Question about redundency, and a second on some trees.

[Esperologist]

Keep in mind that I am new to FTB... just like all the other Mindcrack fans out there. ^_^;

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Okay, so I've noticed a few duplicate items in FTB so far.

First off, the wrench. There are two ways to make a wrench, and each looks different.
(Not that I have any clue what the wrench is for.)

Second, tin ingots. Not sure how, but I have two types of tin ingot... but they can be used interchangably... like wood planks can be used in mixed sets.

Third is silver ore. I've mined up two types of silver ore. I've not gotten much of one type, so I haven't smelted it yet for ingots... however, I note that it doesn't work in the blast furnace, where the more abundent one did work in the blast furnace.

I'm sure there are more, but I haven't run into them yet.
Is this all done intentionally, or is it just that the mods weren't in any way merged... and instead were just placed together?
ie: the wrenches work for items from different mods only, and the silvers will only work in mod specific usages.

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Second question: Are any of the mod added trees fully integrated as wood?
So far I only have redwood and rubber... but both behave not how I expected.

The redwood I can only use for making sticks... haven't tried for a chest yet.
I tried using redwood in BatBox construction (though, with no bats involved, I don't know why the proper term of Batt isn't used)... and wasn't able to do so.

Also, the rubber wood immeadiatly converts to jungle in any attempt to use it as wood.
In an extractor it only yeilds one rubber... and placing the logs again doesn't seem to generate any sap... so I don't see the benefit of cutting them down, other then the apparently slim hope of getting sapplings.
(I get about 6 saplings for every 5 rubber trees I cut down.)

Overall, setting up a rubber farm was a pain... and I don't see why I would ever cut down a redwood tree again. Is there something I'm missing?

 

[Gravitas]

You need to craft a treetap for your rubber trees, you can find it on the industrialcraft wiki here http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Treetap . You should find that some blocks on rubber trees have a different texture with yellow in the middle. If you right-click on these blocks with a treetap you will receive one sticky resin. The texture will go dark, over time it will refill with sap. Put the sticky resin into an extractor and you will receive three rubber.

 

[Bluehorazon]

To your first question:

There are 3 wrenches. A bronze wrench from Forestry, another bronze wrench from IC2 and a iron wrench from Buildcraft. Buildcraft and Forestry-wrenches are interchangeable since they are both for rotating blocks in the mod. If nothing has changed the IC2 wrench does not work that way.

Silver will work for everything, that does not mean that all machines can prozess both ores. The blast-furnace is not a basic furnace so it might not be able to melt all ores, but a normal furnace or most other furnaces in the pack should be able to melt the ores.

To your second question:

Not all of the woods are fully integrated in the ore (it is not only used for ore) dictionary, which is what makes non-vanilla items interchangeable like you noticed with the ingots. Rubber-Wood behaves that way on intension. You can turn a log into 3 pieces of jungle-wood or use it inside an extractor for one piece of rubber. That's on purpose rubber-trees are not meant to be chopped down. They spawn with resin-holes which can be harvest once about every 30min so you normally only chop down the trees without resin-holes. And yes rubber-tree saplings are rare. Only 1 or 2 per tree.

There actually is a single reason to cut down a redwood-tree... charcoal. But next to this all extra-biomes wood has more or less decorative uses, which will hopefully change.

 

[CoderJ]

Keep in mind that I am new to FTB... just like all the other Mindcrack fans out there. ^_^;

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Okay, so I've noticed a few duplicate items in FTB so far.

Bound to happen when multiple mods are lumped together. Luckily, Forge has some solutions for this (such as the Ore dictionary) and often the mod authors will put hooks into the mod so items/ores/etc are interchangeable. Some exceptions exist...

First off, the wrench. There are two ways to make a wrench, and each looks different.
(Not that I have any clue what the wrench is for.)

There's actually four wrenches; Industriual Craft wrench (all brass) which is used to removed/configure IC2 blocks, Buildcraft wrench (ingots + gear) which is used to change pipes around, Forestry wrench used to rotate blocks (appears interchangeable with Buildcraft... recipe doesn't even show up in my NEI atm) and the ThermalExpansion Crescent Wrench for breaking fragile blocks/conduit (stop laughing, seriously, this is how you pick up Energy Cells and have them keep their charge.... unless you have a gravity gun ).

Second, tin ingots. Not sure how, but I have two types of tin ingot... but they can be used interchangably... like wood planks can be used in mixed sets.

It depends on how you made it and from what ore. The ore issue is resolved by disabling it's generation in one of the mods (but not all of them that generate tin, as that would be bad... think it's just Forestry and IC2 doing it here....); not much to do with how you process the ore after, though. It's interchangeable in every recipe that requires it, so not a huge deal.

Third is silver ore. I've mined up two types of silver ore. I've not gotten much of one type, so I haven't smelted it yet for ingots... however, I note that it doesn't work in the blast furnace, where the more abundent one did work in the blast furnace.

Again, two different mods are generating silver (Factorization and one other... think IC2 again, could be Forestry). The one that's super abundant is meant to be smelted so you get lead (Factorization needs tons of lead). Almost all recipes I've seen that require lead and/or silver, though, have been interchangeable between the two types... so again, no huge deal.

Second question: Are any of the mod added trees fully integrated as wood?
So far I only have redwood and rubber... but both behave not how I expected.

The redwood I can only use for making sticks... haven't tried for a chest yet.
I tried using redwood in BatBox construction (though, with no bats involved, I don't know why the proper term of Batt isn't used)... and wasn't able to do so.

Also, the rubber wood immeadiatly converts to jungle in any attempt to use it as wood.
In an extractor it only yeilds one rubber... and placing the logs again doesn't seem to generate any sap... so I don't see the benefit of cutting them down, other then the apparently slim hope of getting sapplings.
(I get about 6 saplings for every 5 rubber trees I cut down.)

Overall, setting up a rubber farm was a pain... and I don't see why I would ever cut down a redwood tree again. Is there something I'm missing?

I kept this quote whole. Not sure what's going on with the redwood... it should be interchangeable with any other type of wood. Possible bug with the BatBox recipe (Battery Box, didn't know there was a proper abbreviation for battery...).

Placing logs will not result in resin holes opening back up (those are generated when the tree grows, I believe); the point of the rubber farm is to get logs + sapling + resin (honestly, I keep turn the resin into rubber as need, logs get turned into charcoal or just thrown into storage, saplings go back into the farm with excess becoming biomass).

 

[Omicron]

Woods from ExtraBiomesXL (such as redwood, acacia etc.) are not fully integrated yet. You can make them into planks and build stuff with them and burn them for fuel, but not use them in mod recipes. I highly recommend you settle in an area with vanilla trees (or carry some saplings over to where you live).

 

[Darlock Ahe]

ThermalExpansion Crescent Wrench for breaking fragile blocks/conduit (stop laughing, seriously, this is how you pick up Energy Cells and have them keep their charge.... unless you have a gravity gun ).

You can use buildcraft wrench to pickup energy cells and break conduits with shift-click

 

[Esperologist]

I guess it would be nice as an interim solution to have items from different mods indicated in some way.
ie: BC means BuildCraft >>> Silver Ore BC
Once the mods are integrated ('One wrench to do it all!'), such markers would not be needed... except maybe on new items/mods added.

I had to cut down the rubber trees for sapplings... my spawn is a tiny island in the ocean and it took about 6 hrs (irl) to find rubber trees.
I actually thought the mods had failed when I got in, since it looked like any vanilla island in the middle of the ocean.
I've decided to convert the whole island into my base, thus not needing to worry about hostile mobs at home... however, I get no animals it seems.
Oh well, once I can get a nether gate network set up, I'll build an animal farm on the mainland.

On another note, I'm enjoying these extra biomes. Alpine thrilled me a little... more so when I got to the top and looked down on a village in the middle of a lagoon... on the water, with no paths between buildings. I'm converting it into a safe village.

On another note, just wondering if location impacts temperature sensative machines at all.
Will building on an ice wasteland or glacier keep machines cooler?

I suspect not, but it would be nice if they could... and deserts in the day should cook machines, and at night cool them (like a real desert).

 

[Darlock Ahe]

Will building on an ice wasteland or glacier keep machines cooler?

Nope, location won't affect machines, otherwise everyone will build their machine rooms under water
It was the case in earlier version of IC2, were you could cool your nuclear reactor by surrounding it with water, so everyone was doing that.

 

[Omicron]

When you are worrying about redundancy, remember that FTB is actually a very special use case for the mods.

At their core, all mods are designed - and need to be designed - to work completely stand-alone. You cannot ask Forestry to rely on Buildcraft's wrench, because there might be a case where Forestry is installed but Buildcraft isn't. Therefore Forestry must include its own wrench, even if it's a 100% duplicate of the Buildcraft one. The same goes for ore - Forestry needs copper and tin, and so does Industrialcraft. But both must work in a situation where only one of the two is installed, so both must include their own ore.

As soon as you install two mods together, then, you invariably get duplicates. It's unavoidable.

That's why Forge exists the way it is now. It's a huge mod compatibility bridge. It doesn't only integrate mods with Minecraft, but also mods with other mods. The so-called Ore Dictionary is a prime example of that. Mods still have to bring their own ore so they are self-sufficient, but they can now say "this ore I am spawning here is a Forge Ore Dictionary compatible type of copper". And then Forge says "great, that means the player can use this copper to replace any other Forge Ore Dictionary compatible type of copper in recipes, even if the recipes are from a completely different mod". This is why we can get away with having only one mod in FTB generate copper ore in the world nowadays, even though there are at least five different independent mods that use copper in their recipes.

The Ore Dictionary has since grown well beyond just ore - GregTech registering the various logic gates and circuits as valid replacements of each other is just one example of many. And it's still being expanded upon.

Maybe there will come a day where Forge will be able to not only translate between each mod's individual resources, but actually manage them in their stead. Like saying "if you write a mod that relies on Forge to run, you might as well ask Forge to spawn copper for you instead of doing it yourself". If that kind of functionality can be offered, and mods take up the offer, then that will eliminate redundancy (at least for the most common resources).

Though it's a question of whether Forge wants to go there, and whether mod authors want to give up their independence that far. It does kind of prescribe to mods how they must design their recipes. Consider Factorization - that mod asks for about three times as many resources for each individual recipe as any other mod. But in return it goes and spawns three times as many resources for the player to harvest. Where it to rely on a central Forge ore generation, it would have to completely reinvent its recipe design paradigm and rework all existing recipes.

 

[Esperologist]

Darloc > I'm not so much talking about external water cooling... really, water cooling should be a 'pump and pipe' system for cooling... immersion does work, but wouldn't be as effective. I'm just thinking that it would generally be colder on top of a glacier so there should be a minor gain in cooling there.

ICountFrom0 > My spawn location was a small island, about 200x100 blocks in size. After checking for all my surface resources (grass for seeds and two oak trees), I got myself established. Once I had a suitable food supply, I boated around the island, keeping it in view. In all that time, I never saw 'mainland' or even other islands... and never got animals.
Eventually, my need for rubber (to make wires) was too great and I went in search of the mainland... about 600 blocks away from spawn, at the shortest. I found rubber trees over 1k away.
It will be easier to just build a Nethergate system and set up a farm elsewhere... I'm thinking not far from my lagoon bound village. As for the village, I am going to secure it against all possible losses... including fencing the edges of paths so they can't leap off.

I hav to mind my dock there though... I was going a little fast, though not top speed, and the transition from water to half tile (set as a bottom in the top layer of water) and it resulted in a wreck of my boat and me 'hitting the ground too hard'. I was lucky that all the important stuff landed on the dock, only lost a few things to the depths of the lagoon (drownable depths).

Thank you for the tips on the rubber trees. I was about to experiment with 'topping' the trees to see if they still produced. I've got 6 trees providing my sap for rubber right now. I even have the electrical tap for hitting them up.
My current project is using the minepump (drills straight down only) to tap for resources... After I moved the unit to start a new hole, I head into the previous hole and pull resources and explore caves. I've also made my first diamond with a compressor... expensive, but I want a quarry.

Omicron > I can think of a better way to bring about unification of mods... however, it would take a rebuild of the way the modding community works... and maybe the Minecraft code itself... I'll have to do some research into modding Minecraft and see if it is feasable. If I believe it to be feasable, I will write a report and present it around.
I already see where it won't fully work... but I'll see what work arounds can be done...

 

[Squigie]

Animals will never spawn in an ocean biome, no matter how much grass there is. It makes lone island spawns less fun. Deserts and ice plains are also lifeless. Alpine, glacier, ice wasteland, mountain ridge and wasteland lack grass, and tundra is specified as lifeless on the wiki.

Snow covered grass should be critter spawnable as long as there is an air block at the same y-level within range. Spawning is complicated. The process must start with an air block, but mobs can spawn in blocks that lack collision (tripwires, pressure plates, rails, signs, etc.)

 

[Squigie]

His wasn't a lone island that was ocean biome, it was a lone island that is alpine biome. I've seen islands as small as 1 block that where a mini biome, sometimes with an animal on them.

I've never been on an alpine, is it maybe one of the special snow biomes where it's more then a block thick, making the grass not actually grass?

I based my reply on this:

ICountFrom0 > My spawn location was a small island, about 200x100 blocks in size. After checking for all my surface resources (grass for seeds and two oak trees), I got myself established. Once I had a suitable food supply, I boated around the island, keeping it in view. In all that time, I never saw 'mainland' or even other islands... and never got animals.

On an island of that size animals should have spawned on chunk creation if they could. They also should have spawned during the boat trip, unless something has gone buggy. I did some quick experiments with void ages, and I as unable to get animals to spawn on grass platforms even staying over 30 blocks away, but I may have not waited long enough. In the FTB Insanity 1.2.5 map I was able to get spawns after laying down grass at the monument level simply by going down to the nether portal for a few minutes.

Alpine biomes have no grass, they are all bare stone and fir trees. Ice wastelands and glaciers are buried under a few layers of snow blocks, and glaciers have ice under that.

 

[Esperologist]

Animals will never spawn in an ocean biome, no matter how much grass there is. It makes lone island spawns less fun. Deserts and ice plains are also lifeless.

Ah, I hadn't thought to check what my biome for the island is. Upon checking, it is indeed ocean.
My lack of animals is not a bug, just the fact that I'm lost at sea... I actually kind of enjoy it. If it was vanilla minecraft, I would have taken it as a challange to see how long until I was desperate for resources.

Not sure where people got the idea it was alpine... I found an alpine while searching for rubber trees. Full out alpine, climbed up and looked down to find a lagoon town. I had thought my island was plains or such... what with the grass, tall grass and a couple trees.
The real good news is I have 3 oil deposits off shore... for when I figure that stuff out.

For anyone curious, the alpine is a large mountain (or few mountains) that are just stripped of dirt completely... or almost completely. Then covered in regular snow.

 

[Esperologist]

The ic2 miner only goes down because you have not built and installed a scanner. The pump lets it handle liquids instead of giving up, yes.

Actually, I am using a Mining Well. I believe it is from BuildCraft.
The mining pipe needed for the miner makes it rather expensive... eventually I will be getting one of those though, to get what I can't find under my island.

Based on what I am reading, here is what the cost looks like:
I won't include wood and stone costs, just ores or crafted items.

Current Setup: Mining Pump
- 13 iron
- 1 redstone
- 1 chest
- 1-8 cobblestone pipe
- 1 switch (for engines)
- 2 redstone engines
= 2 pistons (2 iron, 2 redstone)
= 2 glass
post cost:
stone/iron picks to clear walls of shaft and any tunnels.

Alternate Setup: Miner
- machine block
= 8 refined iron
- electronic circuit
= 1 refined iron
= 2 redstone
= 6 copper cables
== 3 copper each (tot: 18)
== 6 rubber each (tot: 36)
- 2 mining pipe
= 1 treetap
= 6 refined iron
- 1 mining drill ? (presumed as the power tool)
= 5 steel
= 1 battery
= 1 various (easiest being electronic circuit)
result:
Only digs 6 blocks on that cost alone, since mining pipe comes in stacks of 8, and only 2 are need to build it.
post cost:
Mining pipes, produced 8 at a time.
A 'short range' miner (placed underground) likely only needs about 16-32 pipes.
A 'surface' miner will need min 64, just to reach near the bottom, but would be good to have another 16, to ensure full reach at bottom with either scanner.

Note: I may be wrong on exact operation of the miner, since I can't justify the cost of building one.
If it really does require a mining drill power tool, I haven't even tried making steel yet as it requires a blast furnace and I'm not sure how that works yet.
Looks Nether related... and I'm not yet ready for a trip there yet.

On the matter of the pump... with a miner it requires cells (from what I've read).
With the mining well, I just make a second, then combine it with a tank (8 glass) and it becomes a pump that will just put it in a neighboring tank.

Summary:
I don't see a real need to ever build a miner, unless I want to mine under my island more.
Fact is, I now have a quarry machine, just need to set it up in a location that I don't mind turning into a giant pit.

On another note, thanks to Mystcraft, I've solved my farm dilemma... got me an plains age full of animals.
Going to set up my farm there... and make a nexus for teleporting around the overworld... if it works.
I may not be hitting the nether for some time yet.
Also makes setting up a mob farm easier, since it has no underground caves... getting hords of them under the massive trees... which are far apart, so clear one and it makes a perfect spot to set up a mob farm.

 

[Omicron]

Note that you only have to craft the mining pipe once.

After the miner is done, it retracts the pipe and even fills the hole with a material of your choice, so your area doesn't look like swiss cheese.

 

[MCJinzha]

Redwood log is so easy to harvest in MASSIVE amounts, they're cool for charcoal, but I really think they should be compatible more.

Isn't there an update to ExtraBiomesXL and Forestry to add compatiblity between those 2? I got so many redwood saplings, I could use the ability to ferment them..

 

[Esperologist]

Do you mean a "quarry"...

Perhaps we are using different FTB versions... I am using FTB Beta Pack A for Minecraft ver 1.4.2

I have available to build for mining:
Mining Well
Miner
Quarry

I am currently in the process of trying to get a quarry running... which actually led me to discovering another bug, but that is for another thread.