You might not have noticed, but the discussion has moved to a discussion between players and the maker of MPS.
In your next Direwolf20 build, will you bother with IC2?
- Thread starter KirinDave
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All the better. Makes the whole "Where does MPS in terms of progression fit in" discussion obsolete. *shrugs*
I just question the need for yet another onTop-system in order to USE something. If I want to build me glider wings, I gather the resources (whichever those may be) and build them. What I tried (and obviously failed to do so) to say is, in my humble opinion we already have quite enough hoops to jump through in order to get stuff done. Or, even shorter: Keep it simple. Your second paragraph actually goes into this very direction. Yes, a player has to do something in order to get to the meaty stuff. But not another tweaked TC/IC²-Nuclear/Mystcraft research system. Simple, yet required. Picking up your image, it bores the heck out of me whenever I reach a point where I, yet again, have to pick random memory cards for the bajillionth time, in order to build an arcane levitator. I know it's in there. I researched it often enough. Same goes for Mystcraft pages - yes, the hunt for rare pages is fun, especially on a well populated server (where you can get a whole trading card minigame depending on people willing to trade pages) but it gets boring, tedious and, most important, ignored sooner or later in a single player game. As I really doubt someone spends his MC time trading for 58 emeralds in order to get a certain page - and repeats this process about 60 times, to complete his "set". Not even taking into consideration the long walk needed to find enough villages.
So if you manage to pull off an easy enough system to make certain parts for the MPS researchable without ending up with a tedious grind, one internet for you. I just don't see anything that mixes "simple" and "fun" and "rewarding" as of now. At least not, taking into consideration that this system should be at least somewhat entertaining still, when you do it the umpteenth time.
[EDIT]
Sidenote: It would be possible for such a system to be two-ways. One way for the easy going people (yes, like me) and one with a more hardcore approach that nods into the direction of GT hardmode fans. Just tweak the amount of X needed for Y and it should be fine.
I'm still wading through the thread - but thus far the vast majority of the posts are on topic with the OP, as is mine - so it's all good as far as I'm concerned.
I usually use IC2 just for UU matter. being able to substitute UU for iron and copper and diamonds is always a nice feature. I normally have a BC pipe sorting system push all dirt and gravel and cobble from my quarry into the recycler, and use a single nuclear reactor with a basic 100 eu/t hooked directly up to the mass fabricator. I have golems keep the scrap supplied, and more golems to keep putting uranium into my reactor.
All things in MineCraft are time-based. What I'm suggesting would be less time-intensive than harvesting masses of iron, when you focus on it specifically. The idea being that if you want it, why have a middle ground of needing to gather loads of resources (spend time, get materials) to then build what you want (spend materials, get stuff).
Agreed, and the "randomized pattern" would be there only to keep from people being able to metagame and "cheat", as we see in Thaumcraft's system.
And to follow up with my last comment, the bigger issue is that everything in Thaumcraft is structured around the same usage structure, no matter what. It's always going to cost you the same aspects to try and find the same research, which ends up leading to three main end states:
- You are perfectly in line with the author of Thaumcraft, and are able to understand all of the hints and make extremely good guesses about what aspects are required. You greatly enjoy the mod because the risk/reward function is extremely profitable for you.
- You are not in line with the author of Thaumcraft, and often end up not understanding the hints, and often make very bad guesses about what aspects are required. You suffer greatly from this mod, and end up not using it after enough time passes to trip your internal risk/reward function enough times to calculate the mod as a bad investment of your resources (materials, time, emotional satisfaction, etc).
- You are not in line with the author of Thaumcraft, and utilize a walkthrough/"cheat sheet" to remove this issue. You bypass the minigame of research as such, and as such the risk/reward function is extremely profitable for you.
Exactly! The idea being that the randomization is designed to limit people bypassing the minigame (system breaking to obtain a more acceptable risk/reward function outcome), while also being interesting and something that people will be able to pick up easily.
What came to mind earlier but I did not think to post was those "connect the pipe" games (similar to this: http://allure-pipes.lastdownload.com/allure-pipes11436.jpg). The concept being that you have a board of randomized pipes of a few different types which you need to connect to enable the flow of fluid through the pipes between two points without loss of fluid. Something in that general area, perhaps having to do with wiring, or hydraulics, might very well be interesting indeed, and workable.
The two given examples seem a good deal too shallow. Perhaps, instead of inspiration, require that research be done on the materials in a specific way. To use your examples, for the glider module, you first use a feather to be "inspired" to the concept. From there, you then have to complete a process to give your tinker table enough data to create a testable design for the glider (no idea about the tests, but if it involves tossing chickens around I approve!). The testable design for the glider could be an end state (it is the glider module), or it could be a revision one version of it, with more research (chicken tossing, whoo!) utilized to refine it to maximize the possibilities of the module.
Per your other example, an ender pearl may be required to start the Blink Drive research. From there, you then need to poke endermen (maybe a research tool? Samples? Something you place down to cause a reacting within a specific area that you instigate through a certain action?) for more studying of teleportation, and then after enough tests are completed, you return to your tinker table and get the module.
This lacks randomization to keep it from being metagamed, but it isn't as simple as getting the aspects needed for research of X, and then going straight through into that. And there is no randomized loss of resources which is a silly aspect of the Thaumcraft research system I'd say.
I agree for the most part in regard to modules, although improvement to modules could make for a really good way to deepen the tech tree in a way that does not restrict access to the start of most all modules, but requires that if you want the ultimate awesome module of awesome (UAMoA) which provides a +5 to something, you need to go through the +1 and +3 variants, first. The tech tree is then closer a tech bush then, which has spread out covering a large amount of surface.
Hopefully some of this is useful to your thought process!
I agree 100% here and am guilty of using a 'cheat sheet' a few times when my memory failed me on recipes I had done before on other servers.
That crossed my mind as well, simply because it has that 'complex circuitry' aspect to it. I don't know how I feel about using this particular puzzle but a puzzle minigame of this nature would be relatively easy to code and make use of. I guess it would make more sense than using it to represent 'hacking' in Bioshock...
ohhh jeez taking biopsy samples from endermen as a game mechanic would be such a weird inversion of the trope. I love it.
There's also the possibility of making completely different tasks for each module or component. Like, for the circuits, you have to do the pipedream minigame, for the field emitters you have to 'study' endermen, for the glider wings you have to throw chickens around (needs a grabber module...)
It would start to look a bit more like Deus Ex if that were the case, but I think I'm OK with that actually. Just will require some reworking on my end, especially the UI since every component (info frames, item selectors, module selectors bound to item selectors, etc.) is from scratch. Making multiple tiers of items is not such a stretch from the previous plan of 'allow people to install more than one of some items instead of having a tinkering meter'.
I am normally not in line with the Thaumcraft system, so I often resort to looking up data (usually just one bit to get myself a kick in the head to try and figure out the rest, but often enough I just give up trying to play the game by the rules given as it is outside of where I'd like to be, and often ends up with me going off to mine or farm something instead).
Yeah, that specific puzzle is an example of the type of puzzles I mean by "randomized, but not random". And a central core tech branch could give new aspects to the puzzle. An example, using the "connect the pipe" puzzle style, is that you start out with straight pipes, and 90° pipes. After a certain point of the central core tech branch (which is required to access more advanced technology), you'd gain access to three and four way intersections. At another point, you might get four way crossovers (0° and 180° are connected, as are 90° and 270°, but neither of the two groups are connected together). And after that, linked/teleportation pipes. Just from the mechanics, as things become harder, you end up getting more interesting minigame mechanics. And given a bit of work into playing, you should be able to obtain a fairly good level of advancement. Perhaps an expensive way to bypass a specific part, but I cannot think of anything that saturates that without being an easier solution to just completing the task in most cases.
Yeah, maybe even, as I mentioned above, a central core branch to the tech bush/tree which is where you have all things related to research. A grabber would likely be close to that branch but may be in the applied force branch (along with long range grabbing, repulsor, long range repulsor, area of effect grabbing, area of effect repulsor, maybe a tie in for the IFF to repulse only things that are considered foes, and the list could go on of course).
Maybe allow for both stacking of modules (higher cost of quantity of resources, higher usage of slots/weight/power/heat, lower cost of time, lower cost of more valuable resources perhaps versus higher cost of time, higher cost of more valuable resources, lower cost in quantity of resources, lower usage of slots/weight/power/heat) to allow for more customization? There would surely end up being minimaxing to figure out if the mark three blink drive is worth the cost associated with it versus three mark two blink drives, or eight mark one blink drives, but that'll be part of the fun for people, and something that could surely be balanced (with lots of troubleshooting into minimaxing it first by your team to get some good conditionals on it) to make all three choices have reasons to go that way:
- mark three for the best efficiency in slots/power/weight/heat as well as most powerful single module design
- mark one stack for best possible low-time input and low expensive resources [diamonds, perhaps another class of materials created through the usage of common materials to create an aspect to the tinker table which can create things, similar to the BuildCraft Assembly table]
- mark two stack for a good in between setup which is not strong in either situation but not weak in either as well).
All this talk about hating on Thaumcraft's research system, but I rather liked it. What I liked the most about it is that if you sat down and began to make a notebook of what had what aspects you were rewarded immensely. The only thing I think could be improved is discoverability around research boosters.
The problem with that, though, is that it is a time consuming step that people have already completed, and thus something that is often skipped because of that. It's one of the main reasons that I don't Thaumcraft (more than I've played around on single player when trying it out). Although perhaps a ComputerCraft file so it can be printed out as needed could work. Mmm, THAUMHELP, perhaps. Heheh.
If you've done it once you should be able to do it again in 1/4 the time and resources. You just need to design the right kind of research room. Hence my complaint about aspect boosting discoverability.
Mm, true, I barely know any of the aspect boosts. Maybe that would really be enough to make it less bothersome to try and go through. I'll have to try it on single player to verify someday.
Makes sense. Thanks for the discussion (even if it was not quite on-topic...) I feel like I have a more solid idea of where to go from here (in the overall mechanics sense).
@KirinDave: I liked Thaumcraft's research system the first (and even second) time, but I've been through about 10 new worlds over the months since TC3 was released and Azanor himself has basically expressed the same complaints http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1705283-thaumcraft-31-not-4/
@KirinDave: I liked Thaumcraft's research system the first (and even second) time, but I've been through about 10 new worlds over the months since TC3 was released and Azanor himself has basically expressed the same complaints http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1705283-thaumcraft-31-not-4/
Just a suggestion but considering how much inter-mod activity you're going for, it may be more prudent to create an api for modules, then you and other mod fans could petition the other individual mod authors to take advantage of said api. I think in the long run that could spare you some massive headaches, as well as permissions fishing (a la thaumcraft).
There is actually an api already pretty much ready to be used, it just doesn't have all the features necessary to make it really extensible yet (mod authors would have to write their own tick handlers instead of just implementing onTickInInventory for example, and modular items haven't been completely decoupled from electric items which I would like to do)
No worries, glad to help!
Mm, looks like Azanor wants to go a similar direction to what you're thinking (less grind and rind, more fruit to boot), which would make Thaumcraft more interesting. Hopefully he is thinking of biome/location specific research, as that'd be fun assuming you get a non-evil spawn. Good stuff!
Having only done it twice, perhaps I've yet to hit the breaking point. I just enjoyed round 1 so much. And I've yet to make an epic research room.
But I can see how doing metal transmutation 800x over is no fun. And I hate how sometimes you get "locked" onto stuff like the theory of everything when all you wanted was more golem cores.
Afaik, that's only possible in Creative Mode. Survival uses up the research-paper when rightclicked.
Well then, this thread certainly veered of coarse.
Personally with regard to the ic2 shtuff, i want to like ic2, but they just dont have enough interesting, new, and original stuff.
Ive really only done ic2 stuff cause of the qsuit and the nano saber/vajra.
With MPS now on the the scene so to speak, even the few things that were still cool about ic2 are no longer unique to ic2.
In my view, i kind of like ic2,but i think its clear to see that if they dont get there act together, and get original again, they are gonna just fade into oblivion.
Personally with regard to the ic2 shtuff, i want to like ic2, but they just dont have enough interesting, new, and original stuff.
Ive really only done ic2 stuff cause of the qsuit and the nano saber/vajra.
With MPS now on the the scene so to speak, even the few things that were still cool about ic2 are no longer unique to ic2.
In my view, i kind of like ic2,but i think its clear to see that if they dont get there act together, and get original again, they are gonna just fade into oblivion.
I'm not sure I understand. In my SSP game yesterday I switched between research projects without any trouble.