FTB Continuum Release

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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To be fair Magzie introduced the notion of kitchensink expert packs. That is a rather far fetched argument to make in the first place.



I have not played a single expert pack I would also categorize as a kitchensink one.
That argument can be dismissed entirely imo... but tarzan did not make it.
However cutting content is the polar opposite of what qualifies as kitchensink.
Actually to get the discussion back on track the problem was first stated on the 1st page where it was stated that this pack was crap cause it didn't have as many mods as a pack like AOE. My comment was in reference to the 1st expert mode which was in fact a Kitchen Sink pack. I did state that people thought this was going to be a Kitchen sink pack and that was part of the problem. That is when FTB Continuum was being compared to a Kitchen Sink Pack.

That being said the pack mod size has nothing to do with how good it is. 2 of the best Expert type packs every made have had less then what 30 mods. (Crash Landing & Material Energy3 which mind you were map based.) "Back in the day" AOE would have been called Gregtech type pack. Also a Remind that AOE is a Hardcore pack where Continuum pack isn't flaged as such. I don't know how many mods are needed to be called "Oversized" in the Twitch app. The real question here is would this pack be better with more mods and less Removing of unneeded content as well as did the players think "Expert Pack" meant Gregtech type pack or a Progression pack. These are the questions that are causing arguments IMO.
 
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tarzan1376

Active Member
Jul 7, 2013
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You forgot my own personal peeve... People complaining when the darn pack has been out maybe a WEEK! This after endless months of "Where's the #$%%^^& pack?!?!?!" :D

I loaded Continuum a couple of days ago and found a few things to scratch my head over, but I haven't been through the whole pack yet and it may or may not make sense at that time.
Just cause its a new pack doesn't mean new content, the only new addition to the mod list was the efab and this, as far as I know, has received mostly negative attention cause of how poorly implemented it is.
 

Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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Just cause its a new pack doesn't mean new content, the only new addition to the mod list was the efab and this, as far as I know, has received mostly negative attention cause of how poorly implemented it is.
What are you replying/referring to with the "new content" comment? I personally wasn't expecting any "new content" at all btw. Packs aren't expected to have new content. Just new experiences.

For the e-fab: what's poorly-implemented about it? So far my biggest gripe is that you cannot keep overclocking it to the best of my knowledge. And I dunno of any way to automate it (if you wanted to, say, hook it up to AE2 and request different things from it). But other than that I kinda like it.
 

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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Just cause its a new pack doesn't mean new content, the only new addition to the mod list was the efab and this, as far as I know, has received mostly negative attention cause of how poorly implemented it is.
Efab is great. I haven't heard anyone saying anything bad about it. Well Balanced. I love using it. It makes way more sense then a crafting table. I also love the crafting with liquids part of it which is way easier and you can have multi tanks with different liquids. You can speed crafting up if you follow the quest and read. Great addition.
 

mti_

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Actually to get the discussion back on track the problem was first stated on the 1st page where it was stated that this pack was crap cause it didn't have as many mods as a pack like AOE. My comment was in reference to the 1st expert mode which was in fact a Kitchen Sink pack. I did state that people thought this was going to be a Kitchen sink pack and that was part of the problem. That is when FTB Continuum was being compared to a Kitchen Sink Pack.

That being said the pack mod size has nothing to do with how good it is. 2 of the best Expert type packs every made have had less then what 30 mods. (Crash Landing & Material Energy3 which mind you were map based.) "Back in the day" AOE would have been called Gregtech type pack. Also a Remind that AOE is a Hardcore pack where Continuum pack isn't flaged as such. I don't know how many mods are needed to be called "Oversized" in the Twitch app. The real question here is would this pack be better with more mods and less Removing of unneeded content as well as did the players think "Expert Pack" meant Gregtech type pack or a Progression pack. These are the questions that are causing arguments IMO.

That is a lot of subjective stuff you are trying to pass off as fact.
To me IE:E was not a kitchensink pack. IE v2.0 was, the Expert mode was not.
Pack size has a correlation with number of mechanics introduced.
I did not like Crash Landing and ME3 nearly as much as other Expert packs and I personally would struggle to classify/define them as Expert packs.
AoE was an Expert pack and a good one. Vanilla GT has different aspects that make it challenging (e.g. lots of micro components, different ore gen, etc.).
I am not sure what makes a pack hardcore, to me it is a limited number of lives, AoE does not have that (iirc).

The question if an "Expert Lite" pack such as this has a place will be answered over the next weeks.
I feel like this is more of a "my first expert pack" type deal rather than anything that could excite people who have played things like Ozone 2 Titan/Kappa mode, AoE, SevTech etc.
I think I see what they tried to do with this one but I can also understand why plenty of people are underwhelmed after 2 years of waiting.
This pack does not push the envelope, in any way. It is more trying to refine the formula.

Efab is great. I haven't heard anyone saying anything bad about it. Well Balanced. I love using it. It makes way more sense then a crafting table. I also love the crafting with liquids part of it which is way easier and you can have multi tanks with different liquids. You can speed crafting up if you follow the quest and read. Great addition.

That machine needs a muffler block (or respect the muffler already in the game). I do however like the idea that crafting things requires upgrading of the "crafting table" and more than items.
As Pyure said tho, designing a piece of crafting equipment that is required for all stages of the game but can not be automated is questionable.
A mistake I would say.
 

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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That is a lot of subjective stuff you are trying to pass off as fact.
To me IE:E was not a kitchensink pack. IE v2.0 was, the Expert mode was not.
Pack size has a correlation with number of mechanics introduced.
I did not like Crash Landing and ME3 nearly as much as other Expert packs and I personally would struggle to classify/define them as Expert packs.
AoE was an Expert pack and a good one. Vanilla GT has different aspects that make it challenging (e.g. lots of micro components, different ore gen, etc.).
I am not sure what makes a pack hardcore, to me it is a limited number of lives, AoE does not have that (iirc).

The question if an "Expert Lite" pack such as this has a place will be answered over the next weeks.
I feel like this is more of a "my first expert pack" type deal rather than anything that could excite people who have played things like Ozone 2 Titan/Kappa mode, AoE, SevTech etc.
I think I see what they tried to do with this one but I can also understand why plenty of people are underwhelmed after 2 years of waiting.
This pack does not push the envelope, in any way. It is more trying to refine the formula.



That machine needs a muffler block (or respect the muffler already in the game). I do however like the idea that crafting things requires upgrading of the "crafting table" and more than items.
As Pyure said tho, designing a piece of crafting equipment that is required for all stages of the game but can not be automated is questionable.
A mistake I would say.
Ok so one thing I did post at the end IMO so... Also Infinity was the released first. IE:E was the 2.0 upgrade with expert mode. What you want to call that pack really has little to do with the argument other then arguing over word meanings. This allowed you to switch between the Reg pack and the Custom recipes. Since IE:E was the upgrade version to and already released pack. The current expert pack doesn't have to deal with any extra mods cause it was released as Solo pack. Here is a link to a pack search https://www.modpackindex.com/modpack/finder?version=1-7-10&tags=kitchen-sink. Problem is Curse doesn't have a "Kitchen Sink" Tag to search by. Closest thing is Extra Large. I assume that tag is select for pack with over a certain number of mods. Call Infinitry what you want to call it if it stops the word debate To me it is a Kitchen Sink pack because that is what they call every General Purpose pack.
 

mti_

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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I don't think I understand you very well.
To me IE v2.0+ had two versions. 1 Kitchen Sink, 1 Expert. It was like 2 packs but in 1.

The current expert pack doesn't have to deal with any extra mods cause it was released as Solo pack.
Don't make it sound so bad. Them taking the time to make a balanced game out of all those mods was an epic feat and the best mod pack the community had ever seen up to that point (imo).
This is just very different and you can not blame the people who expected "Infinity 2", which this pack is not.
 

Pyure

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Aug 14, 2013
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Don't make it sound so bad. Them taking the time to make a balanced game out of all those mods was an epic feat and the best mod pack the community had ever seen up to that point (imo).
This is just very different and you can not blame the people who expected "Infinity 2", which this pack is not.
This is pretty fair. I suppose likewise, however, you cannot blame the people who wanted something a bit more "expert", which Infinity Expert was (relative to Continuum) shorter on.

Infinity: Expert was a pretty great pack though :)
 

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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I don't think I understand you very well.
To me IE v2.0+ had two versions. 1 Kitchen Sink, 1 Expert. It was like 2 packs but in 1.


Don't make it sound so bad. Them taking the time to make a balanced game out of all those mods was an epic feat and the best mod pack the community had ever seen up to that point (imo).
This is just very different and you can not blame the people who expected "Infinity 2", which this pack is not.
Infinity Evolved had 2 mode normal and expert. You could switch between them using a player command. They were just recipe changes. It was still Infinity pack. This pack was decided by ftb after talking to the community about the issue that since they couldn't make a pack with a normal and expert modes anymore they were going to make expert it's own pack. Since it is it's own pack there is no need to add in extra mods cause they are not trying to make a Infinite 2 pack. They already told every years ago it couldn't be done the same again as 1.7 allowed. So since the community was told ahead time it was going to be a stand alone pack and not a general purpose pack with an expert mode I don't see the problem except it being tech only. Which i have already said a magic progression could be added in later as they did with Infinity pack. Magic mods are getting closer to fully released and stable.
 

Lyra_Chan

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Jul 29, 2019
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This made it more of a kitchen sink pack with the added downside of using time as a "resource"
Continuum is far from a kitchen sink. Kitchen Sink packs are a bunch of random mods with no theme or sense of progression or balance. More of a sandbox of random mods to play with. Making labels for what is and is not kitchen sink is stupid. Especially since the mods in the pack all have a general theme and has progression.
 

tarzan1376

Active Member
Jul 7, 2013
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Continuum is far from a kitchen sink. Kitchen Sink packs are a bunch of random mods with no theme or sense of progression or balance. More of a sandbox of random mods to play with. Making labels for what is and is not kitchen sink is stupid. Especially since the mods in the pack all have a general theme and has progression.
That was my mistake, I assumed kitchen sink meant you stand in one place for a long time. lol I ended up finding the phrase and know now ;p

My point was that they made it more of a waste of time and more of doing nothing with the efab. I watched a streamer wait roughly 12-15 minutes for a diamond chestplate and legs... That is just too much for something that shouldn't be that way. Its adding a time buffer to the pack to make it appear hard, but it's just time-consuming.

IMO nothing is satisfying to earn, everything is tedious and not hard to get, it's just a waiting game. cause it's not an expert pack like infinity evolved, you're not using your knowledge to advance. You're using an efab and making upgrade to it to waste more time and I feel like its a failed implementation of what could've been a good mod. It could've been like an FTB version of extreme crafting to involve power and liquids, instead, we got a waste of time and tedious work
 

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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That was my mistake, I assumed kitchen sink meant you stand in one place for a long time. lol I ended up finding the phrase and know now ;p

My point was that they made it more of a waste of time and more of doing nothing with the efab. I watched a streamer wait roughly 12-15 minutes for a diamond chestplate and legs... That is just too much for something that shouldn't be that way. Its adding a time buffer to the pack to make it appear hard, but it's just time-consuming.

IMO nothing is satisfying to earn, everything is tedious and not hard to get, it's just a waiting game. cause it's not an expert pack like infinity evolved, you're not using your knowledge to advance. You're using an efab and making upgrade to it to waste more time and I feel like its a failed implementation of what could've been a good mod. It could've been like an FTB version of extreme crafting to involve power and liquids, instead, we got a waste of time and tedious work
I am going to assume from this statement that you haven't actually played the pack.
 

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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In what regards?
Well by default the time to make a Diamond Chest plate is 10 minutes. But if you can speed that up. My Efab has a Speed factor of 4 mind you I haven't played but 1.5 hours on that pack. I can make one in 2.5 minutes. Efab can be made to go faster because it is a multi block. Following the quest suggestion will make sure it produce stuff as fast as possible. Also time is always a limiting factor whether I am farming mats for 2 hours or waiting for my Minecraft to craft for my tree farm using Steve's Carts.
 
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Nuclear_Creeper0

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Mar 30, 2017
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For me with the EFab. It's not really about how much time is required, it's that the concept of a time requirement was ever thought up in the first place.
Having a time requirement accomplishes nothing. Nothing, it does nothing for the difficulty of the pack. All it does is make you wait, for the same end goal.
 

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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Time requirements in mods is not a new concept here. Steve's cart did it for years. Every machine in modded minecraft requires a in game wait time.
 

Magzie

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Mar 26, 2014
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But 15 minutes to make a controller and for large AE setups you need over like a stack of them.
ROFL ok so it isn't the fact that the control requires a Nether star for each one or the 36 mrf @ 2000 rf/t. The problem is each one takes 15 minute base time. How ever if you read the tool tip you can add up to 4 rf controllers to speed up rf processing recipes. which makes it like around what 3 minutes or so. Not only that Efab can be set up for auto crafting although I personally haven't gotten that far. I think people keep forgetting it is a multi block. Just add Efab base and make sure you are keeping all the speed parts on the Multiblock.
 

Pyure

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For me with the EFab. It's not really about how much time is required, it's that the concept of a time requirement was ever thought up in the first place.
Having a time requirement accomplishes nothing. Nothing, it does nothing for the difficulty of the pack. All it does is make you wait, for the same end goal.
I've already established that time gates are valid if they force players to learn faster ways of getting things done.

The fact that you're not grasping this, or that you don't "like" the time gates, is a reflection on you, not the pack.

Please generate new arguments if you genuinely dislike the pack (after actually playing it), or phrase your comments like this: "I'm not a fan of time gates."
 

tarzan1376

Active Member
Jul 7, 2013
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Time requirements in mods is not a new concept here. Steve's cart did it for years. Every machine in modded minecraft requires a in game wait time.
you can still do other things while waiting for those machines, you don't have to stop everything you're doing to get a single item, just to do another several minute crafting process. Its tedious is the problem, to say the efab isn't tedious is untrue. It's purely objective that waiting 10 minutes for a diamond chestplate at slowest speed and 2.5 minutes at fastest is tedious. You do this 4 times for full armor and it takes 10-40 minutes for the full set. What normally is an instant craft is now time gated for the sake of " difficulty "

I think we all forgot this is an expert pack meant to be difficult. Nothing is difficult about the pack, it's tedious, it takes very long to do things, but its not hard.

The whole point of expert packs is to use your knowledge to do things faster. This isn't possible, progression is linear and everything is pruned to be linear. This is the downfall of the pack. It might be fun mid or late game. But early game is a grind, very tedious and Just look at the hopper crafting recipe, you need to make 5 different chest just to make a hopper