Pam Harvestcraft , railcraft , IC2 , etc

[Azzanine]

When you consider the main public all sorts packs, it is good question. Who would bother with those mods. Why the need for food variety outside RP.
Why use IC2 when there are better more integrated alternatives. Who would spend hours to build a rail system when you have flight, super speed and teleport.

They are there only in a token capacity. There in because there is still a demographic for those mods. They are in because they are in, your monsters, ultimates and infinities have never been thoughtfully compiled packs. The only work done on them is making sure all the mods play nice and not crash each other.

It's also not a case of the casual hardcore paradigm but a side effect of a plentiful modding community. There are a lot of mods, this means allsorts packs will become bloated. Old mods have to then be kept for posterities sake or to retain compatibility with previous versions. (not that that has been an issue the past year)

If you create a pack with an idea in mind you will find the mods start to have a point. Want to make a pack with no player speed boosts, flying or teleports Railcraft looks like a good midde ground.
Use Spice of Life and or Hunger Overhaul and you will find Pam's Harvestcraft food variety becomes more then just an RP tool.
IC2 can be used as a primary tech mod if you forsake all others if you like IC2.

If you want a cohesive well thought out experience in modded minecraft with no redundancy. You will not find it in your kitchen sink packs.

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[ShneekeyTheLost]

When you consider the main public all sorts packs, it is good question. Who would bother with those mods. Why the need for food variety outside RP.
Why use IC2 when there are better more integrated alternatives. Who would spend hours to build a rail system when you have flight, super speed and teleport.

They are there only in a token capacity. There in because there is still a demographic for those mods. They are in because they are in, your monsters, ultimates and infinities have never been thoughtfully compiled packs. The only work done on them is making sure all the mods play nice and not crash each other.

It's also not a case of the casual hardcore paradigm but a side effect of a plentiful modding community. There are a lot of mods, this means allsorts packs will become bloated. Old mods have to then be kept for posterities sake or to retain compatibility with previous versions. (not that that has been an issue the past year)

If you create a pack with an idea in mind you will find the mods start to have a point. Want to make a pack with no player speed boosts, flying or teleports Railcraft looks like a good midde ground.
Use Spice of Life and or Hunger Overhaul and you will find Pam's Harvestcraft food variety becomes more then just an RP tool.
IC2 can be used as a primary tech mod if you forsake all others if you like IC2.

If you want a cohesive well thought out experience in modded minecraft with no redundancy. You will not find it in your kitchen sink packs.

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I would like to report a serious error with the board code. I am unable to 'like' this post more than once. This is clearly a deficiency in the boards themselves.

Seriously, though. I just updated ShneekeyCraft to 1.7.10 on the ATLauncher, and mod bloat was definitely something I had to deal with. I ended up depreciating Iron Chests of all mods. I discovered Enhanced Inventories, and it was simply... better in all ways. I also depreciated an older 'another fabricator mod' type mod because Enhanced Inventories has that as well. And does it with less crashy/buggy/glitchy code.

Iron Chests. Depreciated and no longer included. This was a mod that I had been using since literally Beta days. Just goes to show, nothing is sacred when it comes to making a tight pack.

Then again, ShneekeyCraft was one of the first packs, back in the 1.5 era, which stopped using the triad of BC/IC2/Forestry. So I'm at least following my core principle of 'Less Is More!'.

Sidenote: for some reason, my 1.6.4 version still has on average a hundred downloads per day, and I haven't made any changes to it in over a year. When I make a pack and put the LTR label on it, I mean it. And it is STILL available on the ATLauncher. I haven't depreciated it just because I have a 1.7.10 version out. As long as people wish to continue playing it on 1.6.4, it will continue to be available. They may not be cross-compatible, but the previous version is still officially supported.

I'm also considering depreciating JABBA in favor of Storage Drawers, which I thought I'd never consider. I've already got Enhanced Inventories so I've got mass storage of different types, and I have Thermal Dynamics core and EnderIO as optional for building some early-game sorting capability. And AE2 of course.

ATLauncher also has the marvelous 'optional' selection, so I can give people options without ramming mods down their throats. So I can provide, say, Thaumcraft as an option, and even a few addons as options, so that those who enjoy it can play with it and those who have legacy hardware and can't handle the shiny don't get crashed. The basic version should be able to run on 32 bit Java with 512 MB RAM dedicated, although performance will obviously be not as good as if you had more.

 

[davecats]

Forestry, aside from having the 'NERF BAT AHOY!' that went about 'fixing' things that weren't broken in the first place, is another mod that got dated and updated in a very strange direction. The multiblock farms, I think, was when I gave up on it. MFR is it's inspiration, predecessor, successor, and all-round better option. Because bees can go... pollinate themselves.

I dunno, MFR stuff just shouts 'COMPONENTS!' to me. I've just got into forestry and I'm really enjoying producing tons of RF via the charcoal my multiblock farm. I'm thinking now about fabricating a few alvearies to breed my bees in and setting up some sort of automated seed oil production facility so I can automate the creation of impregnated frames. Still wondering if a good ol' Peaceful Table (Yes, I do play on Peaceful) will provide me with enough string to facilitate the needs of the frames. (Did that last sentence even make sense?)

Industrial Craft 2, though. Honestly, I don't even know what to say about this mod. It used to be my favourite a few months ago.

Then I discovered Thermal Expansion.

 

[KingTriaxx]

By the logic of 'flight, super speed and teleport', all mod packs should consist of nothing but EnderIO. Dark Armor gives Flight and Super Speed, the Dimensional Transceiver gives all four types of teleportation: Power, Item, Fluid, Player. There, there's your mod pack. Variety? Options? You don't need those, you have the only things you ever need.

Seriously, I understand the reasoning, but you're being Stop Having Fun Guys. You're telling me I can't have those mods, because you don't approve of them.

 

[Cptqrk]

Still wondering if a good ol' Peaceful Table (Yes, I do play on Peaceful) will provide me with enough string to facilitate the needs of the frames.

Textile farm, or cotton seeds. Breed the bejebus out of them till you get 10 10 10 and you won't need a peaceful table for string.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Still wondering if a good ol' Peaceful Table (Yes, I do play on Peaceful) will provide me with enough string to facilitate the needs of the frames. (Did that last sentence even make sense?)

Theres a few types of bee that'll sort you out
Also quite a few mods have a recipe for wool into string.

 

[davecats]

Textile farm, or cotton seeds. Breed the bejebus out of them till you get 10 10 10 and you won't need a peaceful table for string.

Bejebus?


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[skruis]

When you consider the main public all sorts packs, it is good question. Who would bother with those mods. Why the need for food variety outside RP. Why use IC2 when there are better more integrated alternatives. Who would spend hours to build a rail system when you have flight, super speed and teleport. They are there only in a token capacity.

I think both approaches have their place (kitchen sink vs purpose built)

I like the variety and longevity of kitchen sink packs. You might say that the mods are redundant but honestly, most of the mods do the same thing but slightly different enough to justify one over another in certain situations. I'm playing Evolved Expert with a buddy of mine. I built Storage Drawers and he opted for some RFTools storage thing because it consolidated his inventory. We both have remote access to our storage via remote terminals (mine via logistic pipes remote orderer / ender chest/pouch) and his via some RFTools thing. We both have pretty expansive storage. We both lack integrated crafting at this point (I know LP can auto craft, not sure about RFTools) but it doesn't matter cause neither of us have pursued that yet. I went the way I did because I liked the visual interactive nature of Storage Drawers and he did what he did because he liked that it was more compact. If we were to eliminate redundant mods, which would you choose? A kitchen sink pack tends to give you enough variety to be different both within your own builds and within the same world and that's something I value. That gives you the freedom to experiment with your designs and it contributes to the longevity of the world...especially in a SMP environment because you can tour what others have done, see their spin on it and then tailor a similar solution to fit your needs but if a player makes the same old boring OP decisions, what's the point of ever playing Minecraft...again? So, with kitchen sink packs, it's all about what you make of it. If you play a themed pack w/ a narrow focus and mods specifically tuned to support that playstyle, you're almost forced to seek out alternative packs and divide your time in order to try things a different way ... which isn't a bad thing if that's what you like but for people like me that like experimenting on large projects comprising a variety of methods, tools and machines, something with too narrow of a focus is off-putting. I run an Evolved Expert server, an adventure/survival server and some others for a group of my friends and to consolidate our shared experience, we use the Evolved server for our long term 'base building' and we treat the adventure/survival server as random and disposable ... we don't 'build' inside of it (it's actually discouraged in-game via Tornado's, Eathquakes, etc.) because it divides our group. We trash the adventure/survival worlds regularly and start over because they're intended to be 'short lived' experiences. It's literally designed to make you struggle to survive but that's not a way that we want to play all of the time so in the end, I think both approaches (kitchen sink and purpose built) compliment each other.

 

[Azzanine]

@skruis I know all that. Allsorts packs have their demographic, possibly the largest one. Allsorts packs do have the most options at the cost of less cohesiveness. Redundancy is ok, it could even be a goal when it comes to that style of pack.
But it doesn't change the fact that there will emerge an optimal best practice for each kind of task. Traveling base to base; Teleportation wins. Power; whatever produces the best yeild for the fuel/effort put in.
Farming; whatever can be made set and forget, produces high yeild and compatible with all crops.
Each mod will have methods that are over all better then others rendering them obsolete for efficient play.

Not that this is really a problem. It's just par of the course for allsort kitchen sink packs. Some people opt to play without efficiency in mind, and play outside such rigid methodologies. Some just try new things to find other efficient processes not yet discovered.

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[skruis]

@Azzanine Yea I guess my point is more that the reliance on only the 'optimal' is a fault of the players, not the packs. The players that search for and use only the optimal of everything are depriving themselves of the real value behind kitchen sink packs.

 

[Azzanine]

I think those players should make their own packs. However it makes multiplayer a bit difficult as you have essentially cut your choice of servers down to zero.
Efficiency minded multiplayers have to grin and bear a bloated pack if they want to be able to join a server.

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[KingTriaxx]

Why would it? Shouldn't all those players only after the most optimally efficient methods all end up 'playing' together? I mean, since they've decided that only one thing can be the most optimal and efficient, they'll only need one server. It's inefficient to have multiple servers. Never mind that the most optimally efficient thing becomes a lag generating monster. Especially when multiplied by the hundred thousand or so players all on one server.

It shouldn't be too hard to work out a perfect mod pack. Let's see... Big Reactors, max size into four turbines, solid walls to prevent rendering. That's power. World is all stone, with no caves, no ores. One biome, which is Mushroom Island. That stops mobs from spawning. Materials are generated by MFR lasers. Nuclearcraft furnaces to instantly smelt everything. Food is one carrot, and wood is one birch tree. Harvested by MFR, and continuously fertilized to rapidly grow them. Sludge is instantly voided into XU liquid trashcans.

There. The perfect modpack. Perfectly identical optimal ways to do everything. Did I miss anything?

 

[Azzanine]

Why would it? Shouldn't all those players only after the most optimally efficient methods all end up 'playing' together? I mean, since they've decided that only one thing can be the most optimal and efficient, they'll only need one server. It's inefficient to have multiple servers. Never mind that the most optimally efficient thing becomes a lag generating monster. Especially when multiplied by the hundred thousand or so players all on one server.

It shouldn't be too hard to work out a perfect mod pack. Let's see... Big Reactors, max size into four turbines, solid walls to prevent rendering. That's power. World is all stone, with no caves, no ores. One biome, which is Mushroom Island. That stops mobs from spawning. Materials are generated by MFR lasers. Nuclearcraft furnaces to instantly smelt everything. Food is one carrot, and wood is one birch tree. Harvested by MFR, and continuously fertilized to rapidly grow them. Sludge is instantly voided into XU liquid trashcans.

There. The perfect modpack. Perfectly identical optimal ways to do everything. Did I miss anything?

Wow that's some good reducto ad absurdum you have there.
Tell me you where exaggerating for effect lol.
People who want max efficiency also want a bit of variety just not as much as a kitchen sink pack has.
They want a pack that is lighter weight. Does what they want with less mods. What's the point of using a pack with 300 mods when you only use 110 of them.


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[KingTriaxx]

100% exaggeration. Accept no substitutes. But what I'm driving at, is that there are precise, optimally efficient ways to do things, and they're BORING. I was a big fan of Sl1pg8r on Youtube, but I stopped watching because he got stuck into a cycle of doing things in the same, efficient, BORING manner every time. I mean, I understand, he's on a server and attempting to be a good player, and keep the lag down, but... 'I need items/power/fluids here' Tesseract! Every time. Even if it's not a terribly long distance, or he already had AE cable run over there for other reasons.

This pack is a mega build pack and contains a large number of mods to allow players the ability to customize their own experience.

Meaning that they wanted people to do like I did, and disable mods they were never going to use. I dropped these:

Spoiler

Advanced Genetics
Agriculture
Compact Windmills
Craft Heraldry
Dye Trees
Magical Crops
QuarryPlus
Sync
Zan's Minimap

I used every other mod in the pack. The first time around, the only two I didn't use from the disabled list are Compact Windmills and Zan's. The latter because I prefer Map Writer, and the former because I was using Rotarycraft's big spinning death wheels instead.

I can understand, the issues that come on a multi-player server, but that's why you discuss with the other players, what are we leaving turned on, what are we turning off. If you can't get that much communication, I can't see how it's any different than playing by yourself.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Theres a big difference between "lag" reduction and fun reduction. Its got to the point where servers have half the game banned under the lag excuse.
If you effectively force players down the "optimal" path then the games over in a week, your servers dead because everyone's bored and you never fostered the community needed to keep it going.
Oh- and chunkloading itself does NOT cause lag issues. Remember a player keeps over 400 chunks active simply by being online, so pull your finger out and end these excuses.

Stop being stingy with the hardware and actually let players play. They'll thank you for it.​

Arrgh!!! Sorry- needed to say that. Rant over

On the flip side, being a good player is designing a system to provide you with what you need, and not being impatient and spamming the mechanism because you want it NOW!! (this includes overclocking your tree farm with insta-grow fertiliser.)

 

[KingTriaxx]

Over four hundred chunks? Isn't it over six hundred?

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Default radius of 10 (21x21) chunks. (link- second paragraph)
Yes its configurable; but remember the first rule of defaults- Doubly so since this is in reference to the ignorant and apathetic admin.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Ah. I'd thought 12(25x25) was default. Don't forget spawn chunks.

 

[Azzanine]

With chunk loaders you end up adding to that default amount. With no restrictions that 400 or so chunks quickly becomes 1200 or so. Then again not many legit players force load that amount of chunks. But chunk loaders can impact performance.

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[Celestialphoenix]

Technically any loaded chunk will impact performance to a degree. A railcraft anchor loads 9 chunks. 3 players would load over 1300 chunks (441 each), and would make for a very quiet server. How many anchors does a player actually need? 4? 8? 10? You'd break even at 49.

Its not the loading itself; thats the excuse for the lazy/incompetent admin.
Its the crap that goes on in there. That means be a good player. That means do your job as an admin, or delegate to someone who can.​

We may need a new thread at this rate.

Ah. I'd thought 12(25x25) was default. Don't forget spawn chunks.

I don't think spawn chunks cover anything bigger than 4x4.