Project Creep - What's the deepest rabbit hole you've gone down for a simple task?

[malicious_bloke]

This amused me to an extent, I just realised how I spent my evening.

Project: Automate my wheat, potato and sugar farms
Desired end result: Automatic farming using Agricraft Crops and Industrial Foregoing Gatherers.

Stages involved:
1. Breed three sets of seeds up 10/10/10. Done. Took about an hour and a metric ton of bonemeal.
2. Build Gatherers. [Problem: Don't have any latex to make plastic for Gatherers]
2a. Build latex production system [Problem: Out of space on main floor of base]
2a(i). Dig out basement level below main floor [Problem: Huge mess of cabling under floor getting in the way]
2a(ii). Tidy underfloor cabling, move down a couple of y-levels to unfinished early-game digging works, dig out rest of basement. [Problem: Forgot to add staircase, no room to tidily add staircase]
2a(iii). Build RFtools elevator system to get from machine room to basement level.

2b. [Problem: Realise bare rock basement looks ugly].
2b(i). Use pleasant Chisel blocks and a mix of ProjectRed and Mekanism light sources to make area look nicer, TiCo clear glass to wall off aforementioned open cast mining pit. [Problem: No power or ME channels]


3. Run cabling from Colin and Draconic Energy plaything, hide tidily behind walls.
4. Set up treetap machine thingies plus formation panes to export wood from ME network.
5. Tank to collect latex

------ The above is finished, below is still to do
6. Automate smelting of latex into plastic sheets
7. Built Gatherers
8. Create and decorate new space for auto-farm setup
9. Set up farm and connect to Colin.

All bloody evening this has taken me and it's still not finished XD

 

[Pyure]

I dunno. Just about anything in GT5. Its very common for me to rabbit-hole myself to the point where I'm eight steps deep with no recollection of what I'm working towards in the first place. Clipboards are a must.

 

[rhn]

For me it is my "building OCD" that causes the deepest rabbit holes.
Need/want production/processing of some item? Well, that needs its own dedicated building with a whole scene around it. And it needs to be decorated and the actual production/processing hidden behind a better looking facade.

One of my last such projects was a slaughterhouse, simply because it irked me that I had no automated source of raw meats. I didn't need the meat for anything, just bothered me that I could not order a burger at my McBurgers restaurant...
Lead to https://forum.feed-the-beast.com/th...ide-collection-etc.42664/page-69#post-1981013

Or when I set up a fast travel to the nearest taint biome I could find(over 10k blocks away), because it might be handy if I ever needed to go back there. Ended up building a big military/research outpost there, that serves absolutely no purpose. Haven't needed to go back there once, except to check out the build

 

[Nuclear_Creeper0]

It has to be the automation of seed creation in Skyfactory 3.
1. Needed Inferium to kick the process off so I created a mob farm
2. The mob farm was lagging the world so I needed to make black hole units to prevent that.
2a. Those have a slighly more complex recipe and I'm lazy so I had to set up a Refined Storage system for autocrafting.
2b. The system requires power so I had to make a reactor, along with sift for resources to make it.
3. The creation of EnderIO farming stations required me to set up autocrafting and automatic experience movement into the Soul Binder.
4. Had to make a Void Ore miner to get Prosperity shards for the seeds since again, I'm lazy and don't want to go mine in the Beneath.
5. Needed seeds so I made nature seeds manually for that.
6. Used Immersive Engineering Garden Cloches to duplicate seeds
7. Had to make all of the 25 x 25 plots for each kind of seed I wanted to use including growth accelerators.
7a. Growth accelerators required fish and prismarine. I made fish through lootbags and prismarine required me to use large amounts of power into the atomic reconstructor along with making 10/10/10 Quartz Chickens.
8. Finally used Refined Storage autocrafting to make the seeds
I probably overdid it. But I'm lazy and have no desire to sift for resources

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

One of mine wasn't huge, but it was big for me: farming.

I decided to set up robot farming in Regrowth using Buildcraft. Once I'd decided to do that, I realised I'd need all the other tables required for programming the boards; it also got me making a bunch more lasers to construct the redstone core things at a reasonable pace. Then there was learning how to program them, figuring out how to set up their charging and item dropoff... it turned in to a bigger thing than I expected. It was thoroughly enjoyable though!

Likewise my current base in the pack I'm playing. I started sketching it out, planning out stuff with carpenters blocks, and now I'm like "this is a looooot of work..."

 

[Cpt_gloval]

I remember doing that for Regrowth. Had a sub-sub-basement with 9x18 cells and robots trapped in them to collect the plant products, this negated the need for the overly frustrating map table thing you need to get Robots to not roam away. The products were piped up to the Sub basement where they were pumped into crafters that turned the essences into their respective ore blocks and whatnot. The Ore blocks and the lava were then pumped up to the basement where I had dedicated TC Smelters to turn it into blocks then into compacting drawers on the 1st floor next to my Crafting area.

Took me like 2-3 weeks to set it all up due to my limited playing time. Can't remember how many times I had to stop and step back to figure out wth I was doing due to rabbit holing. Was fun though.

 

[Henry Link]

For me it was the single block of ludicrite in Obscurity. Just to find out that I need a second block to complete the pack and reach the overworld.

 

[GamerwithnoGame]

Crikey - what did you need to make ludicrite??

 

[Henry Link]

Well I remember it involved galgadorian metal. Which of course the recipes were changed for and over 5000 diamonds for each block. Several hundred mushrooms for each block. And the only way I could find to automate the mushrooms was via a thaumcraft bore and some golems.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Hole No. 1 (A bridge too far)

Spoiler

Just build a bridge they said...
...Across the nether....
...Without any kind of flight whatsoever.
...When the Ghasts have been given pinpoint accuracy...
...oh, and the floor is covered in some type of aggressive fungus that eats everything that walks on it and spews poison when attacked. But thats probably nothing to worry about.

The best thing? My previous way of reaching this destination was via a tunnel running parallel to the bridge, about 50 blocks over and 30 below.
It connects the same destinations and the route is slightly longer.
(It was going to be part of the server rail network, but the server closed before the network was finished)

Hole No. 2 (My second attempt at building a modpack)

Spoiler: The rabbit hole I'm currently digging. No idea how deep its gonna go.

1. Something Gregtech based and a little later than 1.7.2.
2. Gregtech Unofficial available on 1.10.2- so will fly with that.
3. Most mods are on there. Except Buildcraft. (This is May last year).
4. I want the custom ore-gen to be a 'selling' point of the pack
4a. figure out how to use CoFH world. Play around with different parameters until I generate some interesting structures/deposits.
4b. add in Overworld and Nether ore gen using Gtech ores. Has a few issues with rendering, but a fix is in the works.

-Intermission. Have to stop for 8 weeks; crazy busy at work. (as per usual for the summer)-

5. Added in the Aether II Mod for 1.10. (Its an awesome sky island dimension).
5a. game crashes on launch. Crashlog blames Gregtech. Report issue. (no fix)
5b. -Report issue to Aether II dev team. Fix available for 1.12.
5c. Remove Aether II
6. Added a custom overworld worldgen.
6a. It doesn't support modded biomes.
6b. Design workaround.
7. The constant visual glitching from Gtech ores not rendering properly finally got to me.
8. Need a replacement. None exists.
9. Need to add my own blocks.
10. Install ContentTweaker.
10a. Totally fail to understand the examples on the Wiki, repeatly crash game.
10b. Give up.
11. Try Quadrum.
11a. Successfully add blocks using Quadrum.
11b. Added 3 types of copper (Copper, Chalcopyrite, Malachite), 2 of tin, 4 of iron, 7 of coal, 4 of diamond, 4 each of lapis/lazurite, nether version of gold, lead/silver/galena, some other assorted gemstones, 3x nickel, "poor" gravel versions of the basic ores
11c. Some of the gemstone varients are 'loose' and drop the gemstones rather than themselves. Quadrum did not like non-vanilla block drops.
11d. Use different mod to customise drops
12. Update CoFH to use Quadrum blocks
12a. Added the poor gravel ores to sometimes spawn on the surface over a deposit
13. Encounter random crash to desktop. Logs and crash reports are useless.
13a. This randomly happens occasionally.
13b. Though pot luck, it happens on a known seed about 30sec into the game. Figure its worldgen related.
13c. Fly around aimlessly to recreate the crash; doing split search of my 70ish CoFH worldgen files. Vanilla flying is really REALLY slow.
13d. Over the course of 3 weeks (after giving up several times), I FINALLY find the culprit. An incorrect Meta value for 1 block in 1 script. [thereby trying to place a block that didn't exist]
14. Accidentally discover that a sprint start boosts creative flying speed by 3x.
15. RAGEQUIT!!!

16. Make a start on the ore processing recipes.
16a. Find that Gtech machines also glitch. A LOT.
16b. Give up with Gtech, and ditch it.
16c. 1.12 is more of a thing now- switch over.

17. Total restart of modlist. Pack Rebuild No. 1
17a. Tech Reborn and Modular Machinary makes a decent stand in for Gtech.
18. Quadrum isn't on 1.12.
19. Install ContentTweaker. Actually figure it out this time.
19a. Re-add the ENITRE list of custom ores.
20. CoFHworld scripts are still the same.
20a. Except a slight syntax change. MinHeight Vs min-height. For every parameter specified.
21. OW/Neth Oregen working. Will do the remaining 6 dimensions later.
22. Dive heavily into building out the tech progression.
22a. Adding MM machines and CT blocks/items to fill the void left by Gtech.

Actually making some reasonable progress with the pack. All is looking good.

23. Hear about Gregtech: Community Edition being developed for 1.12
23a. Grab a pre-alpha release and have a play.
24. Drop Tech Reborn and go back to Gtech. Pack Rebuild No. 2
24a. CraftTweaker throws one hell of an error message on startup due to the 'broken' recipes.
25. Gtech ores render properly
25a. Replace CofhWorld files again- Back to Gregtech.
26. Realise there are a LOT of reduntent items in ContentTweaker.
Before and After screenshots from clearing house;

27. Spend the entire weekend fixing all the CraftTweaker scripts.
27a. The Ore-Dict function is very useful, not as painful as expected.

--And once again Summer has rolled around and work is getting crazy again. Time for another intermission--