate everything into centrifuge, electrolyzer and blast furnace to get the endproducts so you can build rather large complex machinery, which could be rather funny. Exspecially since you have to consider that the electrolyzer and the centrifuge wants certain stack-sizes.

If this is the case, then why do so many people seem to have a hang-up with lava power from the Nether? It's not like moving lava from the Nether to anywhere else is a one-block drop it and leave it.

Complexity is also relative. For people like me that have been delving deep into these mods for a long time, the builds I listed above don't seem complex. For my roommate who's only foray into IC2 involved multiple electrocutions and one voltage explosion before he swore off the mod forever, a solar panel is super complex. Then you've got the in-between, my other roommate who looked through everything GregTech had to offer, and decided to rebuild his Wind Mill farm for power. I guess Wind Mills need more nerfing?

There are two things you should not confuse.

1. Moving stuff backwards in the techtree
2. Macking stuff harder to get

He surely nerfed the solars. But Wind and Water were just so strong early on that he decided to make the player do some things before he can get them. Aluminium requires a blast-furnace and for windmills you either need a blastfurnace and a rolling-machine for the cheap recipe or 32 coal per windmill for the more costly version (although both are not really that expensive, but you normally end up with tons of Aluminium and Mangan, and the later does not even have more uses).

He made wind expensive enough so that you would not just spam windmills like you could before, but not so expensive that you won't ever use them.

Lava from the nether is something a bit difficult. It is incredibly easy to do. You can either use liquid transposer and enderchests, which is not very complex. Or Railcraft, which is more elegant, but a bit more expensive and can go into a bit of complexity. The liquid-transposer version is the cheap one, which I would complain at least a bit. It is incredible easy to do and not really a construction-challange. The ressource-requirement for the SteveCarts farm + Charcoal burning is propably higher and you need to make at least some considerations to automate it properly.
 

HeffronCM

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm not attempting to ignore your position and substitute a distorted version of it. You brought up Solars, and are now seeming to claim that is the only part of the conversation that matters. I've seen people deride lava power, forestry bio power, Buildcraft diesel power, in fact anything other than the chemicals and fuels of GregTech and IC2, as too simple and easy to use. I've even seen people talk of nerfing GregTech's own chemicals and generators as too easy. I'm trying to understand this viewpoint. At a certain point, all you accomplish is the removal of every energy option between charcoal and fusion. This doesn't seem like it increases the number of fun possibilities or the depth of the game. It's complexity for complexity's sake.


Lava from the nether is something a bit different. It is incredibly easy to do. You can either use liquid transposer and enderchests, which is not very complex. Or Railcraft, which is more elegant, but a bit more expensive and can go into a bit of complexity. The liquid-transposer version is the cheap one, which I would complain at least a bit. It is incredible easy to do and not really a construction-challange. The ressource-requirement for the SteveCarts farm + Charcoal burning is propably higher and you need to make at least some considerations to automate it properly.


Here's the resources on each set up. Not sure how to figure the pipes and tubes, you probably only need 1 of each per section. I'm assuming the liquid transposers, because I think you need MystCraft portals to use the Railcraft set-up.
To set up a nether pump with liquid transposers and ender chests:
2x Ender Chest (8 blaze rods, 2 ender pearls)
2x Liquid Transposer (4 gold, 4 copper, 14 iron, 4 redstone)
Selective inventory automation, going with 4x Filters for cheap (20 redstone, 4 iron, 8 gold)
Pump (13 iron, 1 redstone)
Waterproof Pipe (source of cactus)
BC power on both sides (assuming least 1 Magmatic Engine per dimension for proper flow of materials, not sure if you can power liquid transposers with redstone engines?) (22 tin, 2 silver, 6 redstone, 2 iron)
chunkloader (ender pearl, 5 gold, 2 diamond for the chickenchunks in the MindCrack packs which seems to be what we're discussing)
Access to Obsidian (either 3 diamond for a pick, or 2 tin, 7 iron, 2 redstone, and 1 gold for an Igneous Extruder) to access nether and build ender chests
at least 1 Geothermal Generator

And this is all up-front, you can't really skimp on any of this or you don't have a nether pump.

The automated charcoal farm:
Rolling Machine (8 iron, 4 redstone)
Track (1 Iron per 4.4 track, Coke Oven for creosote)
Cart Assembler (11 iron, 2 gold, 8 redstone)
The cart (wood cutter, coal engine, storage, standard hull, total of 37 iron, 14 redstone, 2 gold, 5 diamond)
Cargo Manager (7 iron, 5 redstone)
Advanced Detector Rail (6 iron, 1 redstone)
1+ Generators
1+ Electric Furnace
1 filter per furnace, +1 for the Cargo Manager

I'm including some infrastructure you don't need for the nether pump. You can skimp on automation and even the furnaces early, making it something you can set up the bones of earlier and expand as your power needs increase.
So, the up-front costs are fairly similar. The biggest differance is in activity. You can set up the cart farmer with half a stack of iron ore, and getting your hands on clay. The nether pump requires enderman hunting, blaze hunting, liquid transport. The biggest issue with the cart is voltage level, it takes 13 generators burning a charcoal every 20 seconds to provide the constant power for one GregTech machine. However, GregTech + RP2 makes for cheap storage, and once automated this can be a purely passive system (in my experience trying to use lava pumps to Mass Fabricate, you end up needing to move the pump more frequently than I like).

Actually, the more I think about this, the more I'm enjoying the idea of it. I'll have to build one now :-D
 

raiju

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Jul 29, 2019
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At a certain point, all you accomplish is the removal of every energy option between charcoal and fusion. This doesn't seem like it increases the number of fun possibilities or the depth of the game. It's complexity for complexity's sake.

Methane got nerfed and people still use it

People still use lava without the nether/magma crucibles

People still use windmills and watermills

People rarely (if ever) complain about nitrofuel

Bringing things back in line with oil that frankly got gutted by newer mods is not giving you less choice.

I don't see how your point here applies, at all. Solar becomes more and more of an outlier because any complexity involved is solved with 5 minutes clicking buttons in NEI. There is no thought process involved, no maintenance, and no risk of damage. Advanced/compact solars just made this no-thought energy become competitive with energy that are either a) requiring complex setups and massive time investment to automate or b) involve risk

Going Solar is renewable energy, Y is renewable energy; whats the problem? Doesn't really do anything but seem obtuse..
 

HeffronCM

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Jul 29, 2019
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Raiju, I have no problem with the nerfing of solar panels. If I haven't yet made that clear, I apologize. I kind of like the need for silicon panels, and anyone that doesn't want to jump through the GregTech hoops for a blast furnace can jump through the Railcraft hoops instead. I have a problem with people calling for nerfing each of those other options that DO require thought, planning, multiple mod interactions, and automation. I also have a problem with people conflating simplicity with well-documented complexity. Going from zero to nether pump or biofuel is not a simple endeavor, yet people complain about it with the same fervor as solars. I don't understand why. I imagine because it is not the right kind of complexity, with long wait for stages of processing that involve GregTech machines.