What are the pros and cons of having these mods?

[iconmaster]

Recently, I've updated my modpack to 1.5.2 (It's here if you're interested), and I've been focusing on removing mods that provide overlapping content, mainly to reduce lag (it's been pretty bad on my server). I'm trying to further consolidate content, and recently, four mods included in my pack have caught me eye for deletion. However, I'm hesitant to remove these mods, as they do provide some unique features, albeit with some overlap. These four mods are Steve's Carts, Soul Shards, TubeStuff, and Extra Utilities. They have both pros and cons for modpack inclusion. Here's some of my reasons:

Steve's Carts

Reasons for Inclusion: Modular carts have, by being modular, many uses. They can be used as large farms easily. They can be used to player-control carts. They also have several other features, while found in other mods, are not found in mobile carts, such as automated defense, liquid transport, and mining.
Reasons for Deletion: Steve's Carts farms can be easily replaced with MineFactory farms, especially with MFR upgrades. Railcraft also already has many of the features Steve's Carts has, especially with the new tracks, locomotives, and tank carts. The Tunnel Bore can replace Steve's Carts mining function. Some later recipes can be very expensive, especially considering the new update that introduces tool durability.

Soul Shards

Reasons for Inclusion: Soul Shards allows one to create compact and very efficient mob spawners. The system allows one to make spawners that run 24/7, work in light, and can be redstone-disabled.
Reasons for Deletion: Soul Shard's functionality has been mostly replaced with MFR's Grinders and Auto-Spawners. While MFR mob farms require much more setup and are slower, they are not limited by Vanilla mobs. Soul Shards also causes a major amount of lag in the 1.5.2 version.

TubeStuff

Reasons for Inclusion: TubeStuff adds many utilities to the game. It adds many storage blocks for various materials, important considering some mods don't do this with ingots they implement. It adds a much improved automatic crafting table (Not as good as a Fabricator, but XyCraft's not an option). It adds Incinerators for a lagless way to delete blocks. Lastly, it adds various blocks to interface with RedPower 2.
Reasons for Deletion: As more and more mods go ahead and actually add their own storage blocks, TubeStuff adding its own becomes more redundant. Incinerators are already added via Extra Utilities's Trash Can and Railcraft's Void Chest (Although neither of those other mods have liquid disposal methods, I believe). In addition, why am I having a mod whose features mainly are made for RedPower interaction if I don't have RedPower installed?

Extra Utilities

Reasons for Inclusion: Extra Utilities adds a variety of new useful things. Things like the Angel Block and the Unstable Tools are entirely unique among mods. The Painted Bricks allow for a completely custom paint job for your structures. The Golden Lasso allows you to move and rename mobs. The Noise Muffler is an invaluable tool for reducing noise. It also adds a robust item transfer system.
Reasons for Deletion: Extra Utilities, being a general mod, has some overlap. With Railcraft's new Block Update, the painted bricks, while still useful, seem less so. the Golden Lasso can be mostly replaced by MFR's systems. Lastly, the item transfer system, while great by itself, is obviously replaced by more supported methods, such as Buildcraft pipes.

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So, I ask of you, based on these merits, should these mods be kept or removed from my modpack? I've contemplated it for a while, and I'd really like some second opinions about the features of these mods. I realize it might be hard giving me advice without actually using my modpack, but I would appreciate any input you guys have.

 

[tindin]

how do soul shard spawns cause lag? by having them run all the time? if that is so then that's just poor building

 

[Goggles998]

Keep steves carts but remove everything else it just causes un needed lag

 

[iconmaster]

how do soul shard spawns cause lag? by having them run all the time? if that is so then that's just poor building

I've run some basic FPS tests, and the minute I put a shard in the cage, it causes my FPS to drop by up to 3-5 frames on average; I don't know yet if MFR farms do this too; but my (admittably not very scientific) evidance is pretty damning. It may or may not actually add up, though.

 

[ahwtx]

relatively speaking, i'm a newbie to modded minecraft. please keep this in mind when weighing the value of my comments.

sc2 - ditch it. mfr is abso-f'in'lutely awesome and given the nerf to sc2 tree farms, i don't see myself using sc2 much (if at all) in a 1.5.1/2 world.

soul shards - i'm kinda indifferent with respect to this mod. i've never really used soul shards much, but that's because i'm a huge mf4 fan-boi and i actually enjoy the added time investment in setting up mfr mob farms... but that's something you've already mentioned.

tubestuff - don't think it's necessary. as you've already said, more and more mods are including functionality that renders tubestuff redundant.

extra utilities - haven't used this mod whatsoever, so i can't really comment. some of the blocks you describe sound pretty cool, though.

 

[Peppe]

tubestuff works with all inventory systems -- it may have been designed to fill gaps in tube networks, but AE has similar gaps. The AE busses have modes to respond to pulses, which a lot of the tubestuff machines generate to make them work well with RP filters/transposers.
Now that railcraft has the void chest though you might not need the incinerator -- what you use might come down to which mod does it in the most efficient manner. Tubestuff's buffer and crafting table though can still play a valuable roll in an AE network. especially with xycraft fabricators not publicly available for 1.5.

The online player detector could be useful to servers.

 

[Lambert2191]

I think your reasons for inclusion are horribly limited but yeah whatever they're your reasons.

 

[iconmaster]

I think your reasons for inclusion are horribly limited but yeah whatever they're your reasons.

Limited? In what manner? Should I expand my descriptions?

 

[Lambert2191]

Limited? In what manner? Should I expand my descriptions?

I believe so yeah. Just going on ExtraUtilities for example, the mod hasn't got a huge amount of items but they pretty much are all different. A better description would be:

A mod that adds a bunch of random items and gives more lag friendly options to processes like item transport and disposal.

And if you're looking at getting rid of mods due to lag, you shouldn't even consider this one.

 

[iconmaster]

And if you're looking at getting rid of mods due to lag, you shouldn't even consider this one.

Yeah, you're definitely right about that one. Really, the only reason it's on the chopping block is because of some overlap (which isn't THAT bad, I guess). I'm probably going to keep that one.

The descriptions are mostly only focused on a few things, I could of gone into more detail; however, it's only a small summary of my personal reasons.

I think Soul Shards will probably go; perhaps Steve's Carts (probably not), and probably not the others.

 

[Lambert2191]

if you're worried about lag, chop XBL, Xycraft and RP2

 

[Azzanine]

how do soul shard spawns cause lag? by having them run all the time? if that is so then that's just poor building

Yes, but when one poor builder can ruin it for everyone else you can see why the mod is a liability.

 

[paperlord]

Just one thing, if you'd ask me, you shouldn't delete mods just because they have some overlap. Since you're on a server even less so, since there are different people who just like using different methods of achieving the same goal. One of the nice things about these modpacks, is coming up with the best, most efficient or most awesome solution. And sometimes the solution is hidden in one of the less used or slightly different items. (For example: direwolfs mining well quarry, an item almost never used turned into one of the most powerful mining tools...)

Deleting a mod because of lag, at the other hand, is completely valid reason. But there's only one mod where you mention lag...[DOUBLEPOST=1368514100][/DOUBLEPOST]

Yes, but when one poor builder can ruin it for everyone else you can see why the mod is a liability.

And this can be said about each mod, isn't it? Should you remove BC, because someone didn't know how to make an overflow mechanic for his quarry?

 

[PhilHibbs]

if you're worried about lag, chop XBL, Xycraft and RP2

He doesn't have Redpower or Xycraft, I assume XBL means EBXL which he does have.

 

[iconmaster]

He doesn't have Redpower or Xycraft, I assume XBL means EBXL which he does have.

Very true; I do have EBXL. There has been some lag in the old version, however, most of it is due to the redwood forests (me and my friends used to call them "lagwood forests") and similar biomes; in the new version, I removed these laggy biomes.

 

[Azzanine]

And this can be said about each mod, isn't it? Should you remove BC, because someone didn't know how to make an overflow mechanic for his quarry?

Well usually those are the mods that end up with restrictions. I actually frequented a Tekkit server that did actually remove BC due to quarries and overflow... We relied on RP2 for item transport and quarries where banned anyway.

I'm on that same server now with FTB and they allowed it becasue gates somewhat alleviated this concern. (Tekkit had no gates in it's version of BC2.)

Now that doesn't really answer your question but people do remove mods due to their potential to be misused purposefully or not. And their concern is legitimate, especially when you factor in making your server public and white-list free.
You can't realistically expect people to behave and be competent with using the mods, so essentially you should blame those that are the "reason we can't have nice things".

I mean 90% of FTB servers disable nukes for that very reason. People can't be trusted and the stakes are too high to leave things to chance.