Main crafting material for a new mod

[SpitefulFox]

So, lets talk about a hypothetical situation where I were to decide to create a Mad Science themed tech mod. This tech mod would probably need some kind of additional crafting material for recipes in order to not stomp all over other mods or vanilla recipes. Some examples would be how Forestry's tech tree revolves around Bronze for recipes, MFR's normal tech tree uses Plastic Sheets, IndustrialCraft uses Refined Iron, Applied Energistics uses Certus Quartz, or IC2, Forestry, AND Redpower 2 all use Tin.

This hypothetical mod which does not and never existed used Cobalt at one point for most crafting components, but Tinkers Construct adds its own Cobalt which is on a vastly different power level. Registering my own Cobalt in the Ore Dictionary would open up a lot of TiConst exploits, but leaving it unregistered would look about as silly as having incompatible stacks of Aluminum globs and Aluminium ingots in the same modpack. * coughs *

So, this leaves me with a few ideas for choices. For one, I could use Plastic as my main material since ray guns and the like always look like plastic toys anyway. With or without an Ore Dictionary entry, this wouldn't really cause major conflicts with MFR since Plastic is meant to be fairly common and easy to make, and with only one mod using it, there's still plenty of room for more recipes. On the other hand, I don't really know enough about how Plastic is made IRL to come up with my own way of making it, and I don't want to just ripoff PlasticCraft or MFR's plastic recipes.

Another idea is to use Titanium. It's a fairly futuristic metal and the only major tech mod I know of that uses Titanium is GregTech. Since I have zero intention of ever balancing my mod against GT, cross-mod balance or recipe conflicts don't concern me there. On the other hand, real-life Titanium requires a fairly complicated process to refine instead of just tossing it into a hot smelter like Iron or Copper Ore. Having smeltable Titanium Ore would annoy the crap out of me and anyone else who knows about the real-life metal.

And, finally, I could just make up a fictional ore and call it Teslium or Galvinite or Nikolum or something. As long as I don't go hog-wild with something like "This mod adds Awesomespitefulite Ore and it makes tools stronger than diamonds!!!!111", it seems like a fairly good idea. On the other hand, having a fictional ore makes it less likely that my mod could use Ore Dictionary to synergize with another mod.

Anyways, what do you all think? Keep in mind that this is purely hypothetical and don't expect this to actually result in a real mod.

 

[DrHexatron]

Vanadium. You could be creative, however like Dartcraft has force.

 

[SpitefulFox]

Vanadium. You could be creative, however like Dartcraft has force.

Can you really call Dartcraft's naming scheme creative? ;P

 

[DrHexatron]

Can you really call Dartcraft's naming scheme creative? ;P

It's creative in the sense that it doesn't actually exist in mythology or in real life. It's just simple, and it describes it well.

 

[RedBoss]

When I think "mad scientist" I never think about what material he uses. I just think that there will be huge machines, live electrical arcs, and possibly smoke.

I'd stick to using the ores that are out there. Possibly just using iron and gold from vanilla and possibly rubber or plastic via mfr (ore compatible therewith).

 

[Flipz]

I, personally, would like the idea of "gel", a substance (or set of substances) crated with chemistry set-style Mad Science. You could get different types of gel through different processes (i.e. smelt to get Hardened Gel, pour into lava to get Fire Gel, pour into water to get Water Gel, electrify to get Lightning Gel, etc. ), and the different types would be used as components for different things.

Also, the storage blocks for gel would be translucent, but could be smelted to create opaque storage blocks.

...I may have thought about this concept before.

 

[SpitefulFox]

When I think "mad scientist" I never think about what material he uses. I just think that there will be huge machines, live electrical arcs, and possibly smoke.

I'd stick to using the ores that are out there. Possibly just using iron and gold from vanilla and possibly rubber or plastic via mfr (ore compatible therewith).

Problem with using Iron and Gold is that they're there for ALL mods to use, so it's very hard not to have conflicts with other mod recipes. And I don't want to just use MFR's rubber/plastic because then my mod would be dependant on having MFR and I may as well just use an API instead of making a standalone mod.

 

[eric167]

It's creative in the sense that it doesn't actually exist in mythology or in real life. It's just simple, and it describes it well.

uh. . . guess youve never heard of legend of zelda. thats the first thing i thought of when i saw the mod.

on topic, titanium seems interesting.
lower tier, "common purpose" machines could use more common materials (iron, tin, etc) and these machines would be focused on getting your titanium proccessing up and running so you can get the better machines, which do the mod-unique stuff/ stuff in a mod-unique way.
i know this wont go anywhere, but thats how i think the implementation should be for the material.
you have a fairly clear progression through the mod, and a clear upgrade path centered around the material.

mostly id like to see a mod that creates neat looking multiblock machines and UIs.
a lot of the current UIs are. . . dull. a couple slots. an arrow. a gauge of some sort. yawn.
ive always liked multiblocks more than monoblock machines. personal choice.

 

[Flipz]

Also, if you're making a mad science mod, I fully expect one or more references to El Goonish Shive.

 

[QKninja]

Hmm, going off the gel idea, how about some ore that you process into a liquid? No ingot/material form. The ore must be processed in an extractor (perhaps made using iron/gold/diamonds/other vanilla stuff) that converts it directly into a liquid. A different machine is uses this liquid for crafting recipes. Higher end tech could process it into different forms to be used for different recipes.

 

[SpitefulFox]

All this talk of mad science and gels kind of reminds me of PlasmaCraft.

 

[casilleroatr]

What about an alloy like Invar? It has precedent in thermal expansion but is only used sparingly in a few recipes. You could add one nickel ore and then you could do somethings with straight up nickel and other things with invar. If you still wanted a cobalt ore but were willing to make it appropriately rare, I also found just now an alloy called kovar which is cobalt and nickel and it sounds pretty interesting on wikipedia, being used in making vacuum tubes, x-ray tubes and other cool stuff. Don't know if that's what your after but just putting it out there.

Spoiler

You could make a mad pvp weapon called cheap jewellery mde of nickel and a silver nugget which gives the "itchy skin" potion effect

 

[PierceSG]

You could also make it so you do not introduce new ores but rather make a new machine that requires different amount of different metals and/or other materials to make an entirely new material!

 

[Brilliance]

You could also make it so you do not introduce new ores but rather make a new machine that requires different amount of different metals and/or other materials to make an entirely new material!

I'm with this one. I really like it when my hypothetical mods revolve around a clever alloy or amalgam rather than adding too much to the already cluttered worldgen.

 

[Emasher]

As others have mentioned, creating a crafting component somehow out of vanilla resources is generally a better option than adding world gen, especially for newer mods. Either using a more obscure recipe, or having a special machine required for making your items will work.

Many people will be put off from installing a mod that requires world gen resources to use if you don't have a retro gen system. It can also be annoying when mining, since a new resouce that you actually want will take up another space in your inventory, and must be handled by automatic systems.

You could also use something like aluminium, which other mods already use, and add an option to disable its generation in the config.

 

[Siro]

Kinda depends on where you'd want to gate your new metal. If you're not sure what layers you'd want to spawn ore at, a better route might be to add your own smelter and metal fabricator that technologies a given amount of substance (cobble, dirt, gold, diamonds, whatever) into your future tech metal alloys. AE does this with its condenser and the construction of quantum rings. Redpower also did this with respect to red and blue alloy metals.

If you want to do something mad sciencey with more common materials, carbon (coal/charcoal) is suspected of having room temperature (or higher) superconductive properties in the right alloy/atomic arrangement, as well as having all those fun things that can be done with Graphene (again carbon). Metallic hydrogen is also potentially superconductive under extreme pressure and hydrogen is a component of water. And superconductors are naturally perfect for generating high tesla magnetic fields for things like rail guns, ridiculous physics experiments and of course floating beds.

Or if you're going for a more rocketman mad sciencey, CHROMIUM. Chrome everything.

 

[Hydra]

Its easy enough to not have recipe conflicts with other mods while using basic ores. Thermal Expansion shows you how to; by adding your own 'machine frame' thats then used in all your machines. What you can then also do is, like
with mfr; if te is installed you use the te frames as a base. IMHO this works very well. I really dislike mods that add worldgen 'just because' because it makes migrating away from that mod a nightmare. Dont be the next Xycraft.

 

[SpitefulFox]

Dont be the next Xycraft.

First you tell me to be like TE, but then you tell me to stay away from world gen? You know who else adds lots of Ores?

Thermal Expansion. Five different worldgen ores, in fact.

 

[Golrith]

But at least you can turn them on/off accordingly and control spawn rates, unlike another mod Plus, they are used by other mods, so it's not actually that noticeable.

The "simpliest" solution would be a new material that is an alloy of the resources currently available in some mad scientist block. Who knows what strange properties an alloy of Gold, Iron, Redstone and Coal would have in a minecraft world? Plus mixing in diamond/emerald fragments, gunpowder and a hint of bonemeal and a dash of blaze powder could also provide something interesting.
No need at all to add more new ores, or another variation of copper for example. There comes a point when you just don't need any more of that ore once you've built everything you want from that mod (Nikolite...) so it becomes wasted inventory space.

For us tech users, as long as there are automated machines to build to make the "ingots" the mod requires from existing resources, we don't care how "unrealistic" it actually is. Well, I don't, as long as the process is interesting

 

[ThePixie35]

Plants. Use green stuff instead of metals.
Though it's not mad sciency...
Wait... no! This is now my idea. You cant have it.

Back on topic; it depends on how big your tech tree is. If its small and only a few blocks, one or two metals will do. However, if like some more... "advanced" mods (GT) you plan to have a big tech tree, you'll need a lot of metals, minerals and processing techniques.