[EDITED RECENTLY IN LIGHT OF THE LATEST HAPPENINGS]
Right! A little update. We are basically now done with 1.7.10, as you may know (apart from bug fixes, etc.), and I'm slowly but surely working towards a 1.11.2 build. It's going to take some time, but we'll get there!
The first thing I'll do is just get the fission stuff updated before Easter, and simply move on from there in the Summer. In the process of updating, I'll have the opportunity to clean up some of the more ancient code, mess with the recipes, possibly some textures and some other things along the way too. Here's a little list I want to do for 1.11.2:
1. I'm aiming to have at least basic Mekanism, JEI, Tesla, RF and IC2 integration. Mekanism mainly for the gases, JEI as the new NEI, Tesla as another power system and IC2 for cross-compatability. Although there is a '4 RF to 1 EU' conversion rate, since IC2 is generally more difficult when it comes to power generation, although the machines will use that ratio, I'm thinking that the generators should use a ratio closer to '40 RF to 1 EU', but this will be balanced and configurable.
2. I'm going to balance the recipes a bit so that there's less of a focus on lead. The only crafting metals added by the mod will be Boron, Lithium and Magnesium, and the other base metals from other mods will be used (almost all NC players I've seen have such a mod). I'm going to also remove the random metal components already in the game, as well as the frankly tedious-to-make machine base.
Then, there's all of the stuff previously mentioned that I want to add slowly over time:
1. More efficient, actively cooled fission reactors that use molten salt fuels which produce steam.
2. Multiblock steam turbines, which will have a similar yet different complex building system to fission reactors.
3. Perhaps a different style of fusion reactor which produces steam rather than RF.
4. More advanced particle physics.
5. A radiation system. First of all, this was tested out in a recent 'proof of concept' build quite recently, and although the idea seemed to work, the actual mechanics themselves were problematic. Most of the issues revolved around editing the maximum health, messing with other mods such as Morph and TC. There is quite simple solution to this however - instead of radiation taking the player's health down, the player can just be plagued by more and more bad status effects, getting more severe as the player gets more irradiated. This should cause no major compatibility issues.
The basic idea is to have a radiation level per player, and a radiation level per world chunk.
The player can be irradiated by items in their inventory or by the radiation level of the chunk they're standing in. The amount of irradiation can be reduced by wearing Tough Alloy Armour, which acts as a hazmat suit (I've always found it annoying that hazmat suits are generally poor amours), or hazmat suits from other mods, if I can work that out. Radiation can also be removed by RadAway and futher negated by Rad-X.
The chunks are simply irradiated by blocks and events in the world itself. Fission reactors, RTGs, nukes, perhaps even items on the ground. The higher the radiation level, the more radiation the player receives and the more radiation will spread to neighbouring chunks. Perhaps more nuclear monsters could spawn, too. If the radiation level gets far too high in a chunk, then blocks which are susceptible to damage from radiation will begin to be altered.
This set of mechanics is very much inspired by Azanor's brilliant ThaumCraft 2, where 'taint' can spread across chunks and effect blocks and entities in them.
I also want there to be ways to measure the radiation level of the player or chunks (Geiger counters, etc.).
Anyway, as I said, I don't know when the first version will come, but all the ideas are there ready to be implemented
