IC2 is slowly dying out ?
- Thread starter StreetKing
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It's probably getting to the point where we /would/ be better off letting IC2 go if we could.
The few things it has that arn't done well in other mods would quickly gain replacements done better I expect. (crops, scaffholding e.t.c.)
That or it could do with some serious refinement. Minecraft Mods have reached a higher level of quality, and better understanding of good game mechanics. Get rid of the silly, tedious, arbitary mechanics, refine what's left, include some of the more modern configuration/guis, and we would have an /excellent/ base, rather then an outdated and clunky one that is mostly used because it's been used forever.
The few things it has that arn't done well in other mods would quickly gain replacements done better I expect. (crops, scaffholding e.t.c.)
That or it could do with some serious refinement. Minecraft Mods have reached a higher level of quality, and better understanding of good game mechanics. Get rid of the silly, tedious, arbitary mechanics, refine what's left, include some of the more modern configuration/guis, and we would have an /excellent/ base, rather then an outdated and clunky one that is mostly used because it's been used forever.
That's a pretty snazzy armor get up.
QFT, this needs to be done.
However, the problem as I see it is that ablaka isn't interested very much anymore(read: Burned out) a/o feels armlocked by his addons. So with people that don't feel they've got the right to lead at the helm, such developement becomes highly ... hm, theoretical. Cutting out your great leaders code isn't what the likes of RG have the balls to do IMO.
I was just talking to DoctorOr in privchat about how strong MPS stuff feels compared to his usual IC2 preference, and it sort of struck me that IC2 is a really bad yardstick for modern minecraft metagame.
Go back to Tekkit (now called classic) for a bit and look at what they were doing. Automation was much harder, ore processing was much trickier to do right (basically only RP2 could do it and RP2's process is way more manual than TE's machines), Gregtech was just starting out and didn't have the same huge (>3x) ore yields yet, and EE2 was popular mostly because it was so easy to automate and get what you wanted out of it. Even then, EE2's interface was a huge hassle. And there weren't good storage systems like AE yet (Ender Chests as a mod were a big deal!).
The metagame of Minecraft modding has moved on since then. There are lots of ways to engineer infinite everything, from bees to yet more sophisticated vanilla farms to tons of autoamted farming systems to infinite, controllable production of monsters. Automation has gotten way smarter, too. Even ignoring the awesome power of AE, Buildcraft has gotten way smarter and we have more ore processing mods that are intelligent about not dropping things. Even if RedPower2 isn't in 1.5.1, there are no shortage of other mods to step up and fill the gap like Immibis's infinitubes and Thaumcraft's golems. And Thermal Expansion, one of the shining starts of modern modded minecraft, has builtin processing pipelines. Gregtech has his own build-your-own automation tools. Railcraft gives us huge sums of power (even as CJ nerfs fuels we still keep ending up with more and more power).
But IC2, throughout all these changes, has remained almost perfectly static.
IC2 isn't fading away; but it's slowly becoming a mod that offers a power system and a bunch of machines people are eager to ignore unless they have some helper mods to make them more relevant. Similarly, the tools IC2 offers are pretty much worse than the tools everyone else offers; but this isn't because they're poorly coded. It's because everyone else just started offering incremental improvements over IC2 and now we all expect omni-tools and infini-armor.
I wonder if the plan with IC2 is to just let it become a core library for other mods that want to keep the well-established and well-understood EU power system around. It's basically that right now.
And of course, this entire overlong spiel ignores the fact that IC2's power system is, from a game design perspective, utterly broken. It requires a complete redesign.
Go back to Tekkit (now called classic) for a bit and look at what they were doing. Automation was much harder, ore processing was much trickier to do right (basically only RP2 could do it and RP2's process is way more manual than TE's machines), Gregtech was just starting out and didn't have the same huge (>3x) ore yields yet, and EE2 was popular mostly because it was so easy to automate and get what you wanted out of it. Even then, EE2's interface was a huge hassle. And there weren't good storage systems like AE yet (Ender Chests as a mod were a big deal!).
The metagame of Minecraft modding has moved on since then. There are lots of ways to engineer infinite everything, from bees to yet more sophisticated vanilla farms to tons of autoamted farming systems to infinite, controllable production of monsters. Automation has gotten way smarter, too. Even ignoring the awesome power of AE, Buildcraft has gotten way smarter and we have more ore processing mods that are intelligent about not dropping things. Even if RedPower2 isn't in 1.5.1, there are no shortage of other mods to step up and fill the gap like Immibis's infinitubes and Thaumcraft's golems. And Thermal Expansion, one of the shining starts of modern modded minecraft, has builtin processing pipelines. Gregtech has his own build-your-own automation tools. Railcraft gives us huge sums of power (even as CJ nerfs fuels we still keep ending up with more and more power).
But IC2, throughout all these changes, has remained almost perfectly static.
IC2 isn't fading away; but it's slowly becoming a mod that offers a power system and a bunch of machines people are eager to ignore unless they have some helper mods to make them more relevant. Similarly, the tools IC2 offers are pretty much worse than the tools everyone else offers; but this isn't because they're poorly coded. It's because everyone else just started offering incremental improvements over IC2 and now we all expect omni-tools and infini-armor.
I wonder if the plan with IC2 is to just let it become a core library for other mods that want to keep the well-established and well-understood EU power system around. It's basically that right now.
And of course, this entire overlong spiel ignores the fact that IC2's power system is, from a game design perspective, utterly broken. It requires a complete redesign.
Psh, I have nearly 800k and my housemate is coming up on 1.5 million
Sounds like UUM needs a server cap associated with it. Like 1000*players on server. Make it worth much more.
Infact, if someone made a mod for FTB that implemented limiting of certain resources. Right now all people have to do is mine till their eyes bleed, or sit with a thumb up their ass waiting for Wmatter to produce. Limitations breed innovation, creativity and inefficiency.
IC2 is a little like mincraft itself. Its in large part letting the mod community take it to the next step, while the core of it is in need of a refresh. I expect to see IC2 produce horses instead this summer.
And by "ages" I meant a week. And I have work too, y'know! I can't stand around afk'ing at my really weak 1 UU/secondPsh, I have nearly 800k and my housemate is coming up on 1.5 million
It's IC2. Even without GT, people would use for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Some might even remove the mods that "replace" it in FTB from FTB for redundancy, even though it's pretty bloomin' clear it's IC2 that's redundant.
Ignoring the technical problems of a packet system, what is in-game problems with base IC2 EU system?
It's certainly bad in the face of 512EU/t solar, but by itself, with no addons, I see no problem with it.
The tiering of the power is such that it almost always makes sense to replicate small solutions rather than bigger power solutions. Greg only exacerbates this. It's in sharp contrast to most minecraft energy ecosystems where it does make sense to invest in the "big powerplant' becuase its output is extremely better.
I was the only guy who used nuclear with a 4x power modifier, and even I eventually stopped.
Because you told me you set it back to 1x and I never verified.
4x would be OP in face of no 512EU/t solar, and only a little low even with. That's 1200EU/t in a safe six reactor nuclear with low challenge automation.
360EU/t base in safe nuclear in face of 512EU/t solar is a joke though.
I added Universal Electricity to my current FTB install. Its' (Mekanism's) ore processing machines in their default state are about as slow as TE's, but the difference is that you can add speed upgrades to them, so they end up running much faster. With that said, for ore doubling I'm still using TE's induction smelter for the most part, in order to get rich slag.
For me at least, this is only really a problem before I get redstone conduits; and you need to cycle with golden conductive pipes anyway, in order to prevent them from blowing up. The conduits store energy.
Swapping IC out for UE, better IC does not make.
Asamatteroffact, UE is more or less a copy of IC with a number of shortcommings copied. Although there is just a little bit more of spit and boot polish, I'll give you that.
Ore trippling in UE, for example, is ridiculously lame. It's the same bloody old furnace interface, using FLINT for fuel, and you need 3! machines (OH MY GOD, THREE?!?!) instead of one. It's rare that you see a main stream mod as unimaginative as that. We might as well still be using liquid metals or whatever the mod was called, and its ridiculous tiered recipes (did I just do that? Yes I did, looking at you energy cube. But to be honest, many are guilty of this, looking at you mfr expansion cards, buildcraft gears, gtech machines). The solars are another nice example of repeated mistakes and I'm fully expecting the UE team to eventually go trough the whole nerf/buff cycle of death that adv. solars vent trough. Then there's the pick on machines thing. A glaring attempt at one-upping IC2 without considering... well, anything, really.
You know what, that ain't even boot polish, it's fanservice clear and simple. Next thing you know they'll start slapping boobs'n'butts'n'kawaii ears on the machines and calling them Lucy and insinuating that the machines are actually a cursed princess.
Now don't get me wrong, I DO NOT HATE UE. It's bred of good stock, that much is obvious. But calling it a refined IC is a huge stretch of the imagination. It's IC, with kawaii ears.
You know, playing with UE made me really appreciate what Greg does. The grinding to triple process is greatly inspired by reality. There's a clear tech tree and a bit of imagination involved in the addon. There's things that piss me off about gtech ofc, but it's being made (similarly to TE) mostly with "being good" in mind, as opposed to straight up "being better than" in mind, like UE is.
Mmmmm yeah I could go for that.
I mean.
What?
-coughs awkwardly-
I never said anything. Nope pffffffffft. PFFFT. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!
...
pfft.
There's a lot less balance obsession as well, which for me was the main selling point. The wrench mechanic alone had me looking for ways to get rid of IC2 more or less from day one. With that said, Mekanism's hydrogen generator seems to have had its' power output nerfed by about 75% since its' early 1.4.7 releases. *Sigh*
Ore tripling in Factorization was lame too, as far as I'm concerned. TE is the only mod I've seen where it isn't. You do what you were going to do anyway for the most part, and you have a 5% chance for rich slag, which you can then use to reliably triple specific ores of your choice, including diamonds with either Nether Ores or Silk Touch. Simple, fast, uncomplicated.
Balance obsession is the single main reason why I wish I could move to a world where SMP did not exist, being blunt. Multiplayer balance obsession was one of the main things that killed World of Warcraft, as another example. I only ever play Minecraft single player, and I considered the integration of SSP and SMP to be a giant step in the wrong direction; because now people like me have to endure developer balance paranoia concerning multiplayer, whether we like it or not.
IMHO, it's (similar to) IC with:-
a} A simplified upgrade system. I don't need to worry about machines blowing up when I perform speed upgrades, or transformer issues; it doesn't require me to perform complex mathematics in my head.
b} Less balance obsession in general terms, as already mentioned.
Are you seriously suggesting a system where the first person to tech tree to UU matter stops anyone else getting any? Because that's so many different flavours of bad idea I can't even start to explain it.
Also, 1000 UU isn't actually enough to build some of the highest tier GregTech stuff, I don't think.
The wrench mechanics are loopsided, OTOH, using a specialized tool to remove your machines ain't that stupid and I wish more techy mods would employ said mechanic, just not that draconically. The omniwrench is a good example of how I think it should be. It's a nice level of consistency I'd welcome. Even though it's just a stupid extra tool on your belt.
Yeah, but it's mitigated by how... hard it is. It was there right from the start, yet many people didn't use it. It's a good example of gating by difficulty and a good balancing mechanic. You want yourself some ore trippling? Well, you better work for it, cause we're not giving it for free.
That's one of my biggest beefs with both IC and UE. They give you better returns right from the start, but all of the recipes are very wasteful with the higher return resources. Makes you wonder why's there any higher returns in the first place instead of just cheaper recipes. I personally wish things like ore doubling and trippling were gated, but reaching them should make the previous tier easier. That is good gameplay, once you kill the boss, you don't expect his underlings to give you too much trouble.
Expect more of that, always, the more popular a mod becomes the more it'll suffer from that. Which is why I strongly believe that starting out with good balance in the first place is one of the most important aspects a mod should concentrate on. Seriously, if you think it's too efficient, gate it behind the less efficient methods.
Nerfing things with good returns(for good efforts) is just bad mojo and the reason why I think that CJ and SS are shooting themselves in the foot.
1000 UU is 142 iridium, or 35 iridium plates.
You're not supposed to generate everything from UUmatter. The only thing I can think of that uses more than 35 iridium plates to build from scratch is fusion, and you're not supposed to just throw that together on a whim.