Tech mods: Why have a power system?

[Type1Ninja]

I'd like to point out that RF power gen isn't totally brainless. If you have a simple generator - say, the pink generator from extra utilities - then initially that is very brainless. Dump in pink dye,*BOOM* you have power. However, as you keep building, you're going to need more power, and a single pink generator run manually off of pink dye isn't going to cut it. Maybe you upgrade to x8, but then you need to automate the production of pink dye. Depending on which mods you have available, the bone meal you need isn't that complicated, but automating the collection and growing of roses is more complex. You'd need to design some kind of system to automatically grow and collect flowers on the ground, which would require autonomous activators or another fake player. Then, depending on the level of over-achiever you are, you can either void your excess resources, sort out the useful ones for you to use later, or set up entirely new systems for using resources. In this example, you'd get a bunch of other flower types at very high rates - what will you do with those? Some kind of bio generation, maybe, but then you are investing in a whole new system. The "silliness" of the available generators is the challenge in and of itself - how are you going to automate x resources, and what will you do with the excess/secondary yields?

TL;DR: The power gen itself is simple. Making it automatic is not.

Because so far, RF power systems seem to be nothing more than "Do you know the generators that are available to you, and how to use them", and not "Here's a challenge to actually deal with".

Isn't everything like that? "If you know how to use this, you can use it." Surely even RoC works this way - if I know how to set up a reactor, all I have to do is get the resources and build it. How is an RF system any different? If I know how to automate, say, the pink generator from earlier, all I have to do is get the resources and build it (and the assembly line to go with it).

To clarify: I opened this discussion because I figured people came in two camps:
1- I want the challenge of a power system challenge, or
2- I don't want a power system challenge, I don't really want to deal with a power system at all.

That there are people in the middle was the surprise.

(From this point on I'm kind of angry, as opposed to just impatient.)

I keep saying this to RoC/IC2 lovers... I can't believe you had to start up and entire thread and discuss for eight pages to figure this out. There's a thing called "time restraints" which prevents many of us from dumping hours and hours into gathering the materials and building one RoC reactor. The fact that I don't have that much time lends itself to small-ish but clever automation builds, not huge life-consuming reactors you have to continually, manually watch to make sure they don't explode. The fact that this is the first time I have ever seen an RoC/IC2 user ever acknowledge that it's ok to even like RF pisses me off. You still haven't reached the point where you acknowledge there is potential for challenge.

 

[Pyure]

I'd like to point out that RF power gen isn't totally brainless. If you have a simple generator - say, the pink generator from extra utilities - then initially that is very brainless. Dump in pink dye,*BOOM* you have power. However, as you keep building, you're going to need more power, and a single pink generator run manually off of pink dye isn't going to cut it. Maybe you upgrade to x8, but then you need to automate the production of pink dye. Depending on which mods you have available, the bone meal you need isn't that complicated, but automating the collection and growing of roses is more complex. You'd need to design some kind of system to automatically grow and collect flowers on the ground, which would require autonomous activators or another fake player. Then, depending on the level of over-achiever you are, you can either void your excess resources, sort out the useful ones for you to use later, or set up entirely new systems for using resources. In this example, you'd get a bunch of other flower types at very high rates - what will you do with those? Some kind of bio generation, maybe, but then you are investing in a whole new system. The "silliness" of the available generators is the challenge in and of itself - how are you going to automate x resources, and what will you do with the excess/secondary yields?

TL;DR: The power gen itself is simple. Making it automatic is not.

Yep, definitely. And that's sort of the draw for players I think: this is something you have to figure out how you're going to do. I have fond memories of setting up my first Forestry/Biofuel farms, and first couple times I did them, they were fun and challenging and interesting.

Isn't everything like that? "If you know how to use this, you can use it." Surely even RoC works this way - if I know how to set up a reactor, all I have to do is get the resources and build it. How is an RF system any different? If I know how to automate, say, the pink generator from earlier, all I have to do is get the resources and build it (and the assembly line to go with it).

Yes, but there's a difference of scale. Whereas with your XU scenario you have to be concerned with a few moving parts, with something like a ReC fusion reactor you're concerned with literally a base-full of things that all need to be working correctly.

There's no sense here trying to establish a difficulty ratio: is ReC 10x more involved? 100x? 1000x? The numbers are irrelevant. The point is that its just a different type of challenge for a different type of player, period.

(From this point on I'm kind of angry, as opposed to just impatient.)

I keep saying this to RoC/IC2 lovers... I can't believe you had to start up and entire thread and discuss for eight pages to figure this out. There's a thing called "time restraints" which prevents many of us from dumping hours and hours into gathering the materials and building one RoC reactor. The fact that I don't have that much time lends itself to small-ish but clever automation builds, not huge life-consuming reactors you have to continually, manually watch to make sure they don't explode. The fact that this is the first time I have ever seen an RoC/IC2 user ever acknowledge that it's ok to even like RF pisses me off. You still haven't reached the point where you acknowledge there is potential for challenge.

I'm not sure why the anger needs to be here. The whole point of the thread is discussion.

I'm just speaking for myself here: The reason I like the greater challenge of a GT or ReC build is simply: I've done RF. Been there, done it. There is insufficient potential for challenge for me there anymore because I already know definitively that I can "win" RF power in X time.

With a more complicated tech build, there are still unknowns, room for optimization, dangers to alleviate. It has nothing to do with GT being "better", its just more suitable to me and what I want to do to challenge myself.

 

[Zarkov]

And if it's not a challenge, then: why bother?

Just a general comment on this. Things doesn't have to be challenging to be fun or rewarding. I still enjoy getting the complete system of power generation, automated mining, ore processing and storage up and running early game, even though it's completely trivial at this point.

Sure, it's not something that I would care to do endlessly over and over, but given enough time after I have completed it in one world, it's among the top reasons why I eventually bother with starting a new world after having reached "end game".

 

[Pyure]

Just a general comment on this. Things doesn't have to be challenging to be fun or rewarding. I still enjoy getting the complete system of power generation, automated mining, ore processing and storage up and running early game, even though it's completely trivial at this point.

Sure, it's not something that I would care to do endlessly over and over, but given enough time after I have completed it in one world, it's among the top reasons why I eventually bother with starting a new world after having reached "end game".

I frequently don't even reach end-game before I find the sweet siren call too alluring, and do a restart

 

[lenscas]

I frequently don't even reach end-game before I find the sweet siren call too alluring, and do a restart

I don't think I ever really reached end-game, most of the time I quit before getting out of early game.

one of the possible reasons: needing rf to progress(most of the time my own fault) or the need to make a building/base before I can make a machine while I am not in the mood for making a base (which is most of the time)

and yes you read that right, rf kills my joy as it has literally everything I don't want to see in a power system, to make it worse I still need to rely on it for one reason or another.

 

[Type1Ninja]

I'm not sure why the anger needs to be here. The whole point of the thread is discussion.

Your post is good and makes me feel good. I'm responding to the one part that needs clarification; the rest of what you said was spot on. Let me get that out of the way.
The reason why it makes me angry is because I've seen people talk about this everywhere and they tend to deride RF, asking "why don't you just go play creative." There's nothing wrong with creative, but the person saying that implies that I and anyone else playing with RF have no stomach for challenge, which is, as we have discussed here, not true. That's what makes me angry. The fact that the discussion has finally reached this point also makes me angry because it seems like the sort of thing people should know to begin with, and even with this where it is I know there will still be people who say this.

 

[Pyure]

Your post is good and makes me feel good. I'm responding to the one part that needs clarification; the rest of what you said was spot on. Let me get that out of the way.
The reason why it makes me angry is because I've seen people talk about this everywhere and they tend to deride RF, asking "why don't you just go play creative." There's nothing wrong with creative, but the person saying that implies that I and anyone else playing with RF have no stomach for challenge, which is, as we have discussed here, not true. That's what makes me angry. The fact that the discussion has finally reached this point also makes me angry because it seems like the sort of thing people should know to begin with, and even with this where it is I know there will still be people who say this.

The issue is often communications. When people say "RF sucks", what they're usually really saying is "RF sucks at giving me an enjoyable gameplay experience compared to other things out there." Except, obviously, for those "you suck because you use RF" folks: they're just write-offs who can't be helped

The truth is, most of these people probably used RF or MJ and were reasonably satisfied with it until they found something that suited them better.

For me: RF generation is kinda boring for the most part, but do I think it sucks? I'm playing AG2 right now, and I'm thinking a complicated electrical system such as GT would be really silly in this pack. RF-solutions are a minor part of the various tech challenges set up for me, and that's how its supposed to be.

 

[Type1Ninja]

The issue is often communications. When people say "RF sucks", what they're usually really saying is "RF sucks at giving me an enjoyable gameplay experience compared to other things out there." Except, obviously, for those "you suck because you use RF" folks: they're just write-offs who can't be helped

Well, those people need to work on politeness. I never say "GT sucks" or "RoC sucks" even if I personally can't be bothered to even try them (although I know I should try them ). These people seem to be totally polite in everything else, too; they just get super uppity about power generation.
Maybe I'm insecure about RF in general because I spent multiple years trying to put together a non-buggy pack without power converters that also had every tech capability you could want. That's finally possible in 1.7.10 with RF (check my siggy for said pack), so it can't possibly be that bad. I say that, or I say that with time constraints RF is quite nice, or I say that automating resources provides the challenge that is missing from the wires themselves, but then the people persist.

 

[keybounce]

What is this "end game" of which you speak? I've had the same world since 1.2.3, I've migrated mods up through 147, and from 147 though 164 there was no stable "everything is working together in the same minecraft" until just before the switch to 1710. Even then, I'll be moving the old world along, and using multiworld to keep it, along with newer worldgen in a different world.

Could I start in a new world, and build stuff? Sure. Could I build that same stuff in my old world? Sure.

Isn't everything like that? "If you know how to use this, you can use it." Surely even RoC works this way - if I know how to set up a reactor, all I have to do is get the resources and build it. How is an RF system any different? If I know how to automate, say, the pink generator from earlier, all I have to do is get the resources and build it (and the assembly line to go with it).

The size of the RoC universe -- what you need to learn to use it -- is much, much less than the size of the RF universe. No matter what I do with RF, I cannot help but think that there is something simpler that I don't know that would obsolete half of what I've done.

(From this point on I'm kind of angry, as opposed to just impatient.)

I keep saying this to RoC/IC2 lovers... I can't believe you had to start up and entire thread and discuss for eight pages to figure this out.

I stayed out of the first several pages except to clarify a point or answer questions asked of me. I really did want to learn from others, so I just opened up a question, and listened.

That was how I approached this thread.

There's a thing called "time restraints" which prevents many of us from dumping hours and hours into gathering the materials and building one RoC reactor. The fact that I don't have that much time lends itself to small-ish but clever automation builds, not huge life-consuming reactors you have to continually, manually watch to make sure they don't explode. The fact that this is the first time I have ever seen an RoC/IC2 user ever acknowledge that it's ok to even like RF pisses me off. You still haven't reached the point where you acknowledge there is potential for challenge.

I have no intention of doing anything with ReaC's reactors. Maybe -- and I stress maybe -- a pebblebed. Probably not.

Having to automate lubricant? Having to pipe that automated lube into gear systems and hydros? Having to farm nether stuff and make that automatic?

"Low-tech" in RoC -- 4 steam engines fed by a pump -- is probably going to last me a really long time. It's not hard to set up, it's pretty obvious, and it's a good, basic tech. In a finite water world, it's not going to last forever either. You don't need lube for wooden gears, and the whole "wood gears can catch on fire" just means "minecraft fire prevention systems" like stone slabs around them. If heat itself is a problem (don't know yet), then there's the cooling fins.

Is there a potential for challenge in RF?
I don't know enough to know if there is or not.
As far as I can tell, there is a small but non-zero challenge, and upteen dozen different tutorials on "Here's how to automate this machine from this mod". Heck, forestry gives you automatic wood harvesting without having to trap a wither, at a higher rate of return (withers destroy a lot of the wood that they harvest), and that can be fed into a furnace-engine for automatic RF production. That doesn't run out; that, as far as I know, is the RF world equivalent of Reika's pump-feeding-infinite-water-to-a-steam-engine state. (I don't know how much RF/t that would generate; Reika's steam engines generates about 31.5 RF/t each)

As far as I can tell, RF's "automation" is based around what you could do. Got a passive mob farm? You could kill them, harvest the food, cook it, assemble the stuff into a Pam's meal, and toss it in the food generator. Or, you could use an auto-crafter to assemble everything; then, you need an auto-breeder and auto-killer.

Or? Plant a tree farm, chop it down, make charcoal? Or, forestry, grand-daddy of them all, can harvest the trees, and vanilla hoppers can turn that into charcoal. I'm sure that there's something to auto-plant the saplings, and use the leftovers for fuel to turn wood into charcoal.

Your example of pink dye? Skeleton farm, bonemeal on grass, water harvest plants, sort out the red flowers, and an auto-crafting step to mix red flower and white dye.

Let me ask this: If I had an NPC that could do the same stuff that I do -- if I could teach an NPC to do step X, Y, Z -- or if I had a sufficiently smart auto-crafter, how much of a challenge is the RF world? To what extent is it "Engage your brain around a problem", and to what extent is it "Engage your brain around the lack of a tool to automatically do something you can trivially do manually"?

Vanilla is lots and lots of "Very limited automation, what can you do with it". Etho has pushed that very, very far -- I'm watching less and less of him, not because I don't like him, but because I want less spoilers and to still have stuff for me to experiment with.

As far as I can tell -- and I will admit to only having seen a very small number of RF generators -- it's a case of "Find something that you can automate, and then automate that". As in, find something that you know how to automate. Then make a lot of that. Or, at the high-end, "Do a lot of resource harvesting, use lots and lots of resources in automated crafting/processing, use that output to make more power".

And nothing says "silly" like stone being melted to lava, pumped to a lava generator, to generate energy to melt lava. (Or just put a crucible over lava and not even need energy to melt the stone).

McJty's Ender pearl tossing, time sensitive generator? His low power, natural crystals that either require refining or generate pollution for higher power? Both are wonderful ideas -- one requires planning, one requires tech or tradeoff.

There's a thing called "time restraints" which prevents many of us from dumping hours and hours into gathering the materials...

So? The RF world has many different quarries, mining lasers, etc.; Direwolf assembled an automated moving platform that strip-mines a WORLD, not just a chunk. (Granted, it was what, 5 mods put together? Ask Cosmic Encounter players what can be done with just three powers. Heck, ask me what happened in a real-world 2 power game where the first two players had the perfect 4-power group.)

RoC has a horizontal infinite mining device. The more power you give it, the faster it gives you stuff out. RoC is not based around "time restraints" for the reactors, as far as I can tell, you are expected to automate the mining for it. For that matter, I think automated mining of iron is expected at late game.

the first time I have ever seen an RoC/IC2 user ever acknowledge that it's ok to even like RF pisses me off.

Err ... You lost me.

I'm saying that it's OK to like RF, and that gets you upset?
Or that no one before me said that, and you're upset at the other people before me?

Did you ever consider -- please think twice before you react to this -- that maybe they were saying this, and you just did not hear them / understand them?

It's very easy to refuse to hear what you don't want to hear if it's not explicitly stated. I find it very easy to believe that people before me have said "RF is fine for others, but I don't want it myself".

I cannot believe that I'm the first person to ask, "What is it that makes the RF power system worth building?". I can certainly believe that it may have been asked, and you heard it as "Why even bother with RF?". It's a very slight change in tone -- take that first question, and ask it in both a curious, inquisitive tone, and then again in an aggressive, challenging tone.

 

[Azzanine]

I think those uppity RF naysayers probably come from an old school tekkit/ftb background where power management WAS the game. Packs homogenously switching to the convenient mono faceted RF is taking the game away from them.

Of course if they are willing to pull away from preset public packs that is mostly false. People who want technical power management are spoiled for choice. We even have powerful easy to use MC instance launchers that make customization a sinch. Of course this makes multiplayer hard to achive due to the nature of how games are hosted. Nobody has explained to me how an old game like Unreal tournament can distribute it's content/mods via the server yet minecraft can't.

But the point I am making is when PACKS unanimously opt for RF it actually hurts our game play experience. At least if we don't want to stick to old versions of MC. But that being said we can still make our own. We have to learn that we technical players are outliers who aren't worth catering for. Or maybe that's why we are uppity, our penchant for over engineering is making us fall behind.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[Type1Ninja]

What is this "end game" of which you speak? I've had the same world since 1.2.3, I've migrated mods up through 147, and from 147 though 164 there was no stable "everything is working together in the same minecraft" until just before the switch to 1710. Even then, I'll be moving the old world along, and using multiworld to keep it, along with newer worldgen in a different world.

Could I start in a new world, and build stuff? Sure. Could I build that same stuff in my old world? Sure.



The size of the RoC universe -- what you need to learn to use it -- is much, much less than the size of the RF universe. No matter what I do with RF, I cannot help but think that there is something simpler that I don't know that would obsolete half of what I've done.


I stayed out of the first several pages except to clarify a point or answer questions asked of me. I really did want to learn from others, so I just opened up a question, and listened.

That was how I approached this thread.



I have no intention of doing anything with ReaC's reactors. Maybe -- and I stress maybe -- a pebblebed. Probably not.

Having to automate lubricant? Having to pipe that automated lube into gear systems and hydros? Having to farm nether stuff and make that automatic?

"Low-tech" in RoC -- 4 steam engines fed by a pump -- is probably going to last me a really long time. It's not hard to set up, it's pretty obvious, and it's a good, basic tech. In a finite water world, it's not going to last forever either. You don't need lube for wooden gears, and the whole "wood gears can catch on fire" just means "minecraft fire prevention systems" like stone slabs around them. If heat itself is a problem (don't know yet), then there's the cooling fins.

Is there a potential for challenge in RF?
I don't know enough to know if there is or not.
As far as I can tell, there is a small but non-zero challenge, and upteen dozen different tutorials on "Here's how to automate this machine from this mod". Heck, forestry gives you automatic wood harvesting without having to trap a wither, at a higher rate of return (withers destroy a lot of the wood that they harvest), and that can be fed into a furnace-engine for automatic RF production. That doesn't run out; that, as far as I know, is the RF world equivalent of Reika's pump-feeding-infinite-water-to-a-steam-engine state. (I don't know how much RF/t that would generate; Reika's steam engines generates about 31.5 RF/t each)

As far as I can tell, RF's "automation" is based around what you could do. Got a passive mob farm? You could kill them, harvest the food, cook it, assemble the stuff into a Pam's meal, and toss it in the food generator. Or, you could use an auto-crafter to assemble everything; then, you need an auto-breeder and auto-killer.

Or? Plant a tree farm, chop it down, make charcoal? Or, forestry, grand-daddy of them all, can harvest the trees, and vanilla hoppers can turn that into charcoal. I'm sure that there's something to auto-plant the saplings, and use the leftovers for fuel to turn wood into charcoal.

Your example of pink dye? Skeleton farm, bonemeal on grass, water harvest plants, sort out the red flowers, and an auto-crafting step to mix red flower and white dye.

Let me ask this: If I had an NPC that could do the same stuff that I do -- if I could teach an NPC to do step X, Y, Z -- or if I had a sufficiently smart auto-crafter, how much of a challenge is the RF world? To what extent is it "Engage your brain around a problem", and to what extent is it "Engage your brain around the lack of a tool to automatically do something you can trivially do manually"?

Vanilla is lots and lots of "Very limited automation, what can you do with it". Etho has pushed that very, very far -- I'm watching less and less of him, not because I don't like him, but because I want less spoilers and to still have stuff for me to experiment with.

As far as I can tell -- and I will admit to only having seen a very small number of RF generators -- it's a case of "Find something that you can automate, and then automate that". As in, find something that you know how to automate. Then make a lot of that. Or, at the high-end, "Do a lot of resource harvesting, use lots and lots of resources in automated crafting/processing, use that output to make more power".

And nothing says "silly" like stone being melted to lava, pumped to a lava generator, to generate energy to melt lava. (Or just put a crucible over lava and not even need energy to melt the stone).

McJty's Ender pearl tossing, time sensitive generator? His low power, natural crystals that either require refining or generate pollution for higher power? Both are wonderful ideas -- one requires planning, one requires tech or tradeoff.


So? The RF world has many different quarries, mining lasers, etc.; Direwolf assembled an automated moving platform that strip-mines a WORLD, not just a chunk. (Granted, it was what, 5 mods put together? Ask Cosmic Encounter players what can be done with just three powers. Heck, ask me what happened in a real-world 2 power game where the first two players had the perfect 4-power group.)

RoC has a horizontal infinite mining device. The more power you give it, the faster it gives you stuff out. RoC is not based around "time restraints" for the reactors, as far as I can tell, you are expected to automate the mining for it. For that matter, I think automated mining of iron is expected at late game.



Err ... You lost me.

I'm saying that it's OK to like RF, and that gets you upset?
Or that no one before me said that, and you're upset at the other people before me?

Did you ever consider -- please think twice before you react to this -- that maybe they were saying this, and you just did not hear them / understand them?

It's very easy to refuse to hear what you don't want to hear if it's not explicitly stated. I find it very easy to believe that people before me have said "RF is fine for others, but I don't want it myself".

I cannot believe that I'm the first person to ask, "What is it that makes the RF power system worth building?". I can certainly believe that it may have been asked, and you heard it as "Why even bother with RF?". It's a very slight change in tone -- take that first question, and ask it in both a curious, inquisitive tone, and then again in an aggressive, challenging tone.

The challenge in RF is almost totally in automating one specific resource to "burn." That's it. With the variety of generators and tools you have with RF, though, your generator system(s) will always be slightly different from somebody else's. That's what makes it fun.

There will always be something *slightly* simpler than what you used (Steve's Factory Manager comes to mind). I still wrestle with not being a munchkin and building everything soviet engineering style - "HUP HUP SOVIET ENGINEERING FOR ME, EVERYTHING IS BUILT OUT OF SOLID ROCK AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE" (quote from some person on this forum a while back, whose name I do not remember right now, unfortunately).

Basically, variety is the spice of RF.

I am saying that I do not remember seeing anybody who professes liking GT/RoC and has also said that RF is ok. That is what makes me angry. I might just be insecure and selectively (not) remember, though. I think maybe I just remember people making me angry because that's what sticks. I actually was angry earlier, so my post was maybe not the clearest/the most accurate. That's why I said I was angry.

You are the first person to ask "What is it that makes the RF power system worth building?" that I know of. I haven't seen a thread like this ever.

I'll maybe stop posting for a bit... I should post the update to my RF-centric modpack and publish my new modpack designed to get vanilla players into mods.

 

[lenscas]

I am saying that I do not remember seeing anybody who professes liking GT/RoC and has also said that RF is ok. That is what makes me angry.

The reason why I almost never say that rf is ok is the same why I almost never say that windows is ok(ish).
It feels irrelevant as it is pretty much the standard, it already proved itself to be at least somewhat ok else it won't be pretty much the standard.

It is for me and maybe others that don't like rf hard to not include it as so many mods want/require it, making its existence an even bigger annoyance and thus even harder to say about it that its ok.

 

[Type1Ninja]

It is for me and maybe others that don't like rf hard to not include it as so many mods want/require it, making its existence an even bigger annoyance and thus even harder to say about it that its ok.

That's why I like it; I have access to ALL the toys without needing to use power converters. Since this is a discussion, it makes sense for us to agree to disagree on this point.

 

[lenscas]

That's why I like it; I have access to ALL the toys without needing to use power converters. Since this is a discussion, it makes sense for us to agree to disagree on this point.

fun fact, the "it can do all the things" is another reason I don't like it.

 

[Type1Ninja]

fun fact, the "it can do all the things" is another reason I don't like it.

I'm not sure if we agree on "can do all the things." What I meant was "there is an RF mod for every single tech-related (and some unrelated) task you could possibly want to do." For me, that's positive; with IC2, for example, if I wanted dimension creation, I couldn't do that using just EU. I'd need to use power converters. You can pick and choose which mods to download and use if you think certain tasks should not be automatable.

 

[lenscas]

I'm not sure if we agree on "can do all the things." What I meant was "there is an RF mod for every single tech-related (and some unrelated) task you could possibly want to do." For me, that's positive; with IC2, for example, if I wanted dimension creation, I couldn't do that using just EU. I'd need to use power converters.

Then we are talking about exactly the same thing.
I don't mind the need for multiple power systems for different tasks, in fact in my mind it makes sense.
We use electricity for our phones, most(I think)still use gasoline for our cars and I won't be surprised that their are still plenty of people that don't use electricity to cook.
So why would there be a "perfect" energy source for everything in minecraft?
Wouldn't it make sense to use different power systems for different tasks or the same with a very loosely conversion as the system is just not ideal for the job you want it to do?

 

[Type1Ninja]

Then we are talking about exactly the same thing.
I don't mind the need for multiple power systems for different tasks, in fact in my mind it makes sense.
We use electricity for our phones, most(I think)still use gasoline for our cars and I won't be surprised that their are still plenty of people that don't use electricity to cook.
So why would there be a "perfect" energy source for everything in minecraft?
Wouldn't it make sense to use different power systems for different tasks or the same with a very loosely conversion as the system is just not ideal for the job you want it to do?

My argument would be that stuff like gasoline and electricity are different enough to justify using separately. RF and EU both seem like electricity, even if thematically, they're different. They're both transported in wires, they're both used to power machines...

Also, a base powered not by RF but by fuel piped throughout the base and burned where it's needed is a good idea that I will definitely explore.
Also also, we're starting to make electric cars. An "all-powering energy source" is unrealistic at the moment, perhaps, but we're getting there. In terms of thermodynamics, it makes sense to use one type of energy primarily; the more times you convert, the more lossy it is. You convert to the type of energy you want (i.e. for a car, it's kinetic energy, or for a stove, heat energy) at the last possible moment to conserve as much energy as possible.

 

[Chocohead]

For me, that's positive; with IC2, for example, if I wanted dimension creation, I couldn't do that using just EU. I'd need to use power converters.

Or you could use native RF generation. Power Converters were always the game breaker for having different power systems, as suddenly you can just use one and convert it rather than go into a mod to see how it wants you to generate power. All it takes is to look at MJ where it could be converted from RF but not back, and as a result people just used RF and MJ died.

 

[lenscas]

Also, a base powered not by RF but by fuel piped throughout the base and burned where it's needed is a good idea that I will definitely explore.
Also also, we're starting to make electric cars. An "all-powering energy source" is unrealistic at the moment, perhaps, but we're getting there.

I more went with, stuff that interacts with the world by placing and breaking blocks need another power system then the machines that sit in your base heating something up(electric furnace) and stuff like that.

As for the cars, that is why I said

most(I think)

and it took us how long to get it? and why? because electricity is not ideal for the job which get to my point of at a (big) cost transforming it.
That way you get awarded for using the optimal power system for a given task while still being able to use just one power system if one so desires.
(you can also see it as being punished for wanting just one power system that is up to you)

 

[Type1Ninja]

Or you could use native RF generation. Power Converters were always the game breaker for having different power systems, as suddenly you can just use one and convert it rather than go into a mod to see how it wants you to generate power. All it takes is to look at MJ where it could be converted from RF but not back, and as a result people just used RF and MJ died.

True, but multiple types of electricity bug me the same as power converters (again, thematically different, I guess, but not different enough to not bug me).