Gregtech & the omniwrench

[Saice]

I posit that no one actually cares which mods affect which other mods, and all this is just bitching about something being made harder.

For example, TE's conduits entirely change BuildCraft's power distribution system (making it a lot easier to setup), and the OmniWrench changes IC's wrench system (all but removing it from the game - it's dirt cheap compared to any other option for what it does). Why aren't people in uproar about those? Oh, right. They make the game easier.

Sort of. I can agree the omniwrench has a cost to use that is a bit on cheap side.

But the Conduits they have a fairly more complex cost over BC pipes with the built in 5% cost and the need for mutliple machines to make them. VS BC pipes that can be crafted at the bench. It is a fair trade in my book.

 

[Grydian2]

OK well if you examine the golden conductive pipe you would find that it does not do as advertised. Basically it loses way more power then it should. More then 4-5 blocks long and its literally wasting power. Check it out yourself in creative... Setup a couple of set ups with redstone energy cells at each end and test to see the power lost. Golden conductive pipes just dont work well. AND they cause a lot of lag compared to conduits. Its true just use conduits. What I see here is a mod's intent was destroyed by another. The omniwrench is specifically about a wrench that can use all machines and doesn't break. That's what it is. Greg changed that without KL being ok with it. Anyone who thinks thats cool is crazy.

 

[King Lemming]

Sez you. I still see them as superior for short piping runs, and haven't had any problems with them. I find it maddening that whenever anyone does have problems with them the answer around here is "lol use conduits", but I do admit there's some balance there. Even if everyone chooses to ignore it in favour of what doesn't hurt their heads so much.

So I say unto you, don't confuse "easier" with "working better".

But here what I'm seeing boils down to a whole lot of bitching about the OmniWrench being disabled. No, it's nothing to do with any of the other wrenches, just that one - the "skip all the others, just build this once then forget the whole system" wrench.

I agree that people should play the game in whatever way they find fun. I agree that if Greg doesn't want people subverting the wrench system, he should still leave in a config file so that they still have a choice whether to do so. I don't agree that Greg has any reason to like the OmniWrench.

Don't confuse "harder" or "balanced" with "tedious." Just so we're clear on that. The real point of conduits is to allow for energy transfer without server-crippling lag. They're also, on the surface of it, far far more expensive than conductive pipes. You'll also notice I receive an inordinate amount of complaints about the Energy Tesseract, when the phased pipe equivalent is 1% loss.

Nobody is confusing easier with working better - they just actually work better. Same with the Omniwrench - it correctly worked on some IC2 things that even IC2 didn't get right, not to mention vanilla stuff, etc.

It's a 2-diamond wrench. It turns things. You are a madman if you see a real balance issue with that. You have also apparently never used a wrench in real life ever, or you would know that they're incredibly durable.

 

[Saice]

This is what I love about TE that a lot of it has a low impact on servers.

The same reason why I'm falling in love with RedNet so low impact on servers.

 

[DoctorOr]

So, gregtech can mess with other mods but other mods can't mess with gregtech?

Once again, no changes were made to other mods to make this change. Please make different inane, bullshit assumptions and post them in your next message. The inane, bullshit assumption you're making here is not occurring.

 

[Saice]

Once again, no changes were made to other mods to make this change. Please make different inane, bullshit assumptions and post them in your next message. The inane, bullshit assumption you're making here is not occurring.

A agree the idea that he is actively changing other mods is a bit silly.

But from the laymans point of view all they know is they installed GT and now mods work diffrent. It is sematics issue but it stems from others not being as knowledgeble on how mods work and interact.

 

[Harros]

Maybe there should be a mod that tries to do everything greg does but through MJs and buildcraft... Big multiblock machines that run off a lot of MJs. Like a MJ powered blast furnace, a MJ power multiblock pulversier... Just thinking out loud...

There is its called the rock crusher from Railcraft a nice machine for getting rid of excess gravel.

 

[Jadedcat]

I am going to step way outside the role of Global Mod: Everything in this post is a personal opinion and in no way reflects the feelings of FTB


Frankly I find the drama annoying. I also think many people are misusing the word "better". "Better" is subjective in all ways the average player can measure. Things like ease of use, ability to understand its function etc are different from player to player. Different players value different things. Which means what one player finds "better" another player does not. Subjective statements are personal and frequently lead to personal feelings getting injured. This is because people can't prove from an objective standpoint why they feel something is better. This ends up with arguments that are basically the color purple is better then the color blue. This is not in fact a valid argument. Its a statement of opinion.

The people who can make objective claims about "better" are people who can read and understand the code and it influence on the resources required to run the game. In the case of resources used by a server or computer a mod can be objectively "better" then another mod. These would be people like mod devs, coders, mod pack makers, and server admins. The down side is that anyone who can read a tiny bit of code seems to think they are an expert. And then they weigh in on xyz mod behaves in xyz way often totally missing half of whats going on. And some mod authors may be admittedly biased towards their own mod. So again "better" is not the best word. More efficient is the use of computer resources sure. "Better" maybe maybe not.

So basically "better" is a personal opinion. Personal opinions are not worth people arguing so rabidly over. However it seems people do and I am going to venture an opinion on why.


Attitude.

If I start a stream using GregTech very few people will tell me I am a horrible person. If they don't care for it they will tend to be like "better you then me" and enjoy the show. I do a stream with IC2 and no GT and the GT fans come out of the woodwork to inform me I am a crappy player and lazy and stupid etc because I am not using GT and as GT is harder it is obviously better and anyone not conforming to that is a noob that should be playing in creative mode. People who like it to be a bit easier don't tend to gripe at people who want it harder. People who prefer a harder style of play do however frequently attack people who prefer to play easier. Easier and harder aren't even the right words. Its one group of players calling another group of players names because they prefer to play the game differently. Frankly the players that don't like hardcore changes to the game didn't start the drama. The players that want a more "balanced" "hardcore" game are the ones that started the name calling and started saying their way was better. This got the crowd that liked the status quo fired up and insults were thrown and now instead of having one community of players that play differently , it frequently feels we have 2 communities at war over how they want to play a game.


And here we come to the main topic. GT and its creator. I will note I think the mod is fine as an IC2 addon. It adds some stuff to IC2 thats reasonably interesting. That said, where it started and where it has come to are seperate things. Instead of working with other devs for compatibility or refusing to install alongside mods he doesn't want to play with his mod , he reaches around and fiddles with how they work. This leads to mod devs getting "bug reports" when in fact the item is working as intended. Just as intended by Greg not the mod dev. Greg on the other hand just laughs and goes yup I made it better. And his fans buy into this and feel they are somehow morally superior to players who don't see his genius. Personally I dislike the innate arrogance in the presumption that he is a better moder then all the others. He made a mod that plays the game the way he wants. He has then decided that other mods that don't do it his way are inferior and must be changed.

Anytime one group believes they are "better" then another group it leads to conflict.

Different dos not equal better. Harder does not equal better. Easier does not equal better. All of it is personal opinion. The only better that can be proved is hardware resources used. Anything else is just opinion.

TLDR : Unless you have empirical evidence of a mod being better on hardware resource usage then your argument for or against any mod it the equivalent of me saying: "I dislike lima beans , therefore lima beans are bad therefore Lemming you are not allowed to eat lima beans"

Different is not better. Personal opinions are not fact. Play the way you want and let me play the way I want.

 

[RandomMoped]

thank you based Jaded

 

[DoctorOr]

But from the laymans point of view all they know is they installed GT and now mods work diffrent. It is sematics issue but it stems from others not being as knowledgeble on how mods work and interact.

No, it wouldn't. Because the change only affects GT machines. Since GT machines don't exist prior to GT being installed....

 

[Lathanael]

Balancing those mods "by default" that way would make them quite unbalanced, actually -- they're balanced for vanilla, most of the time. It should be your job to get things working the way you want if you have a billion mods installed, which is why config files are an important part of mod packs. Unless you mess up and make MPS crazy good on IC2 energy
Also, yeah, balance isn't only a matter of things being too easy. Being too hard also means something is unbalanced. UP UP UP

Geez i didn't want to derail this topic anymore but you are forcing me to do so.
Ofc i can sift through every config there is to make it as balanced as possible but at the end of the day i won't be able to achieve any good. For 80% of the things it is the mod authors who have to give the possibiliy to either adjust things or make them balanced against other mods by default.
Also the vanilla argument is kinda invalid. MPS for example detects which mods are installed and disables/enables recipes accordingly. So you can balance your mod against different setups. One could even ask the communitiy for feedback what they think would be balanced (although i suspect they would not give good feedback for the most part as the cheaper way will always be preferred to others).
A good example for not beeing able to adjust balance was that it is impossible (at the moment!) to adjust MFRs machines and how much energy they take. If i could do that i would happily do it, make them draw a significant amount of power to get them on par with Forestry farms but i can't.

ONTOPIC:
I really don't get it why people most often ONLY bitch about GregTech nerfing things/makeing them harder/more tedious(which is only true for the really high tier things). At the same time they don't start threads about other mods chaning vanilla recipes/mechanics or why some mod makes another mod nearly obsolete (TE and IC2 anyone?) [Don't get me wrong TE is a fine mod and there are still things in IC2 TE doesn't have, but it has pretty much replaced IC2 as a starting mod)

EDIT:

All posts in this thread reflect my own personal opinion on this matter.
In no way i want anyone to think that this is what we (as in the FTB Team) think about it.

 

[Saice]

No, it wouldn't. Because the change only affects GT machines. Since GT machines don't exist prior to GT being installed....

So you are telling me by Default GT does not effect other mods in any way other then how they work with GT machines.

I'm not just talking about the omni wrench in this case. Most of the issue with the view on GT is from its over all effect not just the Omni Wrench in this thread.

 

[DoctorOr]

I'm not just talking about the omni wrench in this case.

I am. Because I'm not derailing.

 

[Harros]

Personally I have a love-hate relationship with Gregtech I love the extra EU generation methods that he offers as it is easy for me at least to find oil mostly because I'm an explorer and I love some of his machines such as the wire mill saves on copper and gold and now I'm starting to like the assembly machine I like the centrifuge, electrolizer, blast furnace because they make my style of play easier for me now some of the things I find a bit irritating is the plates that have been introduced into the mod instead of just grabbing ingots and crafting you have to bend them now this isn't a huge deal to have to bend plates just a little annoying but the thing is hate is when he changes other mods recipes to use his style of recipes a prime example is the new MFR recipes in 1.5.2 WGT version .5 now PC may have created the recipes or Greg did either way the chronotyper as well as some other machines now requires iridium in its construction. Now it is a powerful device but I don't think that it is powerful enough to require iridium in its construction but of course these are my personal viewpoints and comments on the mod and its interaction with other mods I feel that if you don't want to play I don't blame you it can be a pain sometimes to work with if you do play cool I hope you enjoy it either way its your play style and only you decide if you want to play with certain mods.

 

[ILoveGregTech]

xD
I wish Greg could just join these forums and stalk these kinds of threads
I'm sure he could get some good lulz out of it

 

[Harros]

xD
I wish Greg could just join these forums and stalk these kinds of threads
I'm sure he could get some good lulz out of it

Long time no see ILGT, which may or may not be a good thing.

 

[ILoveGregTech]

Long time no see ILGT, which may or may not be a good thing.

:'(
Yea I know
I've been passed up in post count by a couple of people
Oh well...I sort of just skimmed through the no topic thread and therefore didn't post a lot
Been more over on the GT thread in the IC2 forums..sadly it's more exciting over there

 

[Harros]

:'(
Yea I know
I've been passed up in post count by a couple of people
Oh well...I sort of just skimmed through the no topic thread and therefore didn't post a lot
Been more over on the GT thread in the IC2 forums..sadly it's more exciting over there

Yeah Law shut down the no topic thread because it needed some cleaning up but it will hopefully be opened up again soon.

 

[ILoveGregTech]

Yeah Law shut down the no topic thread because it needed some cleaning up but it will hopefully be opened up again soon.

That's what I read
Wasn't quite sure because I skimmed back a few pages and didn't really see anything. Maybe he already cleaned it up, PM'd everyone that needed to get one and is close to opening it again

 

[power crystals]

but the thing is hate is when he changes other mods recipes to use his style of recipes a prime example is the new MFR recipes in 1.5.2 WGT version .5 now PC may have created the recipes or Greg did either way the chronotyper as well as some other machines now requires iridium in its construction. Now it is a powerful device but I don't think that it is powerful enough to require iridium in its construction but of course these are my personal viewpoints and comments on the mod and its interaction with other mods I feel that if you don't want to play I don't blame you it can be a pain sometimes to work with if you do play cool I hope you enjoy it either way its your play style and only you decide if you want to play with certain mods.

The MFR GT recipes are done by us (technically Emy, I only touch them if I need to fix something that broke). We reached out to greg for assistance creating them and he told us he had no idea what MFR was or did and as such was not going to help us, so they were done as a rough "well this seems kind of greggy I guess??" estimate of how they would play with GT installed. But we've gotten nearly zero feedback on that.