Is Ore processing and sorting disappearing?

[zorn]

Just curious, I have 3 new players that are on my server. 8 weeks into their experience, none of them have automated ore processing.

While it's not necessary and I wouldn't dictate how people have fun, it seemed to me that figuring out how to process the stuff you had coming in and automate it so that you had more time to build was a lot of the fun of the game. Also it was fun 'building' the system itself. My first attempt was a big mass of BC pipes, 3 pulverizers and an induction smelter, lots of diamonds pipes, and a building full of wooden chests. Lots of inefficient pipe loops too that were more fun for me than any AE system has been.

Now I visit a friends base, he has a diamond chest on a hopper that is on a pulverizer, and a diamond chest on the powered furnace that is attached to the pulverizer. That's it.

One of the reasons I tried automating in the beginning was that it sucked to put single stacks of ores into a machine at a time, so I wanted to make it do everything automatically. Figuring out how to do that was more fun any most any other adventure ive had in modded minecraft since. The very first challenge I ran into was that a redstone engine would output an item into the pipe headed to my pulverizer more quickly than my pulverizer could run through one work cycle. Overflow. How do you solve it?

Diamond chest, hoppers... no overflow. Don't even need a pipe.

Now 2 of them say the game is a getting boring. I tell them they can make ways to automate things, but they say there is no real NEED to do so, so it isn't as satisfying to them.

Do other people see what I thought was the core of modded minecraft - ore processing and sorting - to be falling away? What you are left with is vanilla with a shit ton of resources, and only one of my players seems to enjoy that. My early experience with modded mc was that it made it so you couldnt feasibly do everything by hand like you could in vanilla. Tons of resources so you would get bored putting stacks of ores into pulverizers by hand. Now it seems you can get all those resources AND process it all by 'hand'. Is the idea of setting up an ore processing system becoming a thing of the past, when big chests and hoppers do it all in less space, with less hassle? What I originally put into a 20 x 30 building now can all fit in a 9 x 9 and not once do you ever say 'shit that wont fit there, how am I going to do this?' Chest hopper machine chest. Done.

What i really liked about modded minecraft is that it wasnt just vanilla where you would make a big castle or village, you also had this puzzles to solve. Lately it seems im just back to vanilla but with more kinds of resources to build castles and villages with.

Id be happy to hear ideas on what other people do in their game. I might have gotten stuck on the idea of ore processing and sorting because that was the first big challenge and fun I had playing. If you use hoppers and chests, what do you do then? Two players of mine are getting bored, im all ears as to what they can do to have more fun. Other than 'build castles' or things like that, those are a given. What does modded MC really offer *beyond* that?

 

[KirinDave]

Why do your friends like incredibly low yield and power-inefficient solutions like that? TE alone has a really interesting and detailed series of recipes to greatly increase ore yield.

But as to why sorting is falling away... I think that gradually people realize the old systems allowed novice players to routiely hose servers.

I know I harp on this, but if mining and resource acquisition is your only goal, minecraft gets boring quickly. Go explore your modpack. Do you have Mariculture? Build an underwater base! Do you have Ars and Railcraft? Explore the top speed of rail carts! Have you gotten into blood magic? Make a blood star that the helpless wish upon! Do you have AE? Compress your entire base into spatial storage and live in a quiet hovel that is secretly a techno-haven!

Build something you havent built, or do it in a new way.

 

[zorn]

Well one guy made an MPS suit (DW20 1.5) and some TE stuff. Charges his suit, processes ores. He made a multifarm with trees and ONLY made biofuel from the saplings, and put the logs into DSUs. When I said he could make charcoal from the logs and make a boiler he said 'for what?' I can tell him to do it for fun, but when you talk about yield and efficiency... what do they matter if there is no *need* for more power than you can get from saplings on a multifarm?

As for hosing servers... I just recently got lazy and had a quarry overflowing because my fz routers got clogged... no issues. I hear people say that entitites will kill a server, but when i see it happen we dont have issues. What am I missing? Honest questions, im running a server, id like to know what to look out for.

one player said he would like to ban pulverizers altogether because he has too many resources and cant spend them all. He went mining iwth a TiC hammer and came back 30 minutes later with a stack of diamonds. He said if ore doubling was removed, then he wouldnt feel so overloaded with resources, but then my thinking is 'you lose one of the basic 'systems' that most players (I think) end up creating'.

Personally id like to be able to config most mods to require blocks instead of ingots to craft them. if an iron furnace required 45 refined iron (im in 1.5) and a vanilla furnace to craft instead of 5, my group wouldnt have as many complaints about overabundance of resources. Its a stupid fix, but right now I cant even say why they should look into building a quarry. And a quarry was for me one of the big things that required a lot of thought and problem solving. How do I get the stuff back to my base? How do I power this?

Id also love it if I could change a pulverizer to require 40 Mj/t vs 4. Or 400 rf vs 40 or whatever.

edit: I understand resource gathering, but to me minecraft is a 3 pronged game. Building, Resource Gathering, and Survival. Right now all my players are 'Building' but there is no challenge to resource gathering, and no challenge to survival after a couple weeks of playing. I am not saying Building is not part of the fun, but resource gathering is also fun.
Lastly... I enjoy making things that solve problems. A rail cart system to a friends base is fun, but not AS fun for me if I made it to solve a problem. if I spend 3 minutes in a cart riding 1000 blocks to a friends base while wearing an MPS suit that could do it in 1 minute... im not solving a problem. to me its no more fun than making a big rail system in creative mode. Which is fun, but not as fun for me as doing it to solve a problem.

 

[snooder]

I really don't know what to tell you.

Generally, I never built an ore processing or sorting system "just for the sake of it." I always build one at the point when it becomes more tedious to walk from storage to pulverizer and back than to just build a system to do it for me, while I'm off doing something else. That something else may be hunting endermen, or hunting blazes, or exploring, or building a castle, or scripting turtles, or looking for villages, or playing around with mystcraft worlds, or learning more thaumcraft research, or messing with my bees, or building an underwater arboretum, or making a mob farm, etc. The point of the automation is to give me time and resources to go do something else. If they are bored and don't feel like automating stuff, then they just need to figure out what that "something else" is for them. Pretty soon, they'll find out that if they want to (for example) make a giant castle in the sky out of marble, gold, tin and basalt blocks, they'll need to get some sort of automation going, or they'll end up spending all their time sitting in their base and not actually building.

I will say though that when people talk about broken sorting systems hosing servers, they aren't talking about quarries. (1) Entities dropped on the ground disappear on their own anyway (2) Items now get collected into a single stack, and (3) and a quarry only produces so much stuff. The real killers are things like a BC pipe loop collecting thousands of entities in an infinite loop (I'm not proud, but I did that once when I funneled the output of 40 alvearies with 8 frames each into a loop.

 

[KirinDave]

Well one guy made an MPS suit (DW20 1.5) and some TE stuff. Charges his suit, processes ores. He made a multifarm with trees and ONLY made biofuel from the saplings, and put the logs into DSUs. When I said he could make charcoal from the logs and make a boiler he said 'for what?' I can tell him to do it for fun, but when you talk about yield and efficiency... what do they matter if there is no *need* for more power than you can get from saplings on a multifarm?

I'm not saying you need multiple solutions. But maybe try powering the base with something OTHER than a boiler for once?

As for hosing servers... I just recently got lazy and had a quarry overflowing because my fz routers got clogged... no issues. I hear people say that entitites will kill a server, but when i see it happen we dont have issues. What am I missing? Honest questions, im running a server, id like to know what to look out for.

Lots of entities can hose chunks, corrupting region files. It can also significantly decrease tickrate.

one player said he would like to ban pulverizers altogether because he has too many resources and cant spend them all. He went mining iwth a TiC hammer and came back 30 minutes later with a stack of diamonds. He said if ore doubling was removed, then he wouldnt feel so overloaded with resources, but then my thinking is 'you lose one of the basic 'systems' that most players (I think) end up creating'.

How about instead of making the game a series of chickenscratch exercises a la vanilla, we instead adjust the scope of our ambitions to match the resources available?

 

[snooder]

one player said he would like to ban pulverizers altogether because he has too many resources and cant spend them all. He went mining iwth a TiC hammer and came back 30 minutes later with a stack of diamonds. He said if ore doubling was removed, then he wouldnt feel so overloaded with resources, but then my thinking is 'you lose one of the basic 'systems' that most players (I think) end up creating'.

I... don't even... why not just...

How about instead of making the game a series of chickenscratch exercises a la vanilla, we instead adjust the scope of our ambitions to match the resources available?

It doesn't even make any sense unless he's using a silk-touch hammer or something, since pulverizers only work on ore blocks.

 

[Vaygrim]

Why do your friends like incredibly low yield and power-inefficient solutions like that? TE alone has a really interesting and detailed series of recipes to greatly increase ore yield.

But as to why sorting is falling away... I think that gradually people realize the old systems allowed novice players to routiely hose servers.

I know I harp on this, but if mining and resource acquisition is your only goal, minecraft gets boring quickly. Go explore your modpack. Do you have Mariculture? Build an underwater base! Do you have Ars and Railcraft? Explore the top speed of rail carts! Have you gotten into blood magic? Make a blood star that the helpless wish upon! Do you have AE? Compress your entire base into spatial storage and live in a quiet hovel that is secretly a techno-haven!

Build something you havent built, or do it in a new way.

I am with KirinDave on most of these points: If your goal is just to gather resources, you'll get bored fast. I normally am a subterranean builder, so this new play through I'm going "Sky Base" to see what I can do.. and see just how tacky and majestic I can make it look. I want to research all the real complicated and esoteric stuff from Thaumcraft and Ars Magica.. and see just what kind of crazy combinations of machines I can come up with. (Ars Magica speed spells and Railcraft? Yes please!)

That being said, not everyone plays the game the same way. (shrug)[DOUBLEPOST=1389032621][/DOUBLEPOST]

It doesn't even make any sense unless he's using a silk-touch hammer or something, since pulverizers only work on ore blocks.

I think the concept is.. that if he has a stack of diamonds after just 30 minutes of hammering... then getting any amount of the 'other resources' in the game is therefore inherently trivial as well. (shrug)

 

[SonOfABirch]

1.5.2 has been around for a LONG time.. when you're stuck on one version for that length of time it's inevitable that you're going to get bored.
I see 1.5.2 as one of those "golden versions" of minecraft where modding totally hit the sweet spot, a bit like 1.2.5... but as with 1.2.5, I'd not be satisfied going back to it, as I've seen the sweet green grass thats on the other side..

1.6.4 not only has more content from the mods you have in 1.5.2, but there are more mods on the scene that add new and different ways to do things..

Bored with pulveriser? Try using Mekanism for ore processing, or Factorization, or Tinkers construct doesn't Engineers Toolbox have a system? even IC2 has changed significantly..

No, ore processing and sorting isn't dissapearing, but if you're only doing the same thing as you've done before, it will stagnate.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Short answer, no it's not disappearing your friends are just not very good at playing modded MC... They're playing it like vanilla where the entire point is resource collection, modded is about building stuff, resource collection is just an excuse to build stuff so you can get resources and build more stuff.

To be fair I can't play vanilla MC because I play it like modded, come up with crazy cool builds and then have to spend 4 hours and 10 iron shovels digging up clay to make bricks... Which then were enough for 1/4 of the walls of the building and I gave up because I was spending more time gathering than using, which is tedious and boring for me.

 

[DREVL]

we can all agree ore proccessing is most important. Better storage facilitating is very important, but I usually push towards AE right before endgame for better storing. I'd rather do my own sorting until I get AE. Then in the way I setup AE comes the sorting. I am very personal with my chests... sorting just seems like I don't care anymore...

 

[netmc]

Personally, I would remove TiC. Don't get me wrong, I love the oreberry bushes and the various weapons, but the tools are so over powered and have a linear progression so there is no reason to look at any other path once you start down the road with TiC. Once the smeltery is built, nothing else is needed. Most of the other tool paths come in steps, and need to be repaired or remade. TiC tools just need a small amount of the material used in the business end, and all is good. It eliminates the entire need for enchanting. No enchantment table, no bookshelves. No bookshelves, no reed farm, no cow farm. No enchantment table and no anvil, no XP farm either. TiC has removed many of the needs for farming. If you don't need to build farms to get better tools and repair them, there is no reason to automate those farms, and if you don't need to automate them, you remove a lot of the power requirements. Without the power requirements, the farms powering the power supply chain are not needed either. You end up with a pulveriser, a hopper and two chests.

 

[DREVL]

Sorry, but Tic, as OP as it is, is a necessary addition imo in early game. All that enchantment stuff is absolutely frustrating.

 

[SonOfABirch]

Personally, TiCo is the LAST mod I'd ever dream of removing. The tools are infinitely more interesting and customisable than vanilla, removes the need for vanillas terribly boring and frankly broken enchanting system, and the smeltery is the most intuitive and dare I say realistic way of processing ores out of any mod that I can think of.

Also... Linear progression... you say this like vanilla (or ANY other mod that adds tools) does not.. At least it's progression is better than "find a diamond, and then randomly get an enchant on it... I mean, jesus... vanilla enchanting is just horrible.. and their great implementation of enchanting books... even worse... no thank you..

 

[snooder]

Personally, I would remove TiC. Don't get me wrong, I love the oreberry bushes and the various weapons, but the tools are so over powered and have a linear progression so there is no reason to look at any other path once you start down the road with TiC. Once the smeltery is built, nothing else is needed. Most of the other tool paths come in steps, and need to be repaired or remade. TiC tools just need a small amount of the material used in the business end, and all is good. It eliminates the entire need for enchanting. No enchantment table, no bookshelves. No bookshelves, no reed farm, no cow farm. No enchantment table and no anvil, no XP farm either. TiC has removed many of the needs for farming. If you don't need to build farms to get better tools and repair them, there is no reason to automate those farms, and if you don't need to automate them, you remove a lot of the power requirements. Without the power requirements, the farms powering the power supply chain are not needed either. You end up with a pulveriser, a hopper and two chests.

Sure, if all you use those farms for is enchanting your mining pick. Some people use them for other things though, like mystcraft, or villager trading, or making food, or feeding essence into a mob spawner, etc.

This thread as a whole is a real eye-opener about just how very little some people actually interact with the various tools in the FtB modpacks.

 

[DREVL]

I'm not sure what Tic has to do with these farms everyone is talking about, or did I miss something?

 

[KirinDave]

This thread as a whole is a real eye-opener about just how very little some people actually interact with the various tools in the FtB modpacks.

This is something I'm always struggling to combat with RR users. For example, the volume of people who complain, "You can't build monster spawners, lol scrubpack!" is stunning.

 

[Lausten]

I really think you guys should go watch some twitch or Youtube videos and get some inspiration. There really is so many different things to do in monster that I keep getting distracted because I want to do it all.

 

[netmc]

My whole point about TiCo is that is removes a lot of the *necessity* to have several farms and automate them. When you build farms, you normally need to process and sort the output of the farm. What you can do in minecraft is only limited by your imagination. Not everyone is creative enough to come up with builds just because it can be done. Many need an slightly artificial incentive. This is one of the reasons I liked GregTech so much in 1.4.7 and 1.5.2. It gave a goal to work towards... The fusion reactor. (personally, I only ever made the distillation tower--that was bad enough.) It was a complicated and time consuming goal and needed multiple automated farms running on a server to even attempt to achieve it.

Every time I start a new world/server, I purposely use a different base mod to work with and try to use everything in the mod. One, I learn the mod, two, I see some cross-mod interactions that I may not have known about before that gives me a better way to build things. I know my next tech based world will be based on rotarycraft. That seems to have some promise.

Right now I am playing Magic World 2. I have no ore doubling, or really any automation yet at this point. Everything I have fits in 4 double chests. I am going through TC4 and TT. I have several stacks of iron ore, and nothing to use it on at the moment. I am starting to put together the beginnings of farms for the essentia needed to fuel my TC4 creations. But in all honesty, I don't really *need* to do any of this. I should be quite fine with the bit that I am able to do without automation or sorting.

 

[SonOfABirch]

I still have no clue why you think that you don't need farms with TiCo... if all you used a cow farm and sugarcane farm was to create books for that awful enchanting system (Did I mention it's bloody horrid?) then you're totally right, you do lack creativity.

 

[KirinDave]

My whole point about TiCo is that is removes a lot of the *necessity* to have several farms and automate them.

Sort of. In that TiCo is the single most expensive way to process ores effectively and cannot be automated in any meaningful way. It's actually only sorta mediocre in yield and requires time investment and can't be energy positive and... well... and a lot of problems.

TiCo is not as strong as people make it out to be. RotaryCraft and SC2 both can WAY outperform it, and even quarries make hammer mining look pretty silly. As to "why" you need that many resources?

Honestly. Have you ever built a tower of solid iron? Have you made the biggest AE system?

Not everyone is creative enough to come up with builds just because it can be done.

Most people just think they can't.

Right now I am playing Magic World 2. I have no ore doubling, or really any automation yet at this point. Everything I have fits in 4 double chests. I am going through TC4 and TT. I have several stacks of iron ore, and nothing to use it on at the moment. I am starting to put together the beginnings of farms for the essentia needed to fuel my TC4 creations. But in all honesty, I don't really *need* to do any of this. I should be quite fine with the bit that I am able to do without automation or sorting.

Magic Farm is purposely much harder to build automation in, though. It's hardly a valid basis for comparison to the majority of modpacks here.