How to start RotaryCraft?

[gattsuru]

Is there any interest in expanding the Achievements? The current achievement tree jumps from manufacturing Steel to the endgame fairly quickly, and doesn't provide much guidance regarding the intended tech progression, or even stuff like creating the worktable. I'd skipped over the Friction Heater for much of the early-game, for example, although it looks like it'd be rather helpful for packs without (or tech progression outside of) other energy systems. And while I'd put together a Screwdriver pretty early, I've still yet to build an Angular Transducer, which I understand is a pretty important tool, and neither of these are on the achievement tree as far as I can tell.

The handbook's format makes a lot of sense for established players, since individual components link together across the tiers very heavily, but from a newbie perspective it's a little overwhelming.

To some extent, the ore tripling/quintupling tools are going to get a lot of focus no matter what you do: any ingot spent before the Grinder costs five times as much iron ore as after the Extractor is powered. Yes, iron ore is infinite most other resources, but there's only about ~80 iron ore per chunk, and each depopulated chunk requires you migrate further from your (increasingly hard to move) homebase and requires more effort to bring the spoils back. On servers, you may only have a limited number of readily accessible chunks before too much strip-mining is considered impolite. If you can burn through a hundred ingots in just a few machine-engine setups, hitting at least the Grinder and preferably the Extractor as quickly as possible can make a lot of sense. Other mods reduce this issue somewhat, either by quick access to new chunks (MystCraft, DimDoors), or by allowing subbases to connect across distances (Applied Energistics, ThermalExpansion, less obviously Thaumcraft), but I'm not aware of anything internal to RotaryCraft that really handles that on its own (caveat: I'm still fairly low on the tech progression here).

((On the other side, RotaryCraft's ore-quintupling and even ore-tripling is a little overkill if you're in a mixed modpack, or otherwise don't intend to build a huge number of RotaryCraft machines. ThermalExpansion's balanced around 2x or 2.25x with secondary outputs or raw slag, as far as I can tell, so you can very easily be very much Done for gold ingots.))

 

[SaintLucifer]

...I have an aqueous accumulator feeding water to the steam engines and extractor.
5 steam engines right now, 4 for the grinder, 1 for running two fermenters.
gasoline engine running through a multi-clutch and two 16x gear units. slow as molasses on a cold day, but it works. may stick a 30-second(ish) timer on the clutch....

Why 5 when you only need 1 steam engine to run 4 Grinders at same time?

 

[eric167]

Why 5 when you only need 1 steam engine to run 4 Grinders at same time?

4 SEs.

and 1 steam engine cant run 4 grinders at anything near a decent rate.

grinder requirements:

4096 W @ 128 Nm

steam engine:

16.384 kW @32 Nm

torque requirement is 4x higher.
drop the speed by 4x as well in the gearbox, and you have a very slow grinder.

chain 4, you have 128Nm @ 512 rad/s, which leaves a decent processing time.

 

[SaintLucifer]

But why? 1 Steam is enough to run then at enough speed to get all the oil you will ever need to run like 32 Hydrokinetic engines non stop.

 

[Reika]

We have a automated farming system that relies on water and fans but doesn't work on everything, a "fuel-free" furnace heating system that was done ages ago by Industrialization, a way to generate water from air(main benefit: works in the nether), a chest that can hold more stuff if you give it more power(and if power drops below a cutoff value all "extra slots" are locked off until one gets it more power), and the item transfer system sends 1 item per kW you give it, meaning one has to give to 64 kW to match some baseline systems, and while it has no upper limit, it still takes a kW per item, woodcutting that is cool and all but is hardly a selling point here... need I go on? They are all great if you have no other options; but if you do, well, those other options still are usually preferable since they are well known systems. Even I'm somewhat stuck in my ways. I just realize that if the early game things were a bit more diverse then just automated farming and assorted stuff like that, chances are more people would see early game RoC as just as useful.

Early game, automated farming and self-protection are your main concerns. I will never understand those people who build ME systems or tesseracts or mass fabricators before you even have a strong power net.

Also, for the item pump, that is 1 item per kW per tick. That makes it faster than an itemduct at base value, and at 16kW or so faster than an ME export/import bus.

Is there any interest in expanding the Achievements? The current achievement tree jumps from manufacturing Steel to the endgame fairly quickly, and doesn't provide much guidance regarding the intended tech progression, or even stuff like creating the worktable. I'd skipped over the Friction Heater for much of the early-game, for example, although it looks like it'd be rather helpful for packs without (or tech progression outside of) other energy systems. And while I'd put together a Screwdriver pretty early, I've still yet to build an Angular Transducer, which I understand is a pretty important tool, and neither of these are on the achievement tree as far as I can tell.

If you have ideas, go ahead and suggest them.

 

[YX33A]

Early game, automated farming and self-protection are your main concerns. I will never understand those people who build ME systems or tesseracts or mass fabricators before you even have a strong power net.

Also, for the item pump, that is 1 item per kW per tick. That makes it faster than an itemduct at base value, and at 16kW or so faster than an ME export/import bus.


If you have ideas, go ahead and suggest them.

No offense, but early game to me is beyond that. Except for Automated Farming, but that's a luxury I don't need. Basic food and self protection? That's ASAP, and arrows rarely cut it for me, regardless of how cool the bow/arrow is. And that thing aims all in one direction(though it's automatic and detects foes in range automatically, so cool beans on that). Ain't gonna cut it for me.

 

[SaintLucifer]

Well there is other turrets that you can choose.

 

[abculatter_2]

Well there is other turrets that you can choose.

Those are mid-to-high tier, though.

 

[Reika]

Those are mid-to-high tier, though.

And admittedly of somewhat limited usefulness in survival, unless you turn off their block damage.

 

[RoyalCreeper12]

The extractor can quadruple your ores right?

 

[DriftinFool]

Ah, that explains why they all are useless to me and seemingly most other people here; they aren't balanced for a modpack enviroment. Well, I mean, they aren't gonna be used in a modpack with other options since they aren't much better then the alternatives at a glance(even if they may be, they sure as hell don't look it).[DOUBLEPOST=1396534223][/DOUBLEPOST]
So it's cheaper on totally renewable resources and uses less sand overall then other options(and sand is still renewable), has a chance to output more of it's steel, and still isn't really making steel unless you change a config line to make it usable as RC steel.
...What's so groundbreaking here again?

Have you played horizons?? Unless you like Thaumcraft, which I don't, there is no other way to auto farm. No MFR or Forestry. The fans may take a little more effort to setup than a single block from the others, but they work great. I am also pretty sure you will not find another way to mass fertilize ALL crops, in a huge area with one machine. The fertilizer is as good as the Extra utilities watering can and can cover your entire farm. Place one next to a Forestry multi farm or MFR farm in a pack that has them and you will see more output than you thought possible. I had mine shearing leaves when I was playing in Monster to make RC ethanol. A 9x9 MFR farm with spruce trees got me 40k leaves in a single night. The MFR harvester almost couldn't keep up at times.
I just found the RC Lava smeltery the other day. It needs almost no power. I have 2 running off a steam engine and it is more than they need. It shows as having a 7.5 second operation time in WAILA, but it smelts 18 items simultaneously for almost no energy. It is faster than any early or even mid game furnace. The friction heater also offers free smelting with vanilla furnaces. A steam engine(free power) can power 2 of them and you never need coal. They may be slow when you 1st start, but as you make more power and have excess, it is possible to get them up to 2k degrees. At that temp, they run faster than IC2 induction furnaces.
As for the steel issue, when you fill all 9 slots of the furnace, you get a good bit more than 1-1 back out and quite quickly.

Why do you insist on comparing mods? Other than a mod author who has multiple mods designed to work together, their only concern in making mods is their mod+vanilla. How can they possibly plan around what everyone else may or may not do? Stop comparing apples to oranges. If yo don't like it, don't use it. For me Magic mods are removed from every pack I play. I HATED Thaumcraft when I tried it. Won't even watch any of my favorite streamers when they do TC episodes. But I don't come to the forums and tell everyone how bad it is and why every other mod is better IMO. As MC is a sandbox game, it is up to you how you build your castle.....[DOUBLEPOST=1396572378][/DOUBLEPOST]

The extractor can quadruple your ores right?

About 5x on common ores and up to 9x on certain precious ores, I believe.

 

[Reika]

Have you played horizons?? Unless you like Thaumcraft, which I don't, there is no other way to auto farm. No MFR or Forestry. The fans may take a little more effort to setup than a single block from the others, but they work great. I am also pretty sure you will not find another way to mass fertilize ALL crops, in a huge area with one machine. The fertilizer is as good as the Extra utilities watering can and can cover your entire farm. Place one next to a Forestry multi farm or MFR farm in a pack that has them and you will see more output than you thought possible. I had mine shearing leaves when I was playing in Monster to make RC ethanol. A 9x9 MFR farm with spruce trees got me 40k leaves in a single night. The MFR harvester almost couldn't keep up at times.
I just found the RC Lava smeltery the other day. It needs almost no power. I have 2 running off a steam engine and it is more than they need. It shows as having a 7.5 second operation time in WAILA, but it smelts 18 items simultaneously for almost no energy. It is faster than any early or even mid game furnace. The friction heater also offers free smelting with vanilla furnaces. A steam engine(free power) can power 2 of them and you never need coal. They may be slow when you 1st start, but as you make more power and have excess, it is possible to get them up to 2k degrees. At that temp, they run faster than IC2 induction furnaces.
As for the steel issue, when you fill all 9 slots of the furnace, you get a good bit more than 1-1 back out and quite quickly.

Why do you insist on comparing mods? Other than a mod author who has multiple mods designed to work together, their only concern in making mods is their mod+vanilla. How can they possibly plan around what everyone else may or may not do? Stop comparing apples to oranges. If yo don't like it, don't use it. For me Magic mods are removed from every pack I play. I HATED Thaumcraft when I tried it. Won't even watch any of my favorite streamers when they do TC episodes. But I don't come to the forums and tell everyone how bad it is and why every other mod is better IMO. As MC is a sandbox game, it is up to you how you build your castle.....

This. A good mod dev does not design with the assumption other mods are present (though it is of course good to prepare for that case), as you will screw over everyone else who does not have those mods.

About 5x on common ores and up to 9x on certain precious ores, I believe.

The wiki page on the Extractor has the full info, but in general:

• 5x on common ore
• 9x on nether ore (NetherOres mod, not TiC cobalt, etc)
• 13x on rare ore

 

[RoyalCreeper12]

This. A good mod dev does not design with the assumption other mods are present (though it is of course good to prepare for that case), as you will screw over everyone else who does not have those mods.



The wiki page on the Extractor has the full info, but in general:

• 5x on common ore
• 9x on nether ore (NetherOres mod, not TiC cobalt, etc)
• 13x on rare ore

It's a 100% chance?

 

[Optibane]

It's a 100% chance?

It's a statistical average, so with only a few ores you could get more or less.


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[Reika]

It's a 100% chance?

No, you could get as low as 1x or as high as 16x on any ore, but the averages are at 5.1, 9.3, and 13.1.

 

[PierceSG]

I also agree that a mod author should never balance their mod against other mods unless it is an addon.
There will always be players whom prefer something different compared to others.
But let us stop derailing this thread further, shall we?

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[Reika]

I also agree that a mod author should never balance their mod against other mods unless it is an addon.
There will always be players whom prefer something different compared to others.
But let us stop derailing this thread further, shall we?

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More on topic:
Does anyone have any ideas for how to gate magnetostatic upgrades based on RC progression?

 

[Geometry]

More on topic:
Does anyone have any ideas for how to gate magnetostatic upgrades based on RC progression?

You could make it like the normal tier system you have going from wood,stone,steel,diamond,bedrock (replacing wood with something else since wood doesn't conduct electricity ). If you make the diamond and bedrock upgrades expensive enough, it will actually make players climb through the tiers of rotarycraft engines instead of just plopping down a few magnetostatic engines on a bedrock breaker or an extractor and be done with it. The other choice would be to craft a dozen or two steel magnetocstatic engines and use those instead which would be rather inefficient. This system would give the player a total of three options:

1. Use a bunch of diamonds(assuming you made it expensive) to make the diamond upgrade for the magnetostatic engine and use that
2. Use a bunch of the lower tier magnetostatics, combine the power of all of them, and use that
3. Go through the mod's tiered engine progression system(like it was meant to be) and work your way up to, say the gas turbine, and then use that to power the bedrock breaker. At this point in the mod, the player could continue going with the gas turbines or make bedrock magnetostatic engine upgrades and start using those.

The truth is that the majority of rotarycraft users just use a few magnetostatics(or pneumatics) and never look back. With this system, players would actually consider playing the mod instead of just using a few blocks that it adds. The way it is now, anybody can plop down a bedrock breaker with a few magnetostatics and almost instantly reach end-game stage in the mod. They wouldn't even have to make lubricant, since they can just use the bedrock gearboxes. This is just my viewpoint on this, and even though I myself use magnetostatics, I think they should be an endgame luxury.

 

[Reika]

You could make it like the normal tier system you have going from wood,stone,steel,diamond,bedrock (replacing wood with something else since wood doesn't conduct electricity ). If you make the diamond and bedrock upgrades expensive enough, it will actually make players climb through the tiers of rotarycraft engines instead of just plopping down a few magnetostatic engines on a bedrock breaker or an extractor and be done with it. The other choice would be to craft a dozen or two steel magnetocstatic engines and use those instead which would be rather inefficient. This system would give the player a total of three options:

1. Use a bunch of diamonds(assuming you made it expensive) to make the diamond upgrade for the magnetostatic engine and use that
2. Use a bunch of the lower tier magnetostatics, combine the power of all of them, and use that
3. Go through the mod's tiered engine progression system(like it was meant to be) and work your way up to, say the gas turbine, and then use that to power the bedrock breaker. At this point in the mod, the player could continue going with the gas turbines or make bedrock magnetostatic engine upgrades and start using those.

The truth is that the majority of rotarycraft users just use a few magnetostatics(or pneumatics) and never look back. With this system, players would actually consider playing the mod instead of just using a few blocks that it adds. The way it is now, anybody can plop down a bedrock breaker with a few magnetostatics and almost instantly reach end-game stage in the mod. They wouldn't even have to make lubricant, since they can just use the bedrock gearboxes. This is just my viewpoint on this, and even though I myself use magnetostatics, I think they should be an endgame luxury.

Making them expensive does not solve the problem, as that is a resource gate, not an RC progression one. I want to force "you must have made it to X in RotaryCraft". Additionally, only steel of the "material tiers" conducts electricity, so they are useless.

One idea floated was powered crafting, so that you could only craft things with sufficient power, but it is probably still vulnerable to spammed engines and it also requires major rewrites to the worktable.

The most obvious answer is to use things produced by RC machines, for example make the highest tier require bedrock, make the next lower require something from the compactor, the one below that from the pulse jet, and so on. But I have no idea what.

 

[TheCupcakeisaLie]

More on topic:
Does anyone have any ideas for how to gate magnetostatic upgrades based on RC progression?

I agree with the above. Make it use a bedrock something. And the fact you have a machine with 5x ore proccesing that only requires power and water really juatifies and nerf you could do, and a magnetostatic really needed a nerf. Or make them harder to use, like the microturbine or hydrokinetic, with the same wattage as before but an enormous torque or speed that's practicly unusable. Or both. Or male the magnetostatic USE lubricant. Damn that would be evil. But encourage other engines. Or make a farm. I'm done rambling.





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