What would YOU change about BuildCraft?

  • The FTB Forum is now read-only, and is here as an archive. To participate in our community discussions, please join our Discord! https://ftb.team/discord

Azzanine

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
2,706
-11
0
Hmmk, so you just want the mods power to be seperated with limited convertibility, Like the old days.
Fair enough then.
Unfortunately Asie or his predecessor (I forget which) jumped on the RF bandwagon when FTB was all "RF only" under the pretense of MJ being too difficult to maintain and aparently being the same as RF.

I also think BC still has pipe overload just no explosions by default. As ugly as they are BC energy pipes have the best non ui based method of gaugeing power.

So in essence you just want MJ back.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
 

Zandorum

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
315
-3
1
I largely agree with you on Big Reactors, but I've just stopped bothering with the reactors themselves. I use Turbines exclusively instead.

As for converting: Just chop a zero off of power outputs and inputs. Instant RF>MJ conversion. (Seriously, back-end mumbo-jumbo not withstanding, all they did was add a zero to MJ.)
I know this and take this into account, I've nerfed the Dynamos back to their original generation. So they dont overpower buildcraft's setup, however I have had to come up with new numbers for the new Dynamos. I'd rather not get too off topic though. So I won't be responding to anything not atleast semi-related to Buildcraft from this point on.

Hmmk, so you just want the mods power to be seperated with limited convertibility, Like the old days.
Fair enough then.
Unfortunately Asie or his predecessor (I forget which) jumped on the RF bandwagon when FTB was all "RF only" under the pretense of MJ being too difficult to maintain and aparently being the same as RF.

I also think BC still has pipe overload just no explosions by default. As ugly as they are BC energy pipes have the best non ui based method of gaugeing power.

So in essence you just want MJ back.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
To a certain extent yes, but for a few reasons.
1) This would fix RF Overpowering Buildcraft machines.
2) This would allow a more controlled balance by asie over the mod.
3) Buildcraft would be allowed to be more eccentric with what it does with power.
4) This being the least credible, I miss MJ with all of its quirks including alternating power.
 

WildWinni

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
14
0
0
So, I'll be honest. I only just started looking at Buildcraft recently. And unfortunately for buildcraft I had encountered ProjectRed / RedPowered prior to this. Looking over buildcraft I agree with everyone else on this thread : Your piping system is redonculous! Rediculously inneficient and messy and hard to work with - but ironically. I think most people if they dont want to suffer with the inefficiency of your pipes, will just use ProjectRed - especially now it's caught up to the latest forge/mod servers.

Saying all this! You're robots are Fricking Adorable! I personally would love to see them developed further, most of the piping system could easily be thrown away if these things could reliably fly around sorting items, taking items to furnaces or crafting tables or altars on request and not just one at a time, but with an actual requestable amount (up to a stack per request).
And of course an indexing system. It would have to be high tier but you could make a Waiter Bot. Which could log in to each inventory at regular intervals (if the inventory has changed) and then return to the docking station. When right clicking the bot it stops in front of you and shows you a combined list of the logged inventories!

Seriously though, If you develop these robots as an alternative to logistics pipes, I would use them for Everything! Did I say how adorable they were? Did I?
Please make this happen - screw logistic pipes I want an army of small robotic minions running around after me.

Ps; Another interesting thing that would be cute is audio. Actually have each bot make different sounds based on travelling, working, etc :D
(squeee)

Edit: There is an additional logic thing I could suggest. Give robots the ability to detect pipes and fly along them (ie, they don't treat the pipes as solid during pathfinding). It would be a great and useful way to help prevent robots getting lost during long trips, or when they need to get in and out of small holes. If you're worried about bots becoming too overpower thats easy fixed too - just let us upgrade them with different functions!
 
Last edited:

Azzanine

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
2,706
-11
0
So, I'll be honest. I only just started looking at Buildcraft recently. And unfortunately for buildcraft I had encountered ProjectRed / RedPowered prior to this. Looking over buildcraft I agree with everyone else on this thread : Your piping system is redonculous! Rediculously inneficient and messy and hard to work with - but ironically. I think most people if they dont want to suffer with the inefficiency of your pipes, will just use ProjectRed - especially now it's caught up to the latest forge/mod servers.

Saying all this! You're robots are Fricking Adorable! I personally would love to see them developed further, most of the piping system could easily be thrown away if these things could reliably fly around sorting items, taking items to furnaces or crafting tables or altars on request and not just one at a time, but with an actual requestable amount (up to a stack per request).
And of course an indexing system. It would have to be high tier but you could make a Waiter Bot. Which could log in to each inventory at regular intervals (if the inventory has changed) and then return to the docking station. When right clicking the bot it stops in front of you and shows you a combined list of the logged inventories!

Seriously though, If you develop these robots as an alternative to logistics pipes, I would use them for Everything! Did I say how adorable they were? Did I?
Please make this happen - screw logistic pipes I want an army of small robotic minions running around after me.

Ps; Another interesting thing that would be cute is audio. Actually have each bot make different sounds based on travelling, working, etc :D
(squeee)

Edit: There is an additional logic thing I could suggest. Give robots the ability to detect pipes and fly along them (ie, they don't treat the pipes as solid during pathfinding). It would be a great and useful way to help prevent robots getting lost during long trips, or when they need to get in and out of small holes. If you're worried about bots becoming too overpower thats easy fixed too - just let us upgrade them with different functions!
You use projectred pipes? Not that they suck but they are certainly the poor mans logistics pipes.
Most folks go for Thermal Dynamics or EnderIO.

I dunno, I kinda want BC to keep their dumb item dropping pipes. However I am seeing BC's place in big packs slowly diminishing only included for token reasons.
I am giving buildcraft a propper try in my most recent private pack. And I am finding it manageable, although yoy do get some nifty things like gates a little late.
And the multitude of different transport pipe materials needs to change.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
 

KingTriaxx

Forum Addict
Jul 27, 2013
4,266
1,333
184
Michigan
Yes, how dare there be more than one type of pipe. Seriously, don't like multiple types? Pick one and stick with it. And completely miss the feature of certain pipes not connecting to other types. Stone and cobble are separate and distinct and will not connect with each other so they can be run side by side without interacting. Gold is a speed booster. Sandstone doesn't connect to inventories. Wood extracts, Emerald only extracts some things. Diamond sorts. Everything has it's purpose, and that's a big part of the utility.

Pipes should remain just as they are.
 

Golrith

Over-Achiever
Trusted User
Nov 11, 2012
3,834
2,137
248
Yes, how dare there be more than one type of pipe. Seriously, don't like multiple types? Pick one and stick with it. And completely miss the feature of certain pipes not connecting to other types. Stone and cobble are separate and distinct and will not connect with each other so they can be run side by side without interacting. Gold is a speed booster. Sandstone doesn't connect to inventories. Wood extracts, Emerald only extracts some things. Diamond sorts. Everything has it's purpose, and that's a big part of the utility.

Pipes should remain just as they are.
My whole base in 1.2.5 ran using BC pipes (no logistics), and they fed a whole series of auto crafting tables, using diamond pipes to split ratio's of resources to different tables to craft different items. Was great. I didn't understand redpower tubes at the time, but eventually tinkered with them (as you do as you learn mods/packs) and loved them (mainly because the sorting machines gave me much more capacity on filters vs diamond pipes, and eventually overflow was handled better)
I can't get my head around the newer pipes, mainly because I haven't tried them or tried to, mainly because other mods solutions tend to be either easier to use (but not craft), or just look a lot better.
I do miss the redstone pipe from the old 1.2.5 days, used to have a crafting system that was quite slow due to a complex item, so every time it finally produced an item and it sent down a redstone pipe, it emitted a signal that triggered an alarm :p
Ah, those were the days, when Minecraft was new to me and I didn't have a clue what I was doing.
 

lenscas

Over-Achiever
Jul 31, 2013
2,015
1,801
248
My whole base in 1.2.5 ran using BC pipes (no logistics), and they fed a whole series of auto crafting tables, using diamond pipes to split ratio's of resources to different tables to craft different items. Was great. I didn't understand redpower tubes at the time, but eventually tinkered with them (as you do as you learn mods/packs) and loved them (mainly because the sorting machines gave me much more capacity on filters vs diamond pipes, and eventually overflow was handled better)
I can't get my head around the newer pipes, mainly because I haven't tried them or tried to, mainly because other mods solutions tend to be either easier to use (but not craft), or just look a lot better.
I do miss the redstone pipe from the old 1.2.5 days, used to have a crafting system that was quite slow due to a complex item, so every time it finally produced an item and it sent down a redstone pipe, it emitted a signal that triggered an alarm :p
Ah, those were the days, when Minecraft was new to me and I didn't have a clue what I was doing.
I believe the redstone pipe was just from an add-on, not sure if it still exist though
 

rouge_bare

Well-Known Member
Oct 4, 2014
969
324
79
Personally I do feel the amount of transport (and fluid) pipes is a tad silly, particularly the cobble/stone/quartz pipes. Now you can colour your pipes to not connect, once you have access to gold pipes, you really don't need any other 'just transport this' pipes. That said, I do find the various tiers of kinesis pipe useful, to segrgate power. Some might argue you can use an iron kinesis pipe for that purpose, but to me it's more conveient to stick a (for example) cobble kinesis pipe in to limit the flow where needed.

Other than the Stone/Cobble/Quartz which are all flavors of the same pipe (just with different drag and not connecting to one another) Each other pipe has it's use.

Sandstone Pipes avoid connections to anything except other pipes.
Iron Pipes are useful for converging item/fluid flows.
Clay Pipes are useful to inserting items or fluids into tanks.
Diamond Pipes are useful for basic sorting, if you need more room, you can use this in combo with the item painting system or lists.
Wooden and Emerald Pipes are the extractor pipes, where the latter lets you filter items, and in the case of fluids has a better throughput.
Gold Pipes, speed up items, and have the highest fluid troughput of the bc pipes. (and now they are colourable tend to obsolete stone and quartz pipes completely, unless you really cannot find gold as coloured glass isn't that hard to get.)

And all this without needing to use Gates, Pipe Plugs or other pipe attachments, which add a vast amount of possiblities to the system.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gardenapple

Someone Else 37

Forum Addict
Feb 10, 2013
1,876
1,440
168
I believe the redstone pipe was just from an add-on, not sure if it still exist though
The intended way to emulate a redstone pipe nowadays is with a gate: Item Traversing -> Redstone Signal will do it just fine. It also lets you do fancier things, like output to pipe wire instead of redstone or only produce a signal when a particular type of item passes through.
 

KingTriaxx

Forum Addict
Jul 27, 2013
4,266
1,333
184
Michigan
I tend to use Iron Kinesis pipes when I need a variable flow of power. Such as leading into a laser room. Red pipe signal on to crank it wide open when work is needed, no signal to close it all the way down when the table is idle. Same for Railcraft and forestry machines.

I believe it's also possible to completely shut off the power draw of an Emerald Kinesis Pipe.
 

Zandorum

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
315
-3
1
So, I'll be honest. I only just started looking at Buildcraft recently. And unfortunately for buildcraft I had encountered ProjectRed / RedPowered prior to this. Looking over buildcraft I agree with everyone else on this thread : Your piping system is redonculous! Rediculously inneficient and messy and hard to work with - but ironically. I think most people if they dont want to suffer with the inefficiency of your pipes, will just use ProjectRed - especially now it's caught up to the latest forge/mod servers.
I think that "dumb" or "low tech" pipes, is still good to have; If you don't want them to be dumb or lowtech you can use the gates and other things. However there is something to be said for low tech that is very nice, sometimes you don't need a pipe that can do everything and because of this the pipes can also be extremely cheap. I don't think there needs to be any changes.
 

Golrith

Over-Achiever
Trusted User
Nov 11, 2012
3,834
2,137
248
I believe the redstone pipe was just from an add-on, not sure if it still exist though
The intended way to emulate a redstone pipe nowadays is with a gate: Item Traversing -> Redstone Signal will do it just fine. It also lets you do fancier things, like output to pipe wire instead of redstone or only produce a signal when a particular type of item passes through.
Ah, most likely. Have only personally lightly touched on the capability of gates and haven't yet touched gates since BC updated adding in more crafting steps/tables for gates, which just feels a bit excessive (until I get the resources to build a laser system, diamonds are RARE in my pack so I mustn't waste them)
 

Golrith

Over-Achiever
Trusted User
Nov 11, 2012
3,834
2,137
248
I think that "dumb" or "low tech" pipes, is still good to have; If you don't want them to be dumb or lowtech you can use the gates and other things. However there is something to be said for low tech that is very nice, sometimes you don't need a pipe that can do everything and because of this the pipes can also be extremely cheap. I don't think there needs to be any changes.
Agreed, if you need to get an item from point A to point B, and know that there won't be any overflow issues, BC pipes are more then suitable for the job.


One thing I've noticed from the above, no one mentions the newest pipes, the lapis xxxxx thingies that I think are BC's version of coloured item sorting. Fact that I don't even know their name shows I don't understand them (and never used them :p).
 

Azzanine

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
2,706
-11
0
The intended way to emulate a redstone pipe nowadays is with a gate: Item Traversing -> Redstone Signal will do it just fine. It also lets you do fancier things, like output to pipe wire instead of redstone or only produce a signal when a particular type of item passes through.
This is a good example of how id make all pipes work.
That function could have been put in to a new pipe, but no it's a handy gate feature.
Id have it so you only have wood and stone pipe for the start that work like they do now. Then iron pipes that can be altered with logistics gates/ modules to do what current diamond and routing pipes do. Like if you have a junction in your pipes and you want it to sort, just whack a sorting/ routing module and it will sort like diamond. They would come in three tiers iron would let you sort 16 item types, gold would allow 32 types and diamond would allow 64. Those same modules would have other functions too like splitting and round robbin distribution. Also each modual would have the ability to use different levels of redpipe wire.
But somehow this has been considered "cludgier" than the current system.

Aparently Immibis tried a modual based transportation mod like I described. He shelved the idea. Possibility due to the community preference for smarter item routing pipes. That or it was somhow more cludgy then useing several kinds of pipes. I don't see how but agree to disagree I guess.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
 

lenscas

Over-Achiever
Jul 31, 2013
2,015
1,801
248
This is a good example of how id make all pipes work.
That function could have been put in to a new pipe, but no it's a handy gate feature.
Id have it so you only have wood and stone pipe for the start that work like they do now. Then iron pipes that can be altered with logistics gates/ modules to do what current diamond and routing pipes do. Like if you have a junction in your pipes and you want it to sort, just whack a sorting/ routing module and it will sort like diamond. They would come in three tiers iron would let you sort 16 item types, gold would allow 32 types and diamond would allow 64. Those same modules would have other functions too like splitting and round robbin distribution. Also each modual would have the ability to use different levels of redpipe wire.
But somehow this has been considered "cludgier" than the current system.

Aparently Immibis tried a modual based transportation mod like I described. He shelved the idea. Possibility due to the community preference for smarter item routing pipes. That or it was somhow more cludgy then useing several kinds of pipes. I don't see how but agree to disagree I guess.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
The problem I have with that idea is that instead of having a lot of different pipes you now have a lot of different modules thus you don't really fix the problem. Getting your system to work now also requires more crafting steps and more steps when building it for no real benefit.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gardenapple

Someone Else 37

Forum Addict
Feb 10, 2013
1,876
1,440
168
As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, there's kind of an upside and a downside to BC's polychromatic pipe scheme. On the one hand, having fifteen different colored pipes in the same area doesn't look good in some aesthetics; but on the other hand, it makes it much easier to see what the pipes are actually doing, since they all do different things, unlike the smarter pipes found in RedPower, Thermal Dynamics, and the like. If all of BC's pipes looked the same, you'd have to interact with each and every one of them all the time just to figure out what's going on (which sounds like a pain in the rear), or use some kind of item like Logistics Pipes' HUD glasses to differentiate them at a glance- in which case, why not just have them look different anyway?

In addition, BC already provides a solution to the aesthetic issue: facades. If you don't like how the pipes look, hide 'em. If you're going for the factory-with-items-zipping-around-in-exposed-pipes look... well, your options are to embrace the polychromaticity, or use a less transparent pipe from another mod.
 

Azzanine

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
2,706
-11
0
The problem I have with that idea is that instead of having a lot of different pipes you now have a lot of different modules thus you don't really fix the problem. Getting your system to work now also requires more crafting steps and more steps when building it for no real benefit.

I was thinking a min and max of 3 moduals only that can perform the function of all the pipes.
Also it couldn't be more crafting then pipes now.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
 

lenscas

Over-Achiever
Jul 31, 2013
2,015
1,801
248
I was thinking a min and max of 3 moduals only that can perform the function of all the pipes.
Also it couldn't be more crafting then pipes now.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
It kind of is as you not only need to make the pipe but also the module, I also fear that with this solution you will need to go into gui's while making the pipe system something that isn't much needed right now (inventory doesn't count as you can just use the hotbar once)
 

Azzanine

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
2,706
-11
0
The current system has you crafting multiple pipes for builds sometimes even all of the types depending on how complicated they are. In my vision you just craft a bunch of iron pipes and the few moduals you think you need.
There would be more crafts but less crafting if that makes any sense. As all youd need to make is iron pipes and the amount of moduals you think you need.
If I want to build a system that pumps ore from a chest to a bank of processors of your choice (say pulverizers) I would need. Gold pipes for standard transport, clay to reliably insert the ore, diamond pipes to sort the ore and rout it to its designated processor, iron to regulate the directon of item flow in your feedback loop, wooden pipes to extract from the ore chest or processors if they don't auto dump, if I don't want to craft a bajillion pipe seals I will need sandstone for parts where I don't want connections to machines, im not sure what quartz pipes do but I think I'd need some of them too.

As is its just annoying to have to craft all the different pipes, it's not only about looks for me when I call them clown pipes it's not just a reference to their looks.

I remember being on a server and being tasked with making an ore processing systems with just BC (they had some sort of merit based rank system), it had to process every thing put in it and deal with the things that it couldn't process properly. The thing was an utter multicolored monster. I was both impressed and utterly disgusted with what I made...
No amount of facades could cover the trauma and shame induced.
I didn't even get my rank as it couldn't handle all the different mod ores as this was 1.5 in a custom pack that wasn't properly ore unified. They tried but a few kinds of copper slipped through.

Also regarding UIs the more weildly powerful stuff in BC, logistic gates all have UIs. Essentially my idea is an extension of the gates mechanic. There are a lot of times where I wish an iron pipes would just let me right click it and let me tick the side I want it to output to without having to whack it over and over and more if I over clicked ir forgot it is the filled side that's the output... or is it?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
 

asiekierka

Over-Achiever
Mod Developer
Dec 24, 2013
555
1,086
213
This is going to be great!

Pipe Overload, Alternating Power System, No Power Storage. I personally like the Alternating power specifically. Also the amount of power everything requires is too low to handle anything like Big Reactors so being able to use RF on them really hurts Buildcraft.

You mention Pipe Overload. This was canned not due to RF, but due to the fact most of the explosions were caused by Minecraft's wonky chunkloading, not user error. I have some ideas on bringing exploding kinesis pipes on overload back, but those are just ideas. As for Alternating Power System, let's face it: it doesn't change that much with BC alone. Only the extraction mechanics.

Playing with a BC RoC focused pack and I am remembering reasons why I shelfed BC for other mods.
One bugbear I would change is how you acquire pipe sealant. <snip!>

I consider it every time. There's a config option for it and it might well become a default.

I think most of our balance concerns are caused by both thoughtless pack makers and people's inability to create their own pack easily to their specifications or due to how MC multiplayer works.

Nope! Our balance concerns are caused by the fact balance, in the current modpack community, is impossible to achieve. The only resource limiting you in Minecraft is time and that makes it hard to balance around - GregTech shows why dumb balancing on spending time alone doesn't really work.

Unfortunately Asie or his predecessor (I forget which) jumped on the RF bandwagon when FTB was all "RF only" under the pretense of MJ being too difficult to maintain and aparently being the same as RF.

I also think BC still has pipe overload just no explosions by default. As ugly as they are BC energy pipes have the best non ui based method of gaugeing power.

No. I jumped on the RF bandwagon when I saw the only mod staying on MJ was RailCraft (and Forestry, but the RF fork was gaining more traction than the MJ version). It was a "compromise or die" scenario.

I know this and take this into account, I've nerfed the Dynamos back to their original generation. So they dont overpower buildcraft's setup, however I have had to come up with new numbers for the new Dynamos. I'd rather not get too off topic though. So I won't be responding to anything not atleast semi-related to Buildcraft from this point on.


To a certain extent yes, but for a few reasons.
1) This would fix RF Overpowering Buildcraft machines.
2) This would allow a more controlled balance by asie over the mod.
3) Buildcraft would be allowed to be more eccentric with what it does with power.
4) This being the least credible, I miss MJ with all of its quirks including alternating power.

(1) Making dynamos output 40 RF/t and half their RF/fuel unit, from my experience, worked well enough. Gave Combustion Engines that edge.
(2) Very true. I still regret it for that reason solely.
(3) Also true, though not really - I can do whatever I want with RF, it's all about the social aspects of it.
(4) A lot of the quirks are still in RF BC.

(The following one is going to be really good)

So, I'll be honest. I only just started looking at Buildcraft recently. And unfortunately for buildcraft I had encountered ProjectRed / RedPowered prior to this. Looking over buildcraft I agree with everyone else on this thread : Your piping system is redonculous! Rediculously inneficient and messy and hard to work with - but ironically. I think most people if they dont want to suffer with the inefficiency of your pipes, will just use ProjectRed - especially now it's caught up to the latest forge/mod servers.

The piping system is designed to be redonculous intentionally. Think of it as if it was a puzzle game: you get simple pipes with simple rules and your job is to connect the pieces.

Saying all this! You're robots are Fricking Adorable! I personally would love to see them developed further, most of the piping system could easily be thrown away if these things could reliably fly around sorting items, taking items to furnaces or crafting tables or altars on request and not just one at a time, but with an actual requestable amount (up to a stack per request).

...Oooh.

Seriously though, If you develop these robots as an alternative to logistics pipes, I would use them for Everything! Did I say how adorable they were? Did I?
Please make this happen - screw logistic pipes I want an army of small robotic minions running around after me.

Check out Logistics Pipes' Routing Robot.

Ps; Another interesting thing that would be cute is audio. Actually have each bot make different sounds based on travelling, working, etc

Sounds are hard to get right.

There is an additional logic thing I could suggest. Give robots the ability to detect pipes and fly along them (ie, they don't treat the pipes as solid during pathfinding). It would be a great and useful way to help prevent robots getting lost during long trips, or when they need to get in and out of small holes. If you're worried about bots becoming too overpower thats easy fixed too - just let us upgrade them with different functions!

So Steve's Robots?... Eh. I'd say that the pathfinding needs work, but detecting things in-world is computationally expensive.

Yes, how dare there be more than one type of pipe. Seriously, don't like multiple types? Pick one and stick with it. And completely miss the feature of certain pipes not connecting to other types. Stone and cobble are separate and distinct and will not connect with each other so they can be run side by side without interacting. Gold is a speed booster. Sandstone doesn't connect to inventories. Wood extracts, Emerald only extracts some things. Diamond sorts. Everything has it's purpose, and that's a big part of the utility.

Pipes should remain just as they are.

Almost. Some of the pipes are useless, like the quartz pipe or the old lapis/daizuli color sorting system (where their only edge over lenses and filters is being dynamically configurable with gates - something almost nobody uses).

I do miss the redstone pipe from the old 1.2.5 days, used to have a crafting system that was quite slow due to a complex item, so every time it finally produced an item and it sent down a redstone pipe, it emitted a signal that triggered an alarm :p

I believe the redstone pipe was just from an add-on, not sure if it still exist though

Redstone pipe? Any pipe + Basic Gate [Item Travelling -> Redstone Signal]. With a gold/quartz/emerald/diamond gate, you can even filter by item type!

Personally I do feel the amount of transport (and fluid) pipes is a tad silly, particularly the cobble/stone/quartz pipes. Now you can colour your pipes to not connect, once you have access to gold pipes, you really don't need any other 'just transport this' pipes. That said, I do find the various tiers of kinesis pipe useful, to segrgate power. Some might argue you can use an iron kinesis pipe for that purpose, but to me it's more conveient to stick a (for example) cobble kinesis pipe in to limit the flow where needed.

Other than the Stone/Cobble/Quartz which are all flavors of the same pipe (just with different drag and not connecting to one another) Each other pipe has it's use.

Sandstone Pipes avoid connections to anything except other pipes.
Iron Pipes are useful for converging item/fluid flows.
Clay Pipes are useful to inserting items or fluids into tanks.
Diamond Pipes are useful for basic sorting, if you need more room, you can use this in combo with the item painting system or lists.
Wooden and Emerald Pipes are the extractor pipes, where the latter lets you filter items, and in the case of fluids has a better throughput.
Gold Pipes, speed up items, and have the highest fluid troughput of the bc pipes. (and now they are colourable tend to obsolete stone and quartz pipes completely, unless you really cannot find gold as coloured glass isn't that hard to get.)

And all this without needing to use Gates, Pipe Plugs or other pipe attachments, which add a vast amount of possiblities to the system.

Wise words. There are a few other pipes out there, but the thing really does need a cleanup.

One thing I've noticed from the above, no one mentions the newest pipes, the lapis xxxxx thingies that I think are BC's version of coloured item sorting. Fact that I don't even know their name shows I don't understand them (and never used them :p).

Check out Lenses and Filters.

This is a good example of how id make all pipes work.
That function could have been put in to a new pipe, but no it's a handy gate feature.
Id have it so you only have wood and stone pipe for the start that work like they do now. Then iron pipes that can be altered with logistics gates/ modules to do what current diamond and routing pipes do. Like if you have a junction in your pipes and you want it to sort, just whack a sorting/ routing module and it will sort like diamond. They would come in three tiers iron would let you sort 16 item types, gold would allow 32 types and diamond would allow 64. Those same modules would have other functions too like splitting and round robbin distribution. Also each modual would have the ability to use different levels of redpipe wire.
But somehow this has been considered "cludgier" than the current system.

Aparently Immibis tried a modual based transportation mod like I described. He shelved the idea. Possibility due to the community preference for smarter item routing pipes. That or it was somhow more cludgy then useing several kinds of pipes. I don't see how but agree to disagree I guess.

My response to that is:

The problem I have with that idea is that instead of having a lot of different pipes you now have a lot of different modules thus you don't really fix the problem. Getting your system to work now also requires more crafting steps and more steps when building it for no real benefit.

Pretty much.

As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, there's kind of an upside and a downside to BC's polychromatic pipe scheme. On the one hand, having fifteen different colored pipes in the same area doesn't look good in some aesthetics; but on the other hand, it makes it much easier to see what the pipes are actually doing, since they all do different things, unlike the smarter pipes found in RedPower, Thermal Dynamics, and the like. If all of BC's pipes looked the same, you'd have to interact with each and every one of them all the time just to figure out what's going on (which sounds like a pain in the rear), or use some kind of item like Logistics Pipes' HUD glasses to differentiate them at a glance- in which case, why not just have them look different anyway?

In addition, BC already provides a solution to the aesthetic issue: facades. If you don't like how the pipes look, hide 'em. If you're going for the factory-with-items-zipping-around-in-exposed-pipes look... well, your options are to embrace the polychromaticity, or use a less transparent pipe from another mod.

This is the exact reason for all of what we've done. There are more interesting aesthetic means to make BC pipes look good, however their ugly look is highly symbolic to us and we're reluctant to get rid of it. :(

Alright, keep the questions coming!