The good, the bad, and the bees

[Hydra]

Please re-read my post... I addressed both points.

Yes, and I disagree with the reasoning behind them. No one uses swarmers because they're more or less useless. Now you're basically forcing people to use swarmers. Instead of making them actually useful. What's wrong with princessing being 'abundant'? The challenge in bee breeding is, aside from the huge time investment, getting new species from stuff you already have. Going out and getting princesses is just a 'grind'.

That's a matter of opinion. I am sure someone thinks punching trees is annoying.

I'm not saying you should code your mod my way (it's your mod afterall), I just hope you take what people say here into account.

 

[SpitefulFox]

Are Monastic Bees obtained from villagers always Pristine? If you can trade Ignobles to villagers for Pristines, that would make them a renewable resource.

 

[draeath]

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.

Maybe you should read someone's whole post before you react as if it was a personal attack upon your dignity.

 

[Hydra]

Maybe you should read someone's whole post before you react as if it was a personal attack upon your dignity.

If you weren't responding to the post before yours you might want to use the "quote" functionality to make this clear. Anyways; the comment still stands. Telling people not to voice their opinion on a forum is completely rediculous.

 

[draeath]

I did. So, let me quote my original post, that you replied to, that I replied to. I'll do you a solid and bold the section it appears you didn't catch the first time around:

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.

Now if you are a mod author, you'll note that I said "unless you're a modder yourself" so... if you are, it should be obvious the rest of my post doesn't apply to you!

 

[netmc]

I absolutely loved the old forestry farms. They weren't always the best option, but you could build everything in such a way to run infinitely with the right automation. I liked working on setting up the automation, then just letting them run while I worked on the next project. With the new multi-farms, that was no longer an option. True, the farm will practically run forever, but it still requires input from other sources, which means manual intervention at some point. I had never built one of the new forestry multi-farms until my current world. I needed a better source of seed oil (for frames) than wheat and barley seeds, and I wanted to use the new woodworker from extra trees, so I needed a way to grow the trees automatically. The multi-farm is useful for this, but I don't see myself using them outside of this limited option. I used to use peat engines for everything early to mid game as it was so easy to set up to get going early game, and possible to automate for later game. I haven't touched a peat engine since the new multi-farm was released.

Now with the bees, I see the same thing is happening. I finally am working through the bees. I've spent the last two weeks solidly working on my bees. It took 2-3 days to get my first alveary (after breeding the imperial and industrious) and I was about to increase that to 6 alvearies in the following few days. I like breeding the bees manually without use of the extra bees machines. It will often take 50-60 generations for me to breed in all the traits I want into a bee. With these recent changes, it will require me to use the extra bee machines just to get something I can use for a decent amount of time. It also just adds to the grind of only automating and breeding with pristine bees, and using the troll bees for boosted temporary production. Now instead of being able to keep one of every bee, I will be forced to only keep the serums/drone generating troll bee in a bee house.

This does give an incentive for using the long/longest life trait now, as before it didn't matter, but having some of the bees die off really complicates things. I will have to see if it is worth my time to work with bees now. It looks like ethanol generation and a carpenter (creosote oil) might be the only portions of forestry I use going forward as other mods have offered much better options for automating farms and passive resource generation.

Florastar's "exploitation" of bees brought us the frames and alveary. JadedCat's "exploitation" of bees brought in the trolls.

 

[Flipz]

Just a friendly "Be Nice" message for a few people--you know who you are. To everyone else: thank you for keeping the discussion surprisingly civil.​

I may have my own, personal, opinions on this change down the line--I think I'll hold off, though, until I can try the 1.6 version for myself.

 

[DreamSmith]

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.

Indeed, I find myself using MineFactory Reloaded farms these days powered by an Engineer's Toolkit hydro dam. The Unifier will not change fertiliser I guess it's not forge unified.

Forestry had always been my 'renewable' key component in my automation. These days, it is reduced to occasional use of the electric engine, and the moistener for making mossy stone for TiCo. I have not done the bees thing for a while though I'm giving it a revisit now.

From the beginning I loved the 'green' concept of Forestry, I was even content with the humus requirement (yay for old school autocrafting from Buildcraft). With addons like magic bees and extra bees sure there aren't many non fully renewable resources with bees alone. I find that the landscape of MineCraft mods has shifted, where Forestry was once the groundbreaker and thus the only option in renewable automation it's competition both for the 'green' and 'renewable' titles has stiffened. Sure the server I manage has Extra Bees and Engineers Toolkit more than the Direwolf20 pack, but the DW20 modpack has so many ways of doing the same thing now it's sometimes hard to choose. Thermal Expansion has lovely self ejecting machines, though IC2 with overclockers and extra management can do the job faster. TiCo seems to be the only way to process Aluminium at benefit. Applied Energistics rocks, allowing a NEI save to carry everything you own between world restarts. The balance between work and reward is probably the crunch point here, the multiblock structures and the electron tubes genius as they are add complexity. If I was in a game with 'just' Forestry there would be no problem, my game now is more about optimising the integration of the various mods rather than just doing things using just one mods route to a goal. Forestry still 'eats' capsules same as IC2, but with TE I can use the capsules again. AE's many functions mean I need one 'pipe' to carry well everything (even without EnderIO). Just please make AE2 forge multipart friendlier (for pipe coverage)! Ars Magica 2 removes the need to constantly charge tools apart from specialist bits, Projectile - Dig is still faster than a quarry. I find that the focus is leaning towards the 'merging' mods that go the extra mile to work with the popular base mods. AE, Modular Powersuits, Magic/Extra Bees, Engineers Toolkit, Thaumic Tinkerer and Denoflions work are prime examples of intermod support (I guess Bibliowoods should be here too!). I've excluded the awesomeness that is Forge and the support it gives with common ores, and the various pipe providers like Buildcraft and TE.

MFR and TE now cover almost all my automation needs, maybe with AE for storage. Modular Powersuits rocks for minimising carried tools. I think I'd be happy with just them in SMP till I ran out of things to automate. Then I'd look at bees and magic. Thaumcraft is awesome but with the other mods for automation and management it's only really good for automating itself. Ars Magica 2 has renewed my interest in 'magic' mods mainly as a new source of 'power' as mana, no need to recharge the mining tool!

 

[KingTriaxx]

TE's Fluid Transposer can make mossy cobble. With only cobble and water. Plus it's power is directly interchangeable with MJ via a single conduit.

 

[MigukNamja]

Just please make AE2 forge multipart friendlier (for pipe coverage)!

BC covers from the BC Assembly Table (Lasers) work fairly well. They're not as seamless as microblocks, but they look better than exposed AE cable.

Ars Magica 2 has renewed my interest in 'magic' mods mainly as a new source of 'power' as mana, no need to recharge the mining tool!

AM2 is awesome, I agree. In TC4, you can accomplish roughly the same thing by swapping out wands, keeping them charged in a node-packed wand recharging pedestal/room.