Yep, I like that as well - and hence I'm a big fan of the harder recipes, too. I can see how this is annoying for a single-player game - but on server, it's a lot of fun: With world anchors and a persistently running server, the long centrifuging times are not too bad - instead it gets an almost MMO-ish quality, where you log on every couple of hours, just to make a little bit of progress and perhaps chat with mates for a bit. The difficult recipes mean you need to sort of build an industrial basis first, before you build all the fancy things - or have people specialising on stuff - my friends visit me to use my free energy recharge station (solar powered), I visit my friend's base to use his blast furnace and so on.GregTech makes FTB feel less like a collection of mods, and more like a complete game, in which you have reason to spread out, dabble in new fields of technology, and put some thought into how best to spend your limited resources to achieve the desired results.
Like many others here i like the way Greg tech has changed the tech tree progression.
The fact you need to use some of the other mods i think is great, However I do miss the clear Tech progression of IC2.
I Wish that someone with more time than I could put together a simple starting walk through like the IC2 one has
(http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Tutorial:First_Steps)
Working out what to build next and how they all fit together is quite hard based on the information in NEI and what little documentation i've managed to find on the net.
You should probably toss in making a Rockcutter somewhere there, just after you get steel. Unless you want to rely completely on quarries consuming your world, that is. Rockcutters double the yield of uranium, ruby, emerald, sapphire and iridium ore (they also work on other ores that don't drop themselves, but the others are all affected by fortune enchanted picks and return far more using those). Uranium isn't so important here, but you will need a TON of the gemstones, and considering the rarity of naturally occurring iridium ore, having to find only 4 instead of 8 for your matter fabricator can make quite a difference. Not to mention having to find only 36 instead of 72 rubies for the very same matter fabricator... sapphires in bulk are great for making the dozens of lapotron crystals all the gregtech machinery needs, and emeralds are also used in some recipes... plus if you want to make the coveted, indestructible iridium-neutron-reflectors for your nuclear reactor you'll have to macerate either hundreds of emeralds or hundreds of enderpearls.
Yeah I learned that the hard way... and ended up NEI-ing myself some diamond ores...I'm not silktouching diamond anyway, that's what a Fortune pick is for
Vanilla Furnace -> Plant 8-10 Rubber Trees -> Mine until you get diamonds at 11ish height-> Iron Furnace -> Coke Oven (burn Coal here) -> Batbox -> Generator (Coke) -> Compressor/Extractor -> Diamond Pickaxe for Obsidian -> Get Glowstone in Nether -> Macerator/Electric Furnace -> Rolling Machine +Stirling Engine -> Industrial Centrifuge -> Silicon Cells ->Solar+Advanced Solar -> Induction Furnace/Rotary Macerator -> Industrial Electrolyzer-> Find Nether+Slime ->Blast Furnace->Mining Drill->Diamond Drill, Rock Cutter,Lappack->...-> Quarry+Recycler -> Iridium ->Matter Fabricator ->...->Fusion Reactor
IMO (and yeah it is my opinion) the best way to start after a short mining trip is thermal expansions steam engine and Induction Smelter. The Induction Smelter is like a macerator and furnace combined, it will take raw ores and give you 2 ingots from each (just like macerating and furnacing). Also has the byproduct of slag which you can furnace to get rockwool
Going that line to start with you just need a couple of gold some redstone, copper, iron, sand and glass. I tried it and it's a decent start point, just wish gates worked on TE engines.
A bucket? ah.. using Thermal Expansion.. yeah I completely forgot about that one... I didn't build that and just enchanted my diamond pickaxe to fortune pickaxe ..omg I completely skipped everything except for Railcraft...
No, not "that one".
You don't need a machine at all. Just a bucket. Just place lava in the right spots and turn it into obsidian with water. And yes you can skip a lot if you happen to find some diamonds early (like in a mineshaft-chest). Also dungeons are your friend... they happen to hold steel-ingots or even blocks quite often.
Saves you diamonds.You mean like making a shape of portal, ok I don't really like that but that's doable..
It really depends on your start as well, though.
Sometimes you start in an area that's riddled with caves, mineshafts and ravines like a swiss cheese. In that case, gunning for chest loot is probably your best bet, as it will take you ages to do any proper mining for gold and diamonds. Lava and water will be readily available for bucket-casting portals too.
Sometimes (albeit rarely) you start off above solid rock. In that case, making a beeline for the "diamond layer" at 9-12 and getting a branch mine going will be faster than wandering off in search of dungeons.
P.S.: Sweet, this forum has an Ignore option. My forum browsing experience has just improved a lot with just one click
You mean like making a shape of portal, ok I don't really like that but that's doable..