GregTech's changes and Ore Gen

[Darlock Ahe]

Diamonds for macerator is actually perfect example of balance (in a way possible in a sandbox game), before that change you could make diamonds without actually getting some of them. Not even talking about double ores from almost the start of the game.
If you check newer versions of GT it adds machines, which can increase your mining output even more if used properly. You can have more then triple output from your ores.

Just look at normal IC2, BC, forestry progression:

1: mine some stuff
2: make generator, macerator, electric furnace
3: macerate coal, build solars
4: mine/compress 3 11 diamonds
5: start quarry
6: goto 3, repeat couple times
7: build massfab

With GT you first have to explore world, especially for things like iridium (killing ender dragon without q-armor must be fun)

This argument really reminds me the constant MMO argument which happened from dawn of time. Players always asked for faster leveling, smaller raid sizes, more drops and so on. Most of developers went this route and what we have now? Shallow games which can't keep you interested for more then a month of casual play, simply because there is nothing to do, it all happened at light speed.

Thanks Gorlith for pointing mistake with number of diamonds.

 

[Golrith]

Last time I checked, you needed 11 diamonds for a quarry. Diamond Cogs, Diamond Pickaxe, Gold Cogs and more.

 

[jim johnstone]

Advanced solar helmet and gravsuit. These alone make GT worth including in the pack. No, I don't agree with the 'balancing' done by GT on the whole. Getting the stuff together to make these 2 items is a challange in itself, requiring a lot of time and effort, even before Gt's changes.

Nonetheless, Gt adds a lot of good endgame items that are both worthwhile and fulfilling to produce. IDSU, AESU, iriduim reinforced stone-there's a lot this mod brings to the table. You should remember that Minecraft is a game. A game should be about enjoyment and challanges, not about making items so tedious to manufacture, it disheartens people. Granted, what some people view as a challange, others might feel is a little too difficult, reducing their fun factor.

I doubt the devs here will ignore GT and what it can give the playerbase and fully expect it to be included in the 'ultimate' pack (and hopefully in the tech one too, although the jury still seems to be out on this) but it's a shame there's so many people complaining about a mod this developed which, as many people have pointed out, can be set via configs to the users preference. I do think an option should be included as posted here earlier, allowing the players to easily choose their own difficulty, but I'm sure admin (if your on a server) will be more than happy to share the config file they've adjusted prior to your playing anyway.

Agree or disagree with GT and what it does, it's a little unfair to have so many people with mixed opinions slating someones hard work.

 

[raiju]

Gregorius adds the additions in the same mod because without it there would be redundancies/his mod wouldn't be as hardcore as it is known to be. Simple as. I'm not exactly sure how you can call a mod (by definition an addon) arrogant, since the fact is a mod by it's mere existence is an option that isn't there by default. It's pretty impossible to be arrogant in terms of software, short of not allowing the user to uninstall it/disable it (which gregtech and every other decent mod allows).

About the diamonds - well gregtechs mod is meant to make things more difficult. Honestly I tend to find a diamond vein within 10-20 minutes of start, so I'd hardly call it extreme that low tier requires a few diamonds to get started.

 

[jim johnstone]

This argument really reminds me the constant MMO argument which happened from dawn of time. Players always asked for faster leveling, smaller raid sizes, more drops and so on. Most of developers went this route and what we have now? Shallow games which can't keep you interested for more then a month of casual play, simply because there is nothing to do, it all happened at light speed.

Yer, used to play MUDs back in 'the day'. Balance is so opinionated, ergo you can't keep everyone happy

 

[Zaik]

Hmm...In a world where the configs were obscured/required programming language knowledge to edit, you would have a very real point.

However that is not the case here. While the author of GregTech has made a *lot* of confusing and/or ridiculous changes(imo, anyway) to other mods for "balance" reasons, it's as simple as editing a text file written in plain English to revert them.

If you thought they should be disabled by default and give players the option of enabling them, I could possibly get behind that, though I have no idea how you would go about telling the average player "hey this is easily exploitable unless you change some settings in my config file".

 

[Golrith]

Indeed. Having "balanced" the values of items in Morrowind and Oblivion using formulas based on rarity, materials, etc, etc achieving balance is never easy. Everyone has different ideas of balance.

It all boils down to that Greg Tech is balanced when used purely with IC2 with the aim of making the gameplay last longer. It's not balanced when combined with other mods. There are other mods apart from GT that are also unbalanced when you compare construction costs vs what they can do (ComputerCraft and PortalGun are 2 examples in my mind).

End of the day, it's the FTB team to decide on the balance they want for their challenge maps and mod packs.

 

[raiju]

If you thought they should be disabled by default and give players the option of enabling them, I could possibly get behind that, though I have no idea how you would go about telling the average player "hey this is easily exploitable unless you change some settings in my config file".

The argument here (which I agree with) is if someone is involved with the gameplay to a level that they want to remove those exploits, they can (more likely than the other party involved) find the config file and change things as needed.

Someone who has played minecraft pure and hears their friends getting this FTB pack will go and install it as the website tells. Short of his/her friends (if any of them have experience) telling them to go here and change this and that, they won't know of exploits for a while playing it. Effectively the introduction phase of the pack should be as simple to pick up and enjoy as possible. Balance, while important, should come second to that in my eyes.

 

[MrZwij]

The argument here (which I agree with) is if someone is involved with the gameplay to a level that they want to remove those exploits, they can (more likely than the other party involved) find the config file and change things as needed.

Someone who has played minecraft pure and hears their friends getting this FTB pack will go and install it as the website tells. Short of his/her friends (if any of them have experience) telling them to go here and change this and that, they won't know of exploits for a while playing it. Effectively the introduction phase of the pack should be as simple to pick up and enjoy as possible. Balance, while important, should come second to that in my eyes.

New players have no frame of reference. They don't know that the diamond drill recipe is "wrong." They just know that you need these ingredients to make it, and it's going to take a lot of work and figuring stuff out. I don't see any problem with that.

 

[raiju]

New players are just as likely to consult the wiki as find out about the search function ingame, and then be confused when the wiki doesnt work (mixed metal ingots always confuses newbies)

 

[MrZwij]

New players are just as likely to consult the wiki as find out about the search function ingame, and then be confused when the wiki doesnt work (mixed metal ingots always confuses newbies)

True ... but when everything comes together, there will be an FTB wiki, which will have the correct info in it.

 

[Squigie]

Advanced solar helmet and gravsuit. These alone make GT worth including in the pack.

Both those items, as well as the advance drill and chainsaw, are from Gravitation Suite, not GregTech.

 

[whythisname]

Actually for me, as a relative newbie, I had more trouble finding what machines do what, than with finding out recipes. NEI makes finding recipes easy, but for example that I can use a macerator to double my ores is something you only find in guides and isn't mentioned in NEI (and a wiki only helps if you know what you're looking for...). Personally I think information like that is a far bigger stumbling block than recipes, there are just so many new machines and stuff that you can't really read up on ALL of them and remember which ones are best to focus on.

I'm slowly getting my head around all the new machines now and learning what they can do, so I can come up with what I want to do in my games. But when I just started playing I was just clueless about what I should be making.
I don't think GregTech makes those parts all that much harder, I mean it doesn't really matter that a mining drill needs steel instead of iron if you don't know what it does and that it's useful to have.

 

[Darlock Ahe]

You can find all of this information in NEI, find one recipe that is related to the machine in question (for example macerating copper) and click on "Recipes" animation, it will show you all recipes in this machine.

 

[eculc]

I think that my position on the problems with GT can be summed up by this (spoilerd for length). it's one of the members of an FTB server I play on, talking about trying to make a solar panel for the first time on the server (though he's played with some of the FTB mods individually at a previous time)

Spoiler

"So I finally get 10 diamonds and a ton of obsidian! I have 2-3 stacks of most major ores!"
> Heads home
"Hmm, I should really go for that solar panel, it's always where I start."
> Solar Panel requires 2 "Silicon Cells", 2 of a bunch of items (easiest appears to be the Bronze Electron Tube) and Generator+Glass
"Okay, I'll macerate some stone, smelt it into glass, make glass panes."
> Makes Generator (to stick coal in), Batbox (to store some power)
> Makes Macerator, Electric Furnace
"Now I need... Generator, so a bunch of refined iron and a battery. The battery needs copper cable, which means rubber."
> Gets rubber
> Makes Extractor (to produce more rubber) to make another Extractor
> Makes wiring to organize stuff
"Okay, that was easy. Let's do those "Bronze Electron Tubes" now."
> Making that requires a "Thermonic Fabricator". This requires a ton of gold and bronze
> Macerate and smelt gold
> Macerate tin and copper, combines them into bronze, smelts that
> Makes Thermonic Fabricator
"This thing seems to want sand, so I throw some in, but nothing's happening. But it's mentioning MJ, so maybe it's builcraft."
"Maybe an electric engine will work."
> Makes electric engine, hooks up to power
> Gives lever and flips switch
"That works, I now spent a ton of copper and tin to make the 2 Bronze Electron Tubes needed".
"Now I need to make the Silicon Cells."
"That needs an 'Industrial Centrifuge'."
> Industrial Centrifuge requires 2 Advanced machine blocks, an Extractor, an advanced circuit, a pulsating chipset, etc.
"Advanced machine block needs... coal dust and alloy plating. Alloy plating requires mixed metal ingots. Mixed metal ingots require refined iron, bronze and tin."
> Macerates a whole stack of coal for the coal dusts
> Prepares refined iron, bronze and tin, but it turns out to need a "Rolling Machine"
> Makes Rolling Machine
> Turns out Rolling Machine also requires an electric engine
> Makes mixed metal ingot, compresses it in compressor
> Finishes making coal-related stuff
> Advanced machine blocks complete!
"Now for the pulsating chipset."
"It's just an ender pearl and a piece of redstone... Wait, 'Assembly Table'?"
> Assembly Table requires 6 obisidan, a diamond gear (includes 4 iron, 4 gold, 4 diamond), a diamond, and redstone
"Fuck you."
> Makes Assembly Table
> Still won't work
"*Googles* oh... the Assembly Table requires a Laser."
> Laser requires 4 obsidian, 2 diamond, and redstone
"Seriously, fuck you."
> Makes laser, hooks up to another electric engine
"Okay, it's working on it... Wait, why is it taking so long?"
> Assembly Table operation requires 40.000 EU or something like that
> For reference, 1 piece of coal is 400 EU

*ragequits*

...Yeah. It's not quite as easy as some people might think to deal with random recipe changes that involve a bunch of other mods.

 

[Yos]

All this bickering about balance and people saying how easy it is to change config files don't see the problem that this really is.

The problem is that server side config files do not propagate to connected clients.

If a mod is so controversial that everyone must set the configs themselves, then it shouldn't be included in the default pack because of the above problem. I have a small server and would like friends that aren't very computer savvy to join (they believe that if it doesn't work by double clicking then its broken and needs to die in a fire, not that they might have done something wrong, the program wasn't installed properly, or config files aren't right). Having to explain to people that they need to set configs to match the server is a problem. The whole point of a modpack is to avoid manual set up, and for the most part, it looks like GT requires manual setup for anyone to like it.

I don't know how to fix this very real problem as I'm not a modder.

If config files worked properly in SMP situations (server wins no matter what the client has and the client knows it, rather than the current, server wins no matter what the client has and the client doesn't know it) then we wouldn't be having this problem. People playing SSP can set their configs how they want and people playing on servers don't have to worry about changing their configs every time they join a different server or the mods get updated.

So maybe people will stop spending their time bickering about Gregtech and start bickering about how the client/server paradigm still needs work. (Ha, yeah right... get people to stop bickering about Gregtech... laugh).

 

[Darlock Ahe]

So, the only thing that confuses your friend is that items are interchangeable and NEI has no better way of representing it. And instead of investigating possible progression route by looking at NEI for couple of minutes he just went ahead and forced his way to get solar panel, because he is used to do so.

 

[ItharianEngineering]

@eculc most of that just looks like they didn't look at the recipe for more than 1 whole second to realize that it changes items to represent other possible items they could use if they had those in excess? You don't need those electron tubes or the pulsating chipsets for those recipes but those are alternatives for people who have a lot of them and don't want to waste the materials making more circuits. He put in more work creating these other items than he did at looking at the first recipe at all. It just seems like negligence on his own part and not the mods for giving people more choices.

 

[Sirbab]

The problem is that server side config files do not propagate to connected clients.

In what case have you found that the configs don't apply to the client from the server? Every time i adjust a config, the client receives the needed adjustment in NEI. Sure, it may be slightly confusing to put all the parts of a macerator together, and find that it doesn't work, but a small 5 second look in NEI should remedy that. As well as the fact that most decent servers that DO have adjusted configs, will state it in their page, like the one i just played last night. But really, i think a solution to all of this, well, two solutions anyhow. are yes, 2-3 preset config options, (shouldn't bee too difficult to cook up) and the FTB wiki, which should prevent any stymieing that could occur. unless the player is a goober and goes to technic wikia or something.

Heh, and once Gregtech is updated in ftb, there will be NO forcing to get solar panels, you will need an industrial cent, AND the Industrial blast furnace to get silicon plates XD

 

[Yos]

Or there is bad information out there (also likely).

After seeing how debilitating Mystcraft is to my server, I had planned to disable crafting of Description books. Going around and reading the best way to do this, I keep reading that clients have to have the same config files as the server in order for things to really work right. I haven't done this yet because I'm not prepared to have to send out config files and explain where they go at this point.

If this isn't the actual case, and the clients actually see that the recipe is disabled and not showing it that they can make it, then I retract my statement. But I haven't heard that is the case, I guess I should test it. My perspective doesn't come from being annoyed at Gregtech (Personally, I've never used anything IC2 before FTB so I'm in the same boat as the other new person who posted here).