The good things about Botania despawning passive plants

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GreenZombie

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Well, the server I played on has updated to direwolf20 1.8, which includes Botania in its default config. So my attractive but slow mana garden has despawned.

Rather than ranting, well, I'm told that its better to be positive than negative. So here are the good things I find in this new mechanic.
 
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jordsta95

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The good things are, but are not limited to:
- It forces you to try more intricate flowers; ones that require more work, but pay off with more mana
- You aren't using X passive flowers for every Y amount of mana, whereas X passives/Z non-passives would give you Y amount of mana
- This means less room is being used for said setup
- You don't have to wait around for your passives to generate measly amounts of mana, as the non-passives gain the mana quicker
- The options are more plentiful for non-passives; got a good farm? Use a gourmarylls. A massive tree farm, with loads of excess wood? Endoflames. The list goes on
- You make @Vazkii happy
- No need to have your generating flowers placed outside (dayblooms/nightshades)
- No need for massive amounts of infinite water sources (hydrogeneas)
- Most of the non-passive's are easy to automate (and can be fun to automate)
- The DW20 pack has a lot of mods in it that can be used to "cheat" Botania by "abusing" the mechanics from one mod, to make Botania easier (1 example would be: MFR tree farm (wood)-> EnderIO/TE Furnace (charcoal)-> Hopper + Open crate -> Endoflame)
 

GreenZombie

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I can't frankly tell if you are ironically agreeing with me or not. Every statement is an argument that passive flowers were already quite balanced.

Or
- So, if I want "more mana" I would try the more intricate flowers anyway?
- ?
- I had an attractive build. That looked like a bloody garden with flowers init. And without machines. Because FLOWERS.
- Again - I was happy with measly amounts of mana. And If I wanted more I would have switched to an active flower. sounds balanced.
- many active options? sounds balanced.
- meh
- I liked my passives outside. Theyre flowers. And were in my garden.
- yeah. for lots of mana I would have used an active flower. balanced.
- If automation is so easy for the actives - why remove the passives? Other than the fact that automation looks damn ugly in my garden.
- So, oodles of mana available for little effort. Forced upon me for no good reason.
 
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Dkittrell

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While i dont like that passive flowers despawn since they are very slow at producing mana you can get a nice system going with endoflames very cheap. Open crate,hopper,3 pieces of redstone, and wooden pressure plate can get you an automated system, all you need is a consumable like coal/charcoal. Most people have a tree farm which makes that very easy.
 

jordsta95

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I can't frankly tell if you are ironically agreeing with me or not. Every statement is an argument that passive flowers were already quite balanced.

Or
- So, if I want "more mana" I would try the more intricate flowers anyway?
- ?
- I had an attractive build. That looked like a bloody garden with flowers init. And without machines. Because FLOWERS.
- Again - I was happy with measly amounts of mana. And If I wanted more I would have switched to an active flower. sounds balanced.
- many active options? sounds balanced.
- meh
- I liked my passives outside. Theyre flowers. And were in my garden.
- yeah. for lots of mana I would have used an active flower. balanced.
- If automation is so easy for the actives - why remove the passives? Other than the fact that automation looks damn ugly in my garden.
- So, oodles of mana available for little effort. Forced upon me for no good reason.
No, I am saying that passives need to decay, otherwise you don't explore the rest of the mod...

For example, you will never be able to sustain things such as the loonium, or the orechid with passives... unless you spam them to high hell. And these are very useful flowers, at least in some mod packs.
 

GreenZombie

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No, I am saying that passives need to decay, otherwise you don't explore the rest of the mod...

For example, you will never be able to sustain things such as the loonium, or the orechid with passives... unless you spam them to high hell. And these are very useful flowers, at least in some mod packs.

No other mod despawns its beginning content to force you to explore the rest of the mod. Should leather armor just decay to nothing every 3 in game days because I havn't explored what diamond armor has to offer? Pfft.

Yes - the passive flowers can't sustain looniums, or the portal to alfheim. Which, right there, is the incentive to upgrade.
 

KingTriaxx

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I wouldn't mind decorative versions of the flowers so I can maintain aesthetics, and still upgrade to other flowers.

Isn't Decay something with a config option? Maybe ask the server admin to turn it off?
 

jordsta95

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I wouldn't mind decorative versions of the flowers so I can maintain aesthetics, and still upgrade to other flowers.

Isn't Decay something with a config option? Maybe ask the server admin to turn it off?
There is a decorative version called the "motif" versions (only available for passive flowers)

No other mod despawns its beginning content to force you to explore the rest of the mod. Should leather armor just decay to nothing every 3 in game days because I havn't explored what diamond armor has to offer? Pfft.
No, but the more you use something, the less "durability" it should have, and after all the durability is used, it should break.

If you take too much damage in leather armour, it breaks. If you use a passive too much, it should "break"...
 

GreenZombie

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No, but the more you use something, the less "durability" it should have, and after all the durability is used, it should break.

So, as a more direct parallel - Magmatic engines should break after a few days of use because they're a spammable and essentially generate RF for free, and players should be forced to experience more advanced RF power options like Big Reactors?

Somehow IC2exp didn't find it necessary to make geothermal, water mills or solar panels degenerate after a few days of use to force players into the more interesting steam or nuclear options.

My buildcraft cobblestone pipes don't decay because I didn't upgrade to gold.

And yes -leather armor gets used up, as does diamond. Neither one just disappears after 2 in game days
 

lenscas

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Somehow IC2exp didn't find it necessary to make geothermal, water mills or solar panels degenerate after a few days of use to force players into the more interesting steam or nuclear options.
I believe that the wind turbines need replacement :p

Never used botania but in my opinion if a certain type of power gen needs to be destroyed after x amount of time to stay balanced then the power system as a whole is broken.
 

GreenZombie

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I believe that the wind turbines need replacement :p

Never used botania but in my opinion if a certain type of power gen needs to be destroyed after x amount of time to stay balanced then the power system as a whole is broken.

They do - interestingly, this mechanic there balances their use as a mid to high tier power production component.
 

jordsta95

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So, as a more direct parallel - Magmatic engines should break after a few days of use because they're a spammable and essentially generate RF for free, and players should be forced to experience more advanced RF power options like Big Reactors?

Somehow IC2exp didn't find it necessary to make geothermal, water mills or solar panels degenerate after a few days of use to force players into the more interesting steam or nuclear options.

My buildcraft cobblestone pipes don't decay because I didn't upgrade to gold.

And yes -leather armor gets used up, as does diamond. Neither one just disappears after 2 in game days
Pretend when you place a daybloom (or any passive) down, it has the capacity to make 100 mana.
And, for arguments sake, an iron chestplate has (for my example) 100 durability.
Every time your daybloom gives off 1 mana, your iron chestplate takes 1 durability of damage. They both disappear at the same time.

The intention behind the daybloom and nightshade aren't to be used as a main source of mana, they are made to be a stepping stone to get you into Botania. The 100 mana (it isn't actually this amount) that the daybloom gives you is enough to get started to making an Endoflame. The endoflame, when played with only Botania, isn't hard to automate, but runs on a resource you can't get infinitely. So you use the endoflame until you can get the next best flower for your needs.
For example, if you are the sort of person who goes out and kills lots of mobs, the Rosa Arcana would probably be the next stop.
If you make huge farms, maybe the Gourmarylls.
The list goes on.

Think of the generating flora like tiers.
T1: Daybloom/Nightshade/Hydrogeneas. They work, but are slow, pretty crappy, and not worth the effort remaking every 3 days.
T2: Endoflame. It works, can be automated, can be used to supply mana for the rest of your time playing, but isn't the "best" way to do so.
T3: The rest of the non-elven knowledge generating flora. They are pretty good, with a variety of ways to make mana, at different speeds/amount produced
T4: Elven knowledge flowers. These are the creme-de-la-creme of generating flora, able to produce insane amounts of mana (if you use them correctly)


And as for your machine thing... actually agree with you. They SHOULD break, maybe not the whole machine just vanishing, but having to refit gears, or something (I believe Asie talked about, possibly, making this a thing in Buildcraft).
As for the pipes, that isn't a fair argument to make, as you are comparing generation methods with transportation methods. You would compare iron chests to big reactors :p
 

KingTriaxx

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Frankly, I think Vazkii went the wrong way. Instead of busting the generation, I would have added improved mana pools they couldn't feed.
Elven Mana Pools, that can only be fed by Elven Spreaders, which have a mana cost to be fed, which is equal to what passives provide.

And then a Gaia Mana Pool, which is a pool shape of Terrasteel with a Gaia spirit in the center. Requires Gaia Mana Spreaders, and can only be fed directly from Elven Mana pools.

Alternately, the Daybloom sapling. Eight Dayblooms around an Oak sapling creates a tree with all blocks that generate sending the mana to a living core that links to the spreader. Compact Solar, Botania edition.
 

jordsta95

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Let's break this apart
Frankly, I think Vazkii went the wrong way. Instead of busting the generation, I would have added improved mana pools they couldn't feed.
Vazkii said she didn't like the idea of adding bigger mana pools as she liked the idea of having to manage mana storage (IIRC)

(I will ignore this fact when talking about the rest of it)
Elven Mana Pools, that can only be fed by Elven Spreaders, which have a mana cost to be fed, which is equal to what passives provide.
The idea of upgrading the spreader is to make it better in every way (faster, more efficient, longer range, etc.) not add a "cost to use", otherwise people would just stick to the basic mana spreader

And then a Gaia Mana Pool, which is a pool shape of Terrasteel with a Gaia spirit in the center. Requires Gaia Mana Spreaders, and can only be fed directly from Elven Mana pools.

So to fill my "uber pool" I need to send through 2 other pools (normal -> Elven -> Gaia)... seems a little annoying if I am using the default mana spreaders just because I have 1 per endoflame, or something

Alternately, the Daybloom sapling. Eight Dayblooms around an Oak sapling creates a tree with all blocks that generate sending the mana to a living core that links to the spreader. Compact Solar, Botania edition.
And the tree disappears after a while?
Otherwise you are back to the whole point of this discussion.
Passives should decay? Yes or no.
For Vazkii, and most of the people who have been using Botania with this change for at least a month now, the answer is yes. A lot of people put up their hands and some threw a hissy fit, but after a while, they realized it wasn't so bad.

So why is this "Treebloom" any different from a daybloom?
 

KingTriaxx

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I didn't say bigger. I said better. Pools that can consume larger manabursts and dispense it faster. If the base pool takes x seconds to charge the mana tablet, the Elven takes x/.66 times as long, and the Gaia x/.33 times. Or allowing the Altar or Brewery to complete tasks faster. Not to mention dispensing through Sparks that much faster.

Cost is the wrong word. It's more that it's lossy. Like EU's energy cables. Can't use Windmills with too long a length of tin-cables because what they produce is less than the loss from the cable.

No, elven's can take from non passive flowers, into the Elven Pool or from the normal pool. Only the fastest pool needs the huge burst capabilities of the Gaia spreader. Of course sparks don't follow these rules, and can work between any of them without restriction, but the faster pools will naturally move the mana around faster.

I was thinking it decays into a random selection of leaves and some oak for the daybloom, or random leaves and spruce for the nightshade equivalent. Rather than just being a completely one way investment. Mostly though, it's the Botania equivalent of Compact Solars. One tree taking the place of the eight dayblooms. More appropriately replacing eight tile entities with two (generating block and the core that the spreaders link to.)

Passive Decay? I say no. But then again, I don't play like most people play. For me, solar or other passive generation is more for maintenance power than anything. AE consumes a small, constant draw of power, so having passive power generation is useful to keep that running without having to crank up the entire thousand RF/t system just to recharge the power cell. For Botania, it's not quite as applicable, because the one structure it has that consumes energy is the Portal to Alfheim, which sucks a lot more power than the passives can generate. So unless you've got a huge field of passives, you need active generation to run it. With the huge field of passives, comes the server lag. Which generates complaints.

I get what Vazkii is going for, in trying to eliminate the grind of waiting for the flowers to generate mana. The trouble is that now you either have to sit there and make sure the contraption you've constructed is feeding the actives as you want, or you keep trying until you work out something you can treat like a passive. Which is an admirable goal, but seems to defeat the purpose of the mod. Here's your awesome new magic mod, now get some tech to automate it with. Seriously?
 
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Cptqrk

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I have not upgraded to the "new" botania yet due to it running on my server. I'm happy with the mod version I have, but will eventually, begrudgingly, move onto the decay update.

I too am under the impression that Vazkii used a sledgehammer to kill a fly. While I do have Dayblooms and Nightshades, I only use them for things that need little mana to work. I use a small patch of Dayblooms (8 in total, probably overkill) to feed my Jadded Amaranthus. I use the same number of Nightshades to feed a small pool of mana to make the occasional mana pearl/steel/diamond for a craft. I use my Endoflames and Munchdew set ups to make my "usable" mana.

To say that Daybloom and Nightshade use will make players avoid using other flowers is.. well.. silly... The passives make so little mana, that it would take fields of them to make enough mana to be usable over the "life" of the mod. Want to make Terrasteel with Dayblooms? You need to seek professional help! It is easier to make the 8 Endoflames you need to feed the pools to keep the Portal open, two Munchdews keep 4 mana pools topped up to cover your alchemical/enchanting/runic needs. To make that amount of mana with Dayblooms and Nightshades would take more work.. So the proposal that passives make people skip other flowers is moot.

*side note: I never used Hydroangas, nor Thermalilys, so I don't have much to say on them, but I don't understand the decay for one (Hydroanga), but not the other (Thermalily).

In the end though, as I have stated before, this is Vazkii's mod... Not ours. If they decide to make flowers decay, then it's up to them.
As users of the mod, we have a choice of:
1) Not updating the mod....
2) Dealing with the decay mechanic....
3) Not using the mod.....

I'm sticking with option 1 for now, but will probably end up with option 2 in the end.