DW20... a personal musing

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Psychicash

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So I was looking through the pack at the power options and wondering which one I would use? Normally, I break things down into early, mid and late game power options. This got me thinking about a few of the different tech trees in the pack.

Late game options being, for various reasons, things like the draconic reactor, a large extreme reactor, or rainbow gen.

Mid game being things like rftools ender pearl gen, deep resonance, higher tier environmental tech solar.

I have noticed a few threads discussing early game power and a few solutions. Honestly, I'd like to look at a few of those and how they influence build direction. For such a "kitchen sink" pack, there are many things that seem to be over looked or pushed aside for the sake of more efficient options.

For early game I came up with this list

canola oil (crystalized) 200 AA canola
canola oil (empowered) 350 AA canola (requires quartz)
coal gen 30 AA coal
Syngas fuel 1000 Advanced Gen Tree Stumps (requires lots of iron and redstone + nether ore to be powerful)
ET Solar 549 Environmental Tech sun (requires lots of diamonds)
Thermoelectric 30 Immersive Engineering water/lava? (requires lava)
Water Wheel 86 Immersive Engineering water
Coal Gen 60 rf tools coal
thermal expansion gens (but couldn't find the stats on them plus if I remember correctly, unless upgraded, they're not very good in comparison and upgrades cost bronze/invar for first upgrade then up to hardened glass for 2nd + electrum)



Really this comes down to cost to setup.

Active Fuel Setups

Actually additions Canola Oil

Takes some time to automate unless you manually do it. Automation for this isn't too difficult but takes some resources to do it properly which ever automation route you take.

EDIT: this is rediculous not worth the 100rf/t for the step two upgrade. 40, 80, 100, then... what 350? I think? Not worth it.
https://imgur.com/a/vCpC9


Coal generators
RFtools - requires lapis and gold to build, can be challenging depending on rng + redstone
Actually Additions - quick back up? not too expensive, stone, iron... no redstone
Extra Utilities Gen- surival gen - 5 rf/t and requires redstone
furnace gen - requires redstone (highest cost among the coal gen 6 pieces)

All of these require lots of coal and or tree farm to fuel

Advanced Gen
Syngass is very material heavy for starter power and honestly requires a higher tier fan to be effective which means trip to the nether.

Thermal Expansion Dynamo

Compression Dynamo

Dire did this and there's a few good setups for refined fuel. for what? 1k/t (for two dynamos) minus the upkeep for the machines. Plus coal. This is where I had a problem with this, had run into a rough rng for coal on the world I did this with.

steam possibly? but all others require a setup a little past starting out imo

IE Diesel Gen

I personally have tried to get this setup working, I know others have had great success but I've never gotten it working. It does require a good deal of fuel and production there in to get going.

Passive Fuel Setup


Immersive Engineering

Water Wheel

passively fueled by water and generates a little rf. But requires a coke oven to start up and without pam's clay or equiv in the pack clay, finding clay can be challenging.

thermo

not a bad passive but requires constantine metal and immersive infastructure. (didn't look at the recipe so may have changed. Honestly I overlooked this until I started writing this)


solar

Solar requires an empowerer for the actually additions version and it only puts out like 8 rf/t.
The environmental tech is certainly beefy but requires quite a few diamonds plus black concrete. Black dye not being as much of a problem since the dyes or dictionary with the flowers. But the diamond sink on this is incredible.


Arboreal Extractors

Someone had mentioned a setup for this. I haven't tested the cost vs rf benefit for this. seems like a good way to go to be honest. but requires 4 dynamos and a buffer for times of high use as it is passive.


honestly, it looks like you can go any way but cost benefit it seems like going tinkers to nether quickly + advanced gen or canola oil seems to be most cost effective as they put out good amounts of rf and can be expanded.

Environmental Tech Solar would be my first choice but with sooo many diamonds invested in the cost of setting it up makes undoable for starting out.

Lightning rod

requires a huge space to store the rf and transfer it as it is instantaneous but only when hit with lightning

There are a few mining options in the pack.


Manually mining

Vanilla shovel and pick (and biomes a plenty)

included to be... well included

IC2 mining laser

requires a good deal of IC2 infastructure but really cool if you're going that way

IC2 diamond drill

Diamond drill is pretty sweet but again requires a lot of IC2 infastrustrue to use and make

Actually Additions drill

My personal favorite as it can be upgraded to do 1x1, 3x3, or 5x5, silk touch, speed and all are interchangeable at the simple swapping of a module, (would be nice mod author if you're listening to have the 1x1, 3x3, 5x5 changeable with the push of a button, 5x5, 3x3 in the drill, swich between modes based on a button hotkey... sigh) Oh, requires electricity

Tinker's Tools

Honestly, I feel like tinkers is loosing it's gloss and shine in many of the let's plays I see. People seem to make it almost as a right of passage. At least for mining, weapons, well, we still love making our beheaders and quartz upgrades :). The upgraded height and width doesn't do well on picks and the hammer breaks 4 less blocks than the AA drill, requires durability and material cost each repair and is honestly awkward to aim as it breaks from center where the drill centers on where you break +1 up. It makes it easier to walk and mine. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. That's not to say I'm shitting on the mod. I love the sling, the slime boots, most everything in the mod itself, even the aesthetics of the smeltry. Still trying to figure out the tanks and furnace though and if they're beneficial...

Actually Additions manual picks and all in one tool

all in one tool, really cleans up the hot bar but eats at the durability.

Botania Teraformer/Mana tools

Teraformer is amazing with all the upgrades but takes a good deal of investment.
These tools have the benefit of being mana powered and being able to be augmented.

Draconic Evo

Holy crap, late game and very overpowered. Able to manually move worlds with just a few clicks. By this time though, most make this as a novelty as automatic mining is already up and running.

PSI

Great mod, though I admit I'm terrible at it. I've seen some people make some really interesting spells with this for mining resources. high learning curve though (sorry vaskii, some us, cough me cough, aren't smart enough to utilize this to it's potential.

Immersive Engineering mining drill

This is an interesting item. Very Immersive as it is material intensive, is as good at mining as the head and requires fuel. Also will not function underwater unless upgraded. Still a neat experience for those going down the immersive engineering path.

Redstone Arsonal Tools

Interesting tools, can be empowered, expensive to use and make.

I think that covers the manual mining options.

Semi Automatic Quarry


RF Tools Quarry Card with Builder

This is semi auto because it requires a setup and moving every time it's done. Similar to the old buildcraft quarry ( I miss you BC :( ) and the old quantum quarry in this way. Once you have it setup and feed it power, there it goes. Very effective


Immersive engineering Excavator

LOTS OF STEEL!!!!! and a good amount of RF (though nothing compared to below)
Make sure you take a core sample. Unless they've changed this also, you have to move it once it's mined through the chunk.


IC2 Mining Well

I've seen some interesting builds with this and funky locomotion.

Meecreeps

My personal early game mining. I dig a straight tunnel with the creep then branch mine off the side with 4 of them skipping 2 in between each tunnel. Collect all the ore and stone and stuff (dank null + actually addition sacks + filters = awesome inventory. You could use iron backpacks if you wanted to with upgrades, your call... or ender chests and sorting system. Again the world is your oyster) Reminds me of the computer craft turtles.

Open Computers

Speaking of Computercraft (which isn't in this pack, sniffle). Open Computers has drones which I've seen people use on a few youtube videos but seems very complicated

Automatically Mining

Extra Utilities 2 Quantum Quarry

This takes tones of RF to run but also accepts filters. Downside is it accesses a mining dimension and can cause lag, though not as much as some others since you shouldn't ever visit the mining dimension. Can have an enchanting book placed in it.

Environmental Tech Quarry's

Void ore miners use power as well but can be upgraded and spit out a good amount of resources.


Side Note:

The pack does add aroma's mining dimension. So have fun. :)


Can't think of another source of mining?

RF storage. I won't go over the IC2 stuff since I don't use it and honestly IC2 is it's own beast and hasn't changed too much.

Actually Additions Battery Box

(yes I know it's CF but in use, interchangeable.. right? lol)

The battery box is actually pretty neat. It holds a battery and acts like a docking station for it, putting in and taking out power to the network as needed. You can remove the battery and upgrade it for more space. Pretty nice, and you never have to remove the box itself.


Thermal Expansion

Batteries are, imo, so much better now. Upgrading via upgrade kits instead of taking it off and building a new one.. so much easier. Batteries can be enchanted with holding as well.


Immersive Engineering

Capacitors store energy. HV can store up to 4 million rf. No gui but each side can be configured with the hammer. Excellent interaction with other mod items; pole, connectors, switches, etc.

Draconic's Big Ball of Energy

So the OP option for rf storage is the Draconic ball. The ingame guide and gui are very helpful with setting it up and getting it working. Very LATE game past Tier 3, imo.

RF Tools Powercell

The powercells can store RF 250k for simple and up. They can share pools of energy between them and thus transfer energy over distance, even dimensions with a small cost (10%) to the transfer.


NOTE:

Most rf producing machines have a small internal buffer

Advanced Generators has blocks that can upgrade the generator's internal capacity so it acts like a batter from the source.

Extreme Reactors also has a buffer in it.

These two are of note as they are large enough, with proper management you might not even need a battery.

That's all the rf storage I can think of...

Armor Options

Vanilla

Diamond 3 helm, 8 chest, 6 legs, 3 armor total 20

Actually Additions

black quartz 3 helm, 6 chest, 5 legs, 3 boots for a total of 17.
Emerald (not reconstructed) 4 helm, 9 chest, 8 legs, 5 boots for a total of 26 (better than diamond)
Obsidian 4 helm, 4 chest, 8 pants, 1 boots for a total of 17. (equal to black quartz, less than diamond)
Restonia Crystal (redstone hit by a reconstructor) 3 helm, 7 chest, 6 pants, 3 boots for a total of 19 (almost diamond and redstone is PLENTIFUL)
Palis crystal (lapis hit by a reconstructor) 3 helm, 7 chest, 6 pants, 3 boots for a total of19 (same as redstone but a little rarer)
Diamatine crystal (diamonds hit by a reconstructor) 4 helm, 8 chest, 7 pants, 4 boots for a total of 23 (slightly better than plain diamond..)
Void crystal (coal hit by the reconstructor) 1 helm, 4 chest, 3 pants, 1 boots for a total of 9
Emeratic crystal (emeralds hit by the reconstructor) 4 helm, 9 chest, 9 pants, 6 boots for a total of 28
Enori (iron hit by the reconstructor) 3 helm, 6 chest, 6 pants, 3 boots for a total of 18


Botania

Manaweave 1 helm, 2 chest, 2 pants, 1 boots for a total of 4. However, there are many other bonuses associated with this armor specific to botania
Mana steel 2 helm, 6 chest, 5 pants, 2 boots for a total of 15 plus the set bonus for botania.
Elementium 2 helm, 6 chest, 5 pants, 2 boots for a total of 15 plus the set bonus for botania
Terrasteel 3 helm, 8 chest, 6 pants, 3 boots for a total of 20 plus the set bonus for botania

Deep Resonance

Radiation Suit 2 helm, 6 chest, 5 pants, 2 boots for a total of 15 plus radition resistance

Draconic

Wyvern 3 helm, 8 chest, 6 pants, 3 boots for a total of 18 plus bonuses, enchants, modified setting, etc.
Draconic 3 helm, 8 chest, 6 pants, 3 boots for a total of 18 plus fire immunity, fall damage resistance, rf charge, flying, reduced mining time when flying, nightvision, cures negative potion effects, removes underwater mining penalty, immune to suffocation and drowning, added speed boost, plus all of them add various amounts of draconic shield. I mean but it's sooo hard to get, so it's balanced because it takes effort. - Vaskii (favorite quote)

Immersive

Faraday outfit, 1 helm, 3 chest, 2 pants, 1 boots for a total of 7. Looks really cool.

IC2

adds stuff but ... well I don't use ic2...

I think that covers the armor portion of the show.

I had wanted to add more information but ran out of time.

Personally... I jump around on what I'm using and when. Nothing wrong with that. Still out on the best source of begging power of the pack. One thing that is clear, the direction you go will kind of lock you into a path. Unless you start all over, once you go down that path... well... Honestly though, all roads in the pack seem to lead to draconic evolution end game... So how we get there... well that's your business honestly.

I'll be posting updates of my personal build as I move forward. I encourage all of you to take screen shots and post them in the community showcase forum.!!!!! Would love to see all of your bases.
 
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Tombe0

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RFTools also has the advanced powercell , bit of costly in resources but stores 2mil/rf and outputs 20k/rf tick per SIDE. Makes them pretty nice (and practically the only) option for interdimensional power transfer.
 

rouge_bare

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there is another way of getting ore, well 3 ways that are very similar and all automatable.

Lens of the Miner from Actually Additons, Botania's Orechid and the Astral sorceey ritual can all convert stone to ore. it's personaly how i'm getting all my ore atm in my playthrough.
 
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Psychicash

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there is another way of getting ore, well 3 ways that are very similar and all automatable.

Lens of the Miner from Actually Additons, Botania's Orechid and the Astral sorceey ritual can all convert stone to ore. it's personaly how i'm getting all my ore atm in my playthrough.

honestly hadn't seen the miner, left out the botania cause my memory sucks lol and i'm completely unfamiliar with astral. That's awesome though!!!!!


RFTools also has the advanced powercell , bit of costly in resources but stores 2mil/rf and outputs 20k/rf tick per SIDE. Makes them pretty nice (and practically the only) option for interdimensional power transfer.

Yup yup, put those under battery storage. I honestly wasn't aware of them till I ran through a lot of this information
 

KingTriaxx

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Nuts to Lava for the Thermo's. Use Uranium Blocks. Much better power than lava. Constantan is only Copper+Nickel and in a pinch can be made in the Immersive Engineering Alloy Kiln.

Don't forget Thermal Expansion armors. Invar is cheaper than Iron and nearly as good as Diamond for protection.
 

Plainy

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To clarify for the power gen with Arboreal Extractors.
Every 600 ticks (30seconds) 100mB is generated in them, note the devices don't require RF!
This can then be run through a Fractionating Still this will process the Resin every 32 ticks or 1.6 seconds.
After this you can input the output into Compression Dynamo's from which 1 bucket will generate 1 million RF!

As a side product the Fractioning Still will create Rosin(crystallized resin i'm told), this is fed into a Steam Dynamo to power the single Fractioning Still.
The main product that we are interested in is Tree Oil one bucket of this stuff and you get 1 Million RF!
Note to get everything going you will need a buffer to start it all aka, coal or anything with at least a burn time of 800 ticks anything lower de Steam Dynamo doesn't accept.

The Tree Oil gets input into 2 Compression Dynamo's after they get input into a buffer, Energy Cell, and after that extract the RF to Powercells for Dimensional RF.
If no upgrades are installed in all the Machines it will easily self sustain itself, it can create 18million RF in about 30-45minutes.

Sadly this will require quite a bit of crafting to get going first and currently I see no good way to expand it at this time.
This I will experiment with on a later note but know this is a viable way to get decent RF going if you have the resources.

Edit:
This also ties into my Mining setup, RFTools Builder with Quarry card (the most basic one) when adjusting output the system can keep up easily!
 
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GamerwithnoGame

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@Plainy is spot on about the Arboreal Extractors and their benefits - I've set up a similar system (only 2 compression dynamos with plans to expand), 8 extractors and a single still - none upgraded - and its working well for a bit of power!
 

Psychicash

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Nuts to Lava for the Thermo's. Use Uranium Blocks. Much better power than lava. Constantan is only Copper+Nickel and in a pinch can be made in the Immersive Engineering Alloy Kiln.

Don't forget Thermal Expansion armors. Invar is cheaper than Iron and nearly as good as Diamond for protection.

assumed started out, uranium blocks not really available starting out... unless they changed something (which is possible)

To clarify for the power gen with Arboreal Extractors.
Every 600 ticks (30seconds) 100mB is generated in them, note the devices don't require RF!
This can then be run through a Fractionating Still this will process the Resin every 32 ticks or 1.6 seconds.
After this you can input the output into Compression Dynamo's from which 1 bucket will generate 1 million RF!

Absolutely. I saw your post about this and tried myself. Great power production. Honestly though, a good deal of mining went into the crafting of this setup. Again, I wouldn't consider it starting power, though more so than mid tier. I do realize that 1 bucket gives 1 million rf total but I couldn't find how much rf/tick...
 

KingTriaxx

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Uranium and Yellorite should both melt into molten uranium in the Smeltery and as far as I know only require an Iron Pick, so within the first ten minutes, and Immersive Engineering adds it's own Uranium that OreDicts with Yellorite.
 
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Psychicash

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Uranium and Yellorite should both melt into molten uranium in the Smeltery and as far as I know only require an Iron Pick, so within the first ten minutes, and Immersive Engineering adds it's own Uranium that OreDicts with Yellorite.

Any radiation problems?
 

ICountFrom0

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I've often had this sort of thought about packs, and I've sometimes taken notes but I've rarely been moved to share it, except sometimes in my stories as in character musings....
Nice to know I'm not alone in my tendencies.

Anyway, thank you for this post.
 
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Plainy

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Also a 5x4x5(WxHxL) Extreme reactor generates around 800-900rf/t.
This is with Liquid Enderium cooling it in the cardinal directons of the fuel rods.
And in the corners just some iron blocks(possible for gold blocks) though this has no benefit to cooling the reactor.
Best advantage being it is incredible inexpensive compared to what i remember from Big Reactors.
Minimal Yellorite needed for crafting the blocks(though they come out as Uranium from IE).

Tonight im most likely going to expand it to a decent size thinking 7x7x7 on the inside.
Still a bit torn that there isnt a good way to store power in large amounts unless you get a Draconic battery.
 
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Psychicash

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I don't know, the powercells and thermal expansion batteries upgraded hold a good amount of power. Granted you need a lot of them but honestly even the draconic ball is technically a multiblock structure.
 

Psychicash

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https://imgur.com/a/vCpC9

So... 100rf/t... and... not freaking worth it... tbh LOL I imagine I could make a smaller simpler version... but ... I feel like this should push out a lot more rf for the bs that is involved with this... Of course I despise in world mechanics for regular repeated crafting. Boss summons etc, I'm ok with but... something I have to do over and over and over... I'm good. I'll strike this off the list.


edit: forgot to factor in cost of the reconstructor (1000 rf per use on single item, more for stack). 1 seed makes 1 bucket of crystalized oil. Burns for 100 rf/t for 140 ticks? so 10,400 rf for 1 bucket minus the 1000 for the seed. That's 9400 rf per bucket gain... Seems very underpowered to me.
 
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Brian Cherrick

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https://imgur.com/a/vCpC9

So... 100rf/t... and... not freaking worth it... tbh LOL I imagine I could make a smaller simpler version... but ... I feel like this should push out a lot more rf for the bs that is involved with this... Of course I despise in world mechanics for regular repeated crafting. Boss summons etc, I'm ok with but... something I have to do over and over and over... I'm good. I'll strike this off the list.


edit: forgot to factor in cost of the reconstructor (1000 rf per use on single item, more for stack). 1 seed makes 1 bucket of crystalized oil. Burns for 100 rf/t for 140 ticks? so 10,400 rf for 1 bucket minus the 1000 for the seed. That's 9400 rf per bucket gain... Seems very underpowered to me.

If you go all on on canola ,,, it's very overpowered, and infinitely expandable. Although it isn't as easy to do in 1.12.2 without ender io.
 

Psychicash

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If you go all on on canola ,,, it's very overpowered, and infinitely expandable. Although it isn't as easy to do in 1.12.2 without ender io.

I used xnet to automate along with extra utilities sensors and AA fluid placers and collectors. The automation wasn't hard. But for all the "in world" crafting you have to automate, by the time you can afford to do so, the RF return isn't worth it. It doesn't pay for the footprint it takes up in the base, not to mention I hate any mechanic that has real world items being tossed into the world. One of the reasons I hate AE. Way TOO much trouble for little return.