Sure, they are cheaper, but you would need to both a) code the dang thing, and b) fuel it when it comes back after clocking its inventory. When you factor in the time that it would take to return each time, aswell as the chunk loader blocks you would need to keep it loaded, the cost of the turtle in both time and diamonds (for a 64x64 chunck, which is max size of a BC quarry, you need 4 chunck loaders -> 11 diamonds in total), you have to ask: is it worth it?Pickaxe turtles are probably cheaper solution than quarries. Just three diamonds apiece.
It is once you realize that you can have your turtles leave the silk-touch'n'macerate ores alone. Besides, it's easier to only have them work around a single world anchor, they can also mine bottom-up, unlike the quarry. Or consider this: You can have two anchors and an ender chest(for dumping stuff and getting fuel), you can move those using another turtle. You could theoretically use this setup to have your turtles mine into infinity. Heck, you can have a turtle move your god-damn quarry.Sure, they are cheaper, but you would need to both a) code the dang thing, and b) fuel it when it comes back after clocking its inventory. When you factor in the time that it would take to return each time, aswell as the chunk loader blocks you would need to keep it loaded, the cost of the turtle in both time and diamonds (for a 64x64 chunck, which is max size of a BC quarry, you need 4 chunck loaders -> 11 diamonds in total), you have to ask: is it worth it?
I have no experience with turtles, but can't you use a chunkloading turtle? You wouldn't need the chunk loaders then.Sure, they are cheaper, but you would need to both a) code the dang thing, and b) fuel it when it comes back after clocking its inventory. When you factor in the time that it would take to return each time, aswell as the chunk loader blocks you would need to keep it loaded, the cost of the turtle in both time and diamonds (for a 64x64 chunck, which is max size of a BC quarry, you need 4 chunck loaders -> 11 diamonds in total), you have to ask: is it worth it?
It is once you realize that you can have your turtles leave the silk-touch'n'macerate ores alone. Besides, it's easier to only have them work around a single world anchor, they can also mine bottom-up, unlike the quarry. Or consider this: You can have two anchors and an ender chest(for dumping stuff and getting fuel), you can move those using another turtle. You could theoretically use this setup to have your turtles mine into infinity. Heck, you can have a turtle move your god-damn quarry.
Turtles are the future .
I've spent around 50 hours on my world and built quite a few things, so I'm not going to start over in some other world (no idea what mystcraft world even means, heh). I like my world the shape it is, but the way to get Iridium now is frankly stupid.
The point is, the mod is largely targeted at servers in an effort to keep people from becoming bored after a week or two.
On a 24/7 server, the energy cost of a regular mass fab is essentially irrelevant. You hook some solars up to it, plus a cobble generator to produce scrap, and go sleep to wake up the next day to a chestful of UU-Matter. Congratulations, you can now stop playing the game because you now have arbitrary amounts of everything and there's no challenge left.
That's why the matter fabricator is such a hard recipe, and why it needs such incredible amounts of energy to run. This is something you build as a group, with everyone providing what iridium and rubies etc. they found into a common pool. Then after it's up and running, the energy cost is balanced to not instantly trivialize the game if it is kept running 24/7.
However, playing SSP for maybe an hour or two a day, I found the energy cost to be almost impossible to meet. It is simply not suitable for a scenario where the process isn't running while you're away. Therefore, for singleplayer, I went to the config file and tuned down the energy cost from 16.6 million to 2.0 million per UU-Matter (regular IC2: 0.16 million). It is much better now - each piece still feels like a valuable treasure, but I can actually get enough to complete a recipe in one play session.
Building the matter fab all by myself through hand-mining was pretty awesome, by the way. It kept me busy for a long time, but boy am I ever proud of managing it! It also gave me something to do while waiting for bee breeding. You want to see real tedium? Go breed bees. GregTech has nothing on Forestry when you're trying to breed a specific line because it's the only way to get a specific resource that you can't find naturally due to bad luck with world generation and that's completely halting your progress.
Heh, yeah I can see that for huge 24/7 servers. But I doubt that's what most of the people who are playing with the modpack are on. Even if that was the case, they have to consider like half who don't have years and 20 hours a day to play.The point is, the mod is largely targeted at servers in an effort to keep people from becoming bored after a week or two.
On a 24/7 server, the energy cost of a regular mass fab is essentially irrelevant. You hook some solars up to it, plus a cobble generator to produce scrap, and go sleep to wake up the next day to a chestful of UU-Matter. Congratulations, you can now stop playing the game because you now have arbitrary amounts of everything and there's no challenge left.
That's why the matter fabricator is such a hard recipe, and why it needs such incredible amounts of energy to run. This is something you build as a group, with everyone providing what iridium and rubies etc. they found into a common pool. Then after it's up and running, the energy cost is balanced to not instantly trivialize the game if it is kept running 24/7.
However, playing SSP for maybe an hour or two a day, I found the energy cost to be almost impossible to meet. It is simply not suitable for a scenario where the process isn't running while you're away. Therefore, for singleplayer, I went to the config file and tuned down the energy cost from 16.6 million to 2.0 million per UU-Matter (regular IC2: 0.16 million). It is much better now - each piece still feels like a valuable treasure, but I can actually get enough to complete a recipe in one play session.
Building the matter fab all by myself through hand-mining was pretty awesome, by the way. It kept me busy for a long time, but boy am I ever proud of managing it! It also gave me something to do while waiting for bee breeding. You want to see real tedium? Go breed bees. GregTech has nothing on Forestry when you're trying to breed a specific line because it's the only way to get a specific resource that you can't find naturally due to bad luck with world generation and that's completely halting your progress.
Heh, yeah I can see that for huge 24/7 servers. But I doubt that's what most of the people who are playing with the modpack are on. Even if that was the case, they have to consider like half who don't have years and 20 hours a day to play.
Anyway, I did do bee breeding for a while on Normal. Sadly, ExtraBees didn't work, so none of the special bees were breedable no matter how much you tried. Spent a lot of hours on it... Meh.
The newest update for GregTech does at least provide more of a middle tier to keep you occupied and rewards you accordingly.It doesn't make Iridium any less tedious to obtain, but at least it's less of the sudden brick wall that it used to be. And really, UU Matter and the Quantum Suit needed something to slow down obtaining them, it just would have been nice if the progression into the Highly Advanced Machine tier left out the Iridium requirement of the MatterFab and thus relied less on luck or Dense Ores abuse.
Edit: You can centrifuge stuff in the End for Iridium? I need to see how common it is unless it's Endstone itself before I'm satisfied, but that is a step in the right direction... if a little sad that the once "final boss" of Minecraft is trivialized further.