GregTech Debate Thread

[Belone]

1. Recipe changes SUCK. It took me quite a while to figure out how to get back to a rotary macerator because of all the recipe changes. The FTB wiki isn't updated with recipes and there is no tech tree I can find. As a result I had to muddle my way through getting a rolling machine and that carpenter thing and all these other machines I have never used and didn't understand what they needed to operate without some major Internet surfing. This is my greatest annoyance: wanting to make something and having no idea how the hell to get to it, or how to get it to work without pausing the game to search the Internet. Even the vanilla Ender Chest is different.

Can I recommend trying the IC2 wiki? It has a section on Gregtech with all the recipe changes. Oh and you might want to avoid using rotary macerators at the moment (They seem to be a bit broken ). And as for the vanilla Ender Chest, this isn't actually because of Gregtech, this is because of the EnderStorage mod (which is also in Tekkit by the way), which replaces the Ender Chest with something a little bit cleverer (look up the mod and you'll see what I mean).

2. No Mo' Creatures. I can deal with it, but I actually liked all the added critters running around, making the world seem more alive. Ogres were particularly challenging. Alligators in a swamp seemed natural. Bunnies in the forests and plains, yes please. Now it all seems so barren by comparison. When I can find a way to add it, I shall. It probably isn't added due to some permissions thing, but I still miss it.

I'm pretty sure this is a permissions thing (check on the mod suggestion board). There probably is a way to get it working as long as you get a 1.4.2 version, but I haven't tried myself.

3.No Thaumcraft. I liked the idea of taint altering the landscape and fighting against it. I have tried the Magic Pack but it lacks turtles, which are my most favorite toy I have ever played with and don't want to play without now.

It seems that Slowpokes plan is to also release an ultimate pack that will (hopefully) have both Thaumcraft and ComputerCraft in it

 

[FMan_0000]

You forgot that diamond pickaxe can (and should) be enchanted and drill can't.

As fot GT as a whole, I think it should be two separate mods. One is just GT stuff, balanced with other mods as they are. And other is rebalancing "hard mode" mod, that changes recipes across the board.

huh. I never enchant pickaxes. For me, it's a waste of time. Costs xp and it's going to breack anyways... and I never get the enchantement I want. If i want fortune, I get silk touch, if I want silk touch, I keep getting fortune. It's a pain.

 

[Tylor]

huh. I never enchant pickaxes. For me, it's a waste of time. Costs xp and it's going to breack anyways... and I never get the enchantement I want. If i want fortune, I get silk touch, if I want silk touch, I keep getting fortune. It's a pain.

What are you doing with XP, then? They tend to accumulate.
Nearly all enchants grants unbreaking and/or effeciency, which make diamond pickaxe much better. And if you get a Fortune, then you can just use pickaxe for diging diamonds, redstone and lapis, and it will last virtually forever. Using diamond pickaxe unenchanted is just a waste of diamonds.

 

[FMan_0000]

What are you doing with XP, then? They tend to accumulate.
Nearly all enchants grants unbreaking and/or effeciency, which make diamond pickaxe much better. And if you get a Fortune, then you can just use pickaxe for diging diamonds, redstone and lapis, and it will last virtually forever. Using diamond pickaxe unenchanted is just a waste of diamonds.

Im not using Xp for nothing, only for repairing tools on anvils. Not enchanting tools is not a waste of diamonds, I'm just too lazy to make the enchanting table and the bookshelfs.

 

[eculc]

I think GT should stay in the pack, but with all the recipe alterations disabled by default. I don't know what exactly is on or off normally, but if everything is disabled by default everyone who doesn't want to deal with annoying recipe changes doesn't have to, and since it seems the majority don't like the changed recipes they get the convenience of not having to change config files.

 

[Zelfana]

Im not using Xp for nothing, only for repairing tools on anvils. Not enchanting tools is not a waste of diamonds, I'm just too lazy to make the enchanting table and the bookshelfs.

Unbreaking III quadruples the durability of tools so yeah it is waste of diamonds to not enchant tools with that. And you don't need the anvil to repair unenchanted tools, you can combine them in normal crafting. Only point is to repair helmets, chestplates and leggings as you get more repair per material used than making a new one. And that is a bug that still needs fixing imo. Your laziness is making you do more work finding diamonds for your repairing as it is a lossy way to repair. Full anvil repair takes 4 diamonds no matter what you are repairing.

 

[Ember Quill]

Wow, I didn't know there was an actual GregTech debate thread. This is good. I keep seeing topics that have nothing to do with GT at first that somehow devolve into a GT argument. There was one with a newbie basically asking how to get started with all the FTB mods. Somebody mentioned building a macerator and it devolved into a GT argument, then devolved further into some nasty ad hominem attacks. The OP got scared off, I think.

Now whenever a thread turns into a GT argument, we can direct them here in an attempt to get the thread back on topic and avoid having it locked.

As for my opinion on GT, I have mixed feelings. I really like a lot of the extra stuff it adds, but some of the changes to regular IC2 stuff seem like they exist solely to make the game harder. Not prohibitively hard, but hard enough that it becomes less fun and less accessible to people who don't really know what they're doing. It feels too grind-y to me.

It's better with some of the recipe changes disabled. I do recognize that the Macerator is ridiculously OP when you're just using IC2, but with all these other mods using ridiculous amounts of iron, tin, and copper, even after building a Macerator I still find myself perpetually short on metals until I get a massive quarry going.

Honestly though, the one thing that bugs me most is the way the recipes display in NEI. Because GT adds a bunch of buildcraft, IC2, and Forestry machine components to the Forge Ore Dictionary (at least, I think that's what it does), instead of displaying multiple recipes it displays a single recipe that cycles rapidly through the different components (like circuits, logic gates, electron tubes, etc.). Normally that's okay for Ore Dictionary stuff, because it's flashing through different variations of silver or different variations of copper or whatever. It's easy to tell what you need even if the recipe keeps changing. With GT recipes, it's not.

While there are several aspects of GregTech that I don't particularly like, I can definitely live with the grind-y aspects if the flashing recipe thing is changed. And yes, I do realize that's an NEI or Forge thing rather than a GT thing, but honestly it's just a really annoying way to use the Ore Dictionary.

 

[makeshiftwings]

I made it a point of signing up for an account merely to add in my two cents on Gregtech. I shall start with a brief history.

I played Technic for a while, casually, and never progressed beyond nano armor and rotary macerators. I am not an expert on any of this and barely have time to try to make tech trees for myself.

EE completely broke my sense of fun with those solar collectors, meaning I had no reason to go out and mine any more with Energy Condensers (so, I stopped making them and destroyed the ones I made). I really enjoyed Thaumcraft and its 'magical items' and especially requiring research in order to make anything higher tiered.

In any event, with Technic being stuck in 1.2.5 land I tried to find another modpack that had updated to the latest-ist version and found FTB. I have tried it out and enjoyed it so far, with a couple annoyances:

1. Recipe changes SUCK. It took me quite a while to figure out how to get back to a rotary macerator because of all the recipe changes. The FTB wiki isn't updated with recipes and there is no tech tree I can find. As a result I had to muddle my way through getting a rolling machine and that carpenter thing and all these other machines I have never used and didn't understand what they needed to operate without some major Internet surfing. This is my greatest annoyance: wanting to make something and having no idea how the hell to get to it, or how to get it to work without pausing the game to search the Internet. Even the vanilla Ender Chest is different.
2. No Mo' Creatures. I can deal with it, but I actually liked all the added critters running around, making the world seem more alive. Ogres were particularly challenging. Alligators in a swamp seemed natural. Bunnies in the forests and plains, yes please. Now it all seems so barren by comparison. When I can find a way to add it, I shall. It probably isn't added due to some permissions thing, but I still miss it.
3. No Thaumcraft. I liked the idea of taint altering the landscape and fighting against it. I have tried the Magic Pack but it lacks turtles, which are my most favorite toy I have ever played with and don't want to play without now.

Thus, my major issue with GregTech is how it changed recipes, and I cannot find how the hell to adjust for all these changes without just muddling through it all and making a lot of mistakes along the way. Maybe if we had to research the various machines before we could make them, we could be 'led' through the process through research and use THAT as a means of 'extending' the game, as some seem to wish to have.

Thank you for your time.

The pro-GT people will now tell you you're an idiot for not immediately understanding everything, and that you should be able to instantly grasp all the changes by "just using NEI". They'll then go back to saying that GT clearly doesn't make anything more complicated for new players and that it's simple as can be, while simultaneously insisting that it's good because it makes life much harder for new players and is a really complex challenge. They're all a bit deranged, if you ask me.

 

[makeshiftwings]

Why is this a debate? More options = good thing, does it not? Don't like the mod? Disable it. Like the mod, but not some of the choices it makes? Edit the config file, as I did. And no, I'm not buying the idea that the config is difficult to edit. Changing "ElectricSteelTools=True" to "ElectricSteelTools=False" doesn't require a background in coding. On the other hand, adding a mod to an existing pack can be challenging when you run up against block IDs and whatnot. This is why I truly hope the "Ultimate Pack", when it arrives, is essentially everything, giving us the freedom to make our modded world as expansive (or restrictive) as we like.

Essentially, my point is that arguing for the removal of a mod that can be easily disabled/edited is equivalent to saying "I don't like this, so no one should have it."

I can't speak for everyone, but from my perspective, I would be fine with GT if all of its changes to other people's mods were disabled in the config by default. However, some changes can't be turned off in the config, and most people want all the changes turned on by default anyway. I think the burden of messing with configs should be on the people who like the "challenge" of having to look up all the new recipes in NEI/wikis every time they change, since those people probably also enjoy messing with config files more anyway.

 

[CrafterOfMines57]

The pro-GT people will now tell you you're an idiot for not immediately understanding everything, and that you should be able to instantly grasp all the changes by "just using NEI".

I'm pro-GT, and I tell people that are new that they should probably stay away from it until they have used the other mods enough times, so your argument is semi-invalid.

 

[MrZwij]

Not to mention that many of the key early- to mid-game recipes in FTB (macerator, water mill, windmill, quarry) are NOT nerfed. Which has been mentioned about ... 7 bazillion times.

This thread makes me want to go find a noose.

 

[CrafterOfMines57]

macerator ... NOT nerfed

You sure about that?

 

[MrZwij]

You sure about that?

Yep. For SSP at least. From my unedited GregTech.cfg file:

ExpensiveMaceratorRecipe=false

 

[b0bst3r]

After spending a good 5 hrs to make a matter fabricator I was highly satisfied I'd struck a major accomplishment, i can't remember even having that feeling before in MC. After all the Matter Fab was a real challenge to gather all the resources and the several 40 minute centrifuging was a pain in the ass but again added to the suspense

The only thing I didn't like was remembering it was part of IC and pick axing it to move it and the whole thing completely vanished..... good job we have a great server owner

 

[Mikey_R]

The only thing I didn't like was remembering it was part of IC and pick axing it to move it and the whole thing completely vanished..... good job we have a great server owner

You must have died a little inside once you done that. It took me 2 days to get the materials after getting all the iridium I neeeded, so I know how painful it can be.

 

[b0bst3r]

Yeah the air was blue and I was like NOOOOOOOOO Why the *&$% did I just do that, it's VERY VERY BAD that the whole thing vanishes and you get nothing back, at least you should get some part of it, like the Lapotronic Energyorb.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Yep. For SSP at least. From my unedited GregTech.cfg file:

ExpensiveMaceratorRecipe=false

It was edited, just not by you. It's not intended to be that easy. The good news is that we have a team that's both kind, AND sadistic.

I suspect we'll see gregtech, turned to the most unkind possible, in the mappack, with the monument, but that the IC2 devs, who disagree with what it does to IC2, will keep it out of the regular packs.

Im not using Xp for nothing, only for repairing tools on anvils. Not enchanting tools is not a waste of diamonds, I'm just too lazy to make the enchanting table and the bookshelfs.

All that leather feels a little like a nonstarter sometimes don't it?

Now I'm thinking about the added trouble that it takes to make an uncrafting bench to really be smart about it.

 

[Kyre]

I have to admit I'm not really sure why there's so much criticism against the inclusion of Gregtech.

Are you confused about what it can do or what recipes it changes? There's a whole wiki devoted to Gregtech here: http://gregtech-addon.wikispaces.com/
Granted, the version of Gregtech in FTB is fairly out of date and a bit of the content on that wiki isn't in FTB yet, but it tells you how everything works. Additionally, the "Getting started with IC2 and Gregtech" FTB wiki guide is currently in the works: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/seeking-getting-started-guides.3818/

If you're disappointed that you can't macerate ores early on, have you looked into Thermal Expansion? Both the Pulverizer and Induction Smelter will easily duplicate your ores. I'll quote what I said in another thread:

The Pulverizer has three distinct advantages over the Macerator:
1. The Macerator is much more expensive to build if you don't disable the gregtech recipes. Additionally if you can't find any rubber then you're out of luck. The only really expensive aspect of the Pulverizer is 2 gold.
2. The Pulverizer doubles your ores AND has a small chance to give you a third ore for some recipes. For example, every copper ore you pulverize has a 5% chance of also generating a pulverized gold along with the pulverized copper.
3. The Pulverizer is a LOT faster than the Macerator without upgrades.

In conclusion, I think everyone should use Pulverizers when starting out instead of Macerators

I'll concede that there's no real alternative to the Electric Drill / Chainsaw in FTB, but I think it's fair to say that having to never craft a tool again after you reach redstone is awfully overpowered. I think that having to acquire blaze rods / magma creams in the nether is a fair prerequisite to have to get these tools (plus, doing so is absurdly easy with the full IC2 Hazmat suit and a bunch of snowballs).

 

[ICountFrom0]

Careful kyre, if you talk about the hazmat suit, greg will nerf that too, anytime anybody uses the word easy... those things go poof.

 

[Kyre]

Careful kyre, if you talk about the hazmat suit, greg will nerf that too, anytime anybody uses the word easy... those things go poof.

I'd honestly be fine with that too. Being able to take quick swims in lava after about 20 minutes into a new world with the right luck sure seems awfully strange to me.