Okay, first off, I'd like to start out with a gentleman's agreement for this topic, since tempers can flare on this topic:
Like many others, I saw what it did to a lot of recipes, and was rather upset over it and thought it could bring nothing meaningful to the game.
I was wrong.
Once you get past the Artificial Difficulty, there's a surprising amount of 'meat' to this mod, and not all of it is end-game (although there's quite a bit of that here). Furthermore, all of the Artificial Difficulty can be disabled in the config settings. What is left is... well... pretty entertaining, actually.
The IC2 Addon forum post's title is:
GregTech-Addon: Taking Industry to a whole new Level of complexity!
And yanno what? That pretty much sums it up. It makes things more complex, but I actually kind of enjoy that, and the trade off is a surprising amount of flexibility in resource gathering.
There's some new blocks which make this possible. Most notably are the Industrial Grinder/Centrifuge/Electrolyzer/Blast Furnace
Yes, it's complicated. It's supposed to be. However, once you get the hang of the system, you've got a lot of really attractive options. Iron and Gold become somewhat-renewable resources, being able to pull iron out of Obsidian and gold out of Lava Cells. You've also got a LOT of alternate recipes which look like the Periodic Table of Elements just had a love affair with a college-level Geology text. Most of these items, however, are byproducts of refining ores using the grinder/electrolyzer/centrifuge. And a lot of these changed recipes are actually *easier* to get going than the original recipes themselves!
There's also several new generators which are rather nice. The Thermal Generator is basically an upgrade to the Geothermal Generator, and produces 50% more EU per lava block consumed, at a slightly higher EU output rate (24 Eu/t vs 20). Then there's the Gas Turbine, which runs on Hydrogen or Methane Cells... which are byproducts of a lot of what you are creating. Basically, renewable resources. It also produces around 16 Eu/t. The Semifluid Generator runs on raw crude Oil as well as Biomass and even Creosote Oil. There's some viable options here.
Of course, there's also the infamous Lightning Rod and the Fusion Reactor for those who want More Power(tm). But that's going to require extensive resources.
There's also the Rock Cutter (NOT to be confused with the Rock Crusher) which is basically a silk-touch diamond drill. This works exceptionally well in your Industrial Grinder to produce quite a few resources.
Jack Hammers seem fairly pointless at first, but the more I began playing with it, the more I liked it. Basically, it's a drill that runs at a very respectable speed and won't go through Ores. Why not? Because you want to use your Rock Cutter on them for more output!
Plus, yanno, there's a whole pile of end-game toys that are basically 'Tier 4' to keep you interested and playing long after you've gotten your Quantum/Gravisuite gear.
This isn't a GregTech Guide (I'm still doing my research on that topic), so I won't go into all of the details here, however I would suggest to anyone who decided that the 1.4.2 version of GregTech needed to go die in a fire... you should really take another look at it, there's a LOT of improvements that were made between 1.4.2 and 1.4.6, and a LOT of alternate ways to get items you want.
- I'm not trying to tell you how to play the game, I'm sharing some discoveries I have made with you.
- Config files are easy to edit. In fact, I even wrote a QuickTip on the topic. Go check it out.
- Please read the post before responding
Like many others, I saw what it did to a lot of recipes, and was rather upset over it and thought it could bring nothing meaningful to the game.
I was wrong.
Once you get past the Artificial Difficulty, there's a surprising amount of 'meat' to this mod, and not all of it is end-game (although there's quite a bit of that here). Furthermore, all of the Artificial Difficulty can be disabled in the config settings. What is left is... well... pretty entertaining, actually.
The IC2 Addon forum post's title is:
GregTech-Addon: Taking Industry to a whole new Level of complexity!
And yanno what? That pretty much sums it up. It makes things more complex, but I actually kind of enjoy that, and the trade off is a surprising amount of flexibility in resource gathering.
There's some new blocks which make this possible. Most notably are the Industrial Grinder/Centrifuge/Electrolyzer/Blast Furnace
Yes, it's complicated. It's supposed to be. However, once you get the hang of the system, you've got a lot of really attractive options. Iron and Gold become somewhat-renewable resources, being able to pull iron out of Obsidian and gold out of Lava Cells. You've also got a LOT of alternate recipes which look like the Periodic Table of Elements just had a love affair with a college-level Geology text. Most of these items, however, are byproducts of refining ores using the grinder/electrolyzer/centrifuge. And a lot of these changed recipes are actually *easier* to get going than the original recipes themselves!
There's also several new generators which are rather nice. The Thermal Generator is basically an upgrade to the Geothermal Generator, and produces 50% more EU per lava block consumed, at a slightly higher EU output rate (24 Eu/t vs 20). Then there's the Gas Turbine, which runs on Hydrogen or Methane Cells... which are byproducts of a lot of what you are creating. Basically, renewable resources. It also produces around 16 Eu/t. The Semifluid Generator runs on raw crude Oil as well as Biomass and even Creosote Oil. There's some viable options here.
Of course, there's also the infamous Lightning Rod and the Fusion Reactor for those who want More Power(tm). But that's going to require extensive resources.
There's also the Rock Cutter (NOT to be confused with the Rock Crusher) which is basically a silk-touch diamond drill. This works exceptionally well in your Industrial Grinder to produce quite a few resources.
Jack Hammers seem fairly pointless at first, but the more I began playing with it, the more I liked it. Basically, it's a drill that runs at a very respectable speed and won't go through Ores. Why not? Because you want to use your Rock Cutter on them for more output!
Plus, yanno, there's a whole pile of end-game toys that are basically 'Tier 4' to keep you interested and playing long after you've gotten your Quantum/Gravisuite gear.
This isn't a GregTech Guide (I'm still doing my research on that topic), so I won't go into all of the details here, however I would suggest to anyone who decided that the 1.4.2 version of GregTech needed to go die in a fire... you should really take another look at it, there's a LOT of improvements that were made between 1.4.2 and 1.4.6, and a LOT of alternate ways to get items you want.