How far is to far with automation?

[PhilHibbs]

While ridiculously long and information filled that was rather pointless tbh. You see too many things as problems when they can be simply bypassed. Not really going to argue on the validity of that statement but I have no doubts of its validity personally.

Brujon was spot on in his analysis of the problems, and some of them are fundamental to the problem being solved. If you bypass them then you are not solving the problem, you are doing something different to the original task.

Oh, and are enderchests an option? Even if you allow mods other than CC, where will they get the blaze rods and pearls?

 

[brujon]

Up to a point, vanilla enderchest is still a valid option - But it still requires Blazes and Pearls being farmed! Enderpearl farming cannot be done effectively in the overworld without mods, and the same is true for blazes, which would mean the necessity of some form of interdimensional transport of items. It CAN be done vanilla, via rail/minecart for blazes, but i can't quite recall if you can build a Nether Portal at the end. If you can, then it can be done vanilla, if not, then it's impossible (to my knowledge) to transfer stuff from the End to the turtle auto-crafting in the Overworld solely via rails, since the portal to the end is not vertical but horizontal. MAYBE if you used turtles as intermediaries between rails in the end and in the overworld, and built a rail from where the end portal warps the turtle to (is it to your bed? been so long i didn't went to the end i don't even remember where it puts you), to your turtle factory, it could work. But at some point, there would be too many turtles, and the Enderchest(be it the vanilla or the modded one) would get backlogged, and the system would start to fail. As you add more and more mods, it tends to get easier to get to the objective of having a world-eater, but there's always going to be the problem of backlogging chests. Tesseracts would solve the backlogging, probably, but create another problem - Producing tesseracts at an ever increasing rate and providing those to every newly created turtle.

There's just too many problems to solve. Even if you manage to create the program it will eventually fail because of the amount of turtles trying to get rid of their inventories... Or it will eventually fail because there's just too many turtles. Either way, it's really kind of a pointless endeavor, in which the one real accomplishment would be to see how fast the world would get corrupted/destroyed/unable to be accessed.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Up to a point, vanilla enderchest is still a valid option -

Vanilla enderchests don't drop when broken. There are no Silk Touch Mining Turtles. And as to pointless, it's not pointless if the person doing it enjoys doing it. All of Minecraft is pointless to some extent. All of life is pointless to some extent, all we are is dust in the wind. He whose world dies with the most turtles wins!

 

[Hoff]

Brujon was spot on in his analysis of the problems, and some of them are fundamental to the problem being solved. If you bypass them then you are not solving the problem, you are doing something different to the original task.

Oh, and are enderchests an option? Even if you allow mods other than CC, where will they get the blaze rods and pearls?

Analysis of vanilla with CC yes; but if you're going for that I could never understand why. I take that back I could understand it but would probably call you an idiot. Again it's only something different if you attempt to solve the issue wholly with CC which is actually impossible because of chunkloading. That thereby dictates mixed mod play.

Both can be created with other mods. The goal would be, logically to me anyway, to use as few other mods as possible but enough that the problem is realistically solvable.

 

[Trunks9809]

There's just too many problems to solve. Even if you manage to create the program it will eventually fail because of the amount of turtles trying to get rid of their inventories...

Not necessarily, you just have to add a check to ensure the inventory slot the turtle just attempted to drop is actually empty. You may end up with turtles sitting there constantly trying to drop stacks for minutes at a time, but hey

 

[Hoff]

Not necessarily, you just have to add a check to ensure the inventory slot the turtle just attempted to drop is actually empty. You may end up with turtles sitting there constantly trying to drop stacks for minutes at a time, but hey

You could also create multiple emptying sets of enderchests based on number of active turtles.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Analysis of vanilla with CC yes; but if you're going for that I could never understand why. I take that back I could understand it but would probably call you an idiot.

Why do you feel the need to insult people? Are you trying to deliberately provoke someone into getting moderated?

 

[zorn]

Not really a world eater system,b ut there was a guy here months ago that posted his version of a huge turtle mining system.

It started as a thread by a guy who had a very basic but powerful turtle script. You put two ender chests in the turtle, then set it out mining. From whatever y level you wanted down to bedrock, then back up. Drop off ores, refuel if needed, move forward, start again. I ran this script with 25 turtlles, and set them to run 2000 blocks before stopping. It was 3 full days, 24/7 of ores comming in, about as fast, I estimated, as 4-5 quarries. And remember, this is 24/7 with no stops, it would be like running 10+ quarries per day for most players, as quarries stop and ahve to be reset.

This guy had run TWO HUNDRED of those turtles, and set them to run until 50K blocks away. And he had gotten bored with it, so he wrote his own script to place each of those turtles and then come back and grab new turtles and chests, place the miner, etc etc ad nauseum.

Its not really a true 'world eater' system, but itmight as well be. IIRC my 25 turtles netted me 100K iron or so, so 200 would be bringing in maybe... 1.6 million iron per real life week?

 

[Hoff]

Why do you feel the need to insult people? Are you trying to deliberately provoke someone into getting moderated?

It wasn't specifically directed at anyone was more a vague anyone "you". I see no merit in the project whatsoever because with little thought it cannot be achieved solely on vanilla and CC. Foolish may have been a better word but nonetheless invoke a similar meaning.

 

[lukethedude]

Until you automate automation. Then you should probably stop

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[Saice]

Until you automate automation. Then you should probably stop

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Its already possible to automate automation mostly via turtles.

 

[malicious_bloke]

There is no "too far". Every time you hook up a machine to an ME network, skynet grows a little stronger.

 

[zorn]

It is known that many mods offer in one way or another some sense of automation. Rather it's a quarry piping into a auto smelting system that then moves over to an auto storage, or nether networks pumping lava that get stored into tanks that get pumped to fuel various things. Auto farmers for foods and trees or mobs.

But how far is to far? When does it get to the point where you're no longer really playing the game, but sitting back watching mods play it for you? When the most you have to do is maybe move a quarry if you haven't automated that yet.

I'd like to know how far do some of you go with automation?

For myself, I find that if I automate to much the game becomes dull and boring. The most I ever really automate is a sorting system. So I can sort thing's in from a quarry (if I use one at all) or sort random junk I come across that I can dump into a chest and move on. Bees I may also automate to a point, but I only tend to go as far as an indexer to take access drones to send off to either a DNA set up that then goes to a tank, or to a void pipe if I'm choosing to play with out the dna stuff.

Everything else I do myself, as it gives me something to do, a reason to keep playing. Yes it may be fun and cool to build the elaborate set ups that automate everything and watch items flash by in pipes and see and hear machines moving and working...

But in the end you're just standing there, just looking.

The first time I went all out like that I found it looked super amazing, while hardly sufficient it was fun to look at.

But that was it... look at. I did nothing and once that thrill of how cool the build looked and the feeling of having created such a thing wore off... well... maybe in creative to have fun I'd go all out like that again. But for real SSP or SMP game play, I stick to as little automation as I can.

So how far do you go? When does it become to much? Do you ever get to the point where you find yourself just walking around looking at everything do everything for you?

to reply right to the OP, my opinion is muchlike yours. If everything is perfectly automated, its boring. But its also boring to do things manually over and over. What i did was remove the most efficient methods of automation, but keep those that required more effort. OR... nerfed the fully automatic versions. So for example, increase the power draw of a MFR harvester to make it less efficient than a Multifarm. Put Forestry in Hard mode. Now you have effficient farms, but they require consstant mining to get apatite, and Hard mode makes you burn through it faster. MFR harvesters are completely automatic, but are less efficient.

Or ME systems. Remove the ability to use nether quartz, and increase the power draw in the config files. Now it pushes you to find other ways to move items around. I just made a rail cart that moved stuff from one area to another for the first time ever, and ive been playing a year.

Same with quarries. Remove TE3 tesseracts, now you can 'automate' the movement of items from your quarry to your base, but you ahve to do it with rails, which is more challenging than setting up a tesseracts for the 100th time. So you have automation, but its more of a challenge to get going.

 

[Hoff]

So for example, increase the power draw of a MFR harvester to make it less efficient than a Multifarm.

Just for reference base mode MFR harvester + Planter is over 1000% less efficient with power than a Multifarm.

 

[Mevansuto]

Just for reference base mode MFR harvester + Planter is over 1000% less efficient with power than a Multifarm.

What about with fertilizer?

 

[Hoff]

What about with fertilizer?

1500%, easily. MFR is an insatiable power monster compared to a Multifarm.

 

[casilleroatr]

What about with fertilizer?

It still takes a lot of power. With the fertiliser it sure goes fast but it does nothing to make it more efficient in any measure other than time spent (which is important so I'm not discounting it). The advantage of the forestry farm is that it takes so little power to operate. You can power them with one quadrant running a peat bog with a healthy peat surplus with the other three quadrants given over to other production. The ash also makes the fertiliser go further. I am interested to know how hard mode forestry affects apatite usage.

 

[YX33A]

1500%, easily. MFR is an insatiable power monster compared to a Multifarm.

So aside from the relative non-issue that is power, how do they compete? Assuming for a moment that one has NI fertilizer for both systems, and NI power(NI meaning near-infinite, aka a number high enough that it might as well be infinity but is in fact countable), which would generate more, say, wheat for bread, or wood for charcoal, or stuff for fermenting in their respective devices?
My point is power draw is less of an issue then speed and resource output. Power is NI if you have a renewable fuel source of any kind(that is power positive, anyway), and Forestry requires it's fertilizer to work, where as MFR is faster if it use it(while consuming more power, yes).

 

[Hoff]

So aside from the relative non-issue that is power, how do they compete? Assuming for a moment that one has NI fertilizer for both systems, and NI power(NI meaning near-infinite, aka a number high enough that it might as well be infinity but is in fact countable), which would generate more, say, wheat for bread, or wood for charcoal, or stuff for fermenting in their respective devices?
My point is power draw is less of an issue then speed and resource output. Power is NI if you have a renewable fuel source of any kind(that is power positive, anyway), and Forestry requires it's fertilizer to work, where as MFR is faster if it use it(while consuming more power, yes).

True but not everyone plays to the absolute extent or even allow themselves to use a renewable fuel source. The tradeoff will always remain speed vs power. Some may find that moot some may not.

 

[brujon]

MFR is all about automation - set and forget machines that do all the work for you and output it's products in a fairly straightforward manner to your sorting system of choice. All it's machines are relatively cheap and simple to put into operation. Not much more is needed, just a way to pipe items out and sort them, and enough power supply. For many people, that makes it a boring mod. Multifarms are much more high-maintenance, but are more effective power-wise. They yield multiple byproducts instead of just Saplings from a tree farm, and you have to deal with these byproducts or they might choke your system. To automate them you have to go to much more work than you need with MFR... For full automation, you need an autocrafter of some sort to automatically produce Fertilizer for you, and a way to automatically mine more Apatite so you can continuously use your machine nonstop, as well as a stable powersource - with the advantage it can be a very weak and low-maintenance power source, since they only require a constant but small amount of MJ's to run. Let's also not forget that Forestry nerfs vanilla saplings in terms of ethanol production, so you have to get into tree breeding if you want to be a little more efficient about it. Sure, that made lots of people drift away from forestry and go easier routes of producing renewable power, but does that make the mod obsolete? No, and i'll digress some more about it further down.

Like Hoff said, MFR is more power-hungry and that supposedly balances out the easy automation it is able to deliver compared to other tree farm designs. Back when Extra Biomes XL was the standard instead of BoP, i preferred a turtle farm with 2x2 Fir Trees to supply me with saplings for biofuel, and wood for charcoal to use in solid-fueled boilers for power - Fir Trees specifically because they were really tall, and because the saplings for some reason did not require unobstructed line of sight to the sky in order to grow - so a new tree could be planted and bonemealed into a full grown Fir Tree just after the turtle had finished cutting down the other one, also the amount of leaves produced silly numbers of saplings as well. It worked wonders - the amount of fuel produced was far higher than what the turtles consumed and that made me happy. Nowadays i feel it was kind of cheap, just like using turtles for quarries. You can have a turtle-quarry + turtle tree farm in less than 10 minutes of gameplay. Just use your first three diamonds to make the diamond pick for the mining turtle, download the program, put it to run, and forget it. That's why i stopped using it. After the first turtle quarry i could place 10 more turtles with the resources the first gathered, and that made minecraft too easy.


As for the answer to the OP:

Sometimes going the overcomplicated route is more fun than the straightforward and boring automation you've been accustomed to for the last 10 or so worlds you've played. Once i "gated" myself out of just using turtles for nearly everything since they're as cheap as they come and i can just download programs other people have made, i started really enjoying the variety that exists inside a modpack, and making my own programs whenever i did want to use a turtle or a computer. I started trying out all the other possible automation. I started enjoying manual mining again after Tinkerer's Construct gave me the Hammer. I tried to make a sorting system with only Thaumcraft golems, and failed epically. I started playing around with other mods, and started to actually really enjoy what a modpack really is - all the possibilities it gives you, and the challenges each one brings with it.

So i think the problem is not how far is too far with automation. There is no limit to how much you can automate things. Hell, VSWE's new Factory Manager mod makes automating everything a hell of a lot easier. The problem is when the same kind of automation is all you've been using for the past 10 or so worlds and you're bored with it. So you get out of your area of comfort and go try out some new mods and new ways to automate things. Got tired of using Barrel-Sorting? Go AE. Got bored with AE? Go try out Logistics Pipes. Got bored with that too? Try out ExtraUtilities sorting. Got bored with that too? Try automating things with golems. Got bored with that? Try making a vanilla hopper sorting system. Got bored with all of that? Go check new mods on the minecraftforums and try them out too. Minecraft places no limits on your creativity, and cross-mod interactions make it so that you can have crazy, craaaaaaazy contraptions that do some thing a block on another mod does all by itself. That's the fun in minecraft, at least for me.