The buildcraft quarry

[ICountFrom0]

I've been thinking about it. Even with the increased energy cost some folks are still talking about it being over powered.


I propose a what if:

What if the quarry cared about hardness?

It takes just as long to quarry netherrack as it does to quarry obsidian. Why? Honestly, why?

How about shifting the 60 per block and instead make it based on hardness? What if the average block still cost the same, but blocks with more hardness take longer, and take more energy, and blocks of lower hardness get mined faster, taking less energy?

Just an idea I'd like to toss out there and see what folks think.

 

[draeath]

I like it. Seems much more logical to me.

 

[VikeStep]

I haven't really thought about the OP potential of quarries, I just used them and didn't think they were overpowered since everyone was using them.

But my counterargument is that, this change will all of a sudden make mining turtles even more overpowered since they can instantly mine everything at the same speed.

So, if you are gonna nerf one thing, to keep it balanced, it would make sense to nerf the other things that can do the same thing that you just removed. But the problem is that you can't remove this feature from turtles since it is crucial to most builds.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Thats quite a decent idea, though with all the modded blocks in game there'll be a fairly extensive config file to match.

I quite like it- it'll fit in with how tools/basic MC works​

Generally when the quarry was first added, it was hideously expensive and difficult to run

-11 diamonds pre-enchants/adventure update was very expensive.​

-powering it at a decent rate needed a bank of steam engines, or a few (slightly unstable) combustion engines running on hard found fuel+coolant that had to be PIPED into the engines.​

-also it was very slow; full size one could take a few real time days to hit diamonds.​

-also no chunkloading mechanics​

​

Now the cost of materials has dropped off considerably (not too much of a problem- all mods were hit by this)
Suitable power is very easy to come by
It'll dig stupidly fast (This is the main one, it can pay for itself in less than an hour. Running a full size one requires almost no effort on the player- you'd net a LOT of resources. eventually. If you wanted it faster you had to run a second [smaller] quarry or set up something complex [RP mining bore/Turtle army]. Now you slap down and go- BOOM! insta-diamond)
You can easily tele in/out power/items without a second thought
and it'll auto-chunkload the area.

​

I wouldn't mind something similar to steves carts/railcraft- a replaceable drill bit for the quarry head. (like if it cost 5 diamonds to craft, then it'll last for 20k blocks- more life than 2 diamond picks, and should be able to cover its cost- but still a finite component that'll need replacing)

 

[ICountFrom0]

Ah, but here's the magic, won't take a config file, will it?

Hardness is something the game already knows about. Pick takes less time to break netherrack, then it does to break obsidian. When a mod puts a block in, it also puts in how long it takes to break. Just need to code up the quarry to comprehend and "care" about this.

It's not that I think it's unbalanced, it's just that I think details like this, are the sort of detail that makes mods better.

I've got another thought I've been toying with, but I'll give this one a little time to mature and be discussed first.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Hardness is something the game already knows about. Pick takes less time to break netherrack, then it does to break obsidian. When a mod puts a block in, it also puts in how long it takes to break. Just need to code up the quarry to comprehend and "care" about this..

Touche

 

[dgdas9]

That's a good idea ICF0!

 

[draeath]

Ditch cost/action and directly tie speed to energy input, then change the non-breaking actions to specific 'base' times. Would simplify it and ease support of your idea.

 

[SatanicSanta]

IMO speed should never be used as balance.

 

[immibis]

IMO speed should never be used as balance.

Yet time is the only thing that matters. What else are you going to use as balance?

 

[SatanicSanta]

Yet time is the only thing that matters. What else are you going to use as balance?

Difficulty to get X Machine, it could be mobs, or resources. My point was that no one likes waiting, that was a really big problem with people and GregTech.

 

[SatanicSanta]

But santa baby, I didn't propose making every action slower.

I want the average time to quarry a region to be the same, and the average cost to be the same. I just want it to take longer if somebody places a quarry over a lava ocean that's been turned to bedrock, then a quarry in the nether doing netherrack.

oh. I misunderstood the op.

 

[VikeStep]

But santa baby, I didn't propose making every action slower.

I want the average time to quarry a region to be the same, and the average cost to be the same. I just want it to take longer if somebody places a quarry over a lava ocean that's been turned to bedrock, then a quarry in the nether doing netherrack.

I might even like to see it cost a little less energy to mine netherrack, then it takes to mine obsidian... but then your using one mechanic (hardness) and balancing two things (time and energy) off of it, and it might be too... variable? Swingy? Is there a word for this? The average would still be the same, but the items at the extremes might be too ... 'something' ... if both time and energy depended on hardness.

variable was the correct word, if you wanted to know

 

[ICountFrom0]

I think I was actually thinking of...

If both the operation time and the operation cost where increased by higher hardness, then the result would be a modification by the square of hardness, an exponential change at the outliers.

Though, further thought has me being foolish. Operation time IS energy. So you would only change one of them.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Quarries also don't have Fortune. So you're only getting a single diamond per diamond ore it finds, rather than on average 2.5 with a Fortune3 pick. In that light, seems balanced to me...

 

[LoGaL]

You are considering just the cost to make the quarry itself,but remember that to make him to go ridicolous speeds you need 80-100 MJ , which aren't THAT easy to get early game..
if you wanna pump so much energy in the early game, the ways to do it are quite restricted ( early fuel,strange force engines builds, lava pumping)

The other stuff, like mass stirling engines and similar, require continous caring and refueling
Plus you need some kind of item storage to not let it overflow, which normally consists of diamond/inserction pipes , bunch of DSU and diamond chests
After the first quarry,doing this stuff is trivial, and you can also find better ways to do it
My first quarry on my single player world was painfully slow even with 7-8 magmatic engines
Of course on a server it's different, you just leave it going overnight......

 

[RedBoss]

Do NOT give them ideas. The quarry is fine. Quarries Plus is probably over the top, but that's another topic.

Captain America says leave the quarries alone

 

[LoGaL]

lol just checked the quarries plus mod read me.... That's imba almost by definition

 

[MigukNamja]

For new players, quarries are expensive to build, difficult to power, and difficult to deal with the output. They are a good tool to encourage players into higher tiers of power and item sorting. Used in this way, the BC quarry as-is is balanced, IMHO. When it was made and used for the first few months/year, I'm guessing most usage was of this pattern. Great tool and great idea and I applaud SpaceToad for this contributions.

Now, enter the seasoned player with late 2013 mods on their Nth world who knows how to get ~100MJ/t fairly quickly, can setup one or a few diamond pipes with void pipes and chests fairly quickly, and is on a server. We now have a balance issue.

Some will do what DW20 did on Forge 2 this season - shrug and say "meh - it's boring, but effective", drop a quarry, skip the resource bottleneck phase, and move on.

Others, such as myself, view scarce(r) resources as an interesting challenge/puzzle to be solved and I refuse to use the quarry. But, I also don't stream nor are under pressure to get to certain point of progression quickly. I can take my time with TiCo's tools, bees, etc.,.

I think we can improve the quarry, but I don't think there's a way to "fix" it, just like there is no way to "fix" the Matter Fabricator or MFR Laser. It's a boring mechanic that's not far removed from creative mode - stuff just "appears". Yes, it's expensive as hell and only available late game, but it's still a crap mechanic, IMHO. We don't make stuff from nothing. The chunkloaded, item/liquid/energy teleporting quarry is not too far removed from that. Out of sight, out of mind, and stuff just "appears".[DOUBLEPOST=1381939785][/DOUBLEPOST]

Do NOT give them ideas. The quarry is fine. Quarries Plus is probably over the top, but that's another topic.

Captain America says leave the quarries alone

I reluctantly agree. They are fine as-is. It's the interaction with stuff from other mods that makes them OP. But, the stuff from the other mods has its uses, too. Willpower is my solution.

 

[draeath]

The mining laser at least has a "mechanism" - it's supposed to be (somehow) pulling stuff up from under bedrock. An abstraction. The matter fabricator is more like a replicator kind of thing. So, it's not that they are just saying "here's your stuff." The power that these requires has to come from somewhere, and if they feel free then it's the way you obtain that power that's at fault. You shouldn't be able to have a never-ending charcoal farm without some serious investment, and even then...