Getting started with rotarycraft

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Chris Becke said:
Knowing earlier about the grinders ability to ore-triple? would have made this whole process a lot more tolerable.
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Yeah the grinder can grind the ore in 3 flakes which you can smelt. I looked it up and it got implemented in v11 (Dec. 24) at which point I was already past the ore processing so I didn't realized it changed. Good start although I would say grinder alone to 3x ores is a little overpowered, I would still argue for a multi-block/tier extractor with 50% double chance each phase (in addition to get Metallurgy ores working with RC). :)
 
Hematite ore (i.e. common iron ore) is (re wikipedia) ~60% iron (doesn't clarify if by volume or mass).
So, ultimately, an ore processing pipeline that yields 5-6 iron ingots (i.e. 60% worth of a "cube" of iron) per iron ore block processed is defensible. For iron. Other ores have far lower yields. And, frankly, different processing paths.

I hope for a mod that doesn't implement a one size fits all ore processing pipeline, but actually has different processes (and ultimate yields) for the different ore types.
Aluminium should never be available as a direct ore, but be derived (as it is commonly) from bauxite, yield Alumite as an intermediate result that needs to be purified to yield aluminium.

More directly, the 3x yield of a simple grinder setup, requires a much larger initial investment in iron than, say TiC, you will need to build enough iron to construct, at the least, a pump and 5 steam engines, a grinder and the gearing to connect them all.

An alternative starting set might be a dc engine, fermenter, gas engine, industrial coil and grinder. Less gearing, but more saplings. The industrial coil is to act as a capacitor as the gas engine puts out more power than the grinder takes so the yield of ore per unit fuel would be lower than optimal.

At any rate, a "doable" way to achieve an easy ore tripling which most mods reserve for much MUCH more infrastructure investment and most don't even do.

ps. is there any "vegtable matter" that is easier than saplings to obtain? full stacks of saplings are not easy to arrange early game.
 
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As far as I know, Metallurgy support isn't really in mostly because Reika hadn't used it much. There was some issue with Meteor Craft where he mentioned that. Ask about adding support? He usually responds quickly about feature requests. It'd certainly make Metallurgy/Extra TiCon more appealing to me, since it can be a pain to find just 1 of the rare ore blocks.
 
All this ore doubling, tripling, quadrupling etc. really is problematic. Ore doubling is fine as the "industry standard" for switching from vanilla minecraft to the modded world. Toss in a small bonus like TE does - fine. But why have your base machines triple or quadruple the ore? You are either unbalancing gameplay for all other mods, or create a pointless arms race where the result is just higher numbers for everything.

At least the extractor was hard to use for it's ore multiplying (even though it was still unnecessary), but if a grinder just triples ore, you are making other mods obsolete. That's just not a good direction to go.
 
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Cronos988 said:
All this ore doubling, tripling, quadrupling etc. really is problematic. Ore doubling is fine as the "industry standard" for switching from vanilla minecraft to the modded world. Toss in a small bonus like TE does - fine. But why have your base machines triple or quadruple the ore? You are either unbalancing gameplay for all other mods, or create a pointless arms race where the result is just higher numbers for everything.

At least the extractor was hard to use for it's ore multiplying (even though it was still unnecessary), but if a grinder just triples ore, you are making other mods obsolete. That's just not a good direction to go.
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I agree on this. Especially as i have a soft spot in my heart for Thaumcraft, but now the pickaxe of the core is a drawback with its < 100% yield of "native nuggets" that take extra inventory and "ONLY" yield 2x more.

My ideal balance point would be if mods balanced themselves around a basic ore doubling as the "easy low hanging fruit" goal, and reserved incrementally greater yields for increased mod investment. That said, it is quite defensible for a mod to ultimately target a yield of 6 ingots per iron ore block on the basis of "realism" so I think it would be fair for all mods to adjust their end game balance around that kind of yield.

Perhaps we just need mod authors to agree to implement their multipliers as config options, so that packs like Monster can configure all mods "tier1" multiplier to the same number (and so on for tier two devices in each mod).
 
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Cronos988 said:
All this ore doubling, tripling, quadrupling etc. really is problematic. Ore doubling is fine as the "industry standard" for switching from vanilla minecraft to the modded world. Toss in a small bonus like TE does - fine. But why have your base machines triple or quadruple the ore? You are either unbalancing gameplay for all other mods, or create a pointless arms race where the result is just higher numbers for everything.

At least the extractor was hard to use for it's ore multiplying (even though it was still unnecessary), but if a grinder just triples ore, you are making other mods obsolete. That's just not a good direction to go.
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I have to disagree. If you say every mod should only double the ores, why not just scrap the hole thing and make 1 ore = 1 ingot like it was intended in vanilla? With the TE magic blocks there isn't a challenge or expensive to make a fully automated ore process.

Like the MFR creator said, he doesn't care about balance with other mods but only within in his own and in RC you need stacks and stacks of iron, so a 5x ore process isn't unbalanced.
 
Giddimani said:
Like the MFR creator said, he doesn't care about balance with other mods but only within in his own and in RC you need stacks and stacks of iron, so a 5x ore process isn't unbalanced.
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As much as I have, in the context of this challenge, experienced RCs massive thirst for iron ... I have to disagree. Well, its not the 5X step that I find unbalanced. Its the "easy" 3X step.

It does just seem to be a case of mods playing mine-is-larger-than-yours.

And, especially in the context of a modpack like Monster, which has rationalized copper, tin, silver and lead ore generation and a bunch of recipes - it makes sense that mod authors, while they might balance their default experience against vanilla, need to be cognizant of attempts by pack maintainers to achieve an overall balance within their pack.

Otherwise... Dartcraft.
 
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Giddimani said:
I have to disagree. If you say every mod should only double the ores, why not just scrap the hole thing and make 1 ore = 1 ingot like it was intended in vanilla? With the TE magic blocks there isn't a challenge or expensive to make a fully automated ore process.

Like the MFR creator said, he doesn't care about balance with other mods but only within in his own and in RC you need stacks and stacks of iron, so a 5x ore process isn't unbalanced.
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You are right in a sense, however, that is not what I meant to say. I am not saying that every mod should double ores. I am saying doubling ores works as a game mechanic. Or rather, multiplying ores works as a game mechanic, no matter the mulitplier. What doesn't work as a game mechanic is different multipliers for the same resource.

Multiplying ores works not because it's multiplying resources, but because it is tied to creating machines and a power network. It serves as the incentive to do this, and at the same time provides a significant change in gameplay: Resouce use becomes indirect: instead of "combining" coal and ore in a furnace for iron (really just a different looking crafting bench), you input them both into a different system.

Which is also why this step only works once. Adding additional ore multiplying doesn't change the gameplay any more, and is solely a numbers game. So really, whether your mod doubles, triples, or quintuples ore doesn't matter.

But when we enter the world of modpacks, and additional problem occurs, and that is cross-mod compatibility. And technically, introducing an ore processing method that has higher yields that anything else makes your mod incompatible to other mods, or to be more specific to the ore-processing module of other mods.
 
It can't be that overpowered if you look at how many people use TE3 and how many use RC to process their ores.

Just wrote a couple of paragraphs, but don't want to derail the thread with my ranting about mods/balance and how well the beta to 1.25 days were, because I'm sure I cursed about a thousand times about how much redstone engines you needed to transport items . :rolleyes:
 
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Chris Becke said:
As much as I have, in the context of this challenge, experienced RCs massive thirst for iron ... I have to disagree. Well, its not the 5X step that I find unbalanced. Its the "easy" 3X step.

It does just seem to be a case of mods playing mine-is-larger-than-yours.

And, especially in the context of a modpack like Monster, which has rationalized copper, tin, silver and lead ore generation and a bunch of recipes - it makes sense that mod authors, while they might balance their default experience against vanilla, need to be cognizant of attempts by pack maintainers to achieve an overall balance within their pack.

Otherwise... Dartcraft.
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Yep, balance can only be done within a pack by the pack designer.
Another example is that I used Minetweaker to change the Factorization solar mirror to 3 silver, 3 glass panes and a TE servo. Because my pack is using TE type levels of silver generation, it's too rare to spend so much on a solar mirror.

Not sure if Minetweaker could be used to help reduce the iron requirements of RC (at least in the early tier stuff), because there's still the underlying game mechanics of 3-5 ore doubling.
 
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Giddimani said:
It can't be that overpowered if you look at how many people use TE3 and how many use RC to process their ores.
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That may be true, but I don't think terms like "overpowered" or "balanced" are even useful in this context. What I mean is more akin to "compatibility" of the gameplay.
 
We've gotten a tiny bit offtopic, but I have to agree with this:
Yep, balance can only be done within a pack by the pack designer.
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I'm fond of Unhinged sometimes, specifically because its tailored around specific mods and balanced with those in mind. With many of the FTB modpacks, I find I skip too many machines because there's a clearcut better solution for all purposes (why would I build a macerator when I can build a pulverizer?)

If Reika hasn't assembled a modpack yet balanced specifically around his toys, I hope he does.
 
Cronos988 said:
Yeah, I agree. But as far as I see it, we are not really talking about any of the unique ideas.
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True, to be honest we are getting a little off-track, but I wanted to just not exclude a possibility of a more than 2x output, because if it would require a whole factory line with growing cost/difficulty at the later stages, it could not only be awesome but also in balance with other mods.

Sadly factorization never really into factories. I just love big complicated builds preferable with multiblocks (railcraft comes to mind) and not spending hours in UIs (Thaumcraft comes to mind).
 
So, I dedicated some more time to this build.
Sticking to my meta rule (don't move source blocks), I dug on my island a 63ish meter pit from sea level to bedrock. I moved my hydrodynamic generator down to that level and noticed two things:
1. Lubricant usage seems to be time based, and not related at all to the speed, or torque the generator is putting out.
2. There really is no limit to the amount of power that can be stored in an industrial spring. One canola oil bucket lets me charge a coil with about 1.4GJ of energy.

This provides immediate access to the bedrock breaker. Making it rather trivial to skip the entire diamond upgrade tier. Thankfully as I don't think the diamond tier is that well considered: RC does provide items to make diamonds from coal. It does provide items to help mine diamonds. But they are still rare enough that burning them in the quantities required to make RC shafts and gearboxes would require them in such quantities that you'd need a very mature RC setup - which can't be built without diamonds, or by skipping to bedrock tier.

I can't see the recipe for bedrock ingots however.
 
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Bedrock ingots are either made in the same furnace as HLSA steel or in a Thermal Expansion Induction Smelter. I've only got the TE method to work however.

Industrial Coils can hold more than anyone can feasibly generate in Minecraft, as they're limited solely by the variable type (which I think is a long). They're also the most sensible way to power the Bedrock Breaker no matter what your power generation system is (barring stuff like tesseract to magnetostatic), since you have to move them fairly often to get a good supply of bedrock dust.

Diamond tier is weird, I agree. If you're silk touching and extracting diamond ore, you'll have a surplus, but bedrock is so attainable it makes more sense to jump to it unless you're making a 16x gearbox. Still, in my single player experience, lubricant is plentiful enough not to be a concern anyway.
 
Strangely I've never really felt the mod is tiered at all. I've been using steel components (shafts etc) the entire time and only recently realized I could get by with stone or even wood.

I feel like I'm totally abusing the mod however because all I do is charge industrial coils and cart them where I need them, rather than bringing engines to the machines that need the power.

I think the "creative" charged coil holds 1 PJ of energy, presumably a petajoule. Jebus. Why wouldn't I use those?
 
While I suspect it is intended to go for ethanol and making the more powerful engines, I like maintenance-free solutions. To that end, shaft junctions are my friend for starting rotary craft. 32 dc engines is all I need to get a grinder going without lube.
 
32 dc engines is all I need to get a grinder going without lube.
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This is my concern with "free power". BTW did you literally mean the grinder, or did you manage to power the extractor that way?

Hate to say it but if I were Reika I'd make more components require the lubricant, particularly the free-power sources. Then they're no longer free.
 
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