Convince me to use Mod X - My balanced mod pack attempt.

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Count_Cocofang

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hello and welcome.

I'm tinkering a little bit on a modpack to use offline (but perhaps might inspire some serer owner to use it. It's meant to be versatile (and thus not really themed) but as balanced as possible.

Things I want the modpack to do:

-Keep Minecraft dangers dangerous.
-Be as balanced as possible
-Try to not use duplicates (kinda hard to do with the ore)
-Keep the number of different ore types and duplicate ores) as low as possible.
-Avoid unnecesarry randomness.

Thus, as an example xycraft is already out of question despite being quite well designed. It adds 6 ores (all of currently low use) and from the previews tends to do things (tanks and autocrafting) similar but simply "stronger" than other mods.

Mods that I currently could need help to decide:

Convince Me - IndustrialCraft:

Pros:
-Allows me to use Charge Pads (which i hope for something similar in Redpower one day, once more tools are there) and MFFS. Both mods I would like to use.
-Small parts of Forestry and Railcraft use it.
-Jetpacks offer quite balanced (but annoying to control) flight.
-Scaffolds.
-Plant system
-Rubber trees are coler than redpower rubber trees.

Cons:
-Most tools feel slightly OP and the Armor negates any dangers Minecraft offers.
-Most of the stuff their machines do are done by thermal expansion (in a more aesthetic and quit way)
-Many ores and Duplicate ores.
-Electricity is also done by Redpower.
-I won't use Gregtech to rebalance it, since Gregtech heavily violates the "not too many random ores" rule.

Convince Me -Mystcraft:

Pros:
-Makes traveling quicker.
-The portals are well made.

Cons
-Makes traveling less dangerous.
-Can be extremely cheaty.
-Alternative Dimensions are plenty (Nether, End, Twilight Forest and perhaps a Harken Scythe Dimension)

Convince Me -Extra bees:

Pros:
-Bees in the nether.
-Seemingly the Woodworker that I've seen in SotMeads videos, which is extremely cool.

Cons:
-Makes obtaining certain aspects on bees alot easier (Cave dwelling, etc.)
-Underwater Bees are silly, As are bees completely encased by stone. I also feel that it suffers from a heavy case of "too much".
-Certain negative bee effects are silly/ugly. Creeper bees or Lightning bees o_O


Current Custom Modpack:

  • Forge Modloader
  • Rei's minimap
  • Optifine
  • Back Tools Support
  • ChickenChunks
  • Extra Biomes XL
  • Enderstorage
  • NEI
  • WRCBE
  • Iron Chests
  • ObsiPlate
  • Buildcraft
  • Addtional Buildcraft Objects
  • Thermal Expansion
  • Redpower
  • Railcraft
  • Steve's Carts
  • Forestry
  • Thaumic Bees
  • Thaucmraft
  • Harken Scythes
  • Twilight Forest
  • Industrialcraft (pending)
  • Charge Pads (needs IC)
  • MFFS (needs IC)
  • PetroGen (needs IC)
  • Advanced Solars (needs IC)
  • Mystcraft (pending)
  • Extra Bees (pending)
Checklist regarding my wanted atributes:
Diffficulty:
Mobs shoudl be difficult enough with server on Hard and the additional things Thaumcraft, Harken Scythes and twilight Forest add. Resources should be fair (apart from people Quarrying Hollow Hills, which kinda annoys me.)
Balance:
No easy to make mobgrinders, no overpowered equip and most ood building and craftign resources are hard enough to aquire,
Duplicates:
Currently not many duplicate machines. Duplicate ores sadly isn't really avoidable.
Ores:
Number not artificially increased and special mod ores (thaumcraft) differ visually form other things. Tungsten is a bad case obviously.
Randomness:
Still has some. Mostly in Thaumcrafts collisio of Tier and Type golem system (Advanced golems vs different core golems ; I would prolly have preferred just Tiers or justCores, but not both)
Wonder if anyone can persuade me to sue (or not use) a certain mod. Also feel free to suggest me other mods, currently not listed.
 
No real reason to use IC2 if you're already using TE. It adds some useful tools, but the majority of what IC2 is good for (processing of materials) is done just as well (if not better) by TE.
 
I agree with eculc on IC2 with the added caveat that a lot of the tools, and especially the weapons and armor are too op if you really want it to feel dangerous.

Personally I only use Mystcraft to two linking books on bookstands; one in my base and the other in a nether fortress. Even that feels a little cheaty.
 
Industrialcraft power tools are a pretty good addition if you run GregTech. Suddenly the normal tools cost steel, which means a trip to the nether at minimum, and the diamond drill costs titanium. A lot of effort will go into procuring that. GregTech also serves as a drain for some of Redpowers overabundant and overpowered gems, which cannot be turned off and pretty much mean "unlimited free diamond tools for everyone!" within the first 30 minutes of gameplay. At the very least, GregTech will eat the rubies for breakfast and give purpose to sapphires, leaving only the green sapphires to pile up in your chests unless you craft them into pickaxes.

I've actually made a game with custom configs and mod selection with exactly the same goal as yours - to have a challenging, balanced playing field with a minimum of redundant worldgen. The mod selection differs from yours, and is partly based on personal preference (as yours undoubtly is as well), but if you're interested I can tell you what I've done.
 
On the Extra Bees case, the two things you posted are actually more cons that pros.

With the Creeper Bees, you can build a simple little mob/exp farm and obtain unlimted amounts of gunpowder.

If you have Gregtech installed, you can use the lightning rod to get massive amounts of power. Seems pretty legit to me.
 
If you decided against IC2 you may want to look into

http://universalelectricity.com/?m=modular_powersuits

It adds an armour system somewhat like quantum armour but not quite as OP you can get some pretty cool things for your armour in it and while using IC2 to charge it is more sensible it can be done without (also despite it being on the universal electricity site it is not required to use it).
 
Omicron:

I would love that. Even though the 10 or so ores that gregtech adds (and that end up stuffing my nventory) really scare me :D

Democretes:

Pretty sure I've listed those weird bee effects as negatives already (but for other reasons). Unless you played switcheroo wit your words.

NTaylor:

Gonna look at it.
 
Alright. I have created this world on Mindcrack v6, which was the newest at the time, and haven't updated since (because well, I am too lazy to redo the configs just because of a few minor version increments).

I set up a small LAN server for a couple friends and me, some of which have never touched Minecraft before. As such, a secondary goal was not to have too much unneeded complexity.

I have deactivated the following mods:

ChickenChunks - Unneeded in the presence of Railcraft.
ComputerCraft - Unneeded complexity; also, I want to play Minecraft, not program a computer to play Minecraft for me ;)
ExtraBees - Makes too many resources renewable that aren't meant to be, although you can say that the effort involved makes it fair. Still, the added complexity made me turn it off.
Factorization - Its recipe costs are just too out of whack with the entire rest of the modding environment. And given that all it adds in return is yet another ore doubler, barrels and wrath lamps, I found it not worth the trouble.
Voxel Litemods - Disabled these four because some of my friends were running extremely low spec laptops, and each mod less lets them breathe easier.
MiscPeripherals - Superfluous in the absence of ComputerCraft.
MFFS - Unneeded complexity, plus, we were all sitting in the same room. Griefers would simply be slapped ;)
Portalgun - ...I simply don't think the flavor fits into my ideal world. Given this, disabling it to lower complexity was an easy choice.
Steve's Carts - Insanely complex in some aspects, insanely broken in other aspects.
Traincraft - Entered the modpack literally one day before I started the world, and the only experience I managed to get with it in that time was "yeah, yet more worldgen". Disabled for now.
Twilight Forest - Adds a whole new game by itself; too much complexity for people who weren't even familiar with the concept of a common nether portal. The forest also tends to murder FPS on older computers.
Wireless Redstone - Unneeded complexity in the face of people who never heard of regular redstone or its uses before.
XyCraft - I've rarely seen worldgen being this extremely obnoxious. It's everywhere, it tries to jump screaming into your face, it drops tons and tons of stuff... and has absolutely no purpose yet. Disabled.

Also not present by default:
Mystcraft - trivializes a hundred well-working game mechanics, makes people wander off instead of build together, introduces exploits and a new layer of complexity. I really don't like this mod.

That leaves the following active mods:

AdvancedMachines - Tweaked config to double energy drain. Default setting makes them cheaper to run that tier 1 machines, and that's bollocks.
Buildcraft - I love me my oil spouts and autarchic gates.
EnderStorage - Color-coded ender chests are great for multiplayer.
ExtraBiomesXL - deactivated ALL extra biomes except Mountain Ridge and Wasteland, because those are unique looking and don't add performance murdering trees yet offer interesting new building material. Disabled village generation in all mountainous biomes because it just looks retarded.
Forestry - With a custom hard mode config increasing energy need and nerfing many recipes, particularly the fermenter and peat bog. A given considering said hard mode option was implemented at my request in the first place ;)
GregTech - Comes in full hard mode in Mindcrack, I adjusted a few things. No storageblock compressing, since it leads to inconsistent recipes; no difficult iridium plates, they are already difficult enough without requiring you to build an expensive extra machine that has no other purpose but to make iridium plates; disabled lava electrolyzing/centrifuging to close exploits; disabled adding circuitry to the Ore Dictionary, because recipes already fluctuate enough as is and confuse new players; disabled generation of pyrite, cinnabar, rubies, sapphires, silver; raised iridium probability to 25%. Of the remaining ores, only bauxite spawns in the overworld (and not in all biomes). In hindsight, though, I probably should have left rubies on in addition to the redpower ones, because good grief you need a lot of them.
Industrialcraft - Nerfed all renewables to 50% output; nerfed geothermal generator to 75% output. Due to GregTech, power tools become a goal to work towards, not something you build in the first half hour.
Nuclear Control - Always useful.
Inventory Tweaks - As is this mod.
Iron Chests - You'll need it to store excess nikolite... :p
AdvancedSolars - Nerfed to half energy output matching their basic IC2 counterpart. Disabled Ultimate Solar Helmet.
GraviSuite - It's nice to have an endgame goal or two.
Not Enough Items - More important than ever, with Minecraft newbies present.
Obsidiplates - Sure, why not.
OmniTools - Forge Lexicon for the win.
Railcraft - Because boilers are awesome (and finally somewhat balanced, after the latest revision), and it makes steel and aluminium easier to produce than with pure GregTech.
Redpower - Can't really go without Redpower, despite its annoying worldgen that can't be adjusted or turned off. At least, GregTech gives a use to rubies, sapphires and rubber wood here.
SoulShards - With portal gun disabled, and the server running on hard difficulty, I figured it was fair to leave people one way of making their own mob spawners, even though I'm not a fan.
Thaumcraft - Too awesome to not include, and its worldgen is actually pretty sparse. Turned out to be the most popular mod among the newbies!
Thermal Expansion - with Pulverizer and Induction smelter both set to hard recipes to match GregTech, and nerfing the Magma Crucible a bit. Also allowed me to customize worldgen for the basic ores.
PetrolGen - Sure, why not.
Rei's Minimap - Extremely useful to keep new players from getting lost - setting waypoints was the very first thing I explained after everyone logged in ;)
 
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personally I find advance machines redundant. With overclockers you can already speed up your machines with a balance increase in energy cost. And if you want to keep the world interesting, I would disable quarries. With them people never have to visit a cave, or general leave their base except to move the quarry. Setting the block ID to 0 should disable it.

I would also drop advanced solars for compact solars. Advanced solars are way OP.

I think you need something that adds more enemies to the game. If not mystcraft, better dungeons? though it does leave a lot to be desired in many aspects. Mo' creatures screws up mob spawning, so not that. I don't know of any others, maybe someone else can suggest one or two.

For extra bees the woodworker bee is actually part of extratrees which he/she said would not be out soon. I'm on the fence with this mod myself, a lot of bug still exist, serious ones like world corruption. There is also the balance issue, granted I think you can turn off certain bees in forestry's config file, but that probably requires you to know all the bees first. The only thing is... once you have all of forestry's bees what are you going to do to satisfy your bee craving?
 
silentdeth said:
I would also drop advanced solars for compact solars. Advanced solars are way OP.
Click to expand...

AdvancedSolars lets you control their output in the config, CompactSolars does not. ;)

And yes, I have tried the Industrial Blast Furnace. I can build 10 Railcraft furnaces by the time I get that thing going even with the basic machine casings, which are so worthless that you throw all 36 of them away after processing a single stack of steel ingots so you can upgrade it to Reinforced. Starting with it is a collossal waste of time and resources.

Also, the Railcraft blast furnace can now do Aluminium as well...
 
Omicron said:
AdvancedSolars lets you control their output in the config, CompactSolars does not. ;)

And yes, I have tried the Industrial Blast Furnace. I can build 10 Railcraft furnaces by the time I get that thing going even with the basic machine casings, which are so worthless that you throw all 36 of them away after processing a single stack of steel ingots so you can upgrade it to Reinforced. Starting with it is a collossal waste of time and resources.

Also, the Railcraft blast furnace can now do Aluminium as well...
Click to expand...
You can reuse those standard casings for other multi-block machines, namely the bottom and top of the Industrial Grinder. (although you can hook up 4 grinders to one structure). And you don't have to replace all of them, the blast furnace lets you mix and match casings.
 
silentdeth said:
For extra bees the woodworker bee is actually part of extratrees which he/she said would not be out soon. I'm on the fence with this mod myself, a lot of bug still exist, serious ones like world corruption. There is also the balance issue, granted I think you can turn off certain bees in forestry's config file, but that probably requires you to know all the bees first. The only thing is... once you have all of forestry's bees what are you going to do to satisfy your bee craving?
Click to expand...

Could try thaumic bees 8which also gives alot of Forestry compatibility with Thaumcraft. Or try to breed bees with certain traits (industrious eating mushrooms for your mushroom biome)
 
Omicron -- the only change I'd suggest would be re-enabling some more Extrabiomes content. Specifically, forest-islands and savanna come to mind, as those add some more terrain variation without including stupidly large trees.
 
I considered that, but in the past I've had some issues with the EBXL trees. For example, acacia wood from savannahs wasn't compatible with any recipes short of making planks, sticks and stairs; the saplings couldn't be used in Forestry farms, fermenters or any other mod machine. In the interests of sparing the newbies extra confusion, I decided not to chance it.

If that changed, though, I did always like the savannahs...
 
Most of your arguments against IC2 are easily solvable with editing the config file.

Ore generation... disable copper/tin generation in IC2.cfg
Uber Armor... well, the nano-armor isn't too powerful, it protects about the same as iron armor. It's just the quantum armor that gets OP, which you can disable in the config (heck, just disable UUM recipe for Iridium and you're good)
EU is a very different beastie from BT. About as different as MJ is from either one.
As far as TE doing everything better... not quite. The Compressor has no TE equivalent, and is quite handy for several things.

I find it interesting that you consider Scaffolds a 'pro' considering most people concerned with game balance list them as a 'con' due to tripling EU output from a generator (check how much wood it takes to make scaffolds, and how much each scaffold is worth in EU production when burned in a furnace, and you'll see what I mean). A flat reduction in generator EU production across the board won't change the fact that scaffolds are far more efficient than even charcoal, and without being needed to be cooked beforehand. Yes, they're basically ladders you don't need to place on a block, which makes them quite handy, but most people downcheck them for this reason which many see as an exploit.

If you're wanting things 'hard mode' replace ChargePads with Advanced Power Management. It's basically the successor to Charging Benches. Basically, it prevents someone from just standing on a pad and having infinite 'ammo' for their laser. Extremely powerful on towers with commanding views and a mining laser set to long range. APM has about the same idea... some other way to charge your gear other than your MFE/MFSU, but without the potential exploitation.

As far as Mystcraft... it can be easily exploitable if allowed to run unchecked. It can also be pure hell on the server if just anyone is able to make ages. Plus it kind of defeats the purpose of multiplayer if everyone is on their own age. If you are looking to increase difficulty, remove this. Once people get a diamond block and some gold blocks, they can make inter-age following linking books, and thus will never have to worry about dying again. And it only needs one player on the server to make one for theoretically anyone to use it (assuming they can gain access).
 
ShneekeyTheLost said:
Most of your arguments against IC2 are easily solvable with editing the config file.

Ore generation... disable copper/tin generation in IC2.cfg
Uber Armor... well, the nano-armor isn't too powerful, it protects about the same as iron armor. It's just the quantum armor that gets OP, which you can disable in the config (heck, just disable UUM recipe for Iridium and you're good)
EU is a very different beastie from BT. About as different as MJ is from either one.
As far as TE doing everything better... not quite. The Compressor has no TE equivalent, and is quite handy for several things.

I find it interesting that you consider Scaffolds a 'pro' considering most people concerned with game balance list them as a 'con' due to tripling EU output from a generator (check how much wood it takes to make scaffolds, and how much each scaffold is worth in EU production when burned in a furnace, and you'll see what I mean). A flat reduction in generator EU production across the board won't change the fact that scaffolds are far more efficient than even charcoal, and without being needed to be cooked beforehand. Yes, they're basically ladders you don't need to place on a block, which makes them quite handy, but most people downcheck them for this reason which many see as an exploit.

If you're wanting things 'hard mode' replace ChargePads with Advanced Power Management. It's basically the successor to Charging Benches. Basically, it prevents someone from just standing on a pad and having infinite 'ammo' for their laser. Extremely powerful on towers with commanding views and a mining laser set to long range. APM has about the same idea... some other way to charge your gear other than your MFE/MFSU, but without the potential exploitation.

As far as Mystcraft... it can be easily exploitable if allowed to run unchecked. It can also be pure hell on the server if just anyone is able to make ages. Plus it kind of defeats the purpose of multiplayer if everyone is on their own age. If you are looking to increase difficulty, remove this. Once people get a diamond block and some gold blocks, they can make inter-age following linking books, and thus will never have to worry about dying again. And it only needs one player on the server to make one for theoretically anyone to use it (assuming they can gain access).
Click to expand...


For the purpose of Mystcraft if you want for instance an age to mine in or something for everyone to use but not have people able to create their own ages and spam the world with them you could just disable the crafting recipe for the Books and then spawn one in as a server admin or whatever even doing the same in single player if you didn't want to be able to go everywhere but did want an mining age just spawn one book with the recipe disabled and even maybe delete the ingredients and then make it what you want without making it OP and go from there.
 
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