Elegant Automation v. "Beautiful Complexity" Automation

[Type1Ninja]

I'm just curious as to what people's thoughts are on building automated processes.
The way I see it, there are two ends to the spectrum of automation, both of which have their place in tech-modded MC: Elegant and "Beautiful Complexity."

"Elegant" automation is - to me - when you automate something in the most elegant, simplistic way possible. For example, Steve's Factory Manager allows players to automate stuff with potentially invisible, instant-item-transfer, autocrafting, programmable-even-by-non-programmers- Inventory Cables. This allows for the most elegant possible automations, with invisible production lines carrying out custom commands instantaneously.

"Beautiful Complexity" automation is the opposite. It's when you decide to do something in the most complex way possible, using as many mods and steps as possible. Aesthetic appeal and even the ability to get into your machine area is thrown out the window in favor tangled webs of ducts and wires, conveyor belts and whirring machines of unspecified purpose. This (for me) has a sort of nostalgic, Rube-Goldberg feeling.
Edit: Anything having to do with byproducts recycled into other systems is both in this category and awesome.

My first question: Which do you prefer? My gut feeling is that most (not all) people will prefer Beautiful Complexity, but I also think that it's easy to succumb to the simplicity of Elegant (I do it 75% of the time, but I don't do much actual playing).

My second question: Depending on which method you prefer, how do you stick to it (applies mostly to Beautiful Complexity)? As I said, it's hard for me not to utilize all of the useful, low-profile automation mods out there. I have the idea in my head that one way to achieve this is through assigning yourself an end-goal of building a factory that fully automates the production of a certain item or items from start to finish, i.e. jetpacks. However, I don't have much time to actually play, so I haven't really explored that idea.

I do think both have their place. Elegance is, perhaps ironically, most useful in the early-game when resources are scarce and automation of key resources is a top priority. Beautiful Complexity, I think, is my end goal; the challenge of creating something utterly complex but still functional in the end appeals to me, and I think that's part of the appeal of tech mods for everyone.

There. I wanted to talk about that to other people, and now I have.
(I can't really talk to my personal friends about this as none of them are really into mods at all, much less the basic idea and appeal of technology mods)

 

[rhn]

You only really listed the two extremes. I always try to strike a balance. I do things in ways that I like and think looks good, but I make sure they are not overly complex and would cause unnecessary resource load. I dont think up unnecessary steps, but I do often choose the less optimal solutions because I prefer its function or appearance more.

So as your poll lacks any moderate answers, I don't know what to answer.

 

[Type1Ninja]

You only really listed the two extremes. I always try to strike a balance. I do things in ways that I like and think looks good, but I make sure they are not overly complex and would cause unnecessary resource load. I dont think up unnecessary steps, but I do often choose the less optimal solutions because I prefer its function or appearance more.

So as your poll lacks any moderate answers, I don't know what to answer.

Fixed. You may now submit your response.

 

[Someone Else 37]

I sometimes like to keep my builds within one mod and only one mod, i.e. producing AE2 processors using only AE2 machines; generating Botania materials using a combination of Hopperhocks, Rannuncarpi, and Corporea networks; etc. Frequently, it would be possible to automate these things much more efficiently or compactly using Computercraft or SFM, so I don't usually wind up with the simplest solutions, but I don't typically go out of my way to overcomplicate things.

 

[Vaeliorin]

I generally go with Elegant, simply because Beautiful Complexity fails to be interesting to me beyond the first time figuring it out (I was super excited when I first managed to automate bog earth using a liquicrafter, gates, and buildcraft pipes, but now that I know how the various bits actually work, there's no challenge in assembling a system any longer.)

I do often try to use mods that I haven't used previously for various tasks (or that I haven't used in a long time.) In my current world, I was trying to do ethanol->boilers->Big Reactor turbines (I haven't done ethanol since 1.5.2), but after realizing I'd probably need upwards of 50 stills to keep up with 12 boilers (20 stills, which oddly only required 1 fermenter with blue mahoe saplings and fruit juice, failed miserably to keep up with 6 boilers), I decided that was way too much machine spam and just went with a reactor and turbines.

I'm not using much AE in that world, however, choosing to go with Logistic Pipes, which I've never used primarily before. I intend to use AE simply for Thaumcraft stuff (cause Thaumic Energistics is pretty awesome) but that will be the extent of how I use it. Pondering using Thaumcraft for a lot of resource processing as well (which I've never done before beyond a bit of messing around), but I'm not sure about that.

 

[Ieldra]

I dislike complexity for its own sake. and I simply hate it when things look messy. For that reason, I tend towards what you call "elegant", which is, as I see it, much more beautiful than what you call "beautiful complexity".

Having said that, there are times when I don't build things in the simplest way possible:

(1) I aim for a degree of realism. A facility's logic should be extremely compact, sometimes even invisible, but an industrial process should look like one, and there I tend to avoid shortcuts made possible by mod synergy.
(2) I prefer a facility to be realized with the machines of one mod where feasible. I supply my Mekanism gas production facility through my ME network, but the elements of the facility, namely the logistics elements along with - naturally - the machines themselves, are all from Mekanism. I don't like having EnderIO conduits breaking the style.
(3) Sometimes, the simple way feels like the cheat. I tend to avoid these, with some exceptions.
(4) I aim for compactness most of all. Sometimes, making things compact is considerably more complex, and a facility spread over more space would look simpler.

 

[Psychicash]

It depends on what I'm doing. The thaumcraft room I'm working on, so excited (bounces up and down), is Elegant and pretty... er will be once I get the parts working.

I made a tower for ore tripling via factorization. It was not pretty. It was a big obelisk of a rectangle standing tall in the air. The top of it was nothing but mirrors pointed at boilers with a steam engine at the top. Each floor was automated. It wasn't pretty. But in the end, the ender chest at my base (some ways away) dumped all "ore" of the appropriate types to the chest in the building. From there it ran through the gamut and ended up as crystallized ore that was sent back to my base to go to the furnace.

Honestly I did it just to say that I did/could. I couldn't find anything on the subject and Direwolf (the king o' automation) didn't have anything to say on the matter past the first step and his way wasn't very automated. And this was before I knew about the magic that is Steve's Factory Manager.

I don't stick to any one mod or any one method. I used to build with automation in mind no mater what it looked like. After I got better with certain parts of the automation and learned a bit more I've started focusing more on aesthetics.

For most people I play with or see on youtube it kind of goes the same way, they do what works first and then later disassemble and reassemble to make it look nice. Sometimes they switch mods all together when doing this.

 

[Type1Ninja]

Huh. I'm surprised at the amount of people who like Elegance as itself (not a bad thing, just not what I thought would happen ).
Just to be clear: both methods have good things about them. There's nothing wrong with liking one over the other.

Now I'm going to ask:
As I said, I don't get much playtime, so I haven't experimented with ways to keep myself building with Complexity instead of Elegance. Does anyone know of any ways to do that? Honor rules such as don't use X mod (lookin' at you, SFM) are one obvious way, but are there any others?

 

[Ieldra]

Here's a good example of where I prefer unnecessary complexity:

Thaumic Energistics gives us the Infusion Provider. This extremely useful machine, placed under the infusion pedestal, draws the essentia needed for an infusion directly from the essentia stored in the ME network. However, it does so invisibly. I really like the visual effects of Thaumcraft's Infusions, and so I don't use the Infusion Provider but instead still have my wall of jars, only that now the jars are supplied by essentia export buses. I still have a great automation advantage, since I can place the distillation facility anywhere, I can use level emitters to control auto-distillation and I don't need moving parts susceptible to misplacement (i.e.golems), but the essentia supply remains considerably more complex than it needs to be.

Here' an example of where I prefer simplicity:

Example 1: I've seen how DW20 used SFM to manage his tree farm. Uh. way more complex than needed. I place an ME Interface with a crafting card nearby and let it keep one stone axe and one stone hoe in store. A conduit pumps that into the farming station unconditionally. Meanwhile, my charcoal production is controlled by a level emitter. I save quite a few block spaces and don't have to deal with SFM's internal complexities. Basically, this means that if I foresee a time not too far in the future when a complex build becomes obsolete (DW20's setup as soon as you have an ME network), I won't build it in the first place if its added value in functionality is non-critical.

Example 2: Pam's Harvestcraft adds its patented right-click harvesting mechanic, which means you can harvest most plants by right-clicking without destroying the plant. This is a great automation advantage, since now your machines don't have to deal with replanting. I don't mind having to replant, but this *also* means that you can distribute any number of plants in any way at all on your field, without being limited to the planting machine's configuration options. That's why I tend to have Pam's Harvestcraft in my worlds even though I don't use 95% of the content it adds.

 

[gold49]

Somewhere in the middle, I like overly complicated machine setups that are really fun to watch, but I need to be able to walk around the room to see it and I normally do not like seeing massive amounts of cables so they end up in the floors/walls half the time anyway

 

[Inaeo]

I like to break things. By this, I mean I enjoy stress testing the mechanics of a.mod until I see a gaping loophole, then I dive through and see what's on the other side. If a mod is stable on its own, adding other mods into the mix is bound to bring up edge-cases and odd behavior. This is one of my primary attractions to Kitchen Sink packs.

Due to this, I usually have a large warehouse somewhere detatched from the rest of the pretty world where I do proof of concept prototyping and then refinements to process. Once I have all the pieces in order and working, I copy the system into the pretty world and focus on making it work cosmetically with function intact.

Most people use a creative test world (redstone ready flat worlds are popular, it seems), but I enjoy the resource challenge of building my equipment from the ground up. This does mean that I end up with a ton of extra machines with no build to go into or even a real purpose, but they often get recycled into the next flight of fancy.

I avoid adding unnecessary steps and processes unless the byproducts can be cycled into a different system I've employed in such a way that the benefits are too good to ignore. My end goal is to have each system feeding its waste into another system to be made useful again in (potentially) a closed circuit (or positive feedback) loop.

Not sure how that fits the poll, exactly...

 

[APproject]

I prefer complex control, not complex operation.

I recently swapped out a twenty TE furnace setup for a single IC2 furnace system. But I installed a complex control system including a CC program to throttle smelting. I've been cracking down on laggy setups, and this change helped a lot.

 

[Type1Ninja]

I like to break things. By this, I mean I enjoy stress testing the mechanics of a.mod until I see a gaping loophole, then I dive through and see what's on the other side. If a mod is stable on its own, adding other mods into the mix is bound to bring up edge-cases and odd behavior. This is one of my primary attractions to Kitchen Sink packs.

Due to this, I usually have a large warehouse somewhere detatched from the rest of the pretty world where I do proof of concept prototyping and then refinements to process. Once I have all the pieces in order and working, I copy the system into the pretty world and focus on making it work cosmetically with function intact.

Most people use a creative test world (redstone ready flat worlds are popular, it seems), but I enjoy the resource challenge of building my equipment from the ground up. This does mean that I end up with a ton of extra machines with no build to go into or even a real purpose, but they often get recycled into the next flight of fancy.

I avoid adding unnecessary steps and processes unless the byproducts can be cycled into a different system I've employed in such a way that the benefits are too good to ignore. My end goal is to have each system feeding its waste into another system to be made useful again in (potentially) a closed circuit (or positive feedback) loop.

Not sure how that fits the poll, exactly...

Let's go with beautiful complexity.
Anything having to do with recycled byproducts is pretty complex and awesome. I'll add that to the OP.

 

[MushroomDynamo]

On paper, I love beautiful complexity--the whirr and whiz of items and entities flying around everywhere down corridors and on ceilings. I started working on a maglev train system the other day (thank you, arcane levitators, for being awesome) purely for the fun factor of watching hovering chest minecarts fly around.

However, when I get to the nitty-gritty of "you must pay resources for every component you make"--HUP HUP SOVIET ENGINEERING FOR ME, EVERYTHING IS BUILT OUT OF SOLID ROCKS AND SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE

 

[Type1Ninja]

On paper, I love beautiful complexity--the whirr and whiz of items and entities flying around everywhere down corridors and on ceilings. I started working on a maglev train system the other day (thank you, arcane levitators, for being awesome) purely for the fun factor of watching hovering chest minecarts fly around.

However, when I get to the nitty-gritty of "you must pay resources for every component you make"--HUP HUP SOVIET ENGINEERING FOR ME, EVERYTHING IS BUILT OUT OF SOLID ROCKS AND SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE

... Yup. I might get to "aesthetically pleasing chaos" builds later in the game, but I never have IRL time to invest time in a game long enough to get past the end-game. Sometimes I get close, but I never have the time to actually try it out.
I find it quite ironic that the "cool" builds (for me, and many others) are actually the ones that are inherently chaotic/ugly, with all the pieces showing. I suppose it's a "the function makes it beautiful" type of thing, although due to resource costs it isn't even functional.

EDIT: Totally putting that in my sig.

 

[Ieldra]

On paper, I love beautiful complexity--the whirr and whiz of items and entities flying around everywhere down corridors and on ceilings. I started working on a maglev train system the other day (thank you, arcane levitators, for being awesome) purely for the fun factor of watching hovering chest minecarts fly around.

However, when I get to the nitty-gritty of "you must pay resources for every component you make"--HUP HUP SOVIET ENGINEERING FOR ME, EVERYTHING IS BUILT OUT OF SOLID ROCKS AND SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE

Well, that's why we have automated resource gathering, isn't it? So that we don't have to deal with "I need x of y and I don't have it yet" as much? For that reason, I tend to pull out all stops when it comes to resource gathering. Mining? Uh....Mekanism's Digital Miner (slow, but targeted) or RotaryCrafts Miner (ultra-fast, but leaves large holes) are really the only options I use these days. If I don't use Ex Nihilo in the first place and extract everything from cobblestone using an admittedly somewhat intricate build. If there's no "soviet engineering" (nice term btw) for me, it's because I make the limitations that drive it irrelevant.

 

[Plasmasnake]

I lie somewhere in the middle.

When I automate things, I want to make the process as fast as possible and sustainable. I care more about function than looks, partially because I have never been able to build anything visually impressive to myself yet so I just don't worry about it. I do attempt to make my machinery look 'clean' as in neat and symmetrical and all that jazz, but I don't bother to put like vanity pipes or themed metal blocks around particular process and stuff like that.

Most of the time though, I enjoy the way complication looks so that's a win-win situation.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Whichever has the highest throughput, I will do.

If it's untidy but quick, i'll hide the unsightly parts as best I can.

 

[gardenapple]

I try to go for beautiful complexity most of the time because I'm really paranoid about the amount of mods I use on my 32-bit laptop, so no SFM and AE fancyness for me.

Although I remember that one time when I automated TE ore processing with BuildCraft pipes and hoppers (before Thermal Dynamics was a thing). That sure was fun.

 

[RJS]

I seem to go for more complex systems, simply because they are often a little more self-explanatory. For example, my quarry products are processed via a series of filtered ducts. The only ores that go straight to AE are those that need an Auto-fortune setup.

In addition, I deliberately avoid using Thaumic Energistics for my builds, simply because I (personally) prefer that magic and tech should not interface as seamlessly. Instead of a simple AE solution I built this instead:

It's since been improved to have a jar for every aspect, plus an Oblivion jar to deal with excess. Looks way cooler, even if it takes up a wall and a half.