What are your thoughts on renewable energy?

[Recon]

Is the concept inherently flawed, since it can be scaled up to the point where you never need to gather resources to burn for fuel after a certain point?

Clearly certain renewable energy solutions are overpowered - like the MFR planter/harvester gives you infinite charcoal very early in the game. The Forestry farms are more tedious to build and so less of an incentive to short circuit other energy solutions. Bees are another matter, as they take ages to really perfect.

I know there's been a fairly strong push in the modding community to have machines use some kind of power constantly even when not in use. If you have a server that is on 24/7, it makes sense then that renewable energy is a must. If you don't play for a week, all your fuel will be burned up unless you have a mechanism for automating its production.

So I'm curious what the sentiment is on this topic. Some people may be very much against infinitely renewable energy and others might feel differently.

 

[jaycron]

I think there are some people, myself included, who are more interested in working on projects like an automatic "something" maker than they are in going out and gathering resources constantly. I'd rather spend my time doing the projects so its nice to have a set and forget power system so that i can do it uninterrupted, because there is nothing worse than having to go and make a mountain of charcoal to fuel your generators because the ME system ran out of power (especially once it gets large). I can understand that for some that's all part of the challenge and fun of modded minecraft, but for me its simply a pain that i'd rather avoid by having my energy renewable.

 

[ScorpioOld]

Is the concept inherently flawed, since it can be scaled up to the point where you never need to gather resources to burn for fuel after a certain point?

This is absolutely correct! People who play Minecraft must play on "Hardcore" only and with GT, period.

 

[Zenthon_127]

This is absolutely correct! People who play Minecraft must play on "Hardcore" only and with GT, period.

You forgot to mention to switch to creative mode, 0/10.

I'm fine with renewable energy if it's interesting and requires either some infrastructure and automation and/or large amounts of resources. For example, MFR requires a grand total of an Ender Chest, a few power lines and a Tesseract for optimal use (assuming no fertilizer since you really don't need it). Forestry requires automation for fertilizer and item extraction, Thaumcraft needs significant research and infusion crafting and Steve's Carts......'nuff said. IC2 solars are just too flat-out boring IMO.

Also, in general if you make non-renewables renewable and they're a power source that mod becomes insanely OP (aka Mystcraft and EE pre-1.5)

 

[Protocurity]

There was actually a pretty big discussion on the issue in a previous thread titled "Isn't an MFR tree farm really just a solar panel?":

forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/isnt-an-mfr-tree-farm-really-just-a-solar-panel.37344/

The thing with free power is that there are many more things to talk about other than just being free:

#1: is it easy to use?
#2: is it free to move and transfer and manipulate as needed?
#3: is the scale of free power to power demand small, large, or insufficient when dealing with costly power?
#4: is power extremely useful and dominating to the point where you can do everything with enough power?

If something is free, portable, powerful, and extremely diverse, that is when things start to become boring or OP or broken or however you want to describe it. If you take away one of two of those aspects, then free power quits being overpowered.


For a good example of free power, take the steam engine from Rotarycraft. It is free in the sense that it produces 16,384 watts of power with the only cost being water (which can be piped in for free). However, it is not easy to use, it is not easy to transfer, and it is also extremely small when compared to higher output engines. The steam engine by itself supplies enough power to manage many different devices that do useful things, however it often needs to be converted from one form to another, requiring gearboxes and CVT systems which require lubricant (an additional cost to be more useful).

Likewise, transferring the power requires you to have a long system of rather inflexible shafts and gears to reorient the power. If you want to move the system, you'll have to move the pump system and water foundation as well. Though the industrial coil has made it so you could store power and pick up the coil, being incredibly portable, but also being extremely manual.

This free power is far from the peak when compared to the higher tier engines. The gas turbine, which is the most powerful engine, outputs 4096 times the power of the steam engine. As tempting as it would be to run 8092 grinders off of a gas turbine, you need that scale of power for later game devices, making it so maintaining free power using more and more steam engines isn't an effective option. This means that the power the steam engine puts out isn't extremely dominating, either.

 

[SlightlyVisible]

I agree. Granted, some just want things all automatic however I believe for a game to be fun there needs to be stuff to do. Building a system that automates things counts as something to do, however, if all a mod has to offer is an easy way to accomplish a task after just a bit of effort, then all that's done is a lose of things to do going forward. Its for this very reason I could never play with TE or IC2 alone. Great we have machines that make old vanilla tasks easier for us, now what?

 

[Tristam Izumi]

Renewable energy? Bah! Burn ALL the coal! Refine ALL the oil! Screw the environment!

Wait, are we talking in the real world or in Minecraft? I'm all confused now.

 

[PierceSG]

Sometimes, some people find fun and enjoyment out of automating everything they can. I know of some people who would go make ME patterns for every recipe that exist.

Why, I asked. Just because, they replied.

 

[Recon]

well yes, it depends on how pragmatic you are. Some people want to breed EVERY BEE SPECIES. Others want to breed just the ones which give you the products you want. So there's different styles depending on people's personality.

I know there's a danger in getting to the point where you think you're "finished", so its good to always have something else to do with your world after you've advanced as far as you can go.

For the most part though, I'm thinking of situations where the server is on 24/7 and all your machines are running idle when you're not online. Even if you found a massive oil field and stored ridiculous amounts of fuel in tanks, it will all be wasted if you leave a boiler running when you're offline. So I think it'd be really annoying to have to keep gathering resources to upkeep such a situation.

 

[PierceSG]

True, and that is why I welcome renewable energy sources for stuffs that keeps running. And if I have excess power from those, I just forward them to my oil/lava fabricator before I log out for the day to store them for the just-in-case backup plan.

Sent from my GT-N8020 using Tapatalk

 

[Cronos988]

What is the argument against infinite fuel exactly?
Is it that every process must include at least one manual step?
Is it that there is no reason to use finite fuel solutions?
Is it that a particular infinite-fuel solution is boring?

All resources in minecraft (and certainly in modded minecraft) are infinite. It's a sandbox geared for any amount of playtime. From a "balance" perspective, whether I use a quarry to mine coal or have a treefarm to produce charcoal is irrelevant.

 

[SlightlyVisible]

What is the argument against infinite fuel exactly?
Is it that every process must include at least one manual step?
Is it that there is no reason to use finite fuel solutions?
Is it that a particular infinite-fuel solution is boring?

All resources in minecraft (and certainly in modded minecraft) are infinite. It's a sandbox geared for any amount of playtime. From a "balance" perspective, whether I use a quarry to mine coal or have a treefarm to produce charcoal is irrelevant.

Its not irrelevant. Resources are unlimited but only if you work for them. That's what makes survival different from creative.

 

[Cronos988]

Its not irrelevant. Resources are unlimited but only if you work for them. That's what makes survival different from creative.

I agree, in part. The thing is, I don't think you have to "work" for resources. What you work for is advancing your project(s). Survival structures this work in a different way than creative. As long as this structure remains intact, there is, in my opinion, no inherent problem in making certain parts completely automated.

This is why I used the example with the quarry. It certainly makes a difference if I can just plop down a creative style infinite energy box and run all my machines from it. But whether I use a treefarm or a quarry to generate coal is pretty irrelevant. In both cases I used infrastructure to take a manual task of my hand, optimally in order to do something else.

The reason I say this is to illustrate that it is the design of the infinite fuel source - whether it fits in the structure of gameplay - that needs to be discussed. That it is infinite is not a problem in and of itself.

 

[SlightlyVisible]

I agree, in part. The thing is, I don't think you have to "work" for resources. What you work for is advancing your project(s). Survival structures this work in a different way than creative. As long as this structure remains intact, there is, in my opinion, no inherent problem in making certain parts completely automated.

This is why I used the example with the quarry. It certainly makes a difference if I can just plop down a creative style infinite energy box and run all my machines from it. But whether I use a treefarm or a quarry to generate coal is pretty irrelevant. In both cases I used infrastructure to take a manual task of my hand, optimally in order to do something else.

The reason I say this is to illustrate that it is the design of the infinite fuel source - whether it fits in the structure of gameplay - that needs to be discussed. That it is infinite is not a problem in and of itself.

Ok, now I see. Yes I agree, I think depending on circumstance well thought out automation to the point where things become infinite is fine. That is so long as the mod continues to provides a next step in the form of challenge, or progression. Ofcourse this will be very dependent om play style.

On a somewhat related note I think it's no surprise players such as direwolf20, who build near absolute automation and infinite energy systems, using power mods, must constantly restart their worlds inorder to revive any sense of challenge. Compare that to somewhat like CovertJaguar who uses only buildcraft pipes, and rails for automation. In comparison he is no where near an absolute automated network and his series has lasted almost half a year. It really does come down to the level of challenge an individual desires.

 

[zilvarwolf]

I'm glad renewable energy solutions exist in the game. It suits my playstyle to, at some point, be able to just let my machines run without worry about running out of magic go-go-juice. It's not about being in creative mode (I hate creative mode..I suck at creative mode). It's about moving on from one lame-ass grind to another. Having to move a pump or farm up more coal or replace all of my netherrack or whatever just adds to tedium after a while, and I want to move on to things that are more interesting, more fun, or just more dangerous.

 

[SynfulChaot]

On a somewhat related note I think it's no surprise players such as direwolf20, who build near absolute automation and infinite energy systems, using power mods, must constantly restart their worlds inorder to revive any sense of challenge. Compare that to somewhat like CovertJaguar who uses only buildcraft pipes, and rails for automation. In comparison he is no where near an absolute automated network and his series has lasted almost half a year. It really does come down to the level of challenge an individual desires.

Dire resets as often as he does as he's been playing on the Forgecraft 2 server, which resets every couple months, not due to needing to 'revive any sense of challenge'.

 

[SonOfABirch]

my power comes from a renewable resource (sugarcane) and takes like.. 3 steps (and a long assed time) to refine it into the coal coke that I use to power everything.. and it's a hell of a lot more interesting than your non renewable coal in a generator.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

I'm all for it- as long as there's significant gameplay and a design challenge involved in building such a system.

Plopping down a magic superblock of any kind is pretty boring; regardless of the materials needed to build it.
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Like if I borrow @SonOfABirch's sugarcane example- such a system [for me] would probably involve a series of pistons and water channels over some magic "farming machine"

 

[SynfulChaot]

If I can't fully automate a power source, then I'll not use said power source (for long). Maintaining running power isn't my end-goal. Building and engineering new things is. Full automated processing systems are my thing. Power is just a means to that end. The less late-game time I need to spend maintaining my power grid, the happier I am.

YMMV, of course.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Any energy in minecraft is renewable given enough automation... It's an infinite world so coal is infinite, only thing that comes close to 'non-renewable' is oil but that can be done with bees.