Thaumcraft Mining w/ Tools & Enchants. Competitive?

[KirinDave]

So last night I had a conversation with one of my server friends who finds my (recently completed!) quest for full quantum to be less than laudable." "IC2 breaks game balance, and I like Thaumcraft more."

But I really wonder if Thaumcraft has a solution to mining that one or two people could pursue to provide a group with the resources they want, the way buildcraft quarries and ore processor pipelines can? Personally, I don't think so.

One of the reasons I pursued TE and IC2 was to give our group basically "enough" minable resources (everyone else is doing fun building projects, I'm the morlock), and because ore doubling is so essential to any semi-industrious group that it's more like the price of admission rather than a bonus. Thaumcraft has similar resource demands to the other mods (more actually!) and it does seem to have mining options:

1. Infernal furnaces with mutliple bellows give small extra returns on native clusters and unpulverized/smelted ore.
2. Core pickaxes act as diving rods which can really help finding rare ores and guide otherwise-tedious branch mining methods.
3. Core pickaxes can also drop "double ore" clusters. Fortune seems to affect it, but I'd guess the default rate is somewhere south of 1/3.
4. There is the Arcane Bore, but right now it's not really usable without massive magical infrastructure; even big nodes are quickly drained. If you check TC's change logs for newer versions than we have, you'll see that its actually be noticably reduced in cost because right now it's too much. It's also very expensive to run the bore in materials (although there is the enchantment of repair).

So it seems like what Thaumcraft is proposing is "make a ton of elemental pickaxes and infernal furnaces, get a good fortune enchant, and profit." I am not sure if this is actually "competitive". Which is a bummer, because the thaumcraft digging wands and pickaxe have mad style.

Am I missing something?

And yes, I know upcoming releases add a few tools to make mining pipelines slightly easier (mirrors come to mind) but given the insatiable research hunger and then really high costs and upkeep efforts (if you don't want flux you need to play tetris with your aspects).

Because besides the QS (just done), Nuclear Reactors and Gravity suit, and forcefields I've seen all IC2 (sans gregtech) and TE have to offer. I'd love to make something really novel. Already I'm loving my prototype of a golem-only sorting system (although how you afford it outside of creative sort of baffles me, it's REALLY expensive compared to alterantives).

 

[Abdiel]

In my opinion, what you're looking at is not TC tools being too weak, but the quarry being way too powerful for its cost. Mediocre starting cost, no prerequisites (research, tech tree...), no running resource cost, very small running energy cost, infinitely reusable, trivial to automate and move around, mines huge areas at once. By no means should one device have all these properties together. The Arcane Bore is much more balanced, automated mining comes only at the cost of time and resource investment upfront, and significant running costs in both pickaxes and your aura. It is actually worth considering manual mining compared to it, as you wouldn't use up your pick's durability mining cobblestone. The bore is a convenience that comes at a cost, the quarry more of a magical box that spits out free resources.

In all of my modded Minecraft worlds I have ever used a quarry to mine resources once, in my very first contact with Buildcraft. Ever since that I only use it sparingly to dig up stone (cracked sand, red rock, etc.), and I don't miss it at all.

 

[Zjarek_S]

I don't think that mods should really compete in what mod makes given game mechanic easier. This way we would end with 30 slightly different EE2. With so many mods that are included in packs like Mindcrack you won't have any balance, because it is impossible to maintain it with so many mods. I like having many mods installed, however I don't care what is the most efficient way of doing something, but how to do given build using items from some subset of mods. With current mods you can practically remove every element of Minecraft, if you remove things that are tedious and not fun for you that can makes your experience better, but you can't remove all. This is game, enjoyment counts, not the final effect.

 

[KirinDave]

In my opinion, what you're looking at is not TC tools being too weak, but the quarry being way too powerful for its cost. Mediocre starting cost, no prerequisites (research, tech tree...), no running resource cost, very small running energy cost, infinitely reusable, trivial to automate and move around, mines huge areas at once. By no means should one device have all these properties together. The Arcane Bore is much more balanced, automated mining comes only at the cost of time and resource investment upfront, and significant running costs in both pickaxes and your aura. It is actually worth considering manual mining compared to it, as you wouldn't use up your pick's durability mining cobblestone. The bore is a convenience that comes at a cost, the quarry more of a magical box that spits out free resources.

I disagree with your characterization of the quarry, but that's not really the question here. I also think the Arcane Bore is so much better than the quarry that it requiring exotic fuels was almost a given. But that's also not germane, since most people in this forum only got access to a reasonable bore within the last 3 hours of me posting. I also don't get how you break cobblestone without ruining your pickaxes...

I'll restate my question: Can pure thaumcraft mechanics produce ore output equivalent to a TE or IC2 line of production? Because it seems to me like they cannot yield the 2x ore increase. Let's say I'm right about the native cluster drop rate, it's around 30%, which barely boosts you up to 130% increased yield. I have no idea how fortune sits on top of that, but I do know that you never get multiple clusters from a mined ore, only an increase in cluster drop rate. So without a huge number of nuggets, you'll only asymptotically approach 2x ores.

 

[MilConDoin]

You can redeploy the normal ores and mine them again, for another chance at native clusters.

 

[KirinDave]

I don't think that mods should really compete in what mod makes given game mechanic easier. This way we would end with 30 slightly different EE2.

Except that they do and we don't, so I think that's wrong. It's also not really the question. The question is, "Can you ore double with thaumcraft?" I think the answer is currently no.[DOUBLEPOST=1361218321][/DOUBLEPOST]

You can redeploy the normal ores and mine them again, for another chance at native clusters.

I guess you can make that pretty fast with a wand of equal trade and some clever use of pistons and gravel. But that's pretty rough on tools, and repair is crazy rare and I've never seen it show on a book personally (I've now done 78 books and never once seen a thaumcraft enchant, but I've seen on DW20's SMP stream that they have them so perhaps I am just doing something wrong).

 

[Peppe]

The bore uses the enchants on the pick/wand you supply, which i believe makes it the only current automated miner that can silk touch or fortune blocks for you. Silk touch or fortune bore would double some very valuable ores the other systems do not.

I thought the native clusters on the ores was a bonus, so you get the ore block + the cluster. The TC furnace then kicks off nuggets during ore smelting that should all add up to ore doubling.

Factorization is supposedly the best processor with ore tripling. Other than the bore fortune/silk touch potential TC's process is not superior to the others, but is reasonably balanced with them.

Edit:
Repair is rare on books, but fairly common on thaumium armor/tools/wands.

 

[KirinDave]

The bore uses the enchants on the pick/wand you supply, which i believe makes it the only current automated miner that can silk touch or fortune blocks for you. Silk touch or fortune bore would double some very valuable ores the other systems do not.

Yeah, that and its ability to only work in levels you want in directions to make it very, very, very good.

I thought the native clusters on the ores was a bonus, so you get the ore block + the cluster. The TC furnace then kicks off nuggets during ore smelting that should all add up to ore doubling.

As far as I know this isn't the case. I think I would have noticed this after I stopped using the Miner's backpack...

Factorization is supposedly the best processor with ore tripling. Other than the bore fortune/silk touch potential TC's process is not superior to the others, but is reasonably balanced with them.

I don't see how it's "balanced". It takes substantially more startup costs and substantially more expensive automation components to asymptotically approach what... maybe 150% ore drop? And the furnace you use actually increases the monster spawn in the area. Right now the main use of the furnace is to increase your ore usage past 200% if you mix TC and TE methods. But this solution is sort of contrived and the real reason I built such a system was to capture the experience from smelting.

You could argue that experience capture is a major benefit and maybe that's true, but is it really worth a 25% decrease in ore yield?

 

[Neirin]

TC seems to be developed a little differently than TE/IC2 in terms of its ore processing systems. In general, it's not quite as powerful as those other options, however, it has been made so that it is complimentary to them, rather than being competitive with them. TE+TC or IC2+TC will trump TE or IC2 alone.

If your only goal is to build a system using a single mod, TC ore processing is very well balanced for use with TC resource usage. It falls behind when used in a mixed mod environment. However in that case I believe the design intent is that you should also use a mixed mod approach to ore processing.

 

[jnads]

If your only goal is to build a system using a single mod, TC ore processing is very well balanced for use with TC resource usage.

This, you're trying to balance TC's ore use with other mods' ore use.

As anyone with IC2/GT knows, you'll go through 6 stacks of Iron in no time flat. Thaumcraft? You mostly use the other stuff. Magic essentia.

The ideal situation is use your golems to automate Factorization's ore processing, something normal mortals with IC2/BC/RP2 find difficult to do.

 

[Abdiel]

Also keep in mind that TC is nowhere near its final stage. It is very well possible that more efficient ore processing features are coming.

But to answer your question, I don't think it is possible to get a guaranteed 2 ingots per ore block yield with Thaumcraft mechanics alone. What you can do however, that no other mod allows, is convert between different metals almost losslessly (just adding renewable items). So if you have a surplus of silver, but lack copper, TC can help.

 

[ItharianEngineering]

Well I did a few tests using a Pickaxe of the Core on 128 iron ore. This came out to be 42 Native Clusters and 86 Iron Ore. Assuming you have an infernal furnace with 3 bellows I ended up with 170 ingots with 188 nuggets. This accounts for a total of 190 ingots with 8 nuggets remaining. So it is in fact about 30% of the ores will become a native cluster, but the overall increase in ingot production is about 150% instead of 130% because of nugget drops.

Something you are discounting here that I noticed while testing is that if you place the iron ore again it can be broken again and again for more chances are the cluster. This means using TC you could actually get beyond the normal 200% yield. This might be something we can automate through an Arcane Bore + a filler/deployer in some setup that filters out native clusters and sends iron ores back to the deployer. This could allow you to have a greater than 200% ore output using nearly TC only machines, given that I don't know of a way to automatically place blocks with TC.

 

[KirinDave]

That is really interesting. I wonder if a block placing golem is in our future... The thing is, the time taken to get >200% yield will be pretty tiresome. You can still get a >200% yield (albeit smaller) by using a hybrid TE/TC system (you can see my base tour posts for pictures; it's not complex). The most annoying part is operating the packager.

 

[lolpierandom]

You could argue that experience capture is a major benefit and maybe that's true, but is it really worth a 25% decrease in ore yield?

Now that Brains in a Jar don't store a bajillion levels of exp and closer to ~30, I'd say that it's a trivial advantage at most- you'd be better off running a T5 shard for a minute then the slow trickle of exp, especially considering how easy it is to get stuff like a T5 skeleton/zombie/spider spawner.

 

[ItharianEngineering]

Well I tried to create a small automated system for it, and it worked like a charm. I think it could use some refining, but the concept is sound. It does run you into the obvious issue of Vis cost for the process (the wand has charging and the pick has repair 2 so they are self repairing at the cost of further increased vis use). It does a strange thing with the bore head where it flails wildly around for a second before and after breaking the iron ore, nothing just a visual however. The final thing I am looking at is if you do have 100% of the ores turned to native cluster than how far beyond 200% does it go and is it worth the effort, and it looks to be about a total of ~216% with 3 arcane belows on the infernal furnace, so it depends on the person if this vis cost is worth an additional ~16% ore output. It isn't spectacular but it is still an improvement beyond the normal output range.

 

[lolpierandom]

Well I tried to create a small automated system for it, and it worked like a charm. I think it could use some refining, but the concept is sound. It does run you into the obvious issue of Vis cost for the process (the wand has charging and the pick has repair 2 so they are self repairing at the cost of further increased vis use). It does a strange thing with the bore head where it flails wildly around for a second before and after breaking the iron ore, nothing just a visual however. The final thing I am looking at is if you do have 100% of the ores turned to native cluster than how far beyond 200% does it go and is it worth the effort, and it looks to be about a total of ~216% with 3 arcane belows on the infernal furnace, so it depends on the person if this vis cost is worth an additional ~16% ore output. It isn't spectacular but it is still an improvement beyond the normal output range.

Perhaps an off-site processing center (a good hundred or so blocks away from your main base, don't want nasty wisps and flux near you) with tons of crystal clusters and capacitors to process all the ore intake from an arcane bore?

Would certainly be doable near higher tiers of TC.

 

[KirinDave]

Perhaps an off-site processing center (a good hundred or so blocks away from your main base, don't want nasty wisps and flux near you) with tons of crystal clusters and capacitors to process all the ore intake from an arcane bore?

Would certainly be doable near higher tiers of TC.

100 blocks would not be nearly enough for that kinda vis usage... Or maybe it would be with the new reduced bore cost.

 

[ItharianEngineering]

It would be determined by the amount of ores you obtain. If you are not processing lots of ores per minute then you wouldn't have to worry much about any excessive Vis use, even with the repeated attempts to turn them into clusters. Putting it into an alternate dimension is always an alternative for those who have the ability to do so.

 

[lolpierandom]

100 blocks would not be nearly enough for that kinda vis usage... Or maybe it would be with the new reduced bore cost.

If you're going pure TC (besides the RP stuff), I'd assume you're using the Arcane Bore- the amount of vis usage it will use processing the ores it gets from that won't be too high.

 

[KirinDave]

If you're going pure TC (besides the RP stuff), I'd assume you're using the Arcane Bore- the amount of vis usage it will use processing the ores it gets from that won't be too high.

Depends on how you deploy it. I sort of envisioned a circular wall of deployers running continuously on the output of a quarry. That'd add up fast.