FTB Infinity Expert mode is everything I could've asked for out of FTB

[RandomMoped]

Hey guys, I'm one of the (maybe few) people who've been playing FTB since it was released. While I do take long breaks of it a lot, I always end up coming back to try the new modpacks. I've had similar issues with almost every single modpack released however, but FTB Infinity Expert mode seems to solve these. My #1 issue was how the mods would cooperate with eachother as far as progressing towards certain goals in the game, where it was clear that certain mods would allow you to progress to these goals faster and more efficiently than other mods, leaving the inefficient mods irrelevant regardless of how much stuff had gone into them. With expert mode however, the game is essentially divided into Tech & Magic, and the game has a much more clear progression curve that requires using almost every tech/magic mod to make certain goals come together. While this was attempted in gregtech packs, most of the time exploits were clear in those packs and non-gregtech compatible mods would usually break everything. So thank you to the FTB team for making a modpack that truly makes all the mods work together in unison, even if it is a little bit grindy

 

[AuricPolaris]

I agree with this paragraph! My one issue is that I wish AE2 was even more lategame as my players always love to build very large setups that are not so nice to the CPU. Or maybe more resource intensive but still accessible midgame. But overall, well done FTB!

 

[RandomMoped]

I agree with this paragraph! My one issue is that I wish AE2 was even more lategame as my players always love to build very large setups that are not so nice to the CPU. Or maybe more resource intensive but still accessible midgame. But overall, well done FTB!

I can definitely agree with that, but for a different reasoning . AE2 tends to oversimplify storage in my mind, and having to build early game sorting systems with limited resources is actually pretty fun because it forces you into some of the fun retro piping systems that AE2 tends to make irrelevant. This way, progress is actually noticeably more...noticable.

 

[Azzanine]

There's one change I don't get about Expert though. The meat cooking change. While it sort of makes sense its effect on the game is negated by other sources of food. All you need is a juicer and a bunch of apples (gained by the excess oak you need to farm).
It feels like Spice of Life would make the challenge of the meat change hit home better. Hunger overhaul could also be added but might make it a bit too hard.
I might add SoL my self, if it doesn't screw things up.

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[BIG mac]

Honestly, I feel like Spice of Life wouldn't do too much since so many types of food are so easy to come by. I mean, just trying to clear a spot for my base gives me a stacks of carrot and potato seeds. For this reason, I feel like Spice of Life would be mostly an annoyance. The meat cooking thing really doesn't make any sense to me, as I was able to set up a huge carrot farm within 10 minutes of starting the world.

 

[asb3pe]

Nobody has ever balanced the food/hunger aspect of Minecraft. I guess the mechanic is kinda sorta balanced for pure vanilla, it works well enough in the original game where everything is simplified compared to modded... but in modded nobody has really worked food/hunger into the fabric of the game. Pam's Harvestcraft is a terrific mod, but it generally goes woefully under-used because the hunger aspect just isn't worth a darn. And when someone DID try to make hunger a challenge, well, then it just overwhelmed all other tasks and the game became "Don't Starve" in 3D. IMO, that wasn't "balance" either. Modded minecraft needs a way to make hunger more involved in the game, but without making hunger an overwhelming obstacle to our very survival itself. Someone will surely come up with a good concept and implement it someday, I suppose. The modded game deserves it, that's for sure. All vanilla mechanics should be reworked by good mods, so how hunger has gone this long without a great mod to tweak it is surprising.

If Natura is in the pack, I always begin on Day One with my eye out for collecting all 4 (or at least 3) of the berry bushes scattered around the various biomes. Even in Infinity Evolved Expert Mode, I was able to survive just on Natura Berries for the entire game (400+ hours of gametime), and I can pretty much do it in any modpack if that mod is in it. That is the perfect example that shows just how broken the hunger mechanic is. Perhaps there isn't a solution to hunger that won't involve a "grind". I dunno. Nobody wants to just add a mechanic that adds a grind without any fun. But I think a lot of people DO enjoy farming and making foods, so surely there must be a fun way or a fun concept out there in some mod developer's head...

 

[asb3pe]

I can definitely agree with that, but for a different reasoning . AE2 tends to oversimplify storage in my mind, and having to build early game sorting systems with limited resources is actually pretty fun because it forces you into some of the fun retro piping systems that AE2 tends to make irrelevant. This way, progress is actually noticeably more...noticable.

Sometimes that noticeable progress is negative... like the moment I took my 12x6 wall of Storage Drawers down and replaced it all with one AE2 Drive and a Terminal. LOL

And this is what I notice in this pack - I spend a lot of time building something so it all works properly... only to be tearing it all down the very next week. It's a shame, in a way. But it's just part of the progression. If I had gone thru the hoops of using Logistics Pipes, that would all be gone now too, since I have access to AE2 import and export busses. All that work setting it up, only to tear it all down...

It's more noticeable in this pack, all these big changes, because our progression is delayed and we can't immediately go right to our favorite mods. And even when we get there - such as Big Reactors - we can't just go right to the max-sized double Turbine setup. My server-mates are constantly amazed because every time they come to my base, my Big Reactor setup has changed slightly, gotten a bit bigger. That's because the Fuel Rods are so difficult to make (IC2 Plutonium) that we are forced to make small, incremental changes... and then also big, catastrophic changes too... such as switching over in mid-game from Storage Drawers (BIG!) to AE2 hard drives (tiny). Just the way the modpack plays out I guess. It's different from the usual, but I love it and so does all my server-mates. I hear so many great comments about how fun this modpack is...

 

[Azzanine]

Spice of life can actually be adjusted with some a lot of effort. There's a way of making food groups to nullify some of the variety some mods provide. You could make pork chops count the same as steak.
Of course becasue there's a cubic fuck load of different foods in Pam's Harvest craft, only a masochist would bother to write up the JSON file to establish them.
Like you could look at each food, sort and define them in to the traditional food groups; Veg, Meat, Carbs, Fats, Sugars. Or go even further and define them by a sort of food type like Roast, Sandwich, caserole, snack ect.
Then again it might be easier to use a food mod with less options.

 

[asb3pe]

Spice of life can actually be adjusted with some a lot of effort. There's a way of making food groups to nullify some of the variety some mods provide. You could make pork chops count the same as steak.
Of course becasue there's a cubic fuck load of different foods in Pam's Harvest craft, only a masochist would bother to write up the JSON file to establish them.
Like you could look at each food, sort and define them in to the traditional food groups; Veg, Meat, Carbs, Fats, Sugars. Or go even further and define them by a sort of food type like Roast, Sandwich, caserole, snack ect.
Then again it might be easier to use a food mod with less options.

Yeah that's what I was thinking too - the various food groups, and the only way you can achieve full health and stay there is if your food variety encompasses all the nutritional categories. If you are heavy on one and weak on another, you suffer a bit. Perhaps eating foods with sugar gives a speed boost but makes hunger go quicker unless you also eat a veg and a meat along with the sugary food which then negates the speed boost. So your choice which path to take, and when.

I'm just surprised nobody's taken the concept and run with it. Perhaps its been tried and didn't work. Maybe it just makes the game more complicated and grindy. I dunno.

 

[Azzanine]

No, it's the aforementioned task of categorizing the foods in Pam's. You may even need to do research on the foods you haven't heard of.
Could be a week's worth of work for something that would be deemed unpopular.
Some players actually like how ignorable hunger is.

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[Ishi]

There's one change I don't get about Expert though. The meat cooking change.

we used the drying rags from tinker's which are even cheaper then using a furnace

it might just be about looking for alternatives and lerning the mods

 

[Azzanine]

I use those racks too. But it's still odd that it locks regular cooked food behind Pam's. Also the fact Pam's HC is in the pack is also odd. I guess it's there for RP flavor. Because it doesn't really provide any real challenge.

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[asb3pe]

I use those racks too. But it's still odd that it locks regular cooked food behind Pam's. Also the fact Pam's HC is in the pack is also odd. I guess it's there for RP flavor. Because it doesn't really provide any real challenge.

I don't see it as locked behind Pam's Harvestcraft... it's locked behind Thermal Expansion machines since a TE Redstone Furnace can cook all meats. Didn't bother me much, since Natura berries can keep one fully satiated for the entire length of the modpack, and because Thermal Expansion machines are always the first ones I make even if they're expert mode-ed.

I dunno if it was this thread or not, but I recently went on a mini-rant over the whole "food and hunger in modded Minecraft" issues. As you say, it provides no real challenge and there's also no progression to "encourage" the use of foodstuffs. But since it's prevalent in every modpack, it's certainly not a specific problem with modpack development. We simply need a genius mod designer to come up with some way to involve food/hunger without it becoming tedious/grindy, and without going as far as Hunger Overhaul does.

 

[Pyure]

I dunno if it was this thread or not, but I recently went on a mini-rant over the whole "food and hunger in modded Minecraft" issues. As you say, it provides no real challenge and there's also no progression to "encourage" the use of foodstuffs. But since it's prevalent in every modpack, it's certainly not a specific problem with modpack development. We simply need a genius mod designer to come up with some way to involve food/hunger without it becoming tedious/grindy, and without going as far as Hunger Overhaul does.

Or a modpack designer.

There's a couple modpacks that function on a "delivery" mechanism that looks interesting. You can abstract out food requirements so that you're "sending food to another world to keep your people alive" or some such, and the specific food requirements could be highly varied, e.g "we need 300 sausage-on-a-buns for our upcoming Worship of Pyure Festival."

 

[Dentvar]

Or a modpack designer.

There's a couple modpacks that function on a "delivery" mechanism that looks interesting. You can abstract out food requirements so that you're "sending food to another world to keep your people alive" or some such, and the specific food requirements could be highly varied, e.g "we need 300 sausage-on-a-buns for our upcoming Worship of Pyure Festival."

We have to sure start with some ideas and thats one, but I personaly do not find it interesting at all. Sounds like "Damn... I again have to send 300 food to the Void just because HQM tells me to..."
If its used in a modpack with a story background like Blast-Off or Regrowth or something you can manage to make it work. But in packs like Infinity it would be kind of strange to send food to someone. I always belived myself to be the only survivor of a zombie atack

Other Ideas I would have are for example Farming animals to requiere more food. So you need to prepare special food for your pigs so they can get fed and at the end you get more food out. On the other side.... why not eat the food you fed them. Well as @asb3pe said. We need someone with a good mod for this.

 

[Pyure]

We have to sure start with some ideas and thats one, but I personaly do not find it interesting at all. Sounds like "Damn... I again have to send 300 food to the Void just because HQM tells me to..."

Yeah, my own approach is a bit different than that. You're piloting your Worldship to a destination and you're "scored" at the end by how fast you get there and how many civilians survive the trip. Rather than quests adding and subtracting people or anything like that, its all programmed/scripted in LUA or in customized mods (the main mod is already done): there's a general food counter, a civilian counter, a distance-to-home counter, and a velocity counter. Your velocity is a product of how much power you're dumping into the engines. Your food counter is a product of the value of food you're dumping into stores.

 

[Darkarma]

Just started this on Expert mode on the frozensoul server. Literally. Just. Started. So far liking it. Though I am a bit overwhelmed after seeing some of the bases people have been putting together as I'm mainly going for power sources that low or no upkeep.

 

[Pyure]

For lack of a better thread that I can find:
There's a few mods in this pack I haven't tinkered with before. Draconic Evolution is one of them.

Is the only correct gate into D.E in this pack via IC2 Nuclear to get plutonium by any chance? I don't mind assembling IC2 nukes, I'm just curious if that's the "proper" way.

edit: alternatively, is there mineable plutonium somewhere?

 

[asb3pe]

Is the only correct gate into D.E in this pack via IC2 Nuclear to get plutonium by any chance? I don't mind assembling IC2 nukes, I'm just curious if that's the "proper" way.

edit: alternatively, is there mineable plutonium somewhere?

Not that I'm aware of Pyure. There is a very well defined pathway to take in Infinity Evolved with very little leeway. IC2 nukes are definitely required for that all-important Plutonium. I ran 8 little 1-block nukes that each put out 120 EU/t using 2 Quad Uranium Cells each, and every 20,000 seconds (about 5.5 hours) I got 7 Plutoniums from those 16 Depleted Quad Uraniums...

Spoiler

it's the 2nd reactor on this list:
http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&postID=192269#post192269
http://prntscr.com/84931z

For me, the way I've seen it as I've been playing, Draconic is at the end of the pack, and it isn't gated by IC2 nukes or Plutonium, but rather by the magic mods. Have a look at the Wyvern Core and you'll see why - 2 magical ingots required, plus the top-tier Ender IO ingot (Vibrant) and the Redstone Arsenal flux ingots.

What Plutonium does gate is the Big Reactors mod... so my progression began very early on with IC2, then on to Big Reactors, then the magic mods and Draconic.

And while I'm on the subject.... my goodness, the Energy Storage Multiblock requires an almost unimaginable amount of Draconic Ore. I'm up to Tier 5 but probably need to quarry about another 100x100 chunks just to get enough of the stuff to make it all the way to Tier 7. End "comets" aren't very efficient or productive, seems to me the best way to obtain Draconic Ore is just quarry, quarry, quarry. 24/7/365... about 1-2 ores per chunk. UGH. And yes, even with quadrupling the silk-touched ores into ingots using TE Cinnabar. It is brutal.

 

[Pyure]

Not that I'm aware of Pyure. There is a very well defined pathway to take in Infinity Evolved with very little leeway. IC2 nukes are definitely required for that all-important Plutonium. I ran 8 little 1-block nukes that each put out 120 EU/t using 2 Quad Uranium Cells each, and every 20,000 seconds (about 5.5 hours) I got 7 Plutoniums from those 16 Depleted Quad Uraniums...

Spoiler

it's the 2nd reactor on this list:
http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&postID=192269#post192269
http://prntscr.com/84931z

For me, the way I've seen it as I've been playing, Draconic is at the end of the pack, and it isn't gated by IC2 nukes or Plutonium, but rather by the magic mods. Have a look at the Wyvern Core and you'll see why - 2 magical ingots required, plus the top-tier Ender IO ingot (Vibrant) and the Redstone Arsenal flux ingots.

What Plutonium does gate is the Big Reactors mod... so my progression began very early on with IC2, then on to Big Reactors, then the magic mods and Draconic.

And while I'm on the subject.... my goodness, the Energy Storage Multiblock requires an almost unimaginable amount of Draconic Ore. I'm up to Tier 5 but probably need to quarry about another 100x100 chunks just to get enough of the stuff to make it all the way to Tier 7. End "comets" aren't very efficient or productive, seems to me the best way to obtain Draconic Ore is just quarry, quarry, quarry. 24/7/365... about 1-2 ores per chunk. UGH. And yes, even with quadrupling the silk-touched ores into ingots using TE Cinnabar. It is brutal.

I think the draconic chest itself is more or less gated behind the ic2 nukes. It requires a MOX pellet. Can't speak for the rest of the mod, but the tutorials I've read/watched suggest I want to build the chest before anything else.

Another thing that I noticed is gated uber-late-game is the RFTools dimensions. If memory serves it requires Draconic components itself. I wonder if you have the tech/resources required to exploit that mod? RFTools dimensions may have a dimlet for draconic ore (I doubt it), but even if it doesn't, I found it was easy to make certain types of dimensions that facilitated the locations of ores. For instance generating the terrain all as "streams". You can just fly around and look for the distinctive blinking draconic ore. (I used to do this to easily mine yellorium)