How do you do?

[Chocorate]

Good morn-eve-ternoon, forumers. I have a question for all you guys and gals and everything in between, since you all (most of you) seem pretty smart.

How do you.. do? How do you start a project and finish it? I see amazing things like Saice's Shoop Mothership among many other systems when I browse the forums, and I feel so jealous! All of these things seem to be very well organized and generally well done. When I try to build something in FTB, my situation is usually as follows:

1. I think of something cool or simple. I decide I want to build a system that uses Steam. I want to make a farm. I want to make some type of factory.
2. I look up what I need to acquire in order to create said system. Now, this used to be a huge problem. I would be making, say, an ME system. Then I'd get so caught up in making all the necessary component one at a time, and never got to making the actual system. Now I know to make a list of the raw materials I need and make everything beforehand.
3. This is the part I'm stuck on. I start putting together the contraption, piece by piece. Then I say, "Hey, how do I power this thing? I'll make some more engines! I probably need x! Would y go well here? What does that do? Oh, to make this I'm going to need to start another system to power it." and I never get around to finishing it. Basically, I start making my basic creation, and my mind travels to a distant land thinking about how to power it, what could support it, and many other things. Or I spend hours replacing a part of my build with a different color or design scheme even though it doesn't matter. I have ADD, but surely I can get past it.

So how do you do these things? Is there some sort of program I can use to make blueprints for my builds? Is there some sort of organizational technique I can use to stay on track? I haven't built anything great in FTB for quite a while. I get a nice TE system up and running, but I have no idea how to use that to my advantage. I want to start AE but my head explodes just thinking about all the different components and what I need. And yes, I have Gregnerfs turned off.

 

[Runo]

for building, i use an iterative process and dirt. ill build a base camp, then as i need more room, ill jut out a section outline in dirt and build it when i have mats available. i typically try to do this asymmetrically to make my buildings less rigid. once i have things in place, then i worry about decoration and styling. for larger decorative building projects, ill mass produce materials and freebuild it, sometimes but rarely planning styles beyond major features.

for styling, i tend to do a lot of destroying and building until i like how one sectionr looks, then transpose the style onto the rest of the supersection/building.

for machines, i use the iterative process: start out with it functional and rewire when i have a good number of them and have way it could be simplified. when doing this, its a good idea to understand spacing and wiring. for instance, i need 4 attach sides on centrifuges for the ME and power.

for major engineering projects, ill write down component counts and resource rquirements and make them all for a group batch of components. this is most prevalent in multiblocks and nuclear reactors, utilizing AE patterns for non stacking components. for commodity common use components like AE buses, ill produce 64+ at a time so i dont have to hassle with it later. also, for re-use items, i use AE autocrafting. this is especially useful in gregtech for circuits, machine blocks, and centrifuges.

 

[RedBoss]

I personally keep at it and do something else when I get frustrated or bored. My base on RR saw at least 5 incarnations before I settled on my current design. I still consider it a mostly empty shell but I built 4 times larger than I normally do to accommodate future projects.

Also when it comes to building a structure, I have issues with visualization. What I usually do is find an existing structure and adapt it to my tastes. I never end up with what I used as inspiration but I like my end product. Heck, I made a pretty sexy 9x9 based structure when I first started with mods that I am still happy with. I'll never touch a 9x9 again, but it worked.

In the end I think a solid idea of the end result is what helps me. I started my current build with only two huge steel tanks in mind. Those tanks aren't even on the main floor anymore. But go look at lots of pictures, that's what I did, until something touches you and then use that as inspiration. When it comes to the tech stuff I suggest the same thing.

And when all else fails, go mining or harass villagers.

 

[GPuzzle]

I create a temporary base and then expand it.
For example, my longest-running world ended up with several different houses - marble, basalt, wool, wood, stone, cobble...

 

[Jess887cp]

I like to get completely lost in my mc world like you described. But when I need focus, I give myself an obligation. In my current case, a let's play. Even then, I hardly build. So I plan to do a time lapse and grunt work all the building in one go. It works for me, but is unorthodox.

Tons of planning helps. Just a bit.

 

[rymmie1981]

The first thing I do in a world, after getting basic shelter and lighting, is put up a smeltery. TConstruct is far too good to be put off for very long. The most expensive component of a smeltery is the bucket you need to fill the thing with lava. This should be your very first ore doubling processor. You don't get bonus dusts like with TE, but you have to have engines, redstone pipes, plus the cost of the pulverizer itself.

Part of me getting the smeltery going is getting my first manual tree farm which I use to make charcoal which I use to power my base for the rest of my time. I get this going early because coal is better used elsewhere and when I start getting into automation all I'm doing is simply replacing parts. This really, really helps when I get to the point of starting to use AE. 90% of my beginning automation is vanilla hoppers and wooden chests. They work for nearly every inventory in the game, mod or vanilla. All I have to do is slap import and export buses on the chests above or below my hoppers and I'm using AE for automatic processing almost instantly.

Once I have semi-automated wood processing, I can dive deeper into the caves to get at the diamonds. This is the beauty of TConstruct, for 2 iron and one diamond, I can go to the nether and get the netherrack I need to advance into serious power generation. Once I have the netherrack to make a magma crucible, I make a couple hobbyist steam engines and go from magma crucible and liquid transposer to full on magmatic power within 20 minutes of my first trip to the nether. I make my Alumite pickaxe and head back to grab cobalt and ardite for my final TConstruct tools, and use that yummy lapis I got while looking for my diamond to make a cobalt/ardite/many pickaxe with fortune 3. I go back into my mine and sweep up all the Certus Quartz I didn't get the first time. Boom, I'm ready for my first AE system less than an hour after that first nether trip.

Using the power of netherrack-to-lava, I can power the full complement of TE machines to remove the very small number of BC power pipes and replace them with conduits. I make my first REC at this point because I'm generating more power than I'm using. With a little bit of further processing, I have actually assembled my AE network and use it to automate my charcoal production which is only used for the hobbyist steam engines at this point. I keep the hobbyist engines on my network for that tiny bit of extra power that always helps. Now, the charcoal starts stockpiling in my system for its eventual use in a boiler.

By now, I'm ready with enough power and automation to build my MFR tree farm using my ME network. All it takes at that point is running 3 more cables and appropriate buses for the ME network and a conduit line for the power needs. I will expand my magmatic engines as needed to keep up with the energy demands, but the MFR farm doesn't take much.

Once I'm there, it's a hop, skip and a jump to a charcoal-powered boiler. I will start in on my more complicated builds from there. I tend to build separate ME networks for each power system. One system alone for tree->charcoal. Charcoal goes into a DSU that has storage buses on it from both my MJ and EU networks. The MJ network fuels most of my initial resource gathering and processing automation while my EU network is almost exclusively for my tools(TConstruct electric modifier, MPS, etc.). I like branching out from charcoal and lava into solars and biofuel as my resources build up. I use pipes for bees and tree breeding. The AE limitations on different types of items makes it horrible for breeding automation.

I haven't gotten into AE's crafting, but it looks pretty powerful.

Now, realize that this is just my base build for a new world. It is from here that I jump into different projects. This setup means I can as distracted or as focused as I want and always have a ton of resources on hand to do whatever I want. Quarries and MFR mining lasers are my weapons of choice for automated gathering.

I hope this helps.

 

[ICountFrom0]

I'm one part iterative builds, and one part Etho tactics.

Etho suggests always having something to work on, so that whatever it is that you feel like doing there's something you can work on and make progress.

I combine this with having small projects that I can rebuild as larger and larger versions of themselves with progression.

I know the feeling of getting halfway into a system and discovering that either you are low on resources, power, or attention span.

This is partly why I will do parts of it on paper ahead of time, figure out what I'll need, and partly why I try to keep it as things that can be done in stages.

For example my ic2 renewable powergrid. Instead of being just one set of waterwheels, it's rigged up as four sets, only one is done but the other 3 are marked out and I can build around them until they actually happen.

Same for the tanks for liquids. One is in place, the rest are sitting until I feel like it.

I'm going to do biofuel. Before I get to it one of the stages is making the farm. Now I've made the farm twice already, once as a few crops to keep me fed. Once large enough to stockpile me until I got the scrap cake going (dwarf rock cake is very good field rations). And third time is going to be automatic sealed box with golems. Next stage will be making the machines and transfering items between them manually to make my first biomass. I'd be able to run with that for quite a while before I have to do the next step. Or maybe I'll want to do it before then. Next up? Sorting machine, managers, and sealed box automation. Now the engines should have enough biomass to keep running, swap the magmatics for biomass engines, using the same lava pipes for kickstart heat. Next phase? Biomass to biofuel. Then another engine change over. Next step? Why I start to use this to FILL the lava tank.


I think your main problem is that you try to do X, and find that it required you to do A, B, and C first... and then you never get around to doing C or X.

Try meaning to do A, and feeling good that you did A.

 

[Chocorate]

This is partly why I will do parts of it on paper ahead of time, figure out what I'll need, and partly why I try to keep it as things that can be done in stages.

For example my ic2 renewable powergrid. Instead of being just one set of waterwheels, it's rigged up as four sets, only one is done but the other 3 are marked out and I can build around them until they actually happen.

So you have certain things organized in your mind? Like a checklist of what to start off with? I always used to have a little kit that I made at the start of every world, like a furnace and tools and dirt palace. Then I'd go mining and... eventually get to the point where I'm throwing out gold because I need more iron. And I get lost and start a new world. But I'm going to try always working on something, like you said. I'll start off with a dirt palace and build it up to greatness.

 

[ICountFrom0]

I wouldn't call it organized *cough* it is MY mind afterall.

This world started out with the bonus chest, a hole in a dirt wall, and a desert temple in sight.
It will end up with obsidian chests of metal blocks, and quarrying large chunks of the world into void pipes to look for a grav gun and to clear a boundary around a natural mob spawner.

Edit: I didn't even mention that once my biofuel production is high enough, I've got ANOTHER conversion to steam in mind, did I?