The rebirth of IC2 ?

[abculatter_2]

Personally, I don't really see why people complain about the hammer and wire cutter so much... I agree that it's not the ideal way to go about doing things, but it seems like a lot of people just blow it completely out of the water. It really doesn't take THAT long to make two or three additional crafting recipes, MAYBE an extra minute if you're absolutely horrendous as organization and are at least as blind as a bat, and once you have a metal former all you really have to do is throw in a stack or two ingots, and go calculate how much stuff you'll need for your next build or go collect the other items from storage or whatever. By the time you get back, at the very least most of the plates will be done. Enough for you to at least get started on whatever you're doing, anyway.

Maybe I just play differently, though.

 

[MigukNamja]

It is niche indeed. Ore processing is so...2012. No less than 5 major mods have ore (doubling or more) processing mechanisms and provide their own power/engines/dynamos to do it. Also, UU-matter is old hat and nuclear is still the same. It makes decent power, but isn't worth the effort.

I used IC2 exp for my first 1.6.4 world, well before TE3 beta was out, and it was alright. Somewhat interesting, but not that fun.

The only thing I use IC2 exp for is the overclocked machines for late-game, nearly instant AE-based crafting. If/when another mod, *cough* TE 3.1 *cough* offers similarly speedy machines, I'll switch to that and won't need to fiddle with IC2 at all.

 

[Dravarden]

Like slowpoke said, you can feel Greg's influence in the new IC2

 

[MigukNamja]

Personally, I don't really see why people complain about the hammer and wire cutter so much... I agree that it's not the ideal way to go about doing things, but it seems like a lot of people just blow it completely out of the water. It really doesn't take THAT long to make two or three additional crafting recipes, MAYBE an extra minute if you're absolutely horrendous as organization and are at least as blind as a bat, and once you have a metal former all you really have to do is throw in a stack or two ingots, and go calculate how much stuff you'll need for your next build or go collect the other items from storage or whatever. By the time you get back, at the very least most of the plates will be done. Enough for you to at least get started on whatever you're doing, anyway.

Maybe I just play differently, though.

It's not just the hammer and wire cutter by themselves, but the lack of a good reason for doing it.

What value do they add vs. 1.5 IC2 ? None.
What value do the two kinds of intermediate crafting plates and therefor the metal former add vs. 1.5 IC2 ? None.
Why ? To make an extra step.

*IF* the hammer and wire cutter were in IC2 from day 1, I don't think it would be noticed as much. But, when a new version of a mildly updated mod inserts a pointless intermediate crafting step in the middle, people will notice and will be scratching their heads, asking "what's the point ?"

 

[MigukNamja]

Like slowpoke said, you can feel gregtech's influence in the new IC2

Never played GT and if IC2 exp is a mild/lite version of GT, I likely never will subject myself to GT. And, don't get me started on "hard".

"Hard" is doing things that require greater thought power and creativity
"Hard" is *NOT* doing the same thing over and over and over and over. That's grinding.

 

[SpitefulFox]

I'm surprised no one has commented on the Fiber Cable recipe change as well...

Holy crap. Anyone else drop their monocle in disbelief when they saw the "1 diamond per block of fibre cable" recipe?

That was the previous episode of "Spite Freaks Out Over Something In DW20"

 

[abculatter_2]

Well, for one, converting between a metal plate to a metal ingot is much simpler, requiring a simple smelt instead of previous macerate and smelt.
You can also make plates a LOT faster, since it's a crafting recipe, even if this does come at a small additional resource cost.
It also makes more sense from a IRL perspective, (Oh my god I can't believe I'm making this argument brb I need to put a bullet in my head) as you could say the hammer and cutter represent the many tools required to build such a complex machine.
Also, as stated before, this obviously isn't a finished version and there may or may not be more stuff in the future.

I suppose I can understand the fact that it's a change from how things were before, and that may throw people off, though that seems like a "change is bad" mentality to me. I think the plates have better potential then refined iron, even if they really should've done it from the beginning.

"Hard" is doing things that require greater thought power and creativity
"Hard" is *NOT* doing the same thing over and over and over and over. That's grinding.

Thank you for knowing the difference.

 

[PhilHibbs]

*IF* the hammer and wire cutter were in IC2 from day 1, I don't think it would be noticed as much. But, when a new version of a mildly updated mod inserts a pointless intermediate crafting step in the middle, people will notice and will be scratching their heads, asking "what's the point ?"

"Replaces an intermediate step with a different intermediate step", you mean?

 

[abculatter_2]

"Replaces an intermediate step with a different intermediate step", you mean?

This is a good way to put it.

 

[MigukNamja]

On the spectrum of change where one end is "OMG ! That's awesome !" and "that was....dull", the new mechanic is closer to the latter.

A couple of days ago, I made my first IC2 machines in my 2nd 1.6.4 world with IC2 exp. This time around, the hammer and snips didn't even phase me. I just made a couple of hammers, 1 pair of snips, ground through the recipes for 3x Generators, a CESU, LV Transformer, and Metal Former(yes, my 1st IC2 machine was a metal former, lol), and then tossed them away. It didn't phase me because I knew what to expect, i.e. the price of admission.

It's sort of like a speedbump that you can go over at full speed. It doesn't slow anyone down, it just annoys them.

The first time over it after it's installed, you're like "WTF ? Why did the city do that ?"

The Nth time over it, you could hardly care less.[DOUBLEPOST=1386267633][/DOUBLEPOST]

"Replaces an intermediate step with a different intermediate step", you mean?

Technically speaking, yes, but the refined iron was simply iron run back through a furnace of some type. Not that painful/tedious at all.

 

[casilleroatr]

It's sort of like a speedbump that you can go over at full speed. It doesn't slow anyone down, it just annoys them.

The city I live in was recently governed by one of the most overzealous and meddlesome parties in my country (until they were replaced with another one who are roughly the same). Their favourite activity seemed to be irritating motorists with those stupid speed bumps.

tl:dr you have just won the official Casillero forum metaphor usage of the year award.

 

[SpitefulFox]

I'm fairly "meh" about the whole plates thing. It's just a weird arbitrary replacement for Refined Iron, which I'm assuming was only there to prevent recipe conflicts from using just straight iron. Although, the plates combined with the metal former just sort of rub me the wrong way. Just feels like "Machine that solves a problem that we created in the first place" like most of, well, GregTech.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

My biggest problem with the new enet stuff is that it swings a horrible nerf bat a large-scale power generation.

Let's look at some of the new MOX designs, some of the CRCS outputs, and my old Tower of Power build.

Tower of Power had multiple nuclear reactors which were outputting something like 7k+ eu/t. Unfortunately, you can't do that anymore.

The maximum you can transmit is the glass fibre cable's 2048 EU/t. However, transformers don't act like they used to anymore.

Transmitters will only output a maximum of the lower voltage. That's it. So when trying to 'step down' to Extreme Voltage, everything else is truncated. In other words, you might as well not have bothered making it.

However, if you've got enough energy going into it, you can have multiple outputs from the same transformer, which can help you realize this truncated value.

However, now we are running into a tree-traversing algorithm here, with regards to space required to safely transmit all this power to the end-user.

You have one input and five potential output slots, although you are only going to realize four output slots. Now then, is all that power supposed to be going down to the same area? Congratulations, you now not only have four times the amount of cabling you have to run, but you've also got to color the entire length of the bastard, just to keep them from burning out. Then, when you have to step down again, it gets even more rediculous.

So, say, I have a power generating facility generating 8192 EU/t (there's MOX generators that can hit this, even if they are condensator or CRCS designs). First off, I have to have the transformer directly attached to the generator, because there isn't any cable that can handle this.

Then I need FOUR LINES of Glass Fibre Cable (at a diamond per block of length!) to transmit this power. Then, when it is further split down, I need SIXTEEN gold lines, which is simply an unmanageable snake of wires large enough to take up almost half of a 9 x 9's space.

All of that hassle just to USE THE POWER I AM PRODUCING.

In other words, IC2-EX is not only demanding you to produce that kind of power for things like the new UUM system, it's also harshly punishing you for even ATTEMPTING to do it.

Just... no.

 

[SpitefulFox]

That's... horrifying on so many levels. D:

 

[GPuzzle]

I want to talk about something.
Noob influence.
You see, when someone's new to a mod, they generally seek for the easiest way to go (or the most interesting).
They don't want the longest.
Take TE3 as an example. It's a good, powerful mod - but it's also relatively easy to get into. What people liked the most about TE was how easy it was to get into the mod, but also how functional it could be.
Both new and old players enjoy and enjoyed TE - it's straightforward, powerful and, more importantly, easy to learn.
If your mod requires both old and new players to understand tons of concepts and have a relationship with the crafting table, you're doing it wrong.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Take TE3 as an example. It's a good, powerful mod - but it's also relatively easy to get into.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to get the hang of the sided input/output config. I was quite intimmidated by it. Seems real simple to me now though.

 

[Siro]

My biggest problem with the new enet stuff is that it swings a horrible nerf bat a large-scale power generation.

My understanding is that the energy net is currently very much incomplete. The last update I saw regarding it disabled machine explosions because of how broken it currently is. So I don't think the intention is to have an entire digestive tract of cables for one's power supply just to power one's machines from the generation sources available.

 

[GPuzzle]

It took me an embarrassingly long time to get the hang of the sided input/output config. I was quite intimmidated by it. Seems real simple to me now though.

Yes, but that was the most complicated thing in TE. And it didn't take you a long time to use it to its full potential, did it?

 

[MigukNamja]

It took me an embarrassingly long time to get the hang of the sided input/output config. I was quite intimmidated by it. Seems real simple to me now though.

Yeah, the first time I used TE, I was flummoxed by TE's "gear" GUI on the right side used to configure the input and output faces. But, when I got it, I got it, and it was awesome.[DOUBLEPOST=1386278250][/DOUBLEPOST]

Yes, but that was the most complicated thing in TE. And it didn't take you a long time to use it to its full potential, did it?

This is true.

 

[Siro]

Yes, but that was the most complicated thing in TE. And it didn't take you a long time to use it to its full potential, did it?

I'd liken going through IC2/Gregtech's tech tree to be a lot closer to something like Thaumcraft research. Each time you start a world you know it's going to take you quite awhile to get through the tree to use it to its full potential no matter how familiar you are with the process.