Thermal Expansion Status

[SonOfABirch]

Since you are going for your own power system, that will also mean power generation. How about trying to make some of your own unique passive power generation systems. Produce a low amount of RF, but a fire and forget system. Like solar panels/windmills, but more optimised so a large setup of them does not kill performance. One though I had was "Redstone Generator" which is made from a mix of glowstone and redstone blocks (and various materials), which harnesses the natural energy of those two materials in some strange reaction to produce the energy. Almost like a block form of the redstone reception coil component.

Oh please no... Passive power generation is the bane of modded minecraft and should be scrubbed from existance.
I'm talking about solars and windmills, if you can automate a boiler or engines or whatever to BE passive once set up, then fine, but placing a single block and WEE MAGIC POWAH!!! is a terrible concept and should be killed immediately.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Passive power generation is the bane of modded minecraft and should be scrubbed from existance.
I'm talking about solars and windmills...

I don't have a problem with solar power per se. In RP2, for instance, solar power didn't seem out of place. You needed half a dozen panels to be of any use, and they had to be quite close to your machines to get anything out of them. Factorization solars, also, I enjoyed setting up solar mirror arrays. IC2 solars, however, never really felt "right" to me. I made a few of the basic panels, then replaced them with LV solar arrays when I had the materials, but I never went further than that. It seemed like cheating, which RP2 and FZ never did.

 

[Methusalem]

This change does create a major functionality gap that many people will stumble over. I'd be interested what proportion of FTP pack players use a BC quarry or filler or mining well in conjunction with a TE tesseract. I'd imagine it's quite high. TE isn't going to add mining machines that use its new power framework, that's quite clear. However, it does create a huge gap in the market which can filled in three ways that I can think of: 1) New machine(s) that use Redstone Flux power in a new mod, 2) New machines that store or transmit large amounts of MJ wirelessly, 3) New machines that use some new kind of power. Does the second approach conflict with BuildCraft's design aesthetic? It seems so, otherwise BC would already have batteries and wireless power transmission.

On the plus side, this might get me back to using huge swarms of mining turtles again.

There won't be a functionality gap. Right now there is not much left in TE, that can't be done in a better way using a different mod. (Hello, Ender IO!)

In fact, adding another power system will put TE for me at the same level as Factorization. I always hated the fact there, that I have to set up a power system for it, just because I wanted to make one single item, the Machine Upgrade for routers. Or to put it differently, unless TE is able to play nice with other mods or adds some really cool new features, I won't bother to use it much (or not at all) anymore.

 

[Golrith]

It's only a bane because the options available produce either too much power, or are too easy to build by not truly reflecting either the advanced technology to make them work (solars), or the sheer size needed (wind).
IF KL implemented any sort of passive generator, he would be the one modder who i would trust to get the balance right between material cost and output

 

[Golrith]

I don't have a problem with solar power per se. In RP2, for instance, solar power didn't seem out of place. You needed half a dozen panels to be of any use, and they had to be quite close to your machines to get anything out of them. Factorization solars, also, I enjoyed setting up solar mirror arrays. IC2 solars, however, never really felt "right" to me. I made a few of the basic panels, then replaced them with LV solar arrays when I had the materials, but I never went further than that. It seemed like cheating, which RP2 and FZ never did.

Indeed, if a TE type "passive" followed the same build cost as the RedPower solar panel nikolite as redstone instead, that's a lot of redstone for a single block, vital redstone needed for all the machines and conduits. I too enjoyed the redpower solar panels when linked to the MJ engine. Turned into a nice multiblock solar panel that produced (eventually) a good amount of MJ, but very expensive in Nikolite and time to build.

I'm also using the Mekanism Windmills and Solar Panels. They are fairly expensive material wise, and a bit of a pain to craft (and needing a fair amount of gold), which is a good balance, but I personally feel power output is too high.

 

[Falconjh]

Must resist urge to make mod converting all mods to power requiring an algebraic notation to measure the output. Generated by one engine running solid gold ender eyes. No, wait, gold can be farmed. Solid Platinum Ender Eyes.

I was thinking the same thing, but with blocks of lapiz.

 

[Skyqula]

I loved Repowers Bluetricity and the way the generators balanced out. Each generator had an advantage and a downside, loved it.

Wich is also why I think that all ways of generating power from a treefarm is more broken then anny passive power generation ever. Its setup and forget just like a passive generator without an actual downside and it produces significantly more power.

 

[Golrith]

I loved Repowers Bluetricity and the way the generators balanced out. Each generator had an advantage and a downside, loved it.

Wich is also why I think that all ways of generating power from a treefarm is more broken then anny passive power generation ever. Its setup and forget just like a passive generator without an actual downside and it produces significantly more power.

Yep, since growing times in MC are crazily short (even with the the 20 minute day cycle) tree farms are just like a field of solar panels.

 

[KnightOwl]

I loved Repowers Bluetricity and the way the generators balanced out. Each generator had an advantage and a downside, loved it.

Wich is also why I think that all ways of generating power from a treefarm is more broken then anny passive power generation ever. Its setup and forget just like a passive generator without an actual downside and it produces significantly more power.

And from a server admin point of view it uses up WAY more system resources.. Hence why we have mods that take multiple solars and put them in a single block. You still pay for the cost of the individual solars.. then you pay a cost to combine them. Now we can discuss if the actual cost for solars makes any sense but I don't have any problem with combining them into a better block.

And to keep it on topic..

How about a multiblock that you could add new solar cells into?

 

[Omicron]

Pfff, solar again? Please. With a name like "Redstone Flux" for a power system, for passive power generation I could see something more like a stonehenge type multiblock structure built out of solid redstone blocks, pillars and struts arching up high... They'd need to be pulsed by a redstone clock in succession (or form a huge redstone clock themselves), and an antenna in the middle would siphon off power from the constant pulses of the giant clock. Throw in some humming noise and some cool red lightning effects arching about when the clock is pulsing, and you have something even a passive energy grouch like me would build!

Of course, redstone clocks and stuff cause constant lighting updates when pulsing, and that's toxic for server performance... so we'll never see anything like that, especially not out of King Lemming. The point is, stop thinking in boring old terms like solar power. Almost every mod has done it, and not one of them has ever gotten it right. The only mod that's close to a sensible implementation of solar power is actually Factorization, except that it's still generating too much and the machines consume too little.

Just try and be a BIT more creative, folks! Are you Minecrafters or not?

 

[SonOfABirch]

Pfff, solar again? Please. With a name like "Redstone Flux" for a power system, for passive power generation I could see something more like a stonehenge type multiblock structure built out of solid redstone blocks, pillars and struts arching up high... They'd need to be pulsed by a redstone clock in succession (or form a huge redstone clock themselves), and an antenna in the middle would siphon off power from the constant pulses of the giant clock. Throw in some humming noise and some cool red lightning effects arching about when the clock is pulsing, and you have something even a passive energy grouch like me would build!

Of course, redstone clocks and stuff cause constant lighting updates when pulsing, and that's toxic for server performance... so we'll never see anything like that, especially not out of King Lemming. The point is, stop thinking in boring old terms like solar power. Almost every mod has done it, and not one of them has ever gotten it right. The only mod that's close to a sensible implementation of solar power is actually Factorization, except that it's still generating too much and the machines consume too little.

Just try and be a BIT more creative, folks! Are you Minecrafters or not?

I'm gonna quote this, not to add anything, but just to add emphasis to my like!

 

[KnightOwl]

Hahaha.. if I was that creative I'd have written my own mod by now Very awesome response..

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Oh please no... Passive power generation is the bane of modded minecraft and should be scrubbed from existance.
I'm talking about solars and windmills, if you can automate a boiler or engines or whatever to BE passive once set up, then fine, but placing a single block and WEE MAGIC POWAH!!! is a terrible concept and should be killed immediately.

What about one which requires that you do terraforming around the area for it to be passive? For example, a water wheel which produces passive energy flow, but it is something like a 7 block radius, so you have to have flowing water underneath it, and it will check to be sure it is either in a River biome or the water it is in is at least 20 or so blocks long and needs to be at least three blocks wide for it to function?

It's just about as much effort to terraform as it is to automate something.

 

[Blackmoore]

Fine, so put an "electricity" API into forge, the name is semantics and nit picking. Yes, thaumcraft has what could be considered "energy" but it's not a parody of electricity (like 90% of the other mods are, including BC, IC2, TE, Factorization, Redpower, and Universal electricity), it is a parody of Magic a completely separate concept. There's no reason why we couldn't have a central power system for electricity-using mods and still have thaumcraft magic.
The point is, playing modded minecraft would simply just be exponentially more enjoyable if any electrical generator could be conducted by any wire which could be stored in any storage medium to be used to run any machine, much like how you like having options when it comes to writing your power system we like to have options when it comes to building our creations.

But with an API for "power" it doesnt matter if the mod is talking about Volts, MJ, EU, Torque, or Hydraulic pressure - that's the key. just a framework to describe how a block accepts, stores, and passes along the units. it doesnt mean the units passed are compatible between mods; just that the API used is standard. You'd still need a mod to define a block for compatibility (if one was not built into one of the two mods) but it would be an Apples to Apples conversion as far at the software would go. Each mod would have to set the terms for generatation, and use inside of the mod, but the handling is standrd at that point

 

[KnightOwl]

I want a form of steam power where I throw ice into lava..

 

[Blackmoore]

Oh please no... Passive power generation is the bane of modded minecraft and should be scrubbed from existance.
I'm talking about solars and windmills, if you can automate a boiler or engines or whatever to BE passive once set up, then fine, but placing a single block and WEE MAGIC POWAH!!! is a terrible concept and should be killed immediately.

bane?!?

some of us really DONT want to generate a tree farm and auto collect saplings for a boiler. I dont want to take up landscape with a lot of solar or wind.

 

[SonOfABirch]

What about one which requires that you do terraforming around the area for it to be passive? For example, a water wheel which produces passive energy flow, but it is something like a 7 block radius, so you have to have flowing water underneath it, and it will check to be sure it is either in a River biome or the water it is in is at least 20 or so blocks long and needs to be at least three blocks wide for it to function?

It's just about as much effort to terraform as it is to automate something.

that sounds pretty cool tbh. It's not just "place block, wee power!" theres actually some thought that must go into it

bane?!?

 

[RedBoss]

That guy was NOT Bane.

That movie was deplorable.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

That guy was NOT Bane.

That movie was deplorable.

View attachment 7697

There is a flaw in the design of this website. I can only hit 'like' once.

 

[Blackmoore]

I will obviously use a reasonable amount of land for power. I LIKE the idea of a watermill that is multi block. I would LOVE a multiblock thermocoupler, and the solar tower. I'd like to see an option to generate power from liquid redstone or liquid enderpearls. I'm not a fan of using my time to maintain a power system. which is why i passed on BC in previous editions. it's why we PURGED bc power conduits from our current game; and dont use BC engines. frankly i WANTed a BC that could... BUILD. and it doesnt do that at all any more.