Mass Fabricator: In game or out?
- Thread starter Luigilow
- Start date
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Go to your config folder, open up GregTech.cfg and look for the line:
B:Massfabricator=false
change it to true.
B:Massfabricator=false
change it to true.
The Gregtech Matterfabricator is a freaking joke. You literally spend HOURS just getting the resources to put it together. I thought it was going to be a faster machine than IC2's, boy was I wrong. It turns out it takes like 10x or 100x longer than the IC2 Massfab. I don't see why it is even in the game.
balance maybe? I played on a tekkit server for a long time, IC2's mass fabricator is the joke, you get the resources for a few HV solars (pretty easy when you use quarries/frame quarries) and you'll be creating tons of UU in no time, scrap or no scrap.
increasing the cost and running time of the fab is a fabulous idea.
Vanilla IC2's Mass fabricator is broken if you build more than 2 or 3 per person on your server. Anyone who puts a few hours of time putting together HV or Hybrid solars plus igneous extruders hooked to recyclers can easily produce hundreds of UU matter per hour. Once you're producing UU, you can use it create more Mass Fabricator setups over and over. Pretty soon you're producing thousands per hour or filling up a diamond chest near instantly. Because you can create tin, copper, iron, gold, and diamonds with UU matter, you won't ever need to mine again. IC2 is clearly broken when you implement unlimited power from solar panel mods.
But Gregtech's Matter Fabricator isn't a great solution to this either because it forces people who might only want one or two mass fabricators to spend hours and hours searching for enough iridium ore to make even one Matter Fab.
There is a reason Advanced Solars and Compact solars aren't built into IC2, but they do cut down on lag for servers when compared to alternative of using massive solar/wind/watermill arrays to produce free EU.
I don't claim to have a solution to this issue, balance is a tricky thing to achieve when you have to consider the needs of casual players and hardcore players.
But Gregtech's Matter Fabricator isn't a great solution to this either because it forces people who might only want one or two mass fabricators to spend hours and hours searching for enough iridium ore to make even one Matter Fab.
There is a reason Advanced Solars and Compact solars aren't built into IC2, but they do cut down on lag for servers when compared to alternative of using massive solar/wind/watermill arrays to produce free EU.
I don't claim to have a solution to this issue, balance is a tricky thing to achieve when you have to consider the needs of casual players and hardcore players.
Easiest way to really get balance is to make solar, wind, and water too hard to get in mass or implementing diminishing returns. To force people into the more complex and resource intensive energy methods of nuclear and advanced generator fuel use. Since as long as people can just wire up a massive array of the free energy systems than they will continue to abuse them to the bane of servers. Making advanced/compact solar a needed item to help mitigate it.
Personally I like a lot of what greg tech does since it reduces the need for uu matter with the addition of iridium ore. But said ore is a little too rare/hard to get due to being spread between all mine able levels and one per 5 chunks. So the only way to effectively mine it is to fully strip mine the world for it or abuse mystcraft. As for finding it in the nether that is a bug that is fixed in later gregtech versions which instead adds it to the end on rare floating islands/rocks.
Personally I like a lot of what greg tech does since it reduces the need for uu matter with the addition of iridium ore. But said ore is a little too rare/hard to get due to being spread between all mine able levels and one per 5 chunks. So the only way to effectively mine it is to fully strip mine the world for it or abuse mystcraft. As for finding it in the nether that is a bug that is fixed in later gregtech versions which instead adds it to the end on rare floating islands/rocks.
I agree, the free energy systems are clearly abusive. Gregtech tackles it a bit, but the advanced recipes are still incredibly cheap to upgrade after you build the initial vanilla panel.
I have a nuclear reactor using the same setup Direwolf20 has been using lately, it cost me a ton of materials and in the end it's not as effective as the solar panels available in game. An ultimate hybrid solar produces 512 EU per tick, which produces 1 UU matter every 16.5 seconds (assuming 20 ticks per second) and never runs out of fuel. Meanwhile, my reactor can only do about 320 per tick and will consume 16 uranium + tin/copper every 2 hours and 46 minutes.
People complain that gregtech makes solar panels so hard, but they don't realize how broken they are compared to the alternatives. This game should reward you for using systems that consume fuel, especially fuel that's not easily reproduced such as Uranium and BC Oil. Instead, solar panels trivialize everything else. If only real life worked this way, then we'd have free electricity for everyone.
The problem with IC isn't the mass fab. The problem comes from compact solars that give 'free' energy and WAY too much of it.
Energy isn't free, it never is. You have to get it from somewhere. Solar energy is good 'free' energy but like IRL should take up a LOT of space. If that means a lot of lag then the IC authors should fix that but solar panels should always scale with the size of the farm because that's simply how solar farms work.
Seeing a mass fab running on compact solars and then simply disabling it is incredibly silly. They're designed to be run on nuclear reactors.
Free energy should be nerfed if you want to balance this. Both lava and solar. It's just plain wrong that just "lava" can generate energy. It's pretty silly that most engines that just take lava generate like double the energy that an engine on coal would generate while not even reuiring the input of water.
Energy isn't free, it never is. You have to get it from somewhere. Solar energy is good 'free' energy but like IRL should take up a LOT of space. If that means a lot of lag then the IC authors should fix that but solar panels should always scale with the size of the farm because that's simply how solar farms work.
Seeing a mass fab running on compact solars and then simply disabling it is incredibly silly. They're designed to be run on nuclear reactors.
Free energy should be nerfed if you want to balance this. Both lava and solar. It's just plain wrong that just "lava" can generate energy. It's pretty silly that most engines that just take lava generate like double the energy that an engine on coal would generate while not even reuiring the input of water.
It can accept 8192 eu/t so you can put it in an eternal storm age with four lightning rods directly attached and it's pretty fast.
It was never intended to be faster though, it costs 100x the mass fab's cost to produce UU with scrap, and it requires scrap rather than leaving it optional. It's to balance it around Gregtech's crazy EU generation options without trivializing iridium, it probably shouldn't require iridium to craft though, that was a bit dumb imo.
Honestly if both of those were nerfed (the inclusion of compact/advanced solars and geothermal generators), I'd expect to see a lot of people then turn to Wind Mill towers which when built right are cheaper than you'd think, don't blot out the sun nearly as bad as a field of non-compact solar flowers would, and can viably match or even surpass the output of some mk1 Reactors in clear weather. Night doesn't effect them, storms only maximize their output, and I'm pretty sure you wind up with less packets sent than the equivalent solar fields which means less lag as well. Trying to keep just those two energy sources from trivializing EU generation is nothing more than making players trade 1 source of free energy for another.
Compact Solars, to my understanding (which is based on hearsay and could be very wrong) was originally made to cut the lag from players making too many solar panels (something the IC2 coders are unlikely to be able to optimize sufficiently due to the mechanics involved) by allowing them the option to spend a little extra resources to achieve the same effect in a smaller space at a higher voltage, the last bit being more of a downside than an upside. If there's a balance problem with solar power, it isn't the Compact Solars mod, and probably not the Advanced Solars mod either. Arguably, Wind Mills and Water Mills should probably get compact versions as well, especially if Solar and Geothermal ever wind up rebalanced, just to help servers perform better.
I don't think the matter fabricator was the right way to go to balance UU production. It really just penalizes anyone who doesn't abuse advanced solar panels or create tailored storm ages with lightning rods. Considering the amount of iridium it takes to make a fusion reactor, you end up forced to spend hours scouring for iridium (or having to rush to the End as soon as you want to start playing with gregtech), only to have to pour crazy amounts of EU into UU production to make a fusion reactor to properly make UU production.
The issue is clearly with advanced solar panels, as even the lava lakes of the nether can dry up. Without solar fueled UU production, you'd be forced to use actual fuel instead of creating something from nothing. At that point I'd consider the normal Mass Fabricator balanced enough. Personally I just limit the usage of advanced solars for myself and keep the mass fab enabled.
The way I see it:
* Disable GregTech recipe changes if you don't play Minecraft much.
* Keep them enabled if you spend enough time on Minecraft to warrant the amount of work needed to get UU-matter.
Personally, I like it being crazy difficult to obtain UU-matter. Having a goal that is too easy to reach spoils the fun. However, the solar panels are pretty "different" to say the least and if I weren't planning to use them purely for the Matter Fabricator I would rather the time and energy required to be cut in half if not more.
* Disable GregTech recipe changes if you don't play Minecraft much.
* Keep them enabled if you spend enough time on Minecraft to warrant the amount of work needed to get UU-matter.
Personally, I like it being crazy difficult to obtain UU-matter. Having a goal that is too easy to reach spoils the fun. However, the solar panels are pretty "different" to say the least and if I weren't planning to use them purely for the Matter Fabricator I would rather the time and energy required to be cut in half if not more.
That's the awesome thing about gregtech, you can configure it to be exactly what you want in the game.