Is Ore processing and sorting disappearing?

[snooder]

Notice the mods that have nerfed things? Now tell me which mods in a big pack like monster get the most use and fame, and which ones get people complaining?

If there are a set of mods in a pack, and some mods decide to nerf themselves, you can't call the rest of the mods staying the same "Power Creep." That's actually the direct opposite of power creep.

To me you wrapped up my whole theory with your post. Every nerf we have seen gets constant complaints, and people are always, always posting things here like 'BC is just behind the times, TE3 is what I use for everything now". "I only use railcraft for the boilers".

Im sure you can say that you and other veterans have done so, but you have to agree that for the average player what i say is true. You did not mention ONE NERF that referenced Thermal Expansion at all, and it's the most popular mod out there. Every mod you did mention gets a lot of flack or is less used than other options. Forestry is not really referenced either way and suprise surprise... defaults to 'easy' mode.

The point here is that people were comfortable the level of power from the mods in 1.4. It fit the playstyle of a lot (i'd say most) of people who choose to play modded minecraft. When a mod designer decides to nerf his mod so that it doesn't fit that playstyle any more, it shouldn't be a surprise that people choose to use one of the myriad other options available.

Yeah, I don't use BC pipes any more. I've always avoided them as much as possible, except for bees. Before TE itemducts, I used RP tubes almost exclusively. Or logistics pipes when tubes weren't quite right for the job. Or, if there were no other options, often I'd just do without item transport at all, and move stuff manually. BC was great for machines like pumps, builders, fillers and the integration with forestry, but the pipes have always kinda sucked. They are getting better though, and are in a legitimately useful state now, but there are definitely things that can be improved about them.

And yeah, I only used Railcraft for the boilers. Cart systems are ok, but aren't the most important thing to me, and a lot of the fiddly bits from Railcraft with having to make blast furnaces and use rolling machines just has never been worth it for the benefit. I used to make train systems in vanilla to connect my various spread out bases. I stopped doing it in modded minecraft because the expense of making the rails through railcraft wasn't worth the time it would take to just walk/fly/ride there. I was finding that by the time making the rails became trivial, I'd have teleportation available with mystcraft or thaumcraft or portalguns or some other mod and wouldn't need a rail system any more anyway.

I'm not saying I haven't tried these things. I have. I've tried most of the various items in most of the mods in the FtB packs. But I don't keep doing stuff that isn't either fun or useful. And generally, I don't find frustration or tedium fun. If something gets tedious enough, I'll just do without, or do it the vanilla way. For example, if the only option I had for automated farming was Steve's Carts, at this point, I'd probably just do my tree farming with a lumber axe and fuel my base with lava. And if the only option was Forestry, i would HAVE to because I need a power infrastructure just to get the multifarm in the first place.

 

[casilleroatr]

I like the Ars Magica tree farm. I haven't pushed it to its limits yet, but it was a good way of automating a supply of Birch Saplings for Witchery and providing the small bit of charcoal I needed for a peripheral base. I was only using 6 saplings in growth at a time, with the green growth sigil (or is that the blood magic one - anyway the one that speeds up growth), and it was plenty for my purposes but I liked it so much I think I will make a larger scale Ars tree farm.

 

[Skyqula]

On the subject of TE3 ore tripling:

• Rich slag triples ore at the cost of bonus dust.
  • When using sand: Rich slag is a 5% chance per normal ore, 10% for gold, 15% for ferrous and 40% for redstone. Also no bonus dust.
    
  • When using pyrotheum dust: 15% chance per normal ore, 30% for gold and 45% for ferrous. Also no bonus dust.
    • 2 pyrotheum dust is made with 1 coal dust, 1 sulfur, 1 redstone and 1 blaze powder
      • blaze powder can be made by infusing 1 glowstone dust with 200mb of destebilized redstone (2 dust)
  • When using Cinnabar: 75% chance from gold and aluminum.
• Cinnarbar triples ore output and garuntees the bonus output (rich slag incase of gold and aluminum)
  • 25% chance from pulverizing redstone ore
  • Made by infusing cinnabar ore with 200mb of gelid cryotheum in the fluid transposer.
    • 500mb of Gelid Cryotheum requires 2 cryotheum dust ==> 1 snowball, 1 redstone dust, 1 nitor/saltpeter and 1 blizz powder
      • Blizz powder can be made by infusing a snowball with 200mb of destebilized redstone (2 dust)

Note: This makes a witch farm super effective for TE purposes. Makes redstone/glowstone renewable and in turn cryotheum/pyrotheum.

On TE3 making steel:

• The recipy is enabled even of railcraft/tinkers construct is present
• 1 iron ingot and 4 charcoal makes 1 steel ingot
• 1 iron dust and 2 coal dust makes 1 steel ingot

 

[Dorque]

On TE3 making steel:

• The recipy is enabled even of railcraft/tinkers construct is present
• 1 iron ingot and 4 charcoal makes 1 steel ingot
• 1 iron dust and 2 coal dust makes 1 steel ingot

Which, it is worth noting: is identical in charcoal cost to the Railcraft recipe, and double in coal cost. The only savings is time, and you don't get creosote as a byproduct.


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[Skyqula]

Which, it is worth noting: is identical in charcoal cost to the Railcraft recipe, and double in coal cost. The only savings is time, and you don't get creosote as a byproduct.


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It goes further, coal dust can be turned into a fluid and is a very powerfull fuel for a compression dynamo. And since we dont get creosote, wich can also be used for power, its actually very power inefficient to use the TE recipy's.

 

[Loufmier]

It goes further, coal dust can be turned into a fluid and is a very powerfull fuel for a compression dynamo. And since we dont get creosote, wich can also be used for power, its actually very power inefficient to use the TE recipy's.

but TE's steel doesn't require you to visit nether, for which it's blame balance and progression fans...

 

[Dorque]

but TE's steel doesn't require you to visit nether, for which it's blame balance and progression fans...

Even in Vanilla, I can get into the nether in about five minutes, it's hardly a thing anymore.

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[Skyqula]

but TE's steel doesn't require you to visit nether, for which it's blame balance and progression fans...

Meh, a bucket is cheaper then an induction furnace. But I gues your right, finding and killing blazes/magma cubes is abit harder. Then again, RC is not the only steel mod. UE has similair recipy's to TE3, no?

 

[zorn]

Which, it is worth noting: is identical in charcoal cost to the Railcraft recipe, and double in coal cost. The only savings is time, and you don't get creosote as a byproduct.


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Except railcraft requires getting blaze rods. In another post you said getting to the nether is hardly a thing... do you play on Easy difficulty? Because I normally play on Hard and I dont see anyone hitting a nether fortress on Hard in 5 minutes of play. Youre just trying to dismiss an opposing argument with bad evidence. No one gets to the nether in 5 minutes, and even if you did... you going into a nether fortress naked? The TE recipe is absolutely stronger than making steel in railcraft.

And i can prove it to you. KingLemming himself cited Obsidian as a reason his recipes were harder than Buildcraft pipe recipes. His hardened glass required obsidian, and thats a gate or tier to get to before you can make conduits and liquiducts. If so then obsidian is just the first of a few gates or obstructions before you can make a railcraft blast furnace. Then you have to find a nether fortress and fight blazes.

TE3 seems to be "get 4 charcoal and an iron". If that is not more powerful than getting diamonds to mine obsidian, then finding a nether fortress AND fighting blazes, I dont know what is.

Are you really not seeing this? I read KL was a little touchy with SirusKing on the iC2 thread about how they changed an obsidian recipe and 'didnt tell him'. Does Covert Jaguar know that TE3 now makes his HP boilers now ridiculously easy to get?

Either way, its obviously the TE3 recipe changes a lot of other mods. But... in a few months people will look at the railcraft recipe as 'ridiculous and too weak, its tedious' when they get used to the easy TE3 steel recipe.

Again if this isnt power creep, I dont know what is.

 

[King Lemming]

Except railcraft requires getting blaze rods. In another post you said getting to the nether is hardly a thing... do you play on Easy difficulty? Because I normally play on Hard and I dont see anyone hitting a nether fortress on Hard in 5 minutes of play. Youre just trying to dismiss an opposing argument with bad evidence. No one gets to the nether in 5 minutes, and even if you did... you going into a nether fortress naked? The TE recipe is absolutely stronger than making steel in railcraft.

And i can prove it to you. KingLemming himself cited Obsidian as a reason his recipes were harder than Buildcraft pipe recipes. His hardened glass required obsidian, and thats a gate or tier to get to before you can make conduits and liquiducts. If so then obsidian is just the first of a few gates or obstructions before you can make a railcraft blast furnace. Then you have to find a nether fortress and fight blazes.

TE3 seems to be "get 4 charcoal and an iron". If that is not more powerful than getting diamonds to mine obsidian, then finding a nether fortress AND fighting blazes, I dont know what is.

Are you really not seeing this? I read KL was a little touchy with SirusKing on the iC2 thread about how they changed an obsidian recipe and 'didnt tell him'. Does Covert Jaguar know that TE3 now makes his HP boilers now ridiculously easy to get?

Either way, its obviously the TE3 recipe changes a lot of other mods. But... in a few months people will look at the railcraft recipe as 'ridiculous and too weak, its tedious' when they get used to the easy TE3 steel recipe.

Again if this isnt power creep, I dont know what is.

Well, that's a bit disingenuous. TE doesn't add a 4 charoal + 1 iron = steel recipe. It does *allow* for it in the Induction Smelter. Which of course requires Invar, which requires a Pulverizer, which requires caving to the point where you've either found Ferrous (at which point you have likely found Diamond), in addition to Gold and Redstone (hint: you have likely found Diamond), and have to build the power infrastructure as well.

Oh yeah, and there's the matter of the other thing - it's an optional recipe, and unless something was misconfigured in the last patch (I am human), it's not even enabled by default!

So, maybe calm down?

 

[KirinDave]

So many mods provide alternative steel recepies, many even pre-date Railcraft. Why is Railcraft mod that decides the standard?

And (edit: as KL ninja'd me) you're ignoring all the machine costs.

 

[zorn]

Well, that's a bit disingenuous. TE doesn't add a 4 charoal + 1 iron = steel recipe. It does *allow* for it in the Induction Smelter. Which of course requires Invar, which requires a Pulverizer, which requires caving to the point where you've either found Ferrous (at which point you have likely found Diamond), in addition to Gold and Redstone (hint: you have likely found Diamond), and have to build the power infrastructure as well.

Oh yeah, and there's the matter of the other thing - it's an optional recipe, and unless something was misconfigured in the last patch (I am human), it's not even enabled by default!

So, maybe calm down?

Ahh, I thoguht it was the crafting recipe i saw, that was UE. With induction smelter it is more balanced. My mistake.

 

[KirinDave]

Ahh, I thoguht it was the crafting recipe i saw, that was UE. With induction smelter it is more balanced. My mistake.

The UE recepie is bad, deprecated, and disabled in competenly configured packs.

 

[zorn]

The UE recepie is bad, deprecated, and disabled in competenly configured packs.

Its somewhere i saw, my mistake thinking TE3 added the same recipe. I missed that it was an induction smelter recipe.

Still, its another thing that most people relied on railcraft for that is now handled by TE3. Item pipes, now can make steel. Ive read mod authors on minecraftforum.net posts that get suggestions and say "that is really handled already by XYZ mod so I dont want to just replicate what they did and step on their toes."

I can understand that not every mod author has to do this, but i would also imagine a lot of mod authors love seeing their creation used more often. by replacing other mods with easier options, it draws people to your mods. Like bomb bloke said... the answre is always 'well tis better for server lag'. yeah, right. Fixing server lag now coincides with offering easier options? Big surprise.

As one person said somewhere... give TE3 a quarry type device and a tree farm and you have a stand alone mod. You cant tell me there isnt competition going on here, can you?

It doesnt really matter if TE3 goes for a total conversion type mod idea, but it does suck when people start assuming the easier options from other mods are inferior JUST because they are more expensive. If you put a crafting recipe with coal and iron in the game, over time people will start to think even the TE3 recipe is tedious. Can you tell me its not true? People adjust to what they are playing and suddenly yesterdays 'easy' becomes today's 'tedious'.

 

[Dorque]

Except railcraft requires getting blaze rods. In another post you said getting to the nether is hardly a thing... do you play on Easy difficulty? Because I normally play on Hard and I dont see anyone hitting a nether fortress on Hard in 5 minutes of play. Youre just trying to dismiss an opposing argument with bad evidence. No one gets to the nether in 5 minutes, and even if you did... you going into a nether fortress naked? The TE recipe is absolutely stronger than making steel in railcraft.

I had hoped it would be obvious that "5 minutes" was facetious hyperbole; but to clarify, it was facetious hyperbole.

That being said, with a bit of luck I'm usually in the nether between 30m-1h if I want to be, in a full suit of iron armour. It doesn't actually take that long to either find three diamonds and mine 10 obsidian, or to gather 10 buckets of lava and cast a portal. A fortress will likely take a bit longer to find and be a bit more difficult than normal in vanilla armour, but not that much more so, and with the vanilla magma cream recipe using slime plus those blaze flowers, it's not even necessary at this point. Of course, I could certainly see your point if you were to point out that the flowers mess up progression, which they do, but once you've found a fortress it's not too hard to smack the rods out of a few blazes. Nether brick no longer really gates anything since it can be crafted from netherrack; which as of 1.6 was doable in Vanilla, so it's hard to about mods making things easier there.

I do understand where you're coming from, I just... well, honestly, I played WoW for six years and I was sick of "balance" discussions by partway through the first, and that was for a single game with one dev team. MC is not even close to that, in so very many ways.

 

[King Lemming]

Its somewhere i saw, my mistake thinking TE3 added the same recipe. I missed that it was an induction smelter recipe.

Still, its another thing that most people relied on railcraft for that is now handled by TE3. Item pipes, now can make steel. Ive read mod authors on minecraftforum.net posts that get suggestions and say "that is really handled already by XYZ mod so I dont want to just replicate what they did and step on their toes."

I can understand that not every mod author has to do this, but i would also imagine a lot of mod authors love seeing their creation used more often. by replacing other mods with easier options, it draws people to your mods. Like bomb bloke said... the answre is always 'well tis better for server lag'. yeah, right. Fixing server lag now coincides with offering easier options? Big surprise.

As one person said somewhere... give TE3 a quarry type device and a tree farm and you have a stand alone mod. You cant tell me there isnt competition going on here, can you?

It doesnt really matter if TE3 goes for a total conversion type mod idea, but it does suck when people start assuming the easier options from other mods are inferior JUST because they are more expensive. If you put a crafting recipe with coal and iron in the game, over time people will start to think even the TE3 recipe is tedious. Can you tell me its not true? People adjust to what they are playing and suddenly yesterdays 'easy' becomes today's 'tedious'.

You're confusing ease with intuitiveness. Dirt-To-Diamond exists. It's obviously way way easier. It isn't used. The draw of a mod isn't the ease, it's how it all fits together. If I added a quarry to TE, and it were objectively worse than BC's quarry in every way (used more power, slower, more expensive to build), I guarantee you there would be a lot of people that would prefer it. Not because the BC one is bad, either - it isn't. It's highly optimized, in fact.

However, a lot of people would migrate to it simply because it's part of the TE tech tree and fits into the tech progression. It would be polished and work as expected.

And no, there is no competition here. There's no secret plan to kill other mods. I don't have the inclination or time to do so. I code things that I want to play. I'm highly aware of power creep and thematic imbalance, that's why RSA is a standalone and not part of TE - it doesn't *quite* fit with the theme, and some people just don't enjoy having tools that powerful in their world.

 

[zorn]

I had hoped it would be obvious that "5 minutes" was facetious hyperbole; but to clarify, it was facetious hyperbole.

That being said, with a bit of luck I'm usually in the nether between 30m-1h if I want to be, in a full suit of iron armour. It doesn't actually take that long to either find three diamonds and mine 10 obsidian, or to gather 10 buckets of lava and cast a portal. A fortress will likely take a bit longer to find and be a bit more difficult than normal in vanilla armour, but not that much more so, and with the vanilla magma cream recipe using slime plus those blaze flowers, it's not even necessary at this point. Of course, I could certainly see your point if you were to point out that the flowers mess up progression, which they do, but once you've found a fortress it's not too hard to smack the rods out of a few blazes. Nether brick no longer really gates anything since it can be crafted from netherrack; which as of 1.6 was doable in Vanilla, so it's hard to about mods making things easier there.

I do understand where you're coming from, I just... well, honestly, I played WoW for six years and I was sick of "balance" discussions by partway through the first, and that was for a single game with one dev team. MC is not even close to that, in so very many ways.

yeah i was wrong on the steel recipe anyway. Funny one of my players spent 5 years playing everquest, he credits WoW with ruining game balance and making MMOs too easy.

Mostly im not even concerned about tiny balance arguments. its easy to get into them but really, Ultimate pack was really 'easy gregtech mode' with things like soul shards and EE3 to help you along, but it was still a ton of fun. My issue really is that other packs seem to go from early game to end game in just a week or two of playing. Id just like to stretch that out. Is the TE3 steel recipe really easier than railcraft? I only cared when I thought it was a crafting recipe. if the induction smelter was easier than a blast furnace, it wouldnt relaly bother me at all. if anything it only bugs me IF the mod devs do it purposely to get more fans and eliminate other mods. probably not, but hey... do any of us really know what goes on behind the scenes?

Anyway, im just looking for the game to still have things to do a month or two into a world and not have to dream up crazy goals on my own to have things to try and do. An iron castle is fun... but if that is the ONLY way i can spend my iron, i dont find that fun. Thats why im going to try adding ic2 and gregtech to magic farm2. And enable gregtech recipes. If that doesnt keep me busy for a few months, nothing will.

 

[Dorque]

yeah i was wrong on the steel recipe anyway. Funny one of my players spent 5 years playing everquest, he credits WoW with ruining game balance and making MMOs too easy.

Mostly im not even concerned about tiny balance arguments. its easy to get into them but really, Ultimate pack was really 'easy gregtech mode' with things like soul shards and EE3 to help you along, but it was still a ton of fun. My issue really is that other packs seem to go from early game to end game in just a week or two of playing. Id just like to stretch that out. Is the TE3 steel recipe really easier than railcraft? I only cared when I thought it was a crafting recipe. if the induction smelter was easier than a blast furnace, it wouldnt relaly bother me at all. if anything it only bugs me IF the mod devs do it purposely to get more fans and eliminate other mods. probably not, but hey... do any of us really know what goes on behind the scenes?

Anyway, im just looking for the game to still have things to do a month or two into a world and not have to dream up crazy goals on my own to have things to try and do. An iron castle is fun... but if that is the ONLY way i can spend my iron, i dont find that fun. Thats why im going to try adding ic2 and gregtech to magic farm2. And enable gregtech recipes. If that doesnt keep me busy for a few months, nothing will.

Get into bee/tree breeding once the bugs with Binnie's Mods are sorted out, and don't use wikis or NEI to do it. That's how I kept myself busy for the last couple months we played Unleashed.

If anything, I think the ready availability of guides, wikis, videos and mod cheat sheets is the bigger part of what kills it for people, rather than mod progression itself.

Just to clarify that a bit - I feel that much of the time, people ruin their own experience by powering through content and then complain about a lack of content.

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[Golrith]

Excuse me zorn, but some of your attitude I agree with, but other times, you come across as a jerk. I know name calling is frowned upon here (and I might get a warning for it - sorry mods), but jeez, reign in that attitude. You have at times this personal holy crusade to bash TE3 and anyone who doesn't think like you at every opportunity. THAT is getting tedious...

Since when does any mod have to play nicely with any other mod? It doesn't. The fact that many a mod author spends their valuable time offering cross mod support/compatibility/balance/whatever should be welcome with high praise.

So TE machines can produce steel? So what? So can Mekanism, Tinkers, and others. Turn on the steel option in the TE config, suddenly that machine that can make steel needs steel to craft - well, bummer. You'll need to find another way.
Even on default recipes, I think it would still be quicker and cheaper to make a Railcraft Blast Furnace then to get all the infrastructure for the TE approach. As mentioned you frequently just look at one recipe, without considering all the infrastructure needed for that recipe.


It's a simple fact that in MC you'll gain an excess of resources with nothing to use them on. This is common in all games that have some form of resource gathering. An Iron Castle now isn't very ambitious is it? Make it out of Diamonds.
TE3 has 2 configurable options to increase difficulty. Gears in crafting recipes, and Steel for Machine Blocks. I even put a request of yours to KL in the TE topic about configurable power usage, and he said he might consider it.

If you go further, there is also the CoFH World gen, you can define the ores to your tastes. Too much iron? Reduce it's generation. That's more time spent mining and more time making sure you don't waste any iron. Nowadays the modders have given us a lot of config options and tools to turn this sandbox into our "dream" environment, just because the mods and modpacks don't match your expectations doesn't mean you can't do something about it yourself - no need to browbeat everyone else constantly that your ideas are the best and that mod X is trying to outdo mod Y.

But, whatever you'll do, you'll always get to the same situation of having excessive resources. It just seems you hate having a lot of resources lying around, so need to artificially increase the cost of all the blocks to make use of those resources. That's one hell of an artificial boring grind (yes, I don't like GregTech recipes, although a few blocks interest me - but not many - but not enough for me to use the mod). You might as well have a mod that cooks ores into nuggets, that'll reduce your resources by 9 times.

 

[Dorque]

You might as well have a mod that cooks ores into nuggets, that'll reduce your resources by 9 times.

That's not actually such a bad idea; kind of an inverse diamonds to dirt. You could also set an option to convert ingots, dust, coal etc in recipes to blocks.

Not that I'd likely ever play it but it'd be a great and fairly universally-applicable mod for those who want to seriously extend their game phases.

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