TsoriCorp - From Rags to Riches. -(Somewhat Picture Playthrough)

[Tsori]

Hey

So i was meaning to get one of these going at the beginning of my journey. However i got a little sidetracked and quite far along on the server i frequent then it all went to hell when we changed from ultimate to yogscast complete. So i began again, this time taking the idea i had pioneered on the previous iteration and built upon it. It was glorious.. it turned out better than i imagined, but still wasn't quite right.

By complete coincidence, just as i was getting annoyed, we had a map reset. Which gave me a brilliant chance to start over. This co-incided with the time i started watching @Ako_the_Builder season 2 of RR playthrough. His take on Wollaton Hall (which is ironically quite close to me IRL) inspired my new take on what id like to build and as a result i too have taken major influences from this building.

So whats this thread about then? Well, im at a stage now where i have the building set down, Ive done little to no mods and the building itself is a shell. So this stands as a good point to begin from! In the spoiler below is a brief history of how my past playthrough went, unfortunately due to a map reset i no longer have any pictures of them. Following that will be updates hopefully every day or two of my progress =D.

Spoiler: Past TsoriCorp Attempts

TsoriCorp 1.0 started as a large magic based building. It was made from marble and heavily inspired by gothic architecture. The bulk of the building was a giant marble "hall" with high windows stained with various imagines. Within was a tiered library and thaumcraft after. AM2 was built up top and witchery/blood magic within small alcoves in the floor. This was quite enjoyable due to starting off in a perfect medow's biome that fit in perfectly. Technology areas were built underneath however space became an issue due to being very close to another player.

Tsoricorp 2.0 was an observatory, The observatory dome held thaumcraft, AM2. Small cottage in the surrounding fields held the witchery parts and a cave within a cliff nearby the blood magic alter. Once again tech was underground however this time it was a much better implementation. Using an enhanced portal transport system i had a bunch of buried "labs" with sprawling corridors and small rooms. This worked well giving it a great laboratory feel. However the map reset meant this had to be destroyed.

[UPDATE] The server is annoyingly offline till tomorrow afternoon, pictures will be coming then -_-

So, First off, Plans.

Spoiler: Plans

These are basic floorplans with areas that im considering of dividing up for use.



Basement - B1 - Blood magic alter. This area is made specifically for the alter, a 20x20 square, with room for up to 6 blocks high. [/B]

Basement - B2 - I have no idea what to do with this space. It has no access to the outside so it may instead become areas for me to route my wireing/pipes through.

Ground Floor - G1 - This is the entrance hall, it has a large staircase going up to the second level and areas for display cases ect for various armours/items. This room is mostly decorative.

Ground Floor G2 - This im thinking of making into a witchery area. Hidden away this entire side of the building can become a form of indoor "garden" for witchery plants, possibly with a tree growing in each tower. Hidden doors into the garden at the back where my alter will be.

Ground Floor G3 - Unsure currently. Im thinking possibly my bee /gendustry area. Bee's are the only main tech area that requires me to have access to the outside and such need to be quite high up.

First Floor F1 - This is the upper area of the entrance hall, Not much floorspace here due to the balconys looking down on the main hall. Mainly for decoration.

First Floor F2 - This area is AM2. Crafting alter in the tower and various implements running the length of the building.

First Floor F3 - No idea... hoping something strikes me for this area.

Second Floor - S1- This is a high building the size of the main hall. With the mainhalls raised roof, this area is pretty much just a giant rectangle. Il be using this bit for everything thaumcraft related.

So wheres the tech? That will be covered in the actual playthrough.

Spoiler: What did i do to get to this point?

Since it was a new map i started out as always, wandering around getting killed by everything for an hour. Made some stone tools, kept walking. I knew i wanted a forest or something similar as i liked the idea of a manor house with an "estate" of land around it. Not huge fields worth but enough to make the building not feel "squeezed" into the environment. I found a pretty good forest but unfortunately someone else decided to build just round the corner, this simply wouldn't do.

Another hour or so of walking in one direction i reached another forest, this time far enough away from others!. So i settled and made a cobblestone box that would be my workers hut. Within i dug down, got the usual collection of ores and stuff. I also made a smeltery, I realize TinCon is pretty much what everyone does at the start but the tools are just too useful to pass up.
I LUCKILY had enough materials for Alumite tools, these took precedence over a pulveriser as they enabled me to gather more materials quicker.

With alumite pick i dug out some obsidian i had inadvertently created earlier while mining and put together a nether portal. Now, for those who have not played with metallurgy before, it fills the world and nether with various new ores. Kalendrite is a new ore added to the nether in quite copious amounts. Its purple and awesome. What makes it awesome? well..its not rare, it has the mining strength of diamond and can mine vulcanite, the top tier nether ore added by metallurgy. Oh...one last thing..2 vulcanite ingots = a blaze rod!.

So that was what i did, kalendrite pick -> vulcanite. Vulcanite pick/Sword/Armour + all the blaze rods i could eat!. While i was getting this i luckily managed to get 2 ghast tears.

So back in the overworld i crafted a pulverizer, redstone furnace, metallurgic infuser (mekanism makes most TE machines need steel instead of iron, annoying at best). These were all powered by a mekanism wind turbine, cheap and free power which in my opinion is frankly OP at lower levels due to its poweroutput. 192 rf/t no fuel and cheap enough to make at this level. i ended up with 6.

Now, i dont enchant much. Infact.. ever. Bad i know but ah well, alot of the armours in these mods are already enchanted, or there is easier way of getting it (TinCon silk touch, self repairing cobalt pick with some moss balls ect) So my EXP goes into a MFR XP extractor. This makes mob essence which i use to spawn myself mobs for food!. Remember those ghast tears? used one for a renewable safari ball for a cow and the other into a MFR unifier.

The unifier will take in "tears" from cold cows (cold cows are cows shaved of their skin (leather) using force shears from dartcraft. Awesome), and convert them into ghast tears. Easier than hunting those ghasts!

Now at this point i was stopped by a lack of ender pearls. YC uses hardcore end mod...i had no intentions of going there anytime soon. With a mixture of ender lilly seeds and killing ender tots (spawns 2 angry enderman that wont run away) from my spawner, these gave me enough for my current needs.

So with that all setup i crafted myself a mekanism jetpack. Why? Because it was time to hunt bats!
Now i know alot of people disagree with advanced genetics, but in packs like these with so many ways to fly, for those of us who want to use our clothing spots, or spell spots, or potion consumption on something other than flight, advanced genetics is a brilliant mod. Shamefully OP.. but who cares, its not a pvp server.

So i hunted down a bat, stole its cells and through the sacrificing of many..many cows for cells got myself creative flight.

I was finally ready to begin building my main base. Using a excavator shovel from TinCon, i flattened out the area and lain down a framework in cobble. Then after many trials of materials i settled on limestone from mariculture. Using chisel and donations from many others on the server i collected every type of limestone i could get my hands on, chiseled it into mariculture limestone and cooked a ton in a furnace. Mariculture has brick, small brick, smooth, fancy brick and beveled versions, enough for variance and the texture itself is amazing even in default.

I used carpenters block slopes and stairs to add in small detail along the sides of the building, trying to follow in general the design of the original building. I copied @Ako_the_Builder choice of windows, that glass alone is amazing and i had never put it together in such amounts to notice the strips of metal/wood that make it into a very authentic window design.

For the interior, at this point it is mostly blank. I use greatwood for floors alot as i love the color of it. This fit in some areas however to keep the main hall with its "large and airy" feel i went for a lighter spruce wood floor.

Limestone, the chisel variant suited the roof well, the original building has a flat roof, something ive added on however im considering changing sections to a more raised design.

And thats that!. Next up i intend on slowly filling in certain mod areas. AM2 witchery and thaumcraft will be amongst the first.

As for tech, im going to dig down and have an underground area, continuing the batman theme with a cave control center with labs comming off of it. I intend on having a statue/water feature on the grounds infront of the building, the water feature concealing a skylight down into the cave. All this will be expanded as i do it below in pictures.

 

[Tsori]

Finally finished off the outside of the building, So im throwing that up here now. Il get screens of various stages and areas added to the main post in the next few hours.

Ignore the hut in the foreground, it will be removed.

 

[Tsori]

Ok so first big update:


So the server came back up and this is what i was greeted with:

So firstly i decided to finish off the towers, unfortunately i changed the design of the floorplan halfway through and it wasnt until now that i realised it had messed up the symmetry. I didnt want to rip it all down and its not too noticeable but a bit of work later and its covered it mostly up.

A little cleaning up of the front stairs. There is alot of landscaping needed to be done outside however that is something for tonight once ive removed that hut.

Once the towers were done i added a few slopes for skylights:

And the outside of the building was mostly finished:

Aside from that, i had a little bit of time to begin the inside, i dug out and floored the basement, ready for blood magic. The area of F3 in the plans that i didnt know what to do with i decided to move thaumcraft essentia creation into. With thaumcraft i like to have jars arranged so that golems will handle essentia filling. Pipes are (as i understand it, intentionally) awful at moving essentia and the setups i use wouldnt work with pipes. This however is the first time i intend on using essentia mirrors between jars and alter.

This bit ^ is my jar racks, two rows, double tiered each holding 16 jars. Enough for all 58 aspects plus spare jars. The furnaces and alembics will go down to the left, along the wall with the stairs giving the golems a way up. Normally id enclose the golems in, to avoid escapees, however i didnt have the room this time.
Beneath where the photo is taken from is where i can put my crucible and alchemical construct. Unfortunately i dont think i can use essentia mirrors with the cruicible but technomancy has essentia conduits that let essentia move through the air..might try and get them working with the crucible.

Start of the witchery floor. Need to make a raised tank for artichokes in the back left corner. The tower at the top there has the stairs going down into the basement for blood magic. Behind is an empty tower and a door leading outside, this bit will be for the witchery items and access to the alter outside. While im aware i could grow these outside,the decorative addition is always a bonus and leaves room for more things outside.


Next update will be of the landscaping, which il be doing tonight. Before that however i need to make some ME storage so that i can remove that wooden hut and its contents. Once i have the driveway created and set down i can place the fountain. This will dictate where the cave will be placed.
Additionally, i want to make a hedge maze, but i have no idea what to place at its center. Maybe a twilight forest portal? or perhaps something else. Additionally farms leading down to the lake to the west, witchery plants and trees behind and bee hives to the east on the cliffsides.

 

[Tompa974]

Beautiful! And I love the way you plan things. I'll keep following you for sure

The Manor itself is wonderful. You aced the color combination with walls and roof. Keep it up!

 

[madnewmy]

Very nice :O excited to see the final build

 

[Tsori]

Well.. Unfortunate news =\. The area last night has become inflicted with some stupid corrupted chunks that drop my fps to single digits. We tried fixing this however it seems unavoidable. So i packed up and im now looking for a new place to build something new however im going to keep this thread running as id rather it be a continuation than a fresh start. Since i have not begun many mods yet and im keeping the resources from this build through i dont see any benefit to starting a new one.


So where from here? Well, it wont be as big, or rather it will but not above ground. Im going to stick with the above ground magic and below ground tech theme, id like to hide whatever base i make now away in a crag or alps biome however the server is currently having issues with only generating new chunks as vanilla, once that is sorted however il be looking for a mountainous region. The plan is to have caves in the cliffs around where the magical alters are hidden away, forbidden magic style. The entrance to the base will be through a small building with a cottage design that holds most of the witchery/AM2 machines ect. I also want to go heavy into the magical machines as well, AM2 gives quite a few teleportation and utility machines, as does TC.4.1. technomancy and forbidden magic mixed with blood magic round it all off quite nicely. So alot of work will go into the magical mods with them doing whatever they can to replace the tech stuff.

However this is all dependant on finding somewhere to Do this, I shall update this thread with a location later on with pics!

Additionally i have to look into if there is a way of matching Mekanisms ore processing with magic, As right now, aside from power generation, thats the only major tech i "need"

 

[madnewmy]

You can try to copy the castle with world edit somewhere else?

 

[Tsori]

Im not an admin on the server and therefore cant use world edit. Overall its not too much of an issue for me, the new techno magic route i want to take wouldnt suit the building anyway.

I have found a spot to build something a little smaller but hopefully just as visualy impressive and ive begun the boring not-worth-pictures work such as flattening out the land and laying layout markers. Once i get something worth picturing il throw some up

 

[Tsori]

Right just an update and a "this isnt dead!" post.

I have since removed all my machines ect from the building above and have them setup at a small camp. I know what im building next and now just need to find a good location.

PIcs will hopefully be up today of the site and beginning of the build

 

[the_j485]

Sounds good. Sucks about the reset, but hey, you've evidently recovered well!

 

[Tsori]

Long Post INCOMMING


So whats happened, why no updates..

Basically our server fried. Someone placed a tesseract against a mekanism item pipe, server lagged out, restarted constantly and shot a load of constant tick errors.

Myself and an admin went in after changing the tesseract ID in the config, to delete the offending machine, which worked, however for some stupid reason minecraft decided that by changing the ID it would turn all air blocks into lava.

Suffice to say we lost the world and tesseracts are now banned.

So a new map and i set out and found the perfect fir forest location, started up alot like the first time and built a base i was quite proud of (il add pictures here later once i get back to my main computer), however just as i began adding in the wireing for my AE system, as well as a few other mod basics i started getting hit once again with some incredibly strange fps issues. Certain directions would cause lag, chunk updates kept creeping through the roof. A few other players came and found that they couldnt handle the leaves on the fir trees very well, some it was the carpenters blocks on the roof. Basically after using opis and checking, as well as systematically removing stuff we couldnt pin down any one reason, as for why it had taken that long to effect me, well that was a complete mystery too.

So i resolved myself to once again moving. Luckily this time i had the equipment and gear to make the move alot smoother, it also coincided with yogscast completes update which finally added resonant induction and ICBM to the pack. This means tesla coils, fusion reactors, missiles and sentry guns, all the good stuff! Now alot of people would take that and make a sci fi base of the future, but no, i dont want a dull modern base. So steampunk here i come!


Moving east of the spawn there is a largeish pasture biome, the one with all the wheat growing in it. Relatively untouched it seems to be perfect. Its layout is pretty flat with a rising hill dead center of the biome, ontop of which il build my base.

Currently ive begun building, my plan and theme is steampunk workshop/mad scientists lair. I always do generally very "clean" builds, each room for each mod, everything lain out in minimal lines and clean edges. This time, nah, i want a proper steampunks workshop, a place where the excitement of invention and science is far to important to bother with neatness and order. I also still plan to involve technomancy and all the magic mods as due to building ive yet to really get anywhere into them. So the plan is to have a wood, stone and brick steampunk "house", this house is for the magic areas, infusion once again dominating the upper level to avoid instability factors, witchery in a little offshoot with access to a "dip" in the land where the alter , plants and trees can grow. Blood magic once again in the basement, due to the size requirement of the alter. AM2, which has been updated with a whole new power system getting rid of those altars, will fit in and around the rest of the base. Then, tacked onto the side of this house is the workshop itself. a long brick building with a glass domed roof, reminding me a little now that its built of a train terminal, three floors high and going down far into the ground. This workshop wont have fully lain floors, instead each level will have stairs down to the next, not fully using the whole of the building space. What this means is you can stand on the lowest level and look up to the glass roof far above. the use of factory blocks and metals abound, mostly rusty.

Then comes the mods, machines and their wiring will be fully exposed, winding themselves around the walkways in seemingly chaotic fashion. Some machines/conduits i will be making "messy" on purpose, so that as you walk down the walkways there are pipes and cables everywhere. Atop that il be using the tesla coils from resonant induction to shoot power and items across the workshop, i know these have rather poor transfer rates however they are mostly for appearance, they will be backed up with enderIO conduits. Additionally i have already installed a large windmil on the side of the building, i plan tonight (if i can get the water wheel working) to couple both the windmil and water wheels up to generators and have them as a backup. They wont match the upper tier atomic power producers in anyway, but they look amazing and can serve as a useful backup.


In addition to the workshop i intend on fully missile-proofing the base, as well as adding some firepower myself. I will be building an emergency control bunker nearby, with defences and counter missiles ready to use. Additionally the use of gun turrets and anti-air turrets will be used around the biome, electric fences at the borders , landmines and turrets recessed in the ground. the whole wheat biome will be under my control and not accessable to those outside of it. Anti-air turrets will be mounted on balloon platforms and connected down to the bunker. I intend on filling a large part of the open fields around my base with the results of my experiments within my lab, so these guns will also keep these things in check. I am also considering a large MFFS defence system should the worse come to the worse and the radar/Anti-air fail to deal with the missiles. Tests will be conducted later to see how much energy is required to withstand an antimatter missile.


So thats about us caught up.

Pictures will be added later of the old base, as well as some of the point its at currently.

 

[Lumaceon]

I applaud you for keeping at the stylish architecture, especially through all the world derps. I love it when modded minecraft is played with style in mind, it isn't done as much as vanilla and that's a little sad, though understandable.
Good luck, I'm interested in seeing the steampunk build!

 

[Tsori]

Picture time!

First off, the base i made in the fir forest

 

[Tsori]

And then, my final current base!

Made into Two parts, the older wooden house for magic and the brick workshop placed onto the side.

The inside is made so i can have a central pylon of essentia creation running up the center. The roof of the workshop has to light around 6 levels, so its mostly glass.

Trying to harness power from the windmill has been a challenge in itself. Honestly @Calclavia should be ashamed of the buggy mess resonant induction is right now. I also built cells for my experiments beneath the workshop.

Laid out an area for witchery, the wooden logs show where the glyphs go for the circles around the alter. Installed my ME drives from my old base, powering these has been a challenge.

SO! to solve my power problems i got together my good ole 7x7x7 big reactor to tide me over till i get a better power source. Finally, last night before i left, i got my witchery hut together which you can just see in the other screenshots built into the dirt down the bottom. Ive never done witchery before so its proving to be a very fun distraction.


Just to address something: In some of the pics above i AM in creative. I also have a creative builders wand, These are not used in the building of anything for this, but rather i have been working on and off on our servers transport system. Ive had some of these screenshots on my HDD for a while now, just waiting to post. Thought id add that on before getting criticism for it.

 

[Tsori]

So, im writing this post while sat waiting for my client to load, for possibly the twentieth time of trying. It would appear that the recent update to yogscast complete is a complete messup. Not only is Resonant induction completely borked and why they let it anywhere near a modpack is something i cant quite understand, a few recent updates to technomancy , mekanism and ars magica 2 have brought world destroying bugs. Right now i cant login, due to technomancys orderly lamps corrupting the world for aprox 60 chunks in every direction. Someone on the server placed 5 down around his alter and boom, most of us on the map now cant login. While i sit here and wait for the admin to return to attempt to solve this in world edit, hoping dearly that we dont have to do a map reset, it makes me think that pack creators, especially those who run higher profile packs should do a bit better testing job than is obviously being done. Take resonant induction for example, the firebox breaks the world. The firebox. This is supposed to be the block you make second in the mods entire progression. How did anyone miss such a bug in testing, unless they skipped such things to go play with the pretty toys higher up the progression tree, with little or no concern to any sort of testing scheme. Now consider AM2's update, @Mithion did such an overhaul of the mod (although the textures have taken a back step from pretty cool to being hit with the pixcelation hammer) yet consideration of its inclusion in a pack was not paid, so now everyone in resonant rise or yogscast complete cannot use anything that would imbue a vanilla effect, want strength potions? Enjoy your character data corruption. Same goes for water breathing.. or saturation...any vanilla base game effect, including weapon enchantments. Find an enchanted pick in a dungeon? Great. Before you have a chance to close the chest interface, pick it up.. run away...character data corrupt. Opening any chest you dont already know the contents of is a game of russian roulette right now, where losing everything is a real risk. Bugs like these wouldnt fly in any other testing environment yet it seems to be fine to let it happen in minecraft.

At the end of it all you then have to consider where to lay the blame, Do you blame the mod developers? Who in most cases were not aware of such issues when they pushed the build to the pack maintainers. Do you blame the pack devs, who really should test these things before distributing?, do you blame the server admin, who placed the update onto the server without fully testing? Bugs happen right but seriously, there is a line. Whats better is there is no way of rolling back versions thanks to the removal of previous versions courtesy of pack maintainers. Fingers crossed our backups work eh?

/rant


That said, im hoping i dont lose this world. If that happens il need to sit and rack my head for new designs, ideas welcome.

 

[Tompa974]

I'm sorry this happened to you, again it seems... I hope you recover, because I want to see those builds of yours...

Why don't you play on a solo world instead of relying on a server map?

 

[Tsori]

Pics of the builds are above that last post. Hopefully should be able to recover the world just awaiting the admin to come back online so we can start fixing this.

I dont play on solo firstly due to the performance drop that modded minecraft works around. Most mod developers dont consider individual client systems, assuming their playerbase is only on a server and therefore chuck as much resources at their mod as they want knowing the server will stop short of maxing out and crashing, the client however wont, it will keep going until it crashes.

Secondly half the mods are designed around other player interaction. I dont play to build, i just like having a nice base to play the mods in. If there was no mods, i wouldnt build anything.

 

[Lumaceon]

At the end of it all you then have to consider where to lay the blame, Do you blame the mod developers? Who in most cases were not aware of such issues when they pushed the build to the pack maintainers. Do you blame the pack devs, who really should test these things before distributing?, do you blame the server admin, who placed the update onto the server without fully testing? Bugs happen right but seriously, there is a line. Whats better is there is no way of rolling back versions thanks to the removal of previous versions courtesy of pack maintainers. Fingers crossed our backups work eh?

As someone who has been all 3 at one point or another, I can say that sometimes you really can't pinpoint blame very easily. Sometimes things work in one environment and completely break in another.
I get your point though, someone along this chain should've either tested further or released a beta version.

Finger's crossed the world is fine, I loved the pics up there and you've lost enough fantastic builds already.

 

[Strikingwolf]

I like this

 

[the_j485]

If your problems lie with Resonant Rise, I strongly suggest that you tell Velotican, its current maintainer. I'm unsure as to whether he's on the FTB Forums nowadays, but you can always post the bug here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/109856948017213754039

That's the Resonant Rise Google Plus.