Factorization: Sell me

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Okay, I've been writing some guides for inclusion in the Wiki, and I kind of hit a stumbling block.

Factorization.

I... I tried to find something positive about this mod. I just couldn't find it. I'm not saying it is a -bad- mod, I'm just saying I have no idea why anyone would want to use the items the mod delivers at this time.

Barrels... yea, here's the thing about barrels. Granted, they can carry 64 stacks of a single item. However, for that to be useful, you actually have to HAVE 64 stacks of a single item. In fact, if you have less than 27 stacks of two items combined, then you're actually using MORE space, because a single chest will store both. And once you DO get to that point, you have IronChests. They also don't play well with BC Pipes.

ORE TRIPLING... if you want to wait twenty minutes RL to get it. Or, you can simply settle for a doubling with IC2 or just a tiny bit better than doubling with TE, and be happy with that as your quarry levels an entire Mystcraft Age. The other problem is that it uses a whole new energy system which is cludgy, non-compatible with any other mod out there, requires a LOT of space to set up, requires that the setup be able to see open sky, and has absolutely no utility other than the ore multiplication.

The Angular Cutter is nice, I'm not going to deny that. But it requires so much infrastructure to maintain that you might as well just use GregTech's Rock Cutter, which at least runs on a power supply you've already got going.

Now, it's also got Wrath technology... only that's kind of silly as well. I'm NOT blowing a diamond block on Wrath Lamps. Granted, you can get them as a byproduct if you want to make a Grinder, but no way am I going to blow an entire diamond block just on wrath technology by itself.

Bags of Holding... don't really hold all that much, and the mechanic is very kludgy compared to, say, Forestry Backpacks. Even the Canvas Bags which are in the latest version of RP2 are strictly better, and are made with STRING. Upgrading them eats up more ender pearls than I care to use on an already kludgy item, when I can just get some jungle bees going for an upgrade to my backpacks.

The Item Router is another one which is plagued with a kludgy interface and limited functionality. I'll just use a RP2 Sorting Machne, maybe a couple of Managers, and get it done more efficiently. Assuming no Logistics Pipes, of course.

Everything else in wrath tech are upgrades for the Item Router.

Right, that's the downsides of the mod. However, the FTB team is made of win and awesome, and wouldn't slip us a sucker's bet. So... sell me. What do you like and/or enjoy about this mod? What cute tricks have you come up with that uses this mod? What utility have you found with this mod? How do you actually use the Item Sorter and subsequent upgrades? Give me your first-hand experiences. Because I got nothin' so far.

 

[Cloud]

Factorization needs more ways of generating power. Solar power is not a viable option for people who make concealed underground bases.
Extra dimensional storage is nice since it holds 1024 stacks of an item but it requires dark iron.
Dark iron needs at least a diamond block for the shards to make a wrath igniter and the conversion ratio is quite bad, 9 iron ingots = 4 dark iron ingots.
Even Ore doubling needs way more trouble than a macerator/rock crusher/pulverizer/induction smelter.
I agree with this post.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I love factorization. However, I have never really gotten into its machines. Only in as much as is needed to get the router. For sorting it is WONDERFUL! I love it.

I keep most all my stuff in the barrels being fed by and router hooked up to a sorting chest/router.

There is however some stuff I don't bother with the barrels for. Like I have 5 diamond chest I keep next to my workbench area that I have organized by mods. Like a Railcraft/Steve's Carts/Forestry chest, and a Thermal Exp/BC3/Factorization chest, and a IC2/IC2 Addons chest and so on. Everything else can be sorted instantly with the sorting chest using the factorization router. It is amazing.

Really? Perhaps I have underestimated the Router then. Could you explain in greater detail how you have gone about using it? Because I really don't see anything here you couldn't do with RP2. Namely: A Sorting Machine. So you have one silver chest for dirt/cobble/sand/gravel, all four are painted that color, and they all go into that one chest. I've saved me three slots by doing it that way. Or, if you just want to use barrels, you don't need any paint at all or even a sorting machine... you just need a relay, since RP2 tubes are intelligent enough. See also: DW20's latest videos.

However, his videos also brings up a very important point: His storage in his first base was a single row of chests around a 9x9. When he switched to barrels, he STILL had a couple of chests to cover all the other bases, and had three rows of barrels in a MUCH larger room. Granted, it looked pretty cool, but it was not very efficient.

As for the barrels being subpart to the chest, in many ways yes, but you are looking at them from a different way. For some things (like my mod items mentioned above) it is good to keep in a chest by workbenches. Where the barrels are so much better however is they can store many times more stuff than the chest, but best of all they only store one item. That they can only store one item is their best quality. If it is in a situation like the mod items it is their worst quality, but the overall huge bonus that they have for the other items like cobble, wood, dirt, iron/copper/tin bars and so on because they can be sorted into the barrels so easily since they only take one item is HUGE!

They don't actually store many times more stuff than chests, without the upgrade that requires you blowing up a diamond block to get.

Granted with Logistics Pipes it is all super subpar. But with Logistics Pipes there is no longer needs for sorting systems. It is all done for you. Once you have the Quick Sort Module + Polymorphic Item Sort Modules you have basically just won Tech Modded Minecraft. Game over. And even more, once you have crafting + request pipes you have won not just all of the tech mods, but all of minecraft.

Since I play on a server and have little to no say in the mods we use, I pray FTB never add logistics pipes. They are super cheaty and unless they greatly increase the power requirements they are so absurdly cheaty that I can't think of any way to ballance them with out removing 98% of the mod.

I'll have to respectfully disagree here. I can do 90% of the stuff Logistics Pipes does with Diamond Pipes instead. They also are extremely expensive in terms of material costs. You can run through five STACKS of iron in a heartbeat trying to get your system set up, for example. Not to mention a couple stacks of gold. The only way to keep costs that far down are if you go with the assembly table, otherwise it takes four TIMES that amount of resources... and the assembly table requires copious quantities of diamonds, plus a significant power draw.

 

[voidreality]

Pocket Crafter is useful.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Pocket Crafter is useful.

Please elaborate, because I can find no use in an item which requires a third of my inventory space to be empty for it to function.

 

[voidreality]

When I'm out mining, especially early in a new world. I found it very helpful to not have to go all the way to my home base to craft something. Dropping items temporarily on the ground if I needed a few extra inventory spaces is not a problem. It's a good item IMO.

 

[Tylor]

If you want to craft something on the move, you can just place crafting table. It occupy same one slot. Or zero, if you make it from the wood when needed.

 

[Golrith]

I'm in the same boat at the OP. I'm not keen on it's resource requirements for Silver and it's silver World Gen. Routers and barrels seem too cheaty, less overall effort for a sorting system. Power generation is clunky and of limited use.

 

[knight2109]

Really the best thing about Factorization I think is when your FIRST starting out I follow this path.

- Make a furnace
- Make a slag furnace
- Make charcoal
- Possibility of getting double ores for dirt cheap

That's all i can come up with, but its what I do everytime. Since RP2 is now released I may see about using the whole triple system since it can be automated and I wont have to touch it but if extra bees comes back I'm going to be breeding to the mineral bees like a mad man anyway. Never have to go mining again unless i need diamonds... Lots of other ways to get those though, coal bees ftw?

 

[WTFFFS]

Slag furnace early game for some free stone and a bit of extra resources and pocket crafter, if you think about it you already have to have the items in you inv to craft anyway and the controls for it are very nice, balance slots\rotate when you derp and reverse the positions of the outer items that kind of thing.
The later ore processing is very complex and slow but it's probably something I'll do just because I can. Haven't really looked into the router yet since I've been using logi pipes and now I probably still won't since RP2 is here. Though with RP2 the auto-crafting option of Factorization I may take a look at, if it works nicely even if harder to setup than BC autocrafting, I'll probably use it instead since BC autocrafting always struck me personally as a lil too easy.

And blowing up a diamond block is an issue? one of the earlier things I build is a Link Book Modifier

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

DW20 would have been much better off by making his system with a router. There is no need for the RP2 pipes. With the router it is doing the same thing without the pipes and making it instantly rather than the items having to move across the physical space between the router and the barrel. Basically if you look at DW20's new sorting room take out all of those tubes for the barrels and replace them with more barrels and you have what you could have if he was using the router. Then he could put a few chests in the other room for the mod items like copper wires or such.

For the router to work here are some basic rules. It all needs to be connected to the router. Like if we are making a sorting system for barrels you want the router touching at least one of them, and then you can run them all around the room and up the walls and whatever, but if one of the barrels isn't touching the rest then it won't get any items from the router. And it can go crazy distances. Like make a 60 barrel long line and it will fill them all. lol.

For the ammount of diamonds it would take to make 3 diamond chest from silver chest or 4 diamond chest from gold chest (not including the cost of the gold, silver, iron and so on... chest) you can make as many upgrades as you want for the barrels. Want to make 500 upgrades? You can as long as you have the iron. No more diamonds are needed. And I really doubt you have less than 3 diamond chest if you aren't using any barrels in your warehouse.

Diamond chests? Never use 'em. Use at most Silver, since I'm swimming in the stuff most of the time.

Sounds like you need to do a write-up on the router, because I have no idea how it can do what you claim.

It is a diamond block for 18 diamond shards. Only one of the 18 shards is needed for the lighter to light the furnace which can make however much dark iron you will ever need. The biggest cost for the upgrades is not diamonds (those I would never have even considered a cost for upgrades, so not sure why you are) would be the pearls. But most people have farms for them and like I have a barrel with many many stacks of pearls at my base, plus barrels and barrels of pearls in the end.

Yea... let's see. One diamond block is needed to make ANY shards. I have ZERO interest in the rest of the setup. So effectively, it eats up a diamond block to get started with the system.

Logistics pipes are not very expensive. And you can't do even a tiny fraction of what they can do with diamond pipes. For one diamond pipes can't even pull from inventories. If you mean you can set up a sorting system the of course. I still don't believe you can set up a sorting system that can create a system that can do all the jobs of a request/provider/crafting pipes or the polymorphic and quick sort mods with out LP. I don't believe it is possible to create such a system that is completely hands off where all you do is make a request.

Perhaps you missed the part where you need diamond pipes and gold gears to make the basic pipes, then more resources to make the additional pipes? Or, if you prefer to conserve resources and only spend a couple of stacks instead of four times that, you can use chipsets, which means blowing over a dozen diamonds on the assembly table and associated lasers, plus power involved.

Diamond Pipes route things to where you want them to go. It's really that simple. Setting up a sorting system requires a minimal amount of knowledge of binary and logic.

However, I could be wrong as I haven't tried the new sortron from the Redpower 2's pr6. It might be able to do it in the latest RP, but that requires a lot more work on your side to set up than placing one request, one crafting pipe and and a provider pipe by your chest. I mean with LP there are only 3 actions required to do that, and little cost for those 3 items. Then to expand the system in LP there is no more effort needed than to add a crafting pipe next to an autocrafting table. That is all there is to it. Just one pipe. LMAO. That is ridiculously OP.

Little cost? I think we'll have to disagree on that. Also, you won't need just one, you'll need DOZENS of them to get started. And if you want it to be a sorting system, you'll need iron chassis pipes, which is eight iron, plus a polymorphic item sink, which is an iron gear, plus a provider module, which is a gold gear. PER CHEST IN YOUR STORAGE. That's all necessary before your LP network can do ANYTHING. Hell, you'll probably be eating up those nine diamonds for the diamond block just in diamond pipes to build the LP with.

 

[ZeSapper]

I love the pocket crafter just for the fact that you can lay out the items in your inventory as you go through your chests and then just grab the finished product. I am notoriously bad for forgetting something every time I craft say a piston and then have to remove all them items, go get it, then plug the recipe back into the crafting table. Its just a nice convince to have around. The mod could have stopped with that and barrels in my opinion haha

 

[Democretes]

Factorization is a good mod in the long run. Still needs some work though. Tripling your ores is pretty useful, even if it does take 20 minutes to do. The cost to get a large system set up for it is extremely cheap. If you use the GregTech recipes (which hardly anyone does), the grinder isn't much more expensive than a macerator. The power system is a bit derpy, but what else are you going to do with all the silver and lead being added? Make a house out of the stuff? I actually do enjoy the heating core block. One block heats up to 5 furnaces. All you need is lead. If it had better ways to get power and something more to do with them other than 3 or 4 machines, it'd be a pretty good mod.

 

[warfighter67]

I agree. Factorization's ore doubling is tedious and unneeded as there are 2-3 other mods that do the same thing. However, I do like the barrels, pocket crafter, and wrath lamps. I just think Factorization needs to go more of its own direction instead of copying other mods and only adding a few unique things. We have enough ore-processing mods, for pete's sake!

I would love to see more on the storage side of Factorization with the barrels, upgrades, etc. and with the dark iron and wrath igniter.

 

[Tylor]

Factorization wires and solar station would be nice, if it worked on BC electricity.

 

[DR3ADLORD]

I am going to have to agree with Bevo on this. I mean yes Factorization is a relatively expensive mod but really what mod out there isn't anymore? Its all about balance. When you have a quarry going with its size maxed out or 5+ turtles eating away the earth do you really care that much about how much something costs? With a 9 diamond investment for 3 turtles I can easily get 9 more in less than 30 minutes if I am paying attention to them and not roaming doing other stuff. Plus I have used the routers to completely automate a bunch of systems such as sorting, and even the ore processing. And while yes I do believe the system to process ores is pretty slow the crystallizer is pretty cheap to make compared to most other ore processers (7 iron, string, and a stick) compared to even a regular macerator which requires 9 refined iron, 2 redstone, 6 copper cables, 2 cobble, and 3 flint. So with the crystallizer being the limiting part of this whole set up (the others are quite quick) it is very very easy to have multiple of them going at once with ONE router to manage their inputs and one for their product. I have currently made 2 processing setups with the first one being okay but slightly inefficient but the second is damn near flawless.

 

[Sebyen]

I love factorization it doesn't look that good at a first glance but if you give it a chance and learn how the stuff works its extremely useful.

The bag of holding in combination with the pocket crafter is a powerful combination, the problem with the pocket crafter normally is that it can be a bit hard to have the sufficient space to craft stuff, but if you have a upgraded bag of holding then not only do you have a lot more space (almost double the normal inventory if upgraded enough) but you get 2 set's of crafting table's in your own inventory! (be sure to have the pocket crafter where the bag of holding don't change the items or you can't switch between them when in crafting mode). The best part of this is that you can organize a complex recipe in your inventory and when you got it ready you can click the crafting button and your ready to craft without having to get every single item ready before you start putting it together or having to run to a project table every time..

Another nice thing about the bag of holding is that you get an extra set of action slots can be very useful at times and no other mod in FTB can offer anything like that.

Not sure exactly how much you can upgrade the bag of holding personally I upgraded it so I had 3 slots unaffected and 6 affected giving me 6 extra action slots and 24 extra item slots (including action slots) without having to open any bags extremely useful if you ask me.

If that wasn't good enough my favorite thing by far in factorization is the routers they save SO much space are extremely fast NEVER overflow can easily be turned of with Redstone and the lag seams to be very low, together with enderchests they are IMO the best item transportation system in minecraft. The 2 big problems routers have however is 1. The small amount of filtering that can be done on each router meaning you will need several routers if you want to filter many different items, 2. The routers have no set amount they can keep stocked in a inventory like logistic pipes and redpower can.

Here are some examples of what I've done with routers in my world:

My item storage system all those barrels are filled using just 2 routers and an enderchest anything I put in that enderchest will get sorted into the barrels as long as a barrel with that item exists, extremely easy to expand and as the 2 routers and enderchests to the right show you can extract any item from any barrel with just 1 router and 1 enderchest and then have a nice supply of whatever item in the enderchest for use in another system somewhere else.

This is my main sorting system with the diamond chest being the overflow chest and for unsorted items and the enderchest to the left leading to my ore processing and the right enderchest leading to my barrels with the middle enderchest being the main input where every item put into it will get sorted to its proper location be it maceration barrels or the diamond chest if unsorted.

This is my ore processing as you can see its also handled with routers its very easy to expand and fully automated never overflows and no pipes going everywhere and for the amount of machines very little space is used for a fully automated system IMO.

Here is my fully automated recycler system and as you can see with only 4 routers I can supply all those recyclers and move the scrap to the matterfabricator very fast without spill and the supply of cobble is taken directly from the enderchest that's supplied with a enderchest from my barrels, A single leaver can turn the whole system of, making it really simple to control. The routers can easily handle all those recyclers with 6 overclocker upgrades each.

This however is my favorite use of the router the greg tech industrial centrifuge can be quite hard to fully automate to a satisfactory level without massive pipe systems going everywhere. But with the router its easily done and you can easily expand it. Its fully automated and I can easily move stuff from my centrifuges to my induction furnaces or my barrels.

Hopefully I have sold you some of what factorization has to offer as I really like the mod and its sad to see it so overlooked.

 

[makeshiftwings]

I didn't realize the routers actually created the network out of all touching chests; that's pretty cool. I'll have to give them a try.

 

[EternalDensity]

I added Factorization to my Magic World game for the singular reason of storing a lot of cobble in one chest without having to spend big on gold or diamond chests. I haven't touched any of the other stuff yet, as I really don't want to be using another form of energy to power stuff, especially one that requires me to put mirrors everywhere.

 

[noah_wolfe]

I didn't realize the routers actually created the network out of all touching chests; that's pretty cool. I'll have to give them a try.

They make a network out of anything with an adjacent inventory. From this perspective, you can have "stations" of mod-specific barrel clusters, networked with, say, furnaces (under the floor, etc). Quetzi puts this style to use in his streaming world, if you ever catch him on Twitch.

As to the OP, the only one that can sell you on Factorization is you. A large part of its appeal is workflow and aesthetics, which are too subjective to sell. For instance, I prefer not only being able to see my items arrayed on the wall, but being able to exactly select how many I want to retrieve, rather than rummage through a floor full of chests. The remainder is scale - it doesn't take too long in game progression to fill even a gold/diamond chest full of any number of items coming out of a standard quarry - never mind a frame quarry. The routers handle this at light speed, without pipes or tubes.

For cross-mod compatibility, the portal gun should be mentioned, as it plucks those full barrels out of the wall / off the floor and places them wherever you want. You aren't going to have that type of storage functionality otherwise.