Tekkit pro wanting to learn more about FtB

[Kommunističeskiĭ]

While planning a revamp/rebalance/world reset of my Tekkit server with some of my regular players, one of them suggested we drop Tekkit entirely and switch to Feed the Beast. I researched it a bit and I like what I've seen so far. In particular, being on 1.4 is a huge plus. I'm sad to see no RedPower but I understand Eloraam hasn't updated it yet. Now I have questions for people who have played both Tekkit AND Feed the Beast:

1) How do you think the two packs compare overall? Why do you play FtB instead of Tekkit?

2) How do the two mod packs compare in terms of stability? One of my primary complaints with Tekkit is that it tends to have a lot of serious bugs, in particular dupe bugs in various occasions (old disk drive dupe for example) and there isn't really a dedicated "known bugs" section in their forums (there is but it takes a while for bugs to catch up to it) so I have to regularly scan every thread carefully, specially around the time a new version comes out. The latest version has a lot of bugs that render servers unplayable. Nuclear Control and ccSensors are unusable as of the latest version, yet both mods were included in the pack. Plus there is a severe crash bug involving Wireless Redstone triangulators that isn't mentioned in any of the forum stickies at all, even though there are loads of unresolved bug reports about it including two of my own.

3) Is there a difference in performance? Modded Minecraft is modded Minecraft so I'm still expecting a Kraken to eat all my computers, but is there any noticeable FPS/TPS difference between the two packs?

4) If you have experience hosting both a Tekkit and a FtB server, what would you tell a prospect FtB server owner? For example, back when I first started with Tekkit, I wish I had someone there to tell me I had to disable certain items in the pack in order to have a balanced economy (EE2 in particulat).

Thanks in advance!

 

[NosajDraw]

FTB currently has way more bugs and glitches than Tekkit does, I'm sure that will change with time, but certainly true right now.

FTB only works with Vanilla server, so no Bukkit plugins, if your playing with friends that might be OK, if your letting strangers on to your server, could be a costly mistake.

 

[balonbal]

1. I play FTB over Tekkit, yes.
2. To me, both packs seems pretty unstable right now. FTB is still only a Beta though.
3. Tekkit has much better performance. Neither FTB or Tekkit got a license to use the optifine mod, but tekkit stole it anyways, thus better performance. EDIT: It is really easy to install optifine yourself, you have to download and install it yourself tho..
4. Slowpoke and the other guys working on FTB is working really hard on getting stuff balanced, so you should not have to change anything to balance it. Gregtech makes IC2 MCUH more endgame tho, some people prefer to disable it.

FTB currently has way more bugs and glitches than Tekkit does, I'm sure that will change with time, but certainly true right now.

FTB only works with Vanilla server, so no Bukkit plugins, if your playing with friends that might be OK, if your letting strangers on to your server, could be a costly mistake.

Well, tekkit is still in 1.2, while FTB is in 1.4. The reason there is no bukkit for FTB is that there is no Forge bukkit, making it impossible to create a modded bukkit server, not only for FTB but for tekkit as well.

 

[ThyMrMan]

They are around the same but with all the bugs you would expect and a few missing mods that would be nice. Biggest difference may be just the easy use of the wiki for Tekkit, since FTB still does not have a very good one.

 

[NosajDraw]

Well, tekkit is still in 1.2, while FTB is in 1.4. The reason there is no bukkit for FTB is that there is no Forge bukkit, making it impossible to create a modded bukkit server, not only for FTB but for tekkit as well.

Yes, I know. But he didn't ask why differences existed, only what in peoples experience they were.

 

[Bluehorazon]

Well then the biggest difference is FTB will be 1.4.5 pretty soon and at this point Redpower might be included too.

I also don't know how easy additional mods could be implemented with Tekkit. With FTB and the Help of MultiMC this is very easy. Also FTB is not just a Modpack, it is a launcher that could fit multiple modpacks, so you might even have a much greater choice how to play minecraft.

The biggest drawback of FTB is that it is quite new. That also means that it isn't as stable (but some of this is related to mods being not that stable in 1.4.5). But if they really manage to remove all the remaining issues before the release (the launcher is just a beta for now) there should be no reason to not use FTB. They actually also have Mods like Xycraft, Forestry etc. that will most likely not be in Tekkit (I trust soaryn to ensure this^^).

Also not knowing too much about the mods isn't that bad. With NEI and the various plugins it is very easy to figure most things out without having much knowledge and the Wiki is underway too.

 

[Omicron]

Regarding servers and balance, you need to "start over" learning what you think is broken and what is not. On the surface there seem to be few differences to Tekkit in terms of what mods are present, but once you get under the hood it's a really drastic change. In the past, banning EE was the standard method for server owners to kill most (not all, but most) cross-mod exploits; FTB doesn't (yet) have EE, though, so people are looking elsewhere. I too am paying extra attention to these things when I read forums, and so far it seems that GregTech, Railcraft, Thermal Expansion and Mystcraft are at the core of most designs that produce infinite stuff out of thin air, or otherwise provide off-the-charts scaling. Forestry to a lesser extent, in that it actually requires you to put very serious effort into it, but that too eventually generates infinite energy without player interaction. Redpower coming soon will make all these things easier and open up new avenues thanks to its incredible automation capabilities, and EE3's first alpha prerelease already featured in a diamond exploit as well.

Of course, it is always up to the server owner to determine what he considers exploitative and what is simply an ingenious use of game mechanics. Just don't expect your past experiences to help you out - there's a TON of new synergies for players to mercilessly abuse, and I believe we haven't nearly seen them all yet.

To end with a bit of good news, however - you will find many mods having much much better and in-depth config files nowadays that allow server owners to customize many different aspects, often down to disabling individual recipes, both crafting and machine-internal.

 

[Anuillae]

1) I definitely prefer FTB over Tekkit/Technic. Some of the pros and cons of FTB vs Tekkit, though;

Pros

• FTB has a sexy biomes mod. This makes sooo much difference to me.
• FTB has more, bigger mods. This can make the whole experience feel more disjointed than Tekkit (FTB certainly isn't quite balanced yet) but it also makes caving and exploring many times more fun.
• Similarly, FTB has express permission and support from all the mod authors. This should mean no Forestry calamities like with Tekkit, and it should also mean that authors are more willing to work with FTB to make their mods fit.
• FTB is 1.4, although we don't know how long they'll be capable of keeping up with Mojang. Hopefully they won't fall back as far as Tekkit though.

Cons

• FTB isn't finished. This is pretty obvious to anyone playing it - there are multiple types of each ore, and there are continual changes to things like GregTech and so on. Personally, I think they should have waited until it was completely finished, but there you go.
• FTB doesn't have Redpower yet. Hopefully it will soon, though.

2) Yeah, there's heaps of bugs in FTB at the moment. It's still not finished, so hopefully they'll get ironed out properly.

3) Well, my PC can handle both perfectly fine. I don't know if other people experience any issues.

To conclude; honestly, I'd recommend waiting until FTB is actually finished before starting to play with it. At least wait until Redpower is introduced - it adds a ton of worldgen stuff that's gonna be a pain in the ass for everyone else to deal with. My first impressions tell me that FTB is capable of becoming a much more user-friendly modpack than Tekkit, with much more support from the mod authors and hopefully more up-to-date with Minecraft itself. We'll have to wait and see, though.

EDIT: Removed name-calling.

 

[BanzaiBlitz]

Just watch Direwolf20's current server play series. He's playing with most, if not all, the mod devs and the FTB crew and some other youtuber people, if I understand correctly. Not only has FTB expressly made it clear they won't use any mod they do not have express permission for (best example being Optifine), but most of the mod devs are working with the FTB team deliberately to make everything work smoothly and even cross boundaries with mutual mod support. A simplified example is Sengir's Forestry having BC power and IC2 EU power involved. I am personally expecting FTB to pretty much keep good pace with all of Mojang's updates and cross-mod bugs to be largely fixed and even balanced.

Tekkit, on the other hand seems to have pissed off most of the mod devs and, purely by present state, cannot come close to keeping up with Mojang's updates.

 

[Lunarknight32]

1. I play FTB because not only does it have more mods than tekkit, (like forestry, portal gun, mystcraft) but FTB has all the mod dev permissions.
2.In my experience, vanilla server mods have less bugs than bukkit ported ones. Plus, the mod developers are playing on a vanilla modded server very similar to FTB where they test their mods and are able to find bugs and fix them. This pack will also update faster because we don't have to wait for bukkit ports. Unfortunately this means no bukkit plugins like essentials and iconomy. (Though, dynmap has a forge-only port)
3. Both run fine, but, you'll want to get optifine for FTB, because it doesn't come with it. Just edit the modpack and add it to the jar mods
4.There aren't as many OP items this time, but I would be mindful about people creating mystcraft ages on a large server. Also, if you want some of the old IC2 recipes back, you'll have to disable the expensive recipes in the gregtech config.