The good, the bad, and the bees
- Thread starter ShneekeyTheLost
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IIRC TiCo allows you to smelt Armor. If so then mob farms are effective for gathering Armor since mobs spawn with it now.
Why... why.. just... why?
You made an amazing way to get ton of blaze rods and power a boiler? NERFED!
Steve cart's tree farm is too good if you join it with boilers? NERFED!
Bees are too easy to obtain? NERFED!
[insert nerf for no reason here] x 100
Why the actual fuck does every mod maker have to nerf everything just because people come up with intelligent ideas to make them really efficient? Mojang hasn't nerfed spawners just because people exploit them, nor nerfed the end so people don't build ender enders, or nerfed witch huts.
You made an amazing way to get ton of blaze rods and power a boiler? NERFED!
Steve cart's tree farm is too good if you join it with boilers? NERFED!
Bees are too easy to obtain? NERFED!
[insert nerf for no reason here] x 100
Why the actual fuck does every mod maker have to nerf everything just because people come up with intelligent ideas to make them really efficient? Mojang hasn't nerfed spawners just because people exploit them, nor nerfed the end so people don't build ender enders, or nerfed witch huts.
Because they run out of ideas. Messing with stuff to make it more tedious is a cheap way to add 'duration' to your mod without actually having to think up something interesting to add content-wise.
Or it could be that it's their mod and they can do what they want with it? Maybe your super-efficient scheme is not in their vision for their mod.
Your view on this is quite cynical and unless you're a modder yourself, you've no right to talk about it that way.
If a modder makes changes you don't like, you've several options:
1. Complain loudly on forums (this is what you just did and is the least effective)
2. Move along - don't like it, don't use it.
3. Adapt it to your likings - assuming it exposes such things in the configuration.
4. Provide constructive criticism to the mod authors. If #3 is not an option, then this one is the proper path to take because it should be an option, ideally.
#3 and #4 are the best choices you can make, followed by #2. #1 is the worst thing you can do for everyone involved.
Your view on this is quite cynical and unless you're a modder yourself, you've no right to talk about it that way.
If a modder makes changes you don't like, you've several options:
1. Complain loudly on forums (this is what you just did and is the least effective)
2. Move along - don't like it, don't use it.
3. Adapt it to your likings - assuming it exposes such things in the configuration.
4. Provide constructive criticism to the mod authors. If #3 is not an option, then this one is the proper path to take because it should be an option, ideally.
#3 and #4 are the best choices you can make, followed by #2. #1 is the worst thing you can do for everyone involved.
6.Complain about people who complain about people who complain.
Yo dawg...
Yo dawg...
I've released mods before. Do I have a license to criticize now?
It's fairly safe to assume that whenever a modder makes some kind of change to their mod, they're attempting to improve it in some way and not just maliciously trying to ruin it. So, whenever a new change is made, the question is: "What does this add to the game?"
As far as anyone has been able to tell so far, the only thing this change to bees adds is lengthening the experience by making people spend significantly more time trying to find stable bees, or spending more time trying to produce things with less bees. Unless there's some Super Secret change coming up that takes advantage of this new Ignoble/Pristine division and adds new things to do, it's extremely hard to see this as anything other then an attempt to pad the length of playtime by creating more grind.
Now, if there was a new bee that could purify ignoble stock, now that would be something to work towards.
Maybe Pristine is a dominant trait or Ignoble recessive so that's why Ignoble drones don't affect the princesses, their recessive trait is overridden by the dominant trait the princess contributed. So a Pristine drone would then override the princess's Ignoble.
This would be kinda cool since what we've had so far is pretty much co-dominance and incomplete dominance.
Oh and also, hopefully, they can make it so rare bees like end bees (which I sometimes only had one hive of in the end) will always be pristine. Hopefully...
Some clarifications:
a) Everyone had/has ridiculous amounts of princesses/queens. I never intended them to be as common as they are. The fact that (immortal/pristine) queens are non-renewable and world-gen only is their single limiting attribute. Remember: They prodcue resources from thin air.
b) No one used swarmer bees. And why would anyone with so many hassle-free immortal bees available? Combine that with the fact, that they could not be interbred with normal bees without turning those into swarmers as well, they were useless.
a) could have been fixed by simply reducing world gen. Less hives = less queens. But that'd have made the early-game bee search just more annoying. By keeping world-gen the same, but replacing a significant portion of the generated queens with (buffed) swarmer-like bees, early game stays the same, but pristine bees increase in perceived value for automation. Saying "but then I'll just break two times as many hives to get the same amount of bees!" misses the point: The only value anything in MC has is the amount of playtime it takes a player to (manually) aquire it. Unfortunately there is a fine line between "tediously long and unfun to aquire" and "just long enough to give a sense of rarity and value to that item" and no two persons will usually agree where that line is exactly.
What was important to me is, that breaking a hive will always give you something useful. Ignoble bees now are, even if you don't intend to use them ever. F.e. if the only tropical hive you find gives you ignoble stock, you can still make a few drones from that princess and clone the tropical onto a pristine princess. Additionally: One change I do have planned is a "guaranteed" minimum amount of generations an ignboble bee will reproduce, to make them more predictable. (Probably ~100.)
tl;dr: If anything was nerfed at all, it's world-gen by ~50 %. The actual mechanics for (pristine) bees didn't change. Chances are, that, had I just silently changed the values on world-gen, you all wouldn't even have noticed. On the flipside swarmer bees have been buffed significantly.
P.S.: "A kick in the teeth"? "NERF ALL THE THINGS!"? Bit melodramatic, isn't it?
- Pristine/Ignoble is not a trait in the 'genetic' sense.
- When mating, it is irrelevant whether the drone is ignoble/pristine, only the property of the princess counts.
- You can freely interbreed ignoble drones with pristine princesses without worry of getting an ignoble queen. (Follows from above, so you are entirely free to use ignoble for breeding and then clone the result onto a pristine princess.)
- The amount of ignoble bees varies with the dropped species. (It ranges from 0 % (end bees, I am not stupid) to 70 % (some common mundane bees).) Taking into account all the exceptions, I'd say drops are roughly 50:50, despite what the changelog says.
- End game isn't changed. For serious, always-on automation (fuel supply, etc) you'll just want pristine bees.
- Early game isn't changed either. Even ignoble stock can't die in a bee house.
- Mid-game has more options: You can automate bees, but you'll can choose to either a) only go with pristine or b) burn up some ignoble stock or c) a combination of the two. Using the right frames you can increase the time ignoble stock lasts quite significantly (I don't have my calculations as to survival rates here, but iirc it starts out with a 60 % survival rate for the first 200 generations and improves significantly with the right frames). Don't dismiss ignoble bees just because they aren't immortal. (Coal, iron, etc. are 'finite' the same way ignoble bees are.)
a) Everyone had/has ridiculous amounts of princesses/queens. I never intended them to be as common as they are. The fact that (immortal/pristine) queens are non-renewable and world-gen only is their single limiting attribute. Remember: They prodcue resources from thin air.
b) No one used swarmer bees. And why would anyone with so many hassle-free immortal bees available? Combine that with the fact, that they could not be interbred with normal bees without turning those into swarmers as well, they were useless.
a) could have been fixed by simply reducing world gen. Less hives = less queens. But that'd have made the early-game bee search just more annoying. By keeping world-gen the same, but replacing a significant portion of the generated queens with (buffed) swarmer-like bees, early game stays the same, but pristine bees increase in perceived value for automation. Saying "but then I'll just break two times as many hives to get the same amount of bees!" misses the point: The only value anything in MC has is the amount of playtime it takes a player to (manually) aquire it. Unfortunately there is a fine line between "tediously long and unfun to aquire" and "just long enough to give a sense of rarity and value to that item" and no two persons will usually agree where that line is exactly.
What was important to me is, that breaking a hive will always give you something useful. Ignoble bees now are, even if you don't intend to use them ever. F.e. if the only tropical hive you find gives you ignoble stock, you can still make a few drones from that princess and clone the tropical onto a pristine princess. Additionally: One change I do have planned is a "guaranteed" minimum amount of generations an ignboble bee will reproduce, to make them more predictable. (Probably ~100.)
tl;dr: If anything was nerfed at all, it's world-gen by ~50 %. The actual mechanics for (pristine) bees didn't change. Chances are, that, had I just silently changed the values on world-gen, you all wouldn't even have noticed. On the flipside swarmer bees have been buffed significantly.
P.S.: "A kick in the teeth"? "NERF ALL THE THINGS!"? Bit melodramatic, isn't it?
This is probably the most stupid comment I've seen in a long time. Anyone has the right to formulate their opinion on certain things. If you don't like it fine, but don't tell me I don't have the "right" to speak my mind because that's just silly.[DOUBLEPOST=1378282231][/DOUBLEPOST]
It is. However, people might voice their opionions in a bit of a melodramatic way, but it's still an opinion worth hearing.
Regarding the changes. Thanks for the explanation, however, I still don't like them because for the user it doesn't 'solve' anything, it just makes stuff annoying. And "annoying your user" typically isn't good game design. It was visible in the change to multiblock farms (hardly anyone uses those anymore on our server atleast) and it's visible in these changes. Basically all the change does is make me get 5 times as many princesses to make sure I have a good stock of pristines. Oh, and also add a lot of random annoyance because non-pristine bees will just have a random chance of dying.
I think it's worth listening to the people here because these are people that actually like your mod, the people not complaining about change are typically the ones that don't care
Fair enough. Always nice to hear some context for things.
Personally, I always found myself struggling to get enough princesses, but I'm probably not the kind of Powergamer that invited this change.
Sounds like the kind of thing someone in THE NERF CONSPIRACY would say to throw us off the trail!
Personally, I always found myself struggling to get enough princesses, but I'm probably not the kind of Powergamer that invited this change.
Sounds like the kind of thing someone in THE NERF CONSPIRACY would say to throw us off the trail!
Fair enough. Always nice to hear some context for things.
Personally, I always found myself struggling to get enough princesses
Same here. Untill you plop down a quarry somewhere and then suddenly have 100+ rocky princesses
Same here. Untill you plop down a quarry somewhere and then suddenly have 100+ rocky princesses
I forgot about those. Are they even considered real bees?
I forgot about those. Are they even considered real bees?
Dunno, but if they can survive getting sucked up by a quarry I don't want to meet them IRL
Will Apiarist Villagers accept Ignoble Princesses as trades?
Does the Swarmer now create Ignoble bees instead?
Does this mean the nerf to frame overclocking only creates ignoble bees instead? Would that be considered an un-nerf? Or does overloading a queen now increase its chance of dying off?
Does the Swarmer now create Ignoble bees instead?
Does this mean the nerf to frame overclocking only creates ignoble bees instead? Would that be considered an un-nerf?
Or does overloading a queen now increase its chance of dying off?Please re-read my post... I addressed both points.
That's a matter of opinion. I am sure someone thinks punching trees is annoying.[DOUBLEPOST=1378286079][/DOUBLEPOST]
I believe so.
Yes.
Does this mean the nerf to frame overclocking only creates ignoble bees instead? Would that be considered an un-nerf?
a) Yes. b) No, since your pristine bee is now worth more, so you'll probably be even less inclined to casually turn it into an ignoble.
Thank you for your clarifications. All I had to go on was the changelog, which apparently was in error. I had done some testing, which seemed to support the 5:1 ratio, however it appears I was merely unlucky. That's the problem with small-scale testing, you can end up with atypical results fairly easily.
End game hasn't changed, no. By the time you start actually crossbreeding, you've got all your pristines set up. This does force users to use bee houses rather than skipping straight to apiaries, though. It does require a lot more grinding to find the pristine princesses necessary to start your breeding program, as well. And you'll pretty much ditch any of your ignoble princesses when you get it started, except maybe to make a few extra drones for cross-breeding purposes.
Also, coal and iron are no longer finite. Coal can be had from wither skeletons, and charcoal has been a renewable alternative since vanilla beta. Iron is renewable with golem farms.
I do get what you are trying to say here, but the example doesn't work. Bees have always been a renewable resource supply. It would be like having some trees which stopped producing saplings after a while, and no way to tell until you advance sufficiently in your tech tree to tell the difference.
I never experienced this personally, but seeing some of the things Jaded managed to do, I'll concede the point. However you will also have to take into consideration how many hours she poured into the project. Like you said, the only real resource a player has is time. If she put that much time into the project, why not be able to have ridiculous amounts of princesses/queens?
That wasn't the problem, at least in my perspective. My perspective with swarmer bees is that you only had access to them at the 'end' of the tech tree, and they were only good for supplemental income sources.
By the time you had access to Swarmers, you already had Alviaries and royal jelly to burn, which meant you pretty much had 'All The Bees', and your infrastructure was already solid, and required no additional temporary boost. You had already calculated income vs expenditures and made sure you were in the green, because you needed that positive resource flow in order to MAKE them. Since you already had your resource flow properly managed, you had no need for temporary productivity boosts.
It would not have mattered if it took me an hour or ten hours combing the globe to find the hives necessary to generate that resource flow, I wouldn't have had access to the swarmers without it. They literally required themselves to be obsolete to be brought into existence.
By that same token, there are an awful lot of 'troll' hives with ignoble bees in them now. Some would say that is even more cruel to the player, to get their hopes up only to dash them once they have a beealyzer and realize they got trolled.
I have a saying: Cash is not king, cash flow is king. Cash is an asset. It is a liquid asset, and thus valuable as a medium for exchange, but if you aren't doing anything with that asset, you might as well not have it. Net cash flow is the true determining factor on the productivity of a project. If the cash flow is in the red, or it stops, then it doesn't matter how much cash it has at the moment, the end result will eventually be 'none'.
Replace the word 'cash' with 'resource' and it still holds true. You are right, bees are amazing because they provide a renewable resource which can continually be harvested for a net gain of resources. However, ignoble bees will stop their resource flow at some undefined point in the future, which makes them very unattractive to build your infrastructure on.
This is the same reason why I almost never use BC Oil to run my mid-game power network. I build up an early-game setup capable of running a single fermenter to get some biomass, which then runs a biogas engine, which runs that and the still to make ethanol to run in my combustion engines. Why? Because oil runs out, ethanol doesn't. I don't care if it produces less MJ/t or less MJ overall per bucket, I'm interested in sustainability. That's the whole reason I use your mod.
That would make them a great deal better, at least then you would be able to generate enough drones (assuming fertility > 1) to be able to successfully import the species traits into the spare pristine princess line (which means going out and finding a pristine princess somewhere).
Oh, I'm very certain that people would have noticed queens not leaving princesses. You'd have been flooded with bug reports.
I used 'a kick in the teeth' to describe the changelog's 20% of a pristine species to the rarer spawned species (jungle and ender). Which it would have been. It isn't my fault the changelogs were incorrect.
If you honestly wanted to keep people from having ridiculous amounts of hives? Make hives not drop anything when hit by a quarry or similar auto-mining system. Now you need to get off yer duff and literally hunt down and track every single hive and whack it manually with a scoop. That should help mitigate at least some of the nonsense.
One of the core reasons I use Forestry is because of renewable resources and sustainable energy. That was always its main selling point, the whole reason I picked it up back when it was just a sub-forum on the BC forum and a wiki. This and your multiblock farms running on non-renewable Fertilizer made exclusively with Apatite (at least non-renewable on it's own, without other mods to add in other recipies which are renewable) makes me wonder if you are moving away from this principle.
I do appreciate you taking the time to let us know what is going on, and the fact that you have taken rarity into consideration on what percentage of 'ignoble' there is does make this a lot less harsh than the changelog indicates.
I'm not trying to 'bash' anything here, I was originally expressing my displeasure at the change, and now I am attempting to provide feedback from my perspective, and feedback from the users of my (admittedly small) mod pack.