New Thermal Expansion functionality/item: Tesseracts

[Saice]

Endermen are... well... they're probably the single most obnoxious mob in the game to farm, pre-ender access.

Actully not so bad. Go up 144 blocks (so you have nowhere for things to spawn.) Build a huge spawning platfrom. Make a tiny 1 to 3 block wide path from the spawning pad to your soon to be killing pad. Make sure this is out of mob vision range. Build a endman proof place to hang out at the end of that path.

Now just wait for them to spawn and then look at them they will come across the path (with out that they seem to not want to TP over he gap) and you can kill them. In about an hour or two you will have your self a teir five crystal with out ever going to the end.

 

[King Lemming]

Their is the balancing point of using tesseracts to fuel tesseract doubling the fuel cost since your fueling 4 instead of 2.

How about having the liquid ender slowly drain away in each tesseract akin to how the charge drops in energy cells and once it hits 0 require people to refuel them again in liquid transposers. With no way to refuel them out in the field as a balancing point since you would be unable to pump liquid ender into them directly. Prompting people to make turtle systems to auto pick them up and feed them into ender chests to be refilled back at base as needed.

Requiring the use of other mods to add a mechanic isn't something I plan on doing - it's unfortunate already that we don't have chunkloading in at this time. I'll also go out of my way to avoid adding a mechanic that requires that people use turtles. It's not that I hate them or dislike CC, but turtles are way too good for their cost. If I had to pick any single "OP" block in the game, Turtles would be it unquestionably, hands down, end of story. I never use them myself, as it would ruin the experience for me.

Instead of using a turtle you could always use a block breaker and deployer to remove and replace the tesseracts. Just have to make sure their empty before breaking them.

Well, at the moment I'm pretty sure a block breaker can't touch them.

 

[KirinDave]

Requiring the use of other mods to add a mechanic isn't something I plan on doing - it's unfortunate already that we don't have chunkloading in at this time. I'll also go out of my way to avoid adding a mechanic that requires that people use turtles. It's not that I hate them or dislike CC, but turtles are way too good for their cost. If I had to pick any single "OP" block in the game, Turtles would be it unquestionably, hands down, end of story. I never use them myself, as it would ruin the experience for me.

I am so glad to hear this. I live in perpetual fear of CC turtle's creeping influence as the answer to everything. Not only are they way too cheap, but they're such a bushleague programming environment. Way too easy. Turtles should use RP2's forth interpreter.

Maybe I missed this idea or you've already had it, but Endermen and The End are not our friends. Perhaps you could just have the tesseracts be a little unpredictable? Like, every so often killing something in transit or having big fluctuations in power output. It'd actually be a cute juggling act for quarries and the like (for low-yield items the tesseract is a big risk so they should be moved by hand, rail cart, or direct pipe but your cobble? Losing 0.5% of that is no big deal), and still provide strong incentive to create local storage and power plants.

I sort of love the steampunk tech feel of a tesseract leading to an energy cell as a buffer. Without it every so often your machines shut down and your group's engineer scratches their chin and says, "Power fluctuations. The End is not happy with us today."

 

[Rbmoney]

When I use these for say my mystcraft ages I will impose my own rule that the tesseracts will be built into the portal and the piping will have to run to it to make it seem like its using the portal.

 

[jnads]

I am so glad to hear this. I live in perpetual fear of CC turtle's creeping influence as the answer to everything. Not only are they way too cheap, but they're such a bushleague programming environment. Way too easy. Turtles should use RP2's forth interpreter.

Well, the primary issue is that it's waaaay too easy to share programs. Anyone can go on youtube and copy some schmuck's program online without understanding what each line of code does.

Turtles, on their own, really aren't any more dangerous than Frames with an Ender Chest battery recharging system.

King Lemming naturally thinks it's OP because he's a programmer. A turtle is a programmable NPC. Think about it.



But yeah, with the new MiscPeripherals for Tutles.... they are fast becoming OP, with Power Recharging and mobile Chunk Loaders, and the new ID Reader module that lets you read Block IDs....

I'm half-tempted to write a program / collection of programs that allow Turtles to play the game for me. Mine, collect and refine ores, and self-replicate (which, in theory, would be possible to do).

In theory, the seed would be to set up a GPS system, an advanced solar panel w/ charge station, and a master computer (Skynet) with a floppy drive (for transferring programs to newly-constructed turtles), and maybe the initial turtle would be a mining turtle, and an interactive sorter to sort the raw materials into chests for creating new turtles.. From that, you could create all other turtles.

Then watch and time how long it takes before the world is composed of turtles.

 

[EternalDensity]

So I managed to find time to try out a pair of liquid Tesseracts, and I'm quite happy with how the setup turned out. Now I'm pumping lava from the nether to my igneous extruder, without having to set up a pair of liquid transposers, various pipes and redstone engines, and so on. It's very simple and tidy.

If a power cost is added to item and liquid Tesseracts, could it only require power to one shadow per frequency? Then we can power the ends that are near our power generation without worrying about getting power to the "other ends" since they're all the same Tesseract.

Another idea, is that if Mystcraft is installed, crystals are needed in some way, or else changing the frequency requires consumption of a descriptive book. (Probably terrible ideas, but I'm trying to inspire thought 'outside the tesseract'.)


jnads: It's turtles all the way down!

 

[dakamojo]

Yeah they are pretty cool.

Not really that expensive though.. If you play gregtech then they are like a bargin deal.

Gregtech will change the recipe.

 

[HeffronCM]

I believe that XCompWiz is planning some additional blocks to be made with crystals that allow inter-dimensional piping, though I'm not certain of this.

 

[EternalDensity]

So... when do we get a Player Tesseract?

 

[Abdiel]

Gregtech will change the recipe.

And add a chance to randomly blow up.

 

[King Lemming]

If a power cost is added to item and liquid Tesseracts, could it only require power to one shadow per frequency? Then we can power the ends that are near our power generation without worrying about getting power to the "other ends" since they're all the same Tesseract.

>.> Yeah, that kinda plays into the whole "not computationally or logistically obnoxious." That's actually one of the ideas we've thrown about.

So... when do we get a Player Tesseract?

<.< We'll see. Also have some ideas on that, but it will absolutely require power if we implement it.

And add a chance to randomly blow up.

A recipe change is fine, if allowed in the config file. I specifically changed the API to allow this. Greg is cool with this and he's willing to play ball.

He also won't be adding any mechanical changes to TE blocks (such as explosions), as that definitely crosses the line over into hacking (and he knows it, and isn't that obnoxious.) Greg isn't evil, he just walks a path that a lot of people aren't comfortable with, he gets a lot of flak over his changes but he actually does provide a ridiculous amount of configuration.

Having said all that, any mod which alters or attempts to alter TE functionality or base mechanics via reflective java hacks will very quickly find itself in a state where it will not load if TE (and/or various other affiliated mods) are present.

 

[Tolgrimm]

Greg isn't evil, he just walks a path that a lot of people aren't comfortable with, he gets a lot of flak over his changes but he actually does provide a ridiculous amount of configuration.

Well said.
And btw, thanks for your great mod. I like how everything is configurable and easy to understand without having to consult the wiki.

 

[SaintNicster]

A recipe change is fine, if allowed in the config file. I specifically changed the API to allow this. Greg is cool with this and he's willing to play ball.

He also won't be adding any mechanical changes to TE blocks (such as explosions), as that definitely crosses the line over into hacking (and he knows it, and isn't that obnoxious.) Greg isn't evil, he just walks a path that a lot of people aren't comfortable with, he gets a lot of flak over his changes but he actually does provide a ridiculous amount of configuration.

Having said all that, any mod which alters or attempts to alter TE functionality or base mechanics via reflective java hacks will very quickly find itself in a state where it will not load if TE (and/or various other affiliated mods) are present.

This just planted the silly idea in my head of what were to happen if some modder decided to go about and changing Greg's recipes, and what he'd think about that xD

 

[lolpierandom]

This will make lava nether pumping even easier- no need for literally any machines now, just slap 4 redstone engines, a pipe and a tesseract down and now you have unlimited lava, completely maintanence free and (somewhat) cheap!

 

[HeffronCM]

To various degrees of unlimited.

 

[jnads]

Nothing is OP if you trade off material investment for time investment.


- Create hash function that corresponds position in minecraft world + frequency = power on interval [min, max] (say, [5 MJ/t to 100 MJ/t]). "Tunneling through other dimensions".

- Make tesseracts require power to transmit. If they don't supply enough, the item is destroyed. If you don't like consuming max power, you now have two tuning inputs to optimize your teleportation system = time investment.

- This simultaneously balances Tesseract-Frames interaction (random amounts of power as the frame moves, so you have to engineer for max power draw), and time involvement from adjusting frequencies and item location to get the tesseract to consume the least power possible (for stationary Quarry applications).


If you can generate 100 MJ/t reliabily, then you're pretty near end-game (or using a Redstone Energy Cell very rapidly).

This also gets rid of distance calculations, if you just make it rely on the transmitter location. Make receiving free.

 

[Saice]

Nothing is OP if you trade off material investment for time investment.

I would disagree. Time invesetment really is not much of a cost when you have chunk loaders and a ablity to setup it up and forget about it. And then we get into balancing of time costs SMP vs SSP one that basicly as a ton of 'free' time since it is always running vs one where free time is limited for most (who dont want to leave MC runing 24/7). It is hard to blance one with out harming the other either by making it to costly or to cheap.

But as always that is IMHO and YMMV.

 

[HeffronCM]

From a certain point of view, time is the only resource in Minecraft. Everything else is literally infinite, just need to find it. Sometimes that means travelling further.

 

[MilConDoin]

[Power just one Tesseract]
>.> Yeah, that kinda plays into the whole "not computationally or logistically obnoxious." That's actually one of the ideas we've thrown about.

Item Tesseract: 5 MJ per itemStack + 1 per size of itemStack. (stores 50k MJ)
Liquid Tesseract: 10 MJ per bucket. (stores 10k MJ)

[Player Tesseract]
<.< We'll see. Also have some ideas on that, but it will absolutely require power if we implement it.

500k MJ per teleportation. (stores 500k MJ)

Each tesseract on the same frequency adds to the total storage. If several tesseracts on the same freq have different powerlevels, they will auto-equalize. Breaking with a wrench will keep the power (like the RECells). Switching frequency (but not switching personal<->public) will halve the stored energy amount. These tesseracts are not able to be a MJ source for other machines/conduits. Max input/t = storage/1000 (storage of a single tesseract, not of the total storage by tesseracts on the same freq).

 

[jnads]

I would disagree. Time invesetment really is not much of a cost when you have chunk loaders and a ablity to setup it up and forget about it. And then we get into balancing of time costs SMP vs SSP one that basicly as a ton of 'free' time since it is always running vs one where free time is limited for most (who dont want to leave MC runing 24/7). It is hard to blance one with out harming the other either by making it to costly or to cheap.

But as always that is IMHO and YMMV.

Time investment, as in your own time actively doing stuff.

If it takes you an hour or half-hour of going back-and-forth to make a teleport pipe work efficiently, then I'd say it's balanced.


Yes, Chunk Loaders do make Solar Panels OP. But that's a different sort of time.


Thaumcraft is not OP, because you have to spend sooooo much time doing all the stuff. Even though you can transmute ores and such.