Request Looking for critique on my mod pack design document

[Tianyulong]

The pack itself is nowhere near stable, but I have a fairly extensive design document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GHMjX_K_wJWe-WULCpXfxfL8Ha14cz9acpissFXIIuI/edit?usp=sharing. The basic premise of this pack, called Vanilla Foundation, is somewhere in between a vanilla+ pack and a kitchen sink. It's designed to have as many features as possible, while still being balanced around the base game. Modded minecraft staples such as RF and a minimap are deliberately absent, forcing you to experiment with lesser-used options.

Based on this, are there any features you'd like me to add to this modpack? Anything in the design document you think should be removed, or altered? I would really appreciate some feedback!

 

[Senseidragon]

It looks like an interesting idea. Though when I personally tried to add Betweenlands and Aether at the same time, I couldn't get a world to properly generate. Did you have to change one of those two mod configs?

 

[Tianyulong]

It looks like an interesting idea. Though when I personally tried to add Betweenlands and Aether at the same time, I couldn't get a world to properly generate. Did you have to change one of those two mod configs?

Hmm what do you mean by generate properly? I didn't have any problems with the two of them together, but I tweaked some Betweenlands biome ids to avoid conflict with another mod.

 

[Senseidragon]

It's kind of wierd. The game loads to the main screen, I see the Betweenlands main menu. I select single player world, create a "realistic" terrain, create world. It does the "creating terrain" bit, then instead of dropping into the game, I get the main menu again, but this time with the Aether main menu, and creating/entering the world just hangs the game. I've tried it with a default world, realistic world, flat world, customized world --- every time I get the same thing. If I take out Aether, everything loads fine. If I put it back in, it pops up right after world creation.

 

[Senseidragon]

Clarification: Upon further testing, I made a fresh pack with Just Aether, Betweenlands and Foamfix. I started a new singleplayer world, got the same thing. The "Aether" main menu pops up after the world is created. Hitting ESC makes the Aether menu go away, to apparently no ill effect. It's just a wierd, confusing, and unexpected behavior.\

Edit again: Apparently it's a reported bug in Aether II. There has been no action yet to resolve the bug, and it only happens on new world creation. Once you get past it the first time, you're fine.

 

[Tianyulong]

Wait you're using Aether II? That would explain why I'm not having the problem; I'm using Aether: Legacy which is a different mod. Aether: Legacy is a port of the original Aether mod, and while it has less features, it's more stable then Aether II

 

[Senseidragon]

Sorry, I meant Aether Legacy.

 

[Senseidragon]

My apologies, I didn't mean to derail your thread with this Aether Legacy stuff. But your original post prompted me to test out a set of mods similar to what you have in your design document when I encountered this strange behavior.

I'm also losing access to the F3 debug screen when Aether Legacy is loaded. Are you not seeing any of these issues?
I'm using the latest (as of this post, anyway) aether_legacy-1.10.2-1.4.jar

Edit: Also, just so I could rule out any other possible mod being responsible, I tried just Aether Legacy with no other mods installed at all. Same thing happens.

I know you aren't the Aether Legacy tech support. I'm just bringing it up as something to know about that mod. I'm very curious to know if you see any similar behaviors on a newly created world using the 1.4 version of that mod.

 

[Tianyulong]

My apologies, I didn't mean to derail your thread with this Aether Legacy stuff. But your original post prompted me to test out a set of mods similar to what you have in your design document when I encountered this strange behavior.

I'm also losing access to the F3 debug screen when Aether Legacy is loaded. Are you not seeing any of these issues?
I'm using the latest (as of this post, anyway) aether_legacy-1.10.2-1.4.jar

Edit: Also, just so I could rule out any other possible mod being responsible, I tried just Aether Legacy with no other mods installed at all. Same thing happens.

I know you aren't the Aether Legacy tech support. I'm just bringing it up as something to know about that mod. I'm very curious to know if you see any similar behaviors on a newly created world using the 1.4 version of that mod.

Yeah, the 1.4 version is unfortunately broken. I'm still on 1.3 for that very reason, 1.4 came out very recently so I assume it'll be patched soon. Do you have any other feedback about the modpack? Mods I should add or remove, tweaks I should make, change, or are unnecessary?

 

[Senseidragon]

I see the Aether guy is working on a hotfix. I will re-use that mod when the fix is in. As for other mods, I wasn't seeing too many technical issues but when I brought the pack up on a server, quintessential creatures crashed the instance. In single-player this doesn't happen.

 

[Senseidragon]

I assume railcraft is in for carts and trains, not so much for power generation, right?

 

[Senseidragon]

The whole "working without energy" thing is interesting, it'll take some time to see how far I can get before I hit a roadblock.

 

[Tianyulong]

I see the Aether guy is working on a hotfix. I will re-use that mod when the fix is in. As for other mods, I wasn't seeing too many technical issues but when I brought the pack up on a server, quintessential creatures crashed the instance. In single-player this doesn't happen.

Yeah, this is a known issue with that mod. I'm removing it from the pack, hopefully they'll get around to making it server compatible at some point. An unrelated note; I also decided to remove Realistic Terrain Generation. As much as I love the mod, it's such a huge performance hog, especially in biomes with huge trees like its roofed forest. The only use I had for BiomeTweaker was to make BOP and RTG work together, so I've removed that as well.

I assume railcraft is in for carts and trains, not so much for power generation, right?

Actually, I first added it because I really liked the decorative blocks. I'm still exploring all the features this mod adds, which is especially irritating since many of these features have not yet been ported from 1.7. My current plan is to remove machines using rf or the charge system the mod adds, but keep machines that use items as fuel, like the Blast Furnace and Steam Boiler.

Thank you so much for the help by the way

 

[Senseidragon]

Ok, removing RTG and BiomeTweaker from my end as well then. Have you looked at LittleTiles and CreativeCore (supporting mod for LittleTiles) as an addition or replacement for Chisels & Bits? It sort of does the same thing, but in a different way, and you can make functional parts (like doors/trapdoors) that open and close.

Here's the link for their YouTube Trailer if you've not seen it:

 

[Senseidragon]

I also tried Animania, and wanted badly to like it, but at least the last time I tested it, breeding was still not fully implemented for all creatures. It also isn't compatible with mods like "Logical Drops", which I tend to use to reduce the need for larger animal farms (and thus reduce entity lag and noise). But that's more of a personal preference. Logical Drops just increases (configurable) how much meat/leather/feathers/bones/whatever drop from mobs. The author's take on it being that getting 1 piece of meat from a cow seemed rather unrealistic. By increasing that, you reduce the need to maintain a large herd of cattle just to keep your food supply up. Since you also have Spice of Life installed, people can't just eat steak all day and not worry about it, they still need to make different types of meals. This just makes it less tedious to gather the "non-tofu" proteins.

You might decide it isn't your thing, or you might tweak the configs more to suit your sense of balance, or disregard the mod altogether. Whatever you decide is fine with me.

 

[Tianyulong]

Eh, I don't really see the need for Logical Drops in this pack. As I said earlier I want to keep most of Vanilla's balance intact, and Logical Drops changes that significantly. I know its configurable, but I'm comfortable with vanilla drop rates (for the most part, V-tweaks makes some changes like Endermen always dropping ender pearls, which I like). For dealing with sounds, Extra Utilities adds that Sound Muffler item, which is pretty cheap (most expensive item is a single piece of redstone for the noteblock). Little Tiles looks interesting, but Chisel & Bits works perfectly well, and for the other features it adds I'd rather just wait for Carpenter's Blocks. Thanks for the suggestions though!

 

[Senseidragon]

Not a problem.