Pam Harvestcraft , railcraft , IC2 , etc

[LuisAdeur]

Does anyone uses pam harvestcraft for other reason besides the toast and the burgers made out of pressed soybean?

i have no interest on the mod for any other reason besides that.
i seen a lot of people playing with the mod on their streams and they all do only toast.... i had the mod couple times and i never found no reason to make all type of expensive food when i can just do a burger or toast...

or when i found loot on the chests on dungeons but that's about it.


what about railcraft? if you are not into rail carts what's the point of it? the tanks and the boilers? i always have the mod installed but i haven't use anything on the mod except the stuff mentioned above. why install railcraft when i can have immersive engineering with the coke oven and the blast furnance? boilers aren't that good when compared to bigreactors. tanks? pftt TE tanks up too 128buckets or ME fluid cells. besides no one will ever use a iron tank worth of fluids from railcraft.


i think on my point of view some other mods make old mods useless. for example why use a engine from railcraft or forestry to produce RF when i have extrautilities producing tons of rf for low costs. or TE upgraded dynamos. i know i know i know about variety of power generation but i don't like having the same thing over and over.

same goes for the ore doubling methods , i can't find which is the best to process my ores...

there's no tier for the mods is either you go one way and you will never use the other mod. me i made a tier in my personal modpack just like infinity evolved making forestry and other mods useful before getting to the bigger mods. and some other mods just add a bunch of useless stuff that i don't ever use.


Ic2 is more like a solitary mod to play with , it doesn't have no integration with any RF mod unless you have power converters. and having ic2 separated from the rest is no use. i remember back in 1.2.5 when ic2 was the MAIN mod no ic2 people go crazy. now days ic2 is not on modpacks , not including ftb infinity. but third party modpacks or other ones is just no reason to have it, i added ic2 to my modpack and after playing couple hours with it i got bored... why have ic2 when i can have mekanism making 5x ores ? why have factorization when i can have enderio.


look at the multi farms from forestry vs MFR harvester and planter. rarely being used
there's 2 kind of people the ones that like stuff being handed over to them and the ones that like the more complex and hard way , i don't want a bunch of different mods for a farm ... for what?!

anyways any suggestions any opinions etc posted here i want to hear how people feel about this or if is just me feeling this way.

 

[lenscas]

Unless mod a is EXACTLY the same (same texture, same machines, same license, same balance point of view) as mod b mods don't make each other obsolete even if they are similar as certain players feel that difrent things are balanced, like the aesthetic of either mod a or mod b more.
The reason that both mods can exist is because at least 1 person enjoys it, the creator of said mod.

There is no reason to say mod a is better then mod b because unless they are exactly the same and then that should be pretty much impossible to do.
The reason for that is because different humans like different things. Some may enjoy MFR as it is easy to setup and automate, others may absolutely hate it because of that.

 

[LuisAdeur]

Unless mod a is EXACTLY the same (same texture, same machines, same license, same balance point of view) as mod b mods don't make each other obsolete even if they are similar as certain players feel that difrent things are balanced, like the aesthetic of either mod a or mod b more.
The reason that both mods can exist is because at least 1 person enjoys it, the creator of said mod.

There is no reason to say mod a is better then mod b because unless they are exactly the same and then that should be pretty much impossible to do.
The reason for that is because different humans like different things. Some may enjoy MFR as it is easy to setup and automate, others may absolutely hate it because of that.

you're right i don't hate the mods i played with them for a long time but they got thrown on the back by some more recent mods.

 

[Vasa]

what about railcraft? if you are not into rail carts what's the point of it? the tanks and the boilers? i always have the mod installed but i haven't use anything on the mod except the stuff mentioned above. why install railcraft when i can have immersive engineering with the coke oven and the blast furnance? boilers aren't that good when compared to bigreactors. tanks? pftt TE tanks up too 128buckets or ME fluid cells. besides no one will ever use a iron tank worth of fluids from railcraft.

RAILCRAFT

 

[Celestialphoenix]

For some its about generating interesting gameplay mechanics in themselves, rather than whats "objectively best" based on numerical output against resource cost. (the latter is an easy trap to fall into).

A lot of the older mods come from pre modpack [and pre forge] times; so they're designed to fall into the first category and be fun/interesting in individual instances.

 

[Remaker]

Like others have said, you get into strange territory when you evaluate mods strictly by the power of their functions. By your terms, my Real Cool Furnace Mod that smelts diamonds out of cobblestone would be the best mod ever. Well, until I release the Even Cooler Furnace Mod, which smelts TWO diamonds per cobblestone.

Harvestcraft was created by someone who is clearly fascinated by the act of cooking and wanted to capture the feel of puttering about in a kitchen in Minecraft. If that's not your thing, it's not going to do much for you. Harvestcraft does not have a robust interaction with the rest of the game because the hunger mechanic itself doesn't a have a robust connection. It's a weird bit of jank that Notch added without any clear design goal. I would presonally not be all that interested in Harvestcraft, but it has an interesting interaction with Spice of Life. Set the food counter to something high (200ish or so), and food suddenly becomes a major driving pressure in teh game, one that can't be solved by just throwing resources at it.

Railcraft is about trains. I'm not sure what else you were expecting. You have to enjoy the physicality of trains as a transit method if you want to get anything out of it. Minecarts in general are another bit of jank that don't really interact with the game very well. Railcraft feels secondary because minecrafts themselves are secondary. Railcraft just makes the minecraft minigame more interesting.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Harvestcraft is best when served with Hunger Overhaul, Agricraft, and Spice of Life. Then it brings a whole new dynamic to your food production cycle and makes an otherwise boring mechanic which is simply solved with Baked potatoes and makes it interesting.

Railcraft... I dunno. I haven't seen the point in it for quite some time. Rails are fun and all, but they just... they aren't even interesting, much less relevant, these days. Nothing else in the mod really interests me. A victim of 'oh, this is useful? NERF BAT AHOY!' syndrome. And with all the various means of transportation available these days, it just isn't worth it.

Same thing with IC2ex. Adding in complexity and arbitrary resource bleed doesn't make a mod better or even necessarily harder, just more punitive and annoying.

BC's problem is that we have all moved on, and it didn't . The most current update went in some very... strange... directions, and pretty much was the final nail in the coffin IMO.

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.

Back in the day, BC and IC2 were just things you did. You got rid of the file in the bin folder, dropped in Mod Loader, MLMP, Forge, BC, IC2, then decided what else to add in. These days... not so much. However, they were the inspiration for a whole new generation of mods. Now we have Thermal Expansion, Minefactory Reloaded, and Mekanism instead of BC, Forestry, and IC2. And so gaming evolves.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Pam's I very much enjoy, because it takes more effort to make a stack of Extreme Chili, that is like 2.5 steaks, and still only takes one stack size. It's so much more interesting than: Need food, pick carrots. Plus it gives my garden landscaping more diversity than just: Wheat, Carrot, Potato.

Railcraft gives me the ability to run rail lines. The ability to run trains from point A to point B, and have them actually do things. Instead of having a tiny little base, with a few rooms where everything is done automatically and I'm useless, I can run my tree farm in one spot, and my food farm in another and have trains running around moving things. Big Reactors are awesome, but after they're set up, that's it, you'll never touch it again. Boilers require attention to ensure they don't run out of fuel. Use trains to bring them fuel, and you'll have to pay attention to that as well.

Buildcraft? It builds on to Railcraft somewhat. What is Railcraft transporting? With BC, it's bringing stuff back from the quarry. A max size quarry, running at full speed, will fill a 10 cart train. Which is awesome. I see a lot of people: I don't like to quarry the overworld. And then they never ever leave their base. If you're preserving the overworld, and never actually see it, what difference does it make if you put a hole in it? Buildcraft piping isn't the best in the world, that I'll grant you. On the other hand, an externally powered BC pipe has an insanely high extraction speed. (Meaning connected by power line instead of directly to an engine.) I played in Etho's LP pack for a while. My power system was Railcraft Tank carts, bringing Buildcraft Oil refined into Fuel, pumped into TE Dynamos, out through Ender IO conduits, into a Capacitor bank. From there it went out to a Mekanism universal cable line, off to where it was being used, into TE cells, then back into EnderIO conduits. Could I have done it with two tesseracts? Absolutely. Would it have been any fun? Probably not.

Forestry, is one of those mods that has as many charms as it does flaws. For all the hate that multi-block farms get, you have to look back honestly, and admit that even the old ones took at least two blocks to do anything. One farm block and one harvest block. And then they took up a big footprint. There was no ability to control their size, no modification to them. It was Here's the farm, deal with it. Yet, the custom sized Multi-blocks, that only plant on the blocks you place down, are the ones that get all the whining. You had to terraform the land to fit the old ones. The new ones can be hidden in the side of a mountain, so that nothing appears but the farming pad. Ethanol is awesome. Renewable fuel that takes some effort? That's awesome. Compatible with all fuel using generators? Even better.

Bees, I admit, aren't my favorite thing. On the other hand, they're not a thing that should be focused on. Let them run in the background as you build a base, or progress through other mods. Or just find a couple that work in your biome and set them to automatic with EnderIO self-feed, and let them breed trees. Or just add on Gendustry and shortcut it for the cost of power.

IC2, I've entirely lost the taste for. It's a victim of it's own popularity. Modders looked at it, saw it doing things and wondered: How can I improve on that. Sadly, IC2 didn't do that. Instead of: How can I add more interesting content?, they went and thought: How can I make the content I have last longer? Unfortunately, the answer was to make it take 5x as long.

Ultimately though, it all comes down to gameplay style. I enjoy having a much slower, longer lasting experience, by not using teleportation shortcuts. The only thing I teleport is power, and then only if I'm not moving a fuel source to where I want it. I could ender chest or tesseract everything and never worry. But then I'm not playing survival any more. Then I'm just playing Creative, with the necessity to eat a bit. So what exactly is the point?

 

[RedBoss]

I keep Railcraft mainly for it's aesthetic blocks.

 

[Mikhaila666]

What has happened is that much easier to use mods have come out. Easier recipes. More power. More overpowered, OP! and AWESOME!!!.

IC2 reactors can blow up, need lots of work, and don't put out the massive power of Big Reactors. BR can be made with very simple vanilla blocks and ingots. So of course BR is popular because it's more powerful and easier.....then again, some of us don't like easier.

In harder packs like BloodnBones where hunger is a huge challenge, making burgers is suddenly a big upgrade from toast. Add in Spice of life and now i want 10 different meals sitting in my refrigerator.

Take away /home and teleporting, add in limits on what you can carry by making stack size lower and suddently a rail line looks like a good thing. For the Nuclear fallout modpack i had an engine pulling multiple cars running all over my base dropping off ores and running back to the mines. Another picked up crops. The trains stopped at my warehouses and loaded things into barrels.

These mods in something like DW20 or Infinity dont get use much. Change the equation, and you get a different answer.

Plus some things are just cool to build. It's not always about using the "best" or "most efficient" blocks.

If i wanted to be efficient i'd turn off minecraft and get back to work in the real world

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

What has happened is that much easier to use mods have come out. Easier recipes. More power. More overpowered, OP! and AWESOME!!!.

IC2 reactors can blow up, need lots of work, and don't put out the massive power of Big Reactors. BR can be made with very simple vanilla blocks and ingots. So of course BR is popular because it's more powerful and easier.....then again, some of us don't like easier.

In harder packs like BloodnBones where hunger is a huge challenge, making burgers is suddenly a big upgrade from toast. Add in Spice of life and now i want 10 different meals sitting in my refrigerator.

Take away /home and teleporting, add in limits on what you can carry by making stack size lower and suddently a rail line looks like a good thing. For the Nuclear fallout modpack i had an engine pulling multiple cars running all over my base dropping off ores and running back to the mines. Another picked up crops. The trains stopped at my warehouses and loaded things into barrels.

These mods in something like DW20 or Infinity dont get use much. Change the equation, and you get a different answer.

Plus some things are just cool to build. It's not always about using the "best" or "most efficient" blocks.

If i wanted to be efficient i'd turn off minecraft and get back to work in the real world

Oh, this argument again.

It isn't a matter of 'easier to use', although that is a small component of it. And the recipes are certainly not easier, or cheaper. I won't bother to rebut 'OP' since it is a subjective term dependent on what one considers 'normally powered' to be over.

Perhaps you are unaware that I used to be one of the major IC2 nuclear power plant designers, and invented an entire category of reactor which replaced the CASUC when the nuclear mechanic updated back in 1.4ish. It was the CACR (Continuously Applied Coolant Reactor) or, as I called it, the DDOS (Decentralized Distribution of Steam) reactor. Which used smaller cooling reactors to cycle cooling cells around to have a large reactor producing impressive EU/t and multiple smaller 'cooling towers' which have the nearly spent cells pulled into to cool them down. BR does not, and has never, competed with IC2 in any way. My problem with IC2 is that they decided to GregNerf it. However, this doesn't make the mod more difficult, or even more challenging. It just means I spend three times as much time hand-jiving things to do the same thing as I used to. The term for this is, I believe, 'BORING'. Which is the opposite of what a game should be.

Spice of Life and Hunger Overhaul are in packs besides BloodnBones, you know. In fact, I play with these settings in my private pack. And Blood n Bones also has Pam's Harvestcraft. You are conflating a false supposition.

Rail Lines have been obsolete ever since pipes were a thing. It was always cheaper, easier, and faster to run a pipe than a rail line to run stuff. For personal movement, rails are extremely inconvenient for servers. For a SSP game? Sure. For SMP? Not so much. And with practically every mod out there having some other form of teleportation, rails become even more depreciated. Admittedly, this is one I would probably play with, at least just the rails themselves, but not as a part of any build, but just to play around with them.

Best is an arbitrary and subjective concept. Most Efficient is not even an issue.

If I wanted to spend three hours with a pair of calipers and manually draft parts, I'd go back to work.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

For personal movement, rails are extremely inconvenient for servers. For a SSP game? Sure. For SMP? Not so much.

How so?
SMP has pretty much been the only time I've used rail networks on a large scale- specifically built for shunting players about the world. Its a fairly interesting project that encourages players to work together. I know I'm the mother of outliers as such- so take it with a pinch of salt [or something stronger].
Though I'm kinda curious about the flip side of this as my other experiences involve a teleport plugin of some description- which was pretty damn boring and often lead to myself trolling other players. Ever seen someone teleport into a rockcrusher?

 

[Mikhaila666]

hmm, think i agree with you on most things. Possibly i wrote my post wrong? I have hundreds of players on the servers i help to run, and was attempting to give an idea of why some mods get used, some don't, and why they are still viable mods when used in other packs. Not sure where you hostility is coming from. I put up my opinion on why some mods don't get use. OPINION. Most of us have them. I assume when someone posts a question in the OP he is looking for peoples opinions. I was not trying to make an argument of any kind. And wasn't engaging anything you said at all.

As for BR not competing with IC2? I see the competition constantly. IC2 is barely used. BR is. Players in packs like DW20, Infinity, Evolved, Monster, etc. make choices on what to build. Most go with BR because they are easier, more powerful, and don't explode. That simple. We probably have over a hundred players who built BR on our Infinity server. And I think i was the only one who built an IC2 reactor. Or IC2 windmills, etc. Power is just to easy to get in other ways on those packs.

'Best' 'Most eficient' etc are ill defined but real concepts that players constantly use. They are as real as concepts like "infinite water" or that Obsidian is a hard substance. Minecraft has a lot of younger players. They choose a mod because they percieve it to be better in some way.

I'm enjoying Evolved right now, just to listen to players reactions as they learn about and have to use mods they are unfamiliar with. Some people don't like this, but seems very popular with a lot of players.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

How so?
SMP has pretty much been the only time I've used rail networks on a large scale- specifically built for shunting players about the world. Its a fairly interesting project that encourages players to work together. I know I'm the mother of outliers as such- so take it with a pinch of salt [or something stronger].
Though I'm kinda curious about the flip side of this as my other experiences involve a teleport plugin of some description- which was pretty damn boring and often lead to myself trolling other players. Ever seen someone teleport into a rockcrusher?

Without using plugins, there's several mods designed for interconnectivity on a server over large (multi-thousand block) distances. First and foremost is Better Portals to set up a transportation hub. Mystcraft is another extremely popular means of keeping everyone connected without having to lay thousands of tracks. There's also the EnderBooks mod.

As far as items, Tesseracts are the most common means of moving items around large distances.

The key here is keeping everyone interconnected without stepping on each other's toes. You don't want to be branch mining and suddenly break into someone else's base. However, the further away you get, the more it feels like SSP. To balance the two, something like Better Portals or Mystcraft's books are used to keep everyone as a community rather than as a bunch of individuals.

hmm, think i agree with you on most things. Possibly i wrote my post wrong? I have hundreds of players on the servers i help to run, and was attempting to give an idea of why some mods get used, some don't, and why they are still viable mods when used in other packs. Not sure where you hostility is coming from. I put up my opinion on why some mods don't get use. OPINION. Most of us have them. I assume when someone posts a question in the OP he is looking for peoples opinions. I was not trying to make an argument of any kind. And wasn't engaging anything you said at all.

Ahh, I must have misread then. I read it as a simple 'lrn2play' elitist complaint. If that was not the intent, then I apologize.

As for BR not competing with IC2? I see the competition constantly. IC2 is barely used. BR is. Players in packs like DW20, Infinity, Evolved, Monster, etc. make choices on what to build. Most go with BR because they are easier, more powerful, and don't explode. That simple. We probably have over a hundred players who built BR on our Infinity server. And I think i was the only one who built an IC2 reactor. Or IC2 windmills, etc. Power is just to easy to get in other ways on those packs.

The fact that BR is used and IC2 is not have nothing to do with each other. It's like trying to say people don't live on Mars because there are no McDonalds there.

BR is used as a means of creating a lot of power. That is not the primary, or even secondary, purpose for IC2. Nuclear Reactors are used to power end-tier IC2 machines. It is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself (although it used to be fun to play around with before the IC2ex branch made it obsolete).

I compared Mekanism to IC2, which I believe is a fairly fair comparison. It is a technological infrastructure mod. The whole reason we had IC2 back in the day was for the banks of machines that ran on power. Without that, power was fairly meaningless. That was fun, back in the day, with LP used to interconnect everything, and multiple tandem macerator chains...

'Best' 'Most eficient' etc are ill defined but real concepts that players constantly use. They are as real as concepts like "infinite water" or that Obsidian is a hard substance. Minecraft has a lot of younger players. They choose a mod because they percieve it to be better in some way.

Best is a subjective comment and will change with the perspective of the person talking. Infinite Water is an absolute fact and a mechanic of vanilla minecraft. Obsidian being a hard substance is dependent on what other substances you are comparing it to, so is is a bit more fair, but is still less subjective than 'best'. They may be widely used, but that does not make it correct usage of the terms.

I'm enjoying Evolved right now, just to listen to players reactions as they learn about and have to use mods they are unfamiliar with. Some people don't like this, but seems very popular with a lot of players.

I haven't had a chance to play Evolved, but I think I might try it out now, if it is trying to go back to the roots.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Teleportation is nice, but unless you know it's between two sets of loaded chunks, that can get hard on a system pretty fast. Trains aren't necessarily better, I admit, but they're faster than walking, and slower than flying. On the other hand, Rails are less likely to get you killed when you rubber band. Oh, hey, you're coming in to land? Great, but you're supposed to be over here! *dies from falling damage* Or here! *suffocates in wall*

On the other hand, you can go thousands of blocks with a couple of hundred tracks if you go to the effort to make player cannons. Ten or so down and a launcher track nets quite the distance. Admittedly it does take some calculation and precision. And requires two tracks unless it's a one-way system. Or just use EnderIO's Ender Rails. All the fun of trains without the long lines of track.

Big Reactors get used as much because they RF straight out, instead of needing to convert EU into RF. If you're going IC2 you only have to worry about IC2 reactors.

I missed the chance to use IC2 and LP together. I got into the game, just as AE was released. So I was able to use that instead of LP. By the time I got to use LP, it was with TE's standalone version. That was also the last time I used IC2.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Without using plugins.....the more it feels like SSP. To balance the two, something like Better Portals or Mystcraft's books are used to keep everyone as a community rather than as a bunch of individuals.

One of us missed something. You implied it was easier in SSP than SMP. Which was the opposite of my experiences.

You can easily cover 1000s of blocks in the nether- 500 blocks will get you 4km across the overworld. Combine this with a shared workload and not only is it fairly easy [resource wise]- it becomes a part of the community itself. If you want to keep players together then what better way than a team effort?
If 500 blocks is still too much, remember theres a plethora of auto-building mechanics and hand tools available.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

One of us missed something. You implied it was easier in SSP than SMP. Which was the opposite of my experiences.

You can easily cover 1000s of blocks in the nether- 500 blocks will get you 4km across the overworld. Combine this with a shared workload and not only is it fairly easy [resource wise]- it becomes a part of the community itself. If you want to keep players together then what better way than a team effort?
If 500 blocks is still too much, remember theres a plethora of auto-building mechanics and hand tools available.

Rails are convenient for SSP because you typically don't have to move thousands of blocks to do something, you can generally stay within a couple hundred block radius, so your track usage is exponentially less.

When it takes ten minutes just to get to where you are going, your connectivity is... tenuous at best. Better Portals and Mystcraft book networks seem to be the best for interconnectivity.

 

[KingTriaxx]

If you've got EnderIO, it has Ender Rails that will take those thousands of blocks out of the equation. Everyone gets a free Dimensional Transceiver, and the other end sits at spawn. Trains for everyone, and no monster rail lines.

Then again, Launch Tracks look way cooler, but chop huge sections of track out of the equation. I've managed 50 block throws.

And you're much less likely to find someone has set you up to teleport into a deathtrap. (Even if they were after someone else.)

 

[Celestialphoenix]

And you're much less likely to find someone has set you up to teleport into a deathtrap. (Even if they were after someone else.)

I Wonder if its possible to have a pet Gaia Guardian?

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I Wonder if its possible to have a pet Gaia Guardian?

Starting the fight up is just right-clicking the beacon with a terrasteel ingot. You can probably automate that with an Autonomous Activator. Use Wireless Redstone so that a signal is sent to activate when the teleportation happens... it'd be a pretty nifty prank to pull on someone.