Was ethanol nerfed?

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MigukNamja

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That's the weird thing, Poppycocks. Charcoal doesn't seem nerfed at all.

IMHO, ethanol should (and used to, at least in 1.5.2 Unleashed) have a slightly higher gross yield than charcoal in terms of Forestry multifarm per boiler when using vanilla Apple Oaks. It requires more infrastructure and more overhead power. The fermenter especially isn't frugal on power and by the time you add in a squeezer and a few stills, you're using a good percentage of a 36HP's total power to make ethanol.

IMHO, this seems like an un-tested change between Forestry and Railcraft. Not the end of the world, mind you. Both mods are re-adjusting to the 1.6.4 world and re-adjusting to each other. This kind of thing is to be expected.

But, if this is indeed an intentional nerf bat, than it's sad. Forestry is one of my favorite mods and if it's going the way of the SC2 Galgadorian stuff, that's not a good thing.
 

zorn

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It seems the mod devs and community are split, some want things more manual and nerfed, others like things more automatic and buffed.

BC, forestry, railcraft, SC2, IC2 all seem to be going the nerf route, MFR, TE, Dartcraft, are doing the buff route.

Do i dare say the older mods are moving more towards gregtech? 0_o

In 1.4.7 i think i have 37 full size HP boilers running off of one 20 x 10 sugar cane farm. With xycraft soil though. Maybe this is what they wanted to stop? It only takes about 25 mj/t to harvest it all, tree farms require more power, from what ive seen, so maybe that is why charcoal was not reduced as well?

Im pretty sure that (unless im mistaken) 5 bio reactors, for an obscenely low cost to build and zero cost to run, will make enough biofuel to run all those boilers. Although not with sugar cane, admittedly.
 

MigukNamja

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I do sympathize with those that are fighting power creep and I am among the first who will call out egregious stuff like DC Forge Engines and some EE3 recipes like 4 iron to 1 Ender Pearl.

For the most part, however, I don't believe that nerfing (i.e. punishing) existing behavior from one release to the best approach. Rather, providing more end-game (i.e. late-stage, more complex/difficult) content is the better, if not more difficult way to do it.

A good example from Railcraft semi-recently are steel tanks. They are more difficult to make than iron tanks, but are worth it. Another good example in the Forestry universe is ExtraBees. The advanced genetic machines take 100's of MJs to use effectively and provide a good use for all that MJ power plus a very good incentive to get Imperial and Industrious bees "the old-fashioned way". The MPS and GraviSuite armor sets are also another great example.

MFFS - when used on a large scale - is also another great example. I didn't feel comfortable using a turtle program to build a glass dome, but sinking a huge amount of energy and thousands or tens of thousands of glass into an MFFS system to slowly build a glass dome is a very good use of excess energy and materials.

But, nerfing existing early and mid-game content that has had few - to my knowledge - complaints about balance is probably not the best idea.
 

zorn

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I'd venture to say that the older mods are becoming very insulated and niche. The changes are catering to a play style that I absolutely do not possess.

Id argue with the changes to forge craft 3, possibly those older mods aren't niche at all. No computercraft, no TE, no ender storage. The web page I saw even called it "hard". Kinda funny that the idea of the game being hard is laughed at here but apparently the people on forge craft think it can be...
 

MigukNamja

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I will agree that slowing things down is not necessarily a bad thing, but I wouldn't call it 'hard', per se.

tedious != hard
tedious == tedious

It doesn't take skill to grind like it's 1999.
 
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Omicron

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So it's both not fun AND useless now?

Man, how far can a man go to make other people breed trees.

Considering it takes you all of one single breeding cycle to get a tree with over three times the biomass output of apple oaks and a second to double that yet again, that the best possible traits result in around 100 buckets of ethanol (not biomas, ethanol) for one single tree, and that tree breeding is so incredibly easy that the trees even breed themselves for you if you merely leave them alone for a while, your complaint comes across as a little thin. Oh, and the change wasn't even done by Sengir, either.

I've run Forestry with highly nerfed configs in just about every world I run, because you can pull of some really crazy things with it that completely pulls the rug out from under most other fuel loos. Maybe with these changes I can leave the default settings active at last.

IMHO, ethanol should (and used to, at least in 1.5.2 Unleashed) have a slightly higher gross yield than charcoal in terms of Forestry multifarm per boiler when using vanilla Apple Oaks.

Sorry to latch onto and repurpose your statement here MigukNamja. But it's just too conveniently worded, because -

See, this right there is the typical prevailing attitude about Forestry that causes people to completely misunderstand the mod. The moment you are talking about ethanol treefarms with apple oaks, you're just plain doing it wrong. The biomass output of apple oaks is bad. They're absolutely unsuited for the task. Even vanilla spruce does significantly better, and that's without any tree breeding at all. Oh, and for charcoal there's also a better vanilla tree choice... two, in fact. The one thing apple oaks have going for them is the fact that they produce mulch. But people keep building apple oak treefarms for output anyway, because they act on autopilot and just repeat what they've been doing since Minecraft 1.2 or earlier without stopping to think.

Forestry has changed, more than most people realize. And it sucks for them because they do not understand how to play with it anymore. Where's the curiosity, the drive to experiment and find the best setups that engages people tp play tech mods in the first place? You'll find plenty of posts discussing how to optimize a setup in MFR, a mod that requires so little mental capacity to generate gigantic amounts of fuel and energy that a slot machine in Vegas could pass for "complex game mechanics" alongside it. But Forestry trees and multifarms? Nothing but moaning about how the mod sucks by people who haven't built a treefarm with anything other than vanilla apple oaks in their entire minecraft career.


Okay, rant off. I don't usually go off like that, but there's few things that are more of a personal pet peeve regarding Minecraft than people knocking mods based on simply having no clue about how to work with them. If that's what I get for being the helpful guy and providing explanations and information from changelogs that nobody seems to bother reading, then I might as well keep my mouth shut and let them continue guessing. Certainly saves me the trouble of writing stupid argument posts later on that I'll regret the next morning.
 

Hoff

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Id argue with the changes to forge craft 3, possibly those older mods aren't niche at all. No computercraft, no TE, no ender storage. The web page I saw even called it "hard". Kinda funny that the idea of the game being hard is laughed at here but apparently the people on forge craft think it can be...

Because the opinion and taste of the people on forge makes up the opinion and taste of every modded minecraft player.

I would even wager that those mod devs that make those "older" mods are increasing the difficulty because of the time they've spent with it. It is no longer new to them either; they understand and have felt the sense of achievement that the learning of their own mod gives. Because of this they're likely no longer in tune with people new to modded minecraft or of little understanding of mod inter-workings; rather they're in tune with players who have played with the mods and are looking for something "new". I am wholly glad they wish to do so but their method for doing so is fairly poor and will eventually reflect such, if not initially.
 

MigukNamja

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You're fine to rant, Omicron. I've done tree breeding in the past and it's quite rewarding. However, it's also damn frustrating and has a steep learning curve. To get up to Mahoe *with* good traits, you have to first breed up to Mahoe. Not terribly difficult, no, but it takes some time.

Then, once you have a good tree species, you have to cross-breed traits, and this is the part that has always frustrated me. Decoding the red vs. blue (dominant vs. recessive) with active vs. passive traits is a hair-pulling exercise. With bees, I get it. But, with trees....I don't know why I don't get it. I've tried again, again, and again, and have always failed. It's a crap-shoot.

I can write just about any CC turtle program in Lua. I can write a mod from scratch and get it to compile and run with other deobf mods, but for some reason, I can't figure out which grafted leaves from an Oak and a Mahoe sitting side-by-side are better. Maybe I'm semi-competent in some areas and stupid in others ?

I'd *love* to get a tree with the highest sappiness, highest sapling yield rate, lots of fruit, fastest maturing, yadda, yada, but it's a mystery to me. Do you have a video, write-up, or other resource which explains (covers) breeding trees for traits ?
 

Drawde

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It seems the mod devs and community are split, some want things more manual and nerfed, others like things more automatic and buffed.
The IMPRESSION (which could likely be wrong) is the Sengir doesn't like complete automation. Every aspect of the base mod has something that requires mainenance, like the multifarm's fertilizer. And every time people start automating things, even if it requires several different mods to do so, it gets removed or nerfed.

Like the old farms. I used to use the old peat farm and harvester for early-game energy. They required bog earth every so often, but were easy to afford and set up. But I'd seen multiple videos (which is what led me to FTB) that had completely automated them. And now all we have are the multifarms, which require so many resources, including the non-sustainable apatite (base Forestry has no way to make it), that I'm better off simply planting trees and harvesting them by hand in the early game.

Note, as I said, that this is my impression. I know that some "nerfs" were to get people to use other aspects of the mod. Why breed trees at all if vanilla oak trees provide you with all the ethanol you'll ever need? And the removal of the old farms may have nothing to do with their automation.
 
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RedBoss

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Id argue with the changes to forge craft 3, possibly those older mods aren't niche at all. No computercraft, no TE, no ender storage. The web page I saw even called it "hard". Kinda funny that the idea of the game being hard is laughed at here but apparently the people on forge craft think it can be...

I have no clue what you statement had to do with mine other than a classic straw man followed by ad hominem.

Because the opinion and taste of the people on forge makes up the opinion and taste of every modded minecraft player.

I would even wager that those mod devs that make those "older" mods are increasing the difficulty because of the time they've spent with it. It is no longer new to them either; they understand and have felt the sense of achievement that the learning of their own mod gives. Because of this they're likely no longer in tune with people new to modded minecraft or of little understanding of mod inter-workings; rather they're in tune with players who have played with the mods and are looking for something "new". I am wholly glad they wish to do so but their method for doing so is fairly poor and will eventually reflect such, if not initially.
This is what I agree with 100%.
 

zorn

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I have no clue what you statement had to do with mine other than a classic straw man followed by ad hominem.


This is what I agree with 100%.

Where is the straw man? What ad hominem? I didn't attack you at all.
 

zorn

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Because the opinion and taste of the people on forge makes up the opinion and taste of every modded minecraft player.

I would even wager that those mod devs that make those "older" mods are increasing the difficulty because of the time they've spent with it. It is no longer new to them either; they understand and have felt the sense of achievement that the learning of their own mod gives. Because of this they're likely no longer in tune with people new to modded minecraft or of little understanding of mod inter-workings; rather they're in tune with players who have played with the mods and are looking for something "new". I am wholly glad they wish to do so but their method for doing so is fairly poor and will eventually reflect such, if not initially.

Now THERE is a straw man. I never said their opinion reflected all players. My argument is that harder play is not a niche - a statement red boss can't back up at all either by the way. If forge craft is not a change in reaction to what they hear in the community it's something that will influence the community in some way. I know on reddit people who bash competing, gregtech, harder mods get voted DOWN. It's the opposite from this forum from what I've seen. Here someone like enigmius gets lots of Likes but there he is usually voted way down.

My point is to say harder mods being a niche us a statement redboss can't back up.
 

Hoff

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Now THERE is a straw man. I never said their opinion reflected all players. My argument is that harder play is not a niche - a statement red boss can't back up at all either by the way. If forge craft is not a change in reaction to what they hear in the community it's something that will influence the community in some way. I know on reddit people who bash competing, gregtech, harder mods get voted DOWN. It's the opposite from this forum from what I've seen. Here someone like enigmius gets lots of Likes but there he is usually voted way down.

My point is to say harder mods being a niche us a statement redboss can't back up.

Strawman; right. You imply that the opinion of those forgecraft players somehow miniscules the opinions of those here on this forum. You also imply that the opinion of those on forgecraft(and now reddit) are somehow not the minority of players(Not to say that they are or are not). Forgecraft is not a reaction to the community it's the ideas of mod devs coming together as well as a testing ground for their mods.

Fact of the matter is both sides of this argument are in fact niches within modded minecraft. The general populous of modded minecraft is likely completely unaware of most of this and does not often visit this forum or reddit. My point is you saying it's not cannot be backed up either; but remember, only the few are vocal.

And for the record don't drop names; you seem to be a grown man and plenty capable to not be spiteful enough to do that.
 
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RedBoss

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My point is to say harder mods being a niche us a statement redboss can't back up.
Like Hoff said it's all a niche. Like I said, these "older mods" are backing into a play style niche that I don't care to play.
 

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Yusunoha

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it was nice to see alot of mods work really close with eachother for a while, but since 1.6 hit it seems the mods are moving away from eachother again...
 

Omicron

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You're fine to rant, Omicron. I've done tree breeding in the past and it's quite rewarding. However, it's also damn frustrating and has a steep learning curve. To get up to Mahoe *with* good traits, you have to first breed up to Mahoe. Not terribly difficult, no, but it takes some time.

Then, once you have a good tree species, you have to cross-breed traits, and this is the part that has always frustrated me. Decoding the red vs. blue (dominant vs. recessive) with active vs. passive traits is a hair-pulling exercise. With bees, I get it. But, with trees....I don't know why I don't get it. I've tried again, again, and again, and have always failed. It's a crap-shoot.

I can write just about any CC turtle program in Lua. I can write a mod from scratch and get it to compile and run with other deobf mods, but for some reason, I can't figure out which grafted leaves from an Oak and a Mahoe sitting side-by-side are better. Maybe I'm semi-competent in some areas and stupid in others ?

I'd *love* to get a tree with the highest sappiness, highest sapling yield rate, lots of fruit, fastest maturing, yadda, yada, but it's a mystery to me. Do you have a video, write-up, or other resource which explains (covers) breeding trees for traits ?

It's kind of odd that you would say this, considering tree breeding is a lot more straightforward than bees ever were (discounting the "Who cares about breeding I just overwrite everything with my serums" approach of Binnie's Mods). You're guaranteed a purebred with every single species mutation, you can replicate each purebred (and even your constructed hybrids) infinitely often, and there's no trait pollution through successive generations as you hope for a mutation because there are no generations. Imagine if, with bees, you could breed one princess with one hundred drones in one single generation, and just cherry-pick the best result - and you also get the princess and the drones back completely unmodified. That's how easy tree breeding is.

As far as selecting for traits, you basically breed up to the tree that has the trait you want - in a nice, comfortable lineage of purebred after purebred - and then you cross the two trees you want combined, harvest all the saplings,cherry-pick the one sapling that does exactly what you want, and multiply it (for safety) by growing the tree and grafting the leaves. Then you take one of your hybrid saplings to another tree with a desired trait, and repeat the process. Of course, there's the thing with dominant and recessive, but that works exactly the same as it does with bees. If you want a recessive trait to stick around, you must avoid breeding a dominant trait into the hybrid.

You also don't need to go all the way to the best traits right away. There are trees early on that allow for massive upgrades over the vanilla offerings; you just need to know what you want. Here's what I'm using in my current world for ethanol:

1.) Cross apple oak and birch in a swamp or jungle biome (either works) until you receive a "white willow" sapling. You may receive other species, but they're not important.
2.) Grow your new willow. Harvest yourself a couple saplings so you'll always have some to spare.
3.) Cross apple oak and white willow. There's no species mutation going to happen here, just hybridization. In fact, since the apple oak species trait is recessive and the willow isn't, all resulting saplings will be willows. This is a good thing, because it's the unique canopy shape of the willow that gives it its great output.
4.) Look for a sapling that combines the best traits of both - sapling drop chance of the apple oak, size of the willow, sappiness of the willow. You only need to watch for these three traits, the rest should be identical (but keep an eye out anyway, my memory may be faulty). Also, the hybrid should be apple-bearing in addition to having the right traits. It's simply a game of chance, just keep grafting pollinated leaves until you find the perfect sapling.
5.) Grow your new apple willow. Chop down the tree trunk. Stare in amazement at what happens.

Congratulations! You now have a tree that grows as fast as vanilla apple oaks, generates slightly more wood per tree, drops 10-20 saplings per tree that are all worth three times as much as that of an apple oak, and also drops enough apples to process every single sapling with its own fruit juice (give or take random variance, it's a close call) for that beautiful 50% extra bonus. And of course, you'll have mulch for the fermenters coming out of your ears. The biomass output should be around 6 times that of apple oaks. In addition, it has a very unique, almost spooky look and gives funky green wood... perfect for halloween ;)

Not bad for a quick first foray into tree breeding, no?

Just be mindful of your multifarm - my minimum size one needed two farm hatches in order to be able to output stuff fast enough without overflowing. Larger ones may need three. And make sure it's accessible from below, because the top is going to be one giant cloud of leaves :p
 

Hoff

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In 1.4.7 i think i have 37 full size HP boilers running off of one 20 x 10 sugar cane farm. With xycraft soil though. Maybe this is what they wanted to stop? It only takes about 25 mj/t to harvest it all, tree farms require more power, from what ive seen, so maybe that is why charcoal was not reduced as well?

Im pretty sure that (unless im mistaken) 5 bio reactors, for an obscenely low cost to build and zero cost to run, will make enough biofuel to run all those boilers. Although not with sugar cane, admittedly.


I also forgot to point out you were wrong here. One bioreactor only feeds 2 36HP's at max heat. So you'd need 19 reactors for that many.

Oh wait come to think of it in 1.4.7 they were 10 times faster so it'd be 20 boilers each so you'd only need 2 actually.