Update on the Future of FTB Modpacks in 1.7

[ThatOneSlowking]

I wholeheartedly expected that comment to be buried, so firstoff let me thank the devs. A major theme in this thread seems to be "If you like/dislike something, add/remove it yourself". However, the FTB community is largely about server play. Some servers use custom packs, but its a pain to set up, and because official packs are so mainstream, its also extremely difficult to find others to play with, not to mention fixing bugs that are unique to that one combination of mods. Its not as simple as just adding or removing a few mods. Gregtech is probably the most polarizing mod in existence, but a good chunk of Beast Feeders can't play without it. I know how hard the Feed the Beast team is working, but, with many others behind me, I need to ask for Gregtech's inclusion in 1.7. Otherwise, players are forced to choose between mods and other players, which is a hard decision to make.

Edit: the quote derped. just roll with it

It will not happen. It makes tech support seem like hell and gregtech does NOT play nice with quite a few mods.

 

[Jadedcat]

The first post has been edited to add a spoiler with questions/answers from within the thread.

 

[condor700]

Is there any possibility of a standalone Gregtech pack, possibly with a few smaller mods, but focused on GT?

 

[Jadedcat]

Any information on Gregtech? It has (limited) MJ support, and it's a quintessential part of FTB for many.

It was in 1 pack in 1.4 that was a very good pack. It was in a 1.5 pack that was the least popular pack from any FTB version. It has never been a major part of FTB packs except in the minds of the GT fans. And no we have already stated we will leave the tech support nightmare of GT packs to third party packs.

 

[Eyamaz]

For the record, the inclusion/exclusion if GT rests soley under my decision at this time for 1.7 (and the same for 1.6.)
In 1.6 I said no due mostly to time.
I have not made a decision for 1.7 and will not for some time.

That ends the discussion on GT, any more will be deleted.

 

[BemaJinn]

Lots of pages now, no time to read them all so apologies if this has been said:

Having just got into Mekanism recently, i'm finding that i'm not using IC2 or BC AT ALL at the moment, Mekanism does what they did only better - I can see this being a core mod for a lot of people, and a good replacement for a lot of the ore automation of the previous mods.

Plus it appears to work very friendly with every other power out there!

 

[condor700]

I have high hopes that the new packs will add some refreshing content. I'm used to trying to automate things in the least obvious fashion, because i've already done it every other way. Usually, doing so requires a plethora of unrelated mods, but with newer mods, I can start fresh.

 

[AlCapella]

AlCapella said: ↑
Won't lie. I do this. Doom-like dungeons and Greymerk's dungeons go in all my private packs and [zisteau's maniacal laugh erupts for the ensuing 4 hours] dungeon raiding FTW!

You've tried out Better Dungeons, I assume. That's probably my favorite dungeon mod.

Naquada said: ↑
There's to much focus on energy systems in my opinion and not on the content and fun.

Someone said it, finally.

Yup, use that one as well. Neat mobs. The Atum dimension is a new favourite of mine as well. I just didn't want to do a catalogue of every dungeon mod I played with in that line.

And, man... I said it too! That content and fun should be king, not "balance issues" or "MC mega machines", with an Alice in Wonderland analogy no less

 

[kefkakrazy]

Shame about Railcraft. I get that it doesn't have native RF support and that a lot of its secondary functions, like Iron Tanks, have been superseded by other mods doing the same thing better...

but Railcraft expands minecart and track play to an extreme degree, so if it does go because of the RF decision, I'll be a little disappointed.

That said, the FTB group has done a bang-up job providing a quality pack up to this point, even if the Unleashed/Ultimate/Monster packs usually overtax my 32-bit comp's memory, so I don't see any reason to raise a fuss

but but muh high speed lines

 

[NJM1564]

With this announcement are we going to get a suggest mods for 1.7 any time soon.

 

[keybounce]

Gregtech is probably the most polarizing mod in existence

Reika's mods. BTW.

GregTech is one of the top; I'm not sure it is the top.

EDIT: Sorry Eyamaz, missed page 9 when I wrote this.

 

[Raga_RBM]

A good decision, I think. Buildcraft has failed to evolve.

BuildCraft do not fail to evolve. Instead, BuildCraft sticks to its roots, which is the right decision.

I mostly agree with the inclusion of single power system modpacks though. It may be pretty cool.

 

[NJM1564]

Is there any possibility of a standalone Gregtech pack, possibly with a few smaller mods, but focused on GT?

I don't want to comment on anything GT related do to a... suggestion by a mod. But GT is getting it's own stand alone power system. And that will, as per jaded's post about alternate power systems, substantially reduce it's likelihood of being in any official pack.

 

[UK_Lone_Wolf]

I am using EU to produce RF via Hydraulicraft 1.0.4-67, best thing about this mod is that you can convert it back to EU via the hydraulic generator whenever you have a machine in need of EU.

On a side note... Would the dev/s of the mod/s not compatible with RF (I read the Q&A) or the dev of Thermal Expansion (will be better as RF is his baby) will be willing to add a Power Conversion Matrix (PCM) (thats what i would call the block if i could make it) which you make via a recipe and place to convert RF into the required power output, so you could have something like the thermal expansion tabs with the option to set RF input then you just set the output.

eg: you all know that the color for input is blue and output is orange for the energy cells, right so you could do this with the Power Conversion Matrix (PCM)

Input = Blue (accepts all connections from other mods like EU and BC)
RF = Orange (balancing would be needed for conversions to be fair and make sense for EU / BC to RF conversion.)
EU = Green
BC = Yellow
ect, you can keep adding to it as you need to.

hope i made a bit of sense trying to explain the idea, I just wish I could do this myself as got some ideas I have myself but have no clue where to start to bringing these to the MC universe.

 

[NJM1564]

On a side note... Would the dev/s of the mod/s not compatible with RF (I read the Q&A) or the dev of Thermal Expansion (will be better as RF is his baby) will be willing to add a Power Conversion Matrix (PCM) (thats what i would call the block if i could make it) which you make via a recipe and place to convert RF into the required power output, so you could have something like the thermal expansion tabs with the option to set RF input then you just set the output.

One peace of TE energy pipe will convert the power into MJ. Don't ask for anything more than that. Buildcraft wasen't willing to play nice with TE or other mod devs that's why less and less mods are being built around with that system. And I suspect that IC2 is even worse. The only mods that use IC2's power net are IC2 addons and I think that's just the way they like it.
You can't expect a dev to change there mod to except another mod's systems unless they are willing to at least work with them.
Though on that note I would really love to see Buildcraft convert to RF. Wouldn't you.

 

[eashonk]

BuildCraft do not fail to evolve. Instead, BuildCraft sticks to its roots, which is the right decision.

I mostly agree with the inclusion of single power system modpacks though. It may be pretty cool.

If by evolving you mean leaving bugged blocks in the mod for more than one version (builder 1.5.2-1.6.4) and not even bothering to remove the recipe from NEI even though it has been disabled, then yep, it evolved right along.

But, yes, I believe there should be a standardized power system for modpacks. If a mod wants to be a standalone mod that requires power, they should have an alternative energy method and energy producing blocks you can turn on and off in the config if you are using a modpack that already has power.

 

[Jadedcat]

With this announcement are we going to get a suggest mods for 1.7 any time soon.

No. I and Eyamaz test and play every mod that shows up on the MCF or CurseForge. We read the forums. We don't need a list of mod suggestions.

 

[SaintLucifer]

Thanks god FTB can't screw up with Direwolf packs...going to guess many server will end sticking with it on 1.7, thanks to this move.

 

[Sscchhmueptfter]

First of all, I completely agree with the decisions of a) reducing the number of power systems per pack and b) chosing RF as the default system. However, I there is an important aspect to consider about Railcraft and Forestry.

Forestry and Railcraft are both plugin/module based. And many of those plugins/modules do not depend on any power system. So I don't think these two mods should be completely excluded, just because a small part of their features rely on MJ or EU, they even offer the possibility to turn those features off via the config.

For Railcraft, see the list of modules here. If you look through them, you'll realize how much of RC is completely independent from any external power system. The IC2 module would need to be disabled, and the steam module. This would result in loss of the steam boiler, and RC machines would operate without power (rock crusher and rolling machine). Which might be a problem, I admit. But even if you'd see the need to disable the factory modul (which rolling machine and rock crusher are part of), there are still tons of content left.

Forestry is a more difficult case, while it uses different plugins as well, it relies more heavily on Buildcraft.
The only independent parts are Apiculture (bees, does not include the apiarist's pipe), arboriculture (trees), lepidopterology (butterflies), mail (mailbox, stamps etc) and storage (backpacks). This might still be worth inclusion - if beebreeding and treebreeding were a standalone mod and Forestry didn't exist, that mod would have probably found its way into FTB as well.


The expectations player have for Forestry and Railcraft might be the biggest problem here. But I believe both mods add enough independent content to justify inclusion in RF-based packs. Ok, at least Railcraft does - I'm not 100% sure about Forestry myself.

 

[Jadedcat]

Thanks god FTB can't screw up with Direwolf packs...going to guess many server will end sticking with it on 1.7, thanks to this move.

Ignoring the hostility that's kind of the point. Monster and DW20 are nearly identical. There is no reason to have 2 packs in the spotlight that use the same mods.[DOUBLEPOST=1398597441][/DOUBLEPOST]

First of all, I completely agree with the decisions of a) reducing the number of power systems per pack and b) chosing RF as the default system. However, I there is an important aspect to consider about Railcraft and Forestry.

Forestry and Railcraft are both plugin/module based. And many of those plugins/modules do not depend on any power system. So I don't think these two mods should be completely excluded, just because a small part of their features rely on MJ or EU, they even offer the possibility to turn those features off via the config.

For Railcraft, see the list of modules here. If you look through them, you'll realize how much of RC is completely independent from any external power system. The IC2 module would need to be disabled, and the steam module. This would result in loss of the steam boiler, and RC machines would operate without power (rock crusher and rolling machine). Which might be a problem, I admit. But even if you'd see the need to disable the factory modul (which rolling machine and rock crusher are part of), there are still tons of content left.

Forestry is a more difficult case, while it uses different plugins as well, it relies more heavily on Buildcraft.
The only independent parts are Apiculture (bees, does not include the apiarist's pipe), arboriculture (trees), lepidopterology (butterflies), mail (mailbox, stamps etc) and storage (backpacks). This might still be worth inclusion - if beebreeding and treebreeding were a standalone mod and Forestry didn't exist, that mod would have probably found its way into FTB as well.


The expectations player have for Forestry and Railcraft might be the biggest problem here. But I believe both mods add enough independent content to justify inclusion in RF-based packs. Ok, at least Railcraft does - I'm not 100% sure about Forestry myself.

Please read the list of previously answered questions in the first post. The Forestry concern is listed there.