Is Rotarycraft stupidly difficult or am I the stupid one?

[ljfa]

Reika said he can't be sure if some resource which coincidentally has the same name as his is really the same.
Good example is tungsten: There are some mods which add it but if he just oredicted his compound turbine or bedrock breaker recipes then you could skip tiers. People will do this because it's easier to just mine the ore and smelt it as opposed to wrapping their head around how to get the friction heater to 1350 °C.

 

[wolfenstein19]

I made a t5 magnetostatic using no other power sources then magnetostatics. Its not easy, but possible.

 

[Ieldra]

Reika said he can't be sure if some resource which coincidentally has the same name as his is really the same.
Good example is tungsten: There are some mods which add it but if he just oredicted his compound turbine or bedrock breaker recipes then you could skip tiers. People will do this because it's easier to just mine the ore and smelt it as opposed to wrapping their head around how to get the friction heater to 1350 °C.

I know the argument. The thing is, I think consistency is more important than the need to prevent people from skipping tiers. I know I have learned to appreciate a few things I would have never have done without the magnetostatic nerf, but in the end, if it's possible to skip tiers I can still choose not to. It's not an unavoidable problem unless you think there's something fundamentally wrong about it. Which I don't. It's undesirable from a gameplay balance viewpoint but ultimately this is a game where you play your own style, balance is not as important as in competitive games. Meanwhile, every time I have to consider ethanol, I think "ethanol is a real-world compound, there aren't any crystals at room temperature, and if two functionally different things are called ethanol that makes no sense."

(And I can only hope that Reika's response to this is not "OK, then from now on ethanol crystals must be stored at -114 C or lower")

 

[wolfenstein19]

I think consistency is more important than the need to prevent people from skipping tiers

I don't believe thats true but I guess thats down to opinion.

 

[PonyKuu]

Many mods have a similar philosophy. "You want to use advanced machine X from my mod? You need to build some other infrastructure from my mod at least once." I don't see a problem with that. You can, for instance, go through the tech tree and build a tier 5 magnetostatic that provides as much power to your RoC extractor as a gas turbine, and the only other thing you need is a grinder to make lubricant with materials supplied by Forestry bees or a canola farm run by Thaumcraft golems. So really, you don't need to keep an RoC infrastructure with all the pesky ethanol and jet fuel production, but you need it once to make what you want.
Where I agree with you are those cases where tech gating gets in the way of cross-mod consistency. Tungsten and ethanol being the primary examples. It plainly offends my world-builder's sense of consistency, to say nothing of the realism that is often used to argue in RotaryCraft's favor, that the RoC variants are not interchangable with those of other mods, and I do question Reika's priorities here. Steel is another example, though it's not often brought up since it's so much easier to make in RotaryCraft, and there is a config setting to make it available as steel to other mods.

My main complaint is exactly about cross-mod consistency, yes, because if you want to use some power converting stuff (such as Magnetostatic engine) you probably have another power network as your main network and probably don't want to use RoC power generation, so why limit it that hard?
I agree that it's not as hard as gregging the whole modpack with gregtech basically requiring you to play mostly gregtech, but it's kinda a step in that direction.
As for steel, I'm saying that I'd rather convert it vice versa and there's no machine that does that, so I feel like "why would you even do that?"
Kinda same for fuel -> jet, because you still have to use all the complicated stuff and also refined fuel which is no easier than make automatic ethanol farm...

I think evidence suggests that Reika doesn't dislike the RF system, with how much support for it was added lately. RF cable and turbine generators come to mind, and making magnetostatics tiered actually made them more useful than before, even if they became harder to make, and harder to run with v25. He just doesn't like it if people use it to bypass part of RotaryCraft's tech tree.

Well, it feels like a sign that RoC power IS inconvenient to use without other mods and conversions :/

I don't believe thats true but I guess thats down to opinion.

That's down to your opinion. We don't usually play mods, we play modpacks and the greatest thing today is mod integration, not staying away from other mods and fighting the players. If they feel that your mod is awesome and they like its progression, they'll use it anyways. If they only want to use some stuff from your mod, why force them do lots of other stuff they don't want to use or make? And for me it's even more weird to add some sort of material that's only used for upgrading the engine. That's just meh.

 

[wolfenstein19]

That's down to your opinion. We don't usually play mods, we play modpacks and the greatest thing today is mod integration, not staying away from other mods and fighting the players. If they feel that your mod is awesome and they like its progression, they'll use it anyways. If they only want to use some stuff from your mod, why force them do lots of other stuff they don't want to use or make? And for me it's even more weird to add some sort of material that's only used for upgrading the engine. That's just meh.

Thats where balance comes in. Alot of people want to play a balanced modpack experience. That doesn't mean they wont abuse the shit out of loopholes that are created by x-mod interaction. Thats why modpack creators usually use tools such as minetweaker and modtweaker to fix these things. I would consider it imbalanced if you subtracted the tiering system from RC.

 

[Ieldra]

My main complaint is exactly about cross-mod consistency, yes, because if you want to use some power converting stuff (such as Magnetostatic engine) you probably have another power network as your main network and probably don't want to use RoC power generation, so why limit it that hard?

Well, in principle that part is not so different from mods like IC2. If you want to use an advanced IC2 machine, you need to create some IC2 infrastructure to make it and power it with EC which either needs a power converter or an IC2 power generator. The difference, as of v25 of Reika's mods, is that you don't need an IC2 production facility for power converters to work (as you do now in RoC with canola). I agree that the last step is extreme and steps beyond power conversion requirements of other tech mods, except for GregTech maybe which I don't know.

Well, it feels like a sign that RoC power IS inconvenient to use without other mods and conversions :/

RoC power generation isn't inconvenient (well ok, there is jet fuel but that's not the point). RoC power transmission is. For that reason locally generated power dedicated to specific facilities works well with RotaryCraft. You transport the fuel, not the power. Compact bases are quite possible with RoC only power. Things become inconvenient over long distances and across dimensions, and in environments where power requirements change fast. That's where other mods come in. I don't think Reika is a purist in this. As you say, we play modpacks and every mod has its role, and using other mods for those things RoC doesn't do well is a matter of course, and preferable to compromising RoC's design philosophy which is about mechanically-transmitted power.

 

[Pyure]

Look guys, maybe he wasn't right, but all this trashtalk looks really ugly. Is it a "Praise Reika" party or something like that?
It looks like every guy who says that RC is too complex is getting flamed to death with all that "LOL YOU TOO STOOPID" crap. Yes, suggesting to switch to RF is kinda stupid idea, but if the mod often called "overcomplicated", maybe there are reasons for that.
I guess, one of the issues I have with it is "false realism" when some stuff is claimed realistic, while it's not. Reika likes to justify something with realism, while there are lots of stuff that's clearly not realistic. Example: ethanol crystals. I guess you can crystallize ethanol somehow (not even sure), but I doubt that it's an easy thing and it's definitely not the way you get ethanol naturally.
There are also stuff that's not designed good well enough. Example: steel purifier. AFAIR, RotaryCraft steel is the easiest to make and it's used the most, so why would you ever use the purifier adding another step in steel production?
Other example: magnetostatic nerf. Let's put it straight - some people want to use complicated RC power system, some find it tedious and not really interested in. Forcing the latter to use more of RC won't make them happy. Basically I see it as "U PLAY THE MOD NOT THE WAY I WANT U TO!?!!"
The power network itself was discussed quite a lot, so I won't address it. Though, it's funny how often you see magnetostatic engines in Reikas video tour (if I'm not mistaking it with some other vid).

Good counter-arguments, except for even considering that the power system is over-complicated. It is what it is, and nobody is forced to use it.

Moving on in support: RoC has always had a bit of self-indulgence to it.

Its steel is better than your steel, so, we can use RoC steel in everything, but you'll need to pay (Steel Purifier) to use your other steels in RoC.

Likewise, its energy system is more sensible than your energy system, so we can get into yours for free (turbine dynamo; name escapes me), but you have to pay considerably more time to get into RoC's energy system (tiered magnetostatics).

Reika refuses to implement "portals" on the basis of reality, however portals are already canon and realistic in Minecraftia; worse, the mods infrastructure acknowledges this and uses them (in interesting ways, needs to be said).

Its a dangerous tangent I haven't really seen glimmers of since particularly turbulent GT days. But it was still a lot of fun before I got a bit fed up with the whole thing and moved on.

Well, in principle that part is not so different from mods like IC2. If you want to use an advanced IC2 machine, you need to create some IC2 infrastructure to make it and power it with EC which either needs a power converter or an IC2 power generator. The difference, as of v25 of Reika's mods, is that you don't need an IC2 production facility for power converters to work (as you do now in RoC with canola). I agree that the last step is extreme and steps beyond power conversion requirements of other tech mods, except for GregTech maybe which I don't know.

I might be mis-reading you here. Apologies if so.

On the basis of how I interpret that, I disagree: traditionally, mod makers stay out of each other's business. If I want to power a BC machine with a an IC2 power grid, I slap down an Electric Engine or two and call it a day. Am I potentially skipping past some BC progression of some sort? Possibly. Who cares? The BC team shouldn't and doesn't care how other mods interface with theirs. Keep your balance to your own mod and leave others out of it.

 

[Pyure]

Thats where balance comes in. Alot of people want to play a balanced modpack experience. That doesn't mean they wont abuse the shit out of loopholes that are created by x-mod interaction. Thats why modpack creators usually use tools such as minetweaker and modtweaker to fix these things.

Agreed, except that Reika does not permit public packs to mod-tweak his mods. (Except in very narrow circumstances. I had a discussion with Reika in which he agreed that a tweak to the entry-level block of RoC, the blast furnace, could undergo certain minetweaks without breaking his rules)

I would consider it imbalanced if you subtracted the tiering system from RC.

Out of curiousity, do you consider it imbalanced that the rest of the conversion blocks are not tiered?

Conversely, would you still consider it imbalanced if a modpack maker took a single magnetostatic block and minetweaked its requirements?[DOUBLEPOST=1409146065][/DOUBLEPOST]

Reika said he can't be sure if some resource which coincidentally has the same name as his is really the same.
Good example is tungsten: There are some mods which add it but if he just oredicted his compound turbine or bedrock breaker recipes then you could skip tiers. People will do this because it's easier to just mine the ore and smelt it as opposed to wrapping their head around how to get the friction heater to 1350 °C.

This is a prime example of where modders typically stay out of each other's business.

Worrying about overlapping ores is the privilege of pack makers. Let them sort it out. I could make a mod that drops 1000 iron ore every time I kill a zombie; as another modder, you shouldn't be stressing about this and putting code in place to counterbalance bizarre ore economies.

 

[ljfa]

if it's possible to skip tiers I can still choose not to. It's not an unavoidable problem unless you think there's something fundamentally wrong about it. Which I don't. It's undesirable from a gameplay balance viewpoint but ultimately this is a game where you play your own style, balance is not as important as in competitive games.

Reika once said that almost every RoC guide began with "make a magnetostatic engine". Most of the people didn't want to bother with gearboxes and stuff because shaft power is by design more inconvenient than RF. I can understand both why people think that way and why Reika decided to nerf magnetostatics.

The conversion ratio is approximately 1 RF = 5628 J. But the problem is that RoC machines and engines scale logarithmically. A gasoline engine produces an equivalent 11.6 RF/t, a microturbine 372 RF/t, a gas turbine 11924 RF/t, a reactor millions. Maybe a logarithmic approach would be better as well, but it woud be very counter-intuitive.

Btw the whole ethanol crystals thing doesn't make sense to me either. Strictly speaking the slurries and solutions from the extractor should also be liquids (like in Mekanism).

 

[Pyure]

Reika once said that almost every RoC guide began with "make a magnetostatic engine". Most of the people didn't want to bother with gearboxes and stuff because shaft power is by design more inconvenient than RF. I can understand both why people think that way and why Reika decided to nerf magnetostatics.

He's right, and it sucked. Badly.

But the problem was never with RoC. The problem was that many people who used RoC were also using RF-based mods, and those people already had very strong comfort levels with RF.

 

[Bigpak]

I will be quite honest with you, I am extremely glad he nerfed magnetostatic engines as I would have used those in the first place and never would have gotten to explore the power part of rotarycraft. I still haven't made a magnetostatic engine yet as I am still finding amazing ways to use the other engines.

 

[PonyKuu]

Thats where balance comes in. Alot of people want to play a balanced modpack experience. That doesn't mean they wont abuse the shit out of loopholes that are created by x-mod interaction. Thats why modpack creators usually use tools such as minetweaker and modtweaker to fix these things. I would consider it imbalanced if you subtracted the tiering system from RC.

No, it won't be "imbalanced". It doesn't create any infinite loops or stuff like that, it just allows you to convert RF to RoC power. You still have to scale your RF production using other mods and still have to invest in power. The only question is whether the conversion ration good or bad.

Well, in principle that part is not so different from mods like IC2. If you want to use an advanced IC2 machine, you need to create some IC2 infrastructure to make it and power it with EC which either needs a power converter or an IC2 power generator. The difference, as of v25 of Reika's mods, is that you don't need an IC2 production facility for power converters to work (as you do now in RoC with canola). I agree that the last step is extreme and steps beyond power conversion requirements of other tech mods, except for GregTech maybe which I don't know.

It's not the end of the world of course, but still kinda defeats the purpose of making energy convertors.

RoC power generation isn't inconvenient (well ok, there is jet fuel but that's not the point). RoC power transmission is. For that reason locally generated power dedicated to specific facilities works well with RotaryCraft. You transport the fuel, not the power. Compact bases are quite possible with RoC only power. Things become inconvenient over long distances and across dimensions, and in environments where power requirements change fast. That's where other mods come in. I don't think Reika is a purist in this. As you say, we play modpacks and every mod has its role, and using other mods for those things RoC doesn't do well is a matter of course, and preferable to compromising RoC's design philosophy which is about mechanically-transmitted power.

Yeah, that's what I meant. And yes, using mods together is the way to go, and that's why restricting such interactions is kinda meh.

Good counter-arguments, except for even considering that the power system is over-complicated. It is what it is, and nobody is forced to use it.

Well yeah, it is what it is, but it's not really convenient as discussed above.

Moving on in support: RoC has always had a bit of self-indulgence to it.

Its steel is better than your steel, so, we can use RoC steel in everything, but you'll need to pay (Steel Purifier) to use your other steels in RoC.

Likewise, its energy system is more sensible than your energy system, so we can get into yours for free (turbine dynamo; name escapes me), but you have to pay considerably more time to get into RoC's energy system (tiered magnetostatics).

Reika refuses to implement "portals" on the basis of reality, however portals are already canon and realistic in Minecraftia; worse, the mods infrastructure acknowledges this and uses them (in interesting ways, needs to be said).

Its a dangerous tangent I haven't really seen glimmers of since particularly turbulent GT days. But it was still a lot of fun before I got a bit fed up with the whole thing and moved on.

Huh, that's an interesting point and I think I do agree with it

On the basis of how I interpret that, I disagree: traditionally, mod makers stay out of each other's business. If I want to power a BC machine with a an IC2 power grid, I slap down an Electric Engine or two and call it a day. Am I potentially skipping past some BC progression of some sort? Possibly. Who cares? The BC team shouldn't and doesn't care how other mods interface with theirs. Keep your balance to your own mod and leave others out of it.

Hm. I think you are explaining stuff way better than I do [DOUBLEPOST=1409147354][/DOUBLEPOST]

He's right, and it sucked. Badly.

But the problem was never with RoC. The problem was that many people who used RoC were also using RF-based mods, and those people already had very strong comfort levels with RF.

Or with the people who write those guides

 

[Pyure]

I will be quite honest with you, I am extremely glad he nerfed magnetostatic engines as I would have used those in the first place and never would have gotten to explore the power part of rotarycraft. I still haven't made a magnetostatic engine yet as I am still finding amazing ways to use the other engines.

While I don't think the tiering was necessary with regards to RF, its absolutely fantastic within the confines of the mod itself. I wish other components of the mod used the same principal, rather than (just) conversion blocks.

 

[Bigpak]

While I don't think the tiering was necessary with regards to RF, its absolutely fantastic within the confines of the mod itself. I wish other components of the mod used the same principal, rather than (just) conversion blocks.

I just feel that it would have gotten boring if I was using magnetostatic engines for everything than rather using different engines for different applications.

 

[PonyKuu]

Actually, TBH, I do think sometimes that some parts are too easy in the modded minecraft.
For example, railroads and any means of long-range transport are actually dead because we can teleport using Mystcraft or other teleporting things. There's no place for planes in the game, because flying is easier using powersuits or jetpacks. Imagine how cool would be such stuff?
Actually, all these problems can be solved with self-regulations or additional home-made rules, I guess, but that makes them very uncommon. AFAIK, vanilla guys had sophisticated railway systems using "booster" glitch, minecart dispensers and stuff like that. I've seen some of that stuff on yt and that was really awesome...

 

[Bigpak]

Actually, TBH, I do think sometimes that some parts are too easy in the modded minecraft.
For example, railroads and any means of long-range transport are actually dead because we can teleport using Mystcraft or other teleporting things. There's no place for planes in the game, because flying is easier using powersuits or jetpacks. Imagine how cool would be such stuff?
Actually, all these problems can be solved with self-regulations or additional home-made rules, I guess, but that makes them very uncommon. AFAIK, vanilla guys had sophisticated railway systems using "booster" glitch, minecart dispensers and stuff like that. I've seen some of that stuff on yt and that was really awesome...

You have no hope do you? :3 I actually build things instead of teleporting around constantly, I really do enjoy building railway networks with railcraft. And from what I have seen there is planes on flans mod which I do have installed and I haven't touched it yet but I really am interested in building a biplane for means of transportation however there is also archimedes ships which I use for exploration currently. It really is all up to the player how they want to do it as there are many many mods that allow the player to play in the play style they want.

 

[Pyure]

I just feel that it would have gotten boring if I was using magnetostatic engines for everything than rather using different engines for different applications.

I agree. My counterargument was that you never had to have RF involved in your world in the first place. ( I suspect you're playing Monster or Horizons)

The problem isn't with RoC, its with how it co-exists with "simpler" energy systems which are more prevalent.

Look at it from another angle: thermal expansion team could have made their conduits more difficult to make in order to balance them against RoC. Suddenly sounds a bit absurd right?

Trying to fix this from the perspective of a single mod is madness.


Fortunately these days a pack maker can look at what mods he or she wants to assemble and modtweak them to get balance. In this instance, you could tweak all TE conduits to use, say, RoC tungsten. Bizarre at a glance, but suddenly you have both balance and progression in place. (Dunno if a lot of people would play that pack though)

 

[dothrom]

TIL:
-Reika gets yelled at for making the extractor because people used unlocked magnetostatics to easy mode power it.
-Reika implements tiered magnetostatics to re-gate his system, and re-balance his mod in the face of mod interactions.
-Reika gets yelled at for 'nerf'ing magnetostatics and re-balancing his mod.

Edit: Also, as to the 'having to scale up RF production, so it was balanced' argument is DOA. RF is ridiculously easy to scale up.

 

[Pyure]

TIL:
-Reika gets yelled at for making the extractor because people used unlocked magnetostatics to easy mode power it.
-Reika implements tiered magnetostatics to re-gate his system, and re-balance his mod in the face of mod interactions.
-Reika gets yelled at for 'nerf'ing magnetostatics and re-balancing his mod.

In a nutshell man.

I don't always get along with the dood but he has considerably more patience than I do.