Finite Water?

[ProfessorMudkip]

I've been playing with finite water in my world and it's quite fun. It causes water to become a resource that you must properly manage instead of a mindless annoyance that only requires spamming Aqueous Accumulators.

People may be opposed to it because it leaves ugly water messes from draining oceans. That is true; don't drain oceans. Although it is easier, it's not a great idea. I would recommend draining lakes and rivers. This option just leaves sand/dirt holes and shallow ravines, which look much nicer than a messed up ocean. Also, observing drained lakes and rivers from your progress looks great.

If you are draining a lake or river, keep in mind that the BuildCraft Pump's maximum range is 64 blocks from each side. If the water you are draining extends further than this, build a dam between them so it doesn't make a mess. Ensure that the dam separates the water completely; right down to the ocean floor. If the water is touching, the pump will be able to suck it up. If you block it with solid blocks, it will stop.

The lines represent some possible dam placements. I will use the purple line in my example.

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Dam is done. Of course, this is a quick and cheap dam, you can make yours look prettier.

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Pump aftermath

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Water gained

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How to do it below. The CodeChickenCore and BuildCraft configs are required because they affect water in the world. The rest are optional because you can just choose not to use water generators, but this disables them if you lack self control.

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minecraft/config/CodeChickenCore.cfg
#If set to true two adjacent water source blocks will not generate a third.
finiteWater=true

minecraft/config/buildcraft/main.conf
# set to true if the Pump should consume water
B:consumeWater=true

minecraft/config/cofh/ThermalExpansion.cfg
B:Machine.WaterGen=false

minecraft/config/railcraft/railcraft.cfg
B:machine.alpha.tank.water=false

minecraft/config/powercrystals/minefactoryreloaded.cfg
B:WeatherCollector.Recipe.Enabled=false

minecraft/config/minetweaker
Forestry's raintank does not have a config option that I can locate. Add the below line to the cfg file. Note that this is the ID in Monster, if it's different in your package use that instead.
recipes.remove(<1406:1>);

What do you guys think?

 

[Tyrindor]

Way too much effort for me. Too many mods are balanced around infinite water.

 

[ProfessorMudkip]

Way too much effort for me. Too many mods are balanced around infinite water.

Although you are likely correct, mods being balanced around infinite water seems strange. They are adding a required secondary fuel that can be rapidly and infinitely generated using simple, in-expensive machines.

However, this is true for Thermal Expansion too. The Induction Smelter uses sand as a secondary resource to process the ore. Yet, it gives you a simple and in-expensive method to create infinite sand.

 

[DepressivesBrot]

It's an interesting idea and I'd like to see someone deal with it, but wouldn't use it myself. Main reason being: It would annoy me to lose all that water that I should be able to get back. Now if steam consumers 'produced' water at a lossy rate so I don't have to replace all the water all the time, I'd consider it.

 

[krugle]

I haven't messed around with finite water for a long time however, I do remember that ocean water blocks were treated slightly differently they regenerated themselves. This left for a lot of fun by placing the ocean source block at 200 height jumping in a boat and riding a tidal wave that destroyed the map (think waterworld for those old enough to know the movie).

 

[Nyoros]

Some mods have given ways for people with finite water to still experience the mods, generally by allowing collection of water from rain (Forestry and Rotarycraft are two I immediately think of that allow it). Personally, I find finite water to be an interesting concept, albeit one I wouldn't want until it's worked a bit further.

By worked a bit further, I'd personally enjoy seeing rain producing actual water that could pool up and gradually evaporate (making for drier deserts). Though that doesn't work out too well due to crops being destroyed by it among many other things such as torches. Would add a drainage need in mines, more thoughtful base building and irrigation. Otherwise, I don't quite like the water model in finite water due to the fact of having to drain entire parts of oceans, rivers, and lakes for water where it will never replenish (aesthetic preference) especially because of the amount of underground water is small and difficult to find reliably.

So in shorter words, my feelings on Finite Water are mixed. I think it's an interesting concept that should be explored and developed further, but in its current form... I'm not a fan, although I do look forward to what may come from its concept and/or development (first heard of it and tried it out a long time ago so I may be outdated on information).



Addendum on the first part, more mods add ways to obtain water without even touching already existing water. I just remembered them..
A few mods allow you to turn cactus and snow into water using energy, Rotarycraft has in addition to Reservoirs collecting rainwater a device that separates water from the atmosphere.

 

[ProfessorMudkip]

Some mods have given ways for people with finite water to still experience the mods, generally by allowing collection of water from rain (Forestry and Rotarycraft are two I immediately think of that allow it). Personally, I find finite water to be an interesting concept, albeit one I wouldn't want until it's worked a bit further.

By worked a bit further, I'd personally enjoy seeing rain producing actual water that could pool up and gradually evaporate (making for drier deserts). Though that doesn't work out too well due to crops being destroyed by it among many other things such as torches. Would add a drainage need in mines, more thoughtful base building and irrigation. Otherwise, I don't quite like the water model in finite water due to the fact of having to drain entire parts of oceans, rivers, and lakes for water where it will never replenish (aesthetic preference) especially because of the amount of underground water is small and difficult to find reliably.

So in shorter words, my feelings on Finite Water are mixed. I think it's an interesting concept that should be explored and developed further, but in its current form... I'm not a fan, although I do look forward to what may come from its concept and/or development (first heard of it and tried it out a long time ago so I may be outdated on information).

Addendum on the first part, more mods add ways to obtain water without even touching already existing water. I just remembered them..
A few mods allow you to turn cactus and snow into water using energy, Rotarycraft has in addition to Reservoirs collecting rainwater a device that separates water from the atmosphere.

Hmm, yes. If there was a system like you suggest it would be much better.

I was aware that you can turn cactus and snow into water, but it doesn't generate it out of nothing like the Aqueous Accumulator/Rain Tanks. However, it is still "exploitable" because both of those can be created in large quantities. Although the MFR water generator uses energy to generate water, it still generates it out of nothing and is thus merely trading energy for water. Also, the passive rate of the rain tanks is too high, and some of them generate even when its not raining.

 

[zorn]

Just thought id add my thoughts here Mudkip, even though we have already discussed this.

Im currently playing in my world as if water was finite, without using a mod to actually enable it. This way you dont ruin a tiny pool of water by grabbing a bucket out of it, but I don't allow myself to use small infinite sources for water either. Railcraft water tanks collect water slowly, and as Mudkip said, it adds another resource to deal with, which is fun. You'd be surprised how fast factorization solar boilers use up water.

For me, the only 'infinite' source I allowed myself is large lakes or the ocean, so im planning on setting up a pump station on the ocean and piping water to my base for boilers.

So far its been a lot of fun.

 

[Bruigaar]

I tried the option of only finite water before and really liked it. Well until I noticed the designs you could make weren't as fun. Now I design infinite water sources to look like they are finite.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ProfessorMudkip]

I tried the option of only finite water before and really liked it. Well until I noticed the designs you could make weren't as fun. Now I design infinite water sources to look like they are finite.

Why are they not as fun? Also, how do you make it appear finite?

 

[TangentialThreat]

There are/have been decent finite liquid mods that alter water physics to be more realistic.

This would be fine, except making Minecraft water behave like actual water so it can fill in craters in the ocean and stuff invariably results in horrible lag.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

I quite like it, though turning off the RC/MFR/forestry ect accumulators is probably going a bit far- making water totally non-renewable.

The setup I tend to enjoy the most involves turning off bucket source placement, but leaving in railcraft ect methods which slowly accumulate water.
This way you can build water supply where you want it, or have a large (optionally non renewable) source that you have to pump in.

Realistic finite water/fluid movement is a no go at the moment- theres a lot of calculations involved, and therefore lag.
SMP would be totally non-viable just because of the amount of data that'll need to be sent to clients/servers.

 

[zorn]

I quite like it, though turning off the RC/MFR/forestry ect accumulators is probably going a bit far- making water totally non-renewable.

The setup I tend to enjoy the most involves turning off bucket source placement, but leaving in railcraft ect methods which slowly accumulate water.
This way you can build water supply where you want it, or have a large (optionally non renewable) source that you have to pump in.

Realistic finite water/fluid movement is a no go at the moment- theres a lot of calculations involved, and therefore lag.
SMP would be totally non-viable just because of the amount of data that'll need to be sent to clients/servers.

this was my theory, if you remove railcraft tanks other ways to collect water, you really have to build near the ocean. Too restrictive IMO.

 

[krugle]

If I remember correctly with finite water you can make infinite sources by dropping diamonds into the water, though that was a long time ago and may have changed.

 

[Saberwulfy]

Use a chunk load in a 5 km radius lake, chunk load a 40 km river, make the rain fill the river and the water end in this lake. Its a realistic way to be viable finite water

 

[Morberis]

this was my theory, if you remove railcraft tanks other ways to collect water, you really have to build near the ocean. Too restrictive IMO.

That depends. I see a lot of people don't use rail craft for the rails or Steve's carts but you can use both as a viable way of moving water or other liquids in large quantities in a realistic manner. However you are correct in that your initial base would need to be near water until you could develop the infrastructure to move water (including manually via TE3.

 

[ProfessorMudkip]

I quite like it, though turning off the RC/MFR/forestry ect accumulators is probably going a bit far- making water totally non-renewable.

The generation rate of those things is so great that it is essentially infinite water though. RC tanks are the slowest at generating water, so I chose to use those. I only built 3, and it much more than I ever needed. If you could config the rate, it would be better.

Realistic finite water/fluid movement is a no go at the moment- theres a lot of calculations involved, and therefore lag.
SMP would be totally non-viable just because of the amount of data that'll need to be sent to clients/servers.

Indeed, it is very unfortunate.

this was my theory, if you remove railcraft tanks other ways to collect water, you really have to build near the ocean. Too restrictive IMO.

You don't like an ocean view?

That depends. I see a lot of people don't use rail craft for the rails or Steve's carts but you can use both as a viable way of moving water or other liquids in large quantities in a realistic manner. However you are correct in that your initial base would need to be near water until you could develop the infrastructure to move water (including manually via TE3.

Yes, that parallels real life; cities crop up around rivers and such. I think that adds an interesting dynamic to a SMP environment.

 

[RealSketch]

Not the best idea really.
But I like how you can create dams.

 

[zorn]

The generation rate of those things is so great that it is essentially infinite water though. RC tanks are the slowest at generating water, so I chose to use those. I only built 3, and it much more than I ever needed. If you could config the rate, it would be better.


Indeed, it is very unfortunate.


You don't like an ocean view?


Yes, that parallels real life; cities crop up around rivers and such. I think that adds an interesting dynamic to a SMP environment.

I don't use chunkloaders so then the railcraft tanks don't give me too much water. If I play for an hour and run some steam engines for 10 minutes, my railcraft tanks have 50 more minutes to recover the water lost to the engines. With chunkloaders they would gather another 23 hours before I got to play again, which would mean about what you said, infinite water.

 

[Explosion_Pro]

what is the ftb pack?if not what is the private pack code