What would YOU change about BuildCraft?

[GreenZombie]

For me, the pipe system I want would be far more like the current Buildcraft than those of thermal dynamics or ender io. The recipes the recipes for both those mods pipes don't come close to hinting at the complicated item routing they allow.

So, I would far prefer, for my own gameplay a somewhat simpler pipe system that requires a bit more thought. So basically BC pipes.

The trick is, how to implement simple pipes that do not loose items or cause crashes, especially in the face of chunk loading. Buildcrafts existing behavior is such that pipes carrying items from a loaded chunk into an unloaded chunk will force the chunk to load. This bypasses server chunk loading restrictions and causes server reformable issues when entire bases get stuck in memory.

 

[KingTriaxx]

A (presumably) simple solution would be to make them act like Railcraft's Personal Anchors. So when the original player who placed them is offline, the pipes shut down, and stop chunk loading at all.

 

[GreenZombie]

A (presumably) simple solution would be to make them act like Railcraft's Personal Anchors. So when the original player who placed them is offline, the pipes shut down, and stop chunk loading at all.

You are still going to get the boundary conditions if the player builds on the edge of the spawn chunks or if the players have a shared base.

--
Actually, how about this.
Buildcrafts pipes were described as being pneumatic long before Pneumaticraft was introduced.

Perhaps the buildcraft team should/could focus on a rewrite of pipe mechanics where, instead of just pipe materials, pressure is tracked over the pipe network, and pressure defines the speed items travel. Gates (And redstone engines) provide the pressure to inject items into the network, as they slow down, rather than just gold pipes, more gates would be installed at points along the pipe to inject more pressure.

When pipes encounter an unloaded chunk - or any other blockage - they treat it as a zero pressure situation, and the current pipe segment becomes blocked. This blockage propagates backwards until the entire network stalls - until the blockage is dealt with.

 

[asiekierka]

Perhaps the buildcraft team should/could focus on a rewrite of pipe mechanics where, instead of just pipe materials, pressure is tracked over the pipe network, and pressure defines the speed items travel. Gates (And redstone engines) provide the pressure to inject items into the network, as they slow down, rather than just gold pipes, more gates would be installed at points along the pipe to inject more pressure.

When pipes encounter an unloaded chunk - or any other blockage - they treat it as a zero pressure situation, and the current pipe segment becomes blocked. This blockage propagates backwards until the entire network stalls - until the blockage is dealt with.

This is, to an extent, what I had considered for clogging in internal talks with a few people. It is also what I had implemented in an experimental conveyor belt mod. The problem, however, is that playing with core pipe mechanics requires a lot of careful thought as it influences everything.

 

[lenscas]

This is, to an extent, what I had considered for clogging in internal talks with a few people. It is also what I had implemented in an experimental conveyor belt mod. The problem, however, is that playing with core pipe mechanics requires a lot of careful thought as it influences everything.

Maybe for the time being make the new pipes a separate item (which maybe even should be disabled by default at the very beginning ) so you can mess with it as much as you want without breaking others build and when you are satisfied with them and you either update to a new minecraft version or the new version is not compatible with the older one for another reason you just replace the old ones with the new pipes?

That way people can still give feedback and don't have to risk their previous builds and even compare functionality in the same world.

 

[WildWinni]

How long ago was that? I'm pretty sure that pipes explode nowadays when there's more than 100 items (or stacks of items?) in them, and destroy all the items contained within.

Not that long ago and in two seperate modpacks. In Trinity I had a crash issue not with overload of items but with chunk load as mentioned later on by someone else. Sortof. I had gone well away from the pipes working on an oil mine, and when I went back I suddenly hit a massive lag. I discovered that the extraction pipes had been trying to load items into a chunk that wasn't loading properly. When I re-entered the area and the chunks loaded the system caught up, and the game insta-crashed. I found after I recovered the crash that I had lost half the blocks mined from my quarry but none of the pipes were damaged ....

The other occurrence was more mundane. Regrowth pack, but I think they have the pipes exploding options turned off in the config files, so there was no safety.

When pipes encounter an unloaded chunk - or any other blockage - they treat it as a zero pressure situation, and the current pipe segment becomes blocked. This blockage propagates backwards until the entire network stalls - until the blockage is dealt with.

While I like the idea of trying to detect unloaded blocks, I think having to 'add pressure' regularly would get annoying. Especially considering the number of items required just to extract items. Having to add more just to keep them going... arrrg.

 

[GreenZombie]

While I like the idea of trying to detect unloaded blocks, I think having to 'add pressure' regularly would get annoying. Especially considering the number of items required just to extract items. Having to add more just to keep them going... arrrg.

Having to "add pressure regularly' is no different now to adding runs of gold pipes 'regularly'. And how regular they would need to be would be the kind of balancing parameter the bc team would tweak before releasing the mod. Personally, a hundred meter long run of pipe, with branches and sorting, driven from a single redstone engine seems like it could or should require 'more' effort of some kind.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

I personally can't see any issues with chunks staying/becoming loaded (as long as the loading mechanism itself it bug free); remember players keep 441 chunks active simply by being online.
If you can't handle the extra chunks loaded from a pipe network then you either have some serious hardware issues, or there's another bug/something player-built causing problems [which you'll encounter anyway whenever s/he logs on].

The passive chunk loading is actually a nice design feature- don't have to think about chunk loading at all [so it doesn't break immersion], and I get peace of mind knowing that if I half wonder out of range [only half the base within 10 chunks] I won't come back to some horrid jammed up mess as a result of some pipes behaving differently simply because I'm not there.

Edit- after a bit more thought, this is one of the most efficient ways of keeping chunks loaded- by only loading both the minimum required [rather than everything in a set radius], and said chunks are only loaded when necessary.

 

[Fortanono]

Bit of a thought here, since Slimeballs are also a pain to get: Maybe you can smelt Sugar Cane into Pipe Sealant? Then Cactus, Wax and Slimeballs can each make 2 Sealant, making them a superior source.

 

[Darkone84]

I'm not sure if any of the following have be looked at or requested before but of me this would make BuildCraft more useful.

Maybe a GUI for the Quarry or Advanced Quarry that lets you do the following.
1. Change how the Quarry mines e.g. by chunk, row or line at a time.
2. Option to set the power used by the quarry which could be increased or decreased. (so if needed the quarry can use 5000 RF/t or just 10 RF/t)
3. Option that lets you set if the quarry's buffer is full it will not just dump the items on the ground. (This is good if your chest is full and you don’t notice.)

Maybe advanced Filler or a different block that does the following.
1. If you set the filler to clear it doesn’t always give you time to collect all the items on the ground before they will de-spawn. Maybe have the filler collect the items but use lots more power or have a filler upgrade that will use the robot to collect the items on the ground by setting the robot to the filler.
2. Option to set the power used by the Filler which could be increased or decreased.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Filler was actually changed at one point not to leave the items lying around, because people were using it as a quarry, because it's infinitely cheaper than the quarry.

 

[lenscas]

I'm not sure if any of the following have be looked at or requested before but of me this would make BuildCraft more useful.

Maybe a GUI for the Quarry or Advanced Quarry that lets you do the following.
1. Change how the Quarry mines e.g. by chunk, row or line at a time.
2. Option to set the power used by the quarry which could be increased or decreased. (so if needed the quarry can use 5000 RF/t or just 10 RF/t)
3. Option that lets you set if the quarry's buffer is full it will not just dump the items on the ground. (This is good if your chest is full and you don’t notice.)

Maybe advanced Filler or a different block that does the following.
1. If you set the filler to clear it doesn’t always give you time to collect all the items on the ground before they will de-spawn. Maybe have the filler collect the items but use lots more power or have a filler upgrade that will use the robot to collect the items on the ground by setting the robot to the filler.
2. Option to set the power used by the Filler which could be increased or decreased.

for the quarry
1: I don't really get the point of being able to change how it mines, sure you might get the diamonds earlier but you will get them eventually and as we are talking about an advanced quarry you might have already got at least one run with the normal quarry.
2 if you mean limiting the amount of rf the quarry gets then the different kinetic pipes will do it for you. Not entirely sure about why you would want to do it though.
3 if an advanced quarry is made then I can see the point of it, for a normal quarry not so much (especially if it can be turned off with redstone, never tried that one before). I don't find it fitting for a normal quarry especially if it reacts to redstone (if that is not the case then that is something I would change about buildcraft) as it can be done with a chest and a gate.

for the filler
1 Maybe if you combine a quarry with a filler (and maybe some other things) you get an advanced filler which is basically a filler that outputs the mined items like a quarry?
2 same thing as point 2 for the quarry

 

[GreenZombie]

I personally can't see any issues with chunks staying/becoming loaded (as long as the loading mechanism itself it bug free); remember players keep 441 chunks active simply by being online.
If you can't handle the extra chunks loaded from a pipe network then you either have some serious hardware issues, or there's another bug/something player-built causing problems [which you'll encounter anyway whenever s/he logs on].

The passive chunk loading is actually a nice design feature- don't have to think about chunk loading at all [so it doesn't break immersion], and I get peace of mind knowing that if I half wonder out of range [only half the base within 10 chunks] I won't come back to some horrid jammed up mess as a result of some pipes behaving differently simply because I'm not there.

Edit- after a bit more thought, this is one of the most efficient ways of keeping chunks loaded- by only loading both the minimum required [rather than everything in a set radius], and said chunks are only loaded when necessary.

I do have issues:
Getting a modded server to maintain 20tps is a problem for admins.
Having pipes chunkload themselves causes the server to run hot even when there are no players are online. Causes unrelated poorly performing systems to continue to negatively effect other players even when the offending player logs off. Negatively effects players who don't expect that their base will continue to consume limited fuel when they log off.

 

[asiekierka]

For the quarry:
1. No. There is a gameplay reason why the quarry only mines in layers - that's so you have to deal with the top stuff before you get to the goodies (or build your quarry underground).
2. Iron Kinesis Pipe. Or, if BC power is not your fancy, a battery with an RF/t output limit.
3. Use a Gate. "Inventory Full -> Off; Space in Inventory -> On"

For the filler:
1. Use a Quarry. Though I do agree that a Quarry should have a height limit, then. Perhaps an Advanced Quarry for that?
2. Again, Iron Kinesis Pipe.

 

[Sidorion]

@Chris Becke: Then why don't you try and eliminate the 'poorly performing systems'? Stopping the pipes from junkloading doesn't fix the problem. You'd attend the symptoms, not the illness.

 

[GreenZombie]

@Chris Becke: Then why don't you try and eliminate the 'poorly performing systems'? Stopping the pipes from junkloading doesn't fix the problem. You'd attend the symptoms, not the illness.

Because players are not optimization experts.
The people with the expertise and ability to create low latency packs are mod authors (and modpack creators). mods 'should just work' as performanantly as possible - and that includes not chunkloading if they can avoid it.

 

[Sidorion]

Sure, it's nice to have mods that care for performance, but you can't demand from a mod to take care that no one kills performance.
BC itself has no problems with loaded chunks and people will find other ways to load their chunks while they're off.

 

[KingTriaxx]

I wish it were possible to have quarries act like Railcrafts Personal Anchors. Where it only loads and operates if the person who placed it is online. Would stop other people having to deal with the water flow updates while other players are offline. And being aware that defeats the purpose, having it be a config option would be nice.

As for throttling the quarry, it's something you do if your system cannot handle the high speed intake. I use trains to move the goods from the quarry, so I don't want it running too fast or the train can't keep up.(Admittedly, at 12 carts long, I can out run it on foot.)

 

[GreenZombie]

Sure, it's nice to have mods that care for performance, but you can't demand from a mod to take care that no one kills performance.
BC itself has no problems with loaded chunks and people will find other ways to load their chunks while they're off.

All of which subvert the server operators ability to set a chunkloading policy.
The ForgeCraft2 S8 lets play by direwolf20, they decided to as a matter of policy, to solve server lag, disable/remove chicken chunks, allow free use of railcrafts personal anchor, and "fueled" use of railcrafts local anchor, where ender pearls only last 1 hour RT and cannot be piped in.

 

[asiekierka]

I wish it were possible to have quarries act like Railcrafts Personal Anchors. Where it only loads and operates if the person who placed it is online. Would stop other people having to deal with the water flow updates while other players are offline. And being aware that defeats the purpose, having it be a config option would be nice.

As for throttling the quarry, it's something you do if your system cannot handle the high speed intake. I use trains to move the goods from the quarry, so I don't want it running too fast or the train can't keep up.(Admittedly, at 12 carts long, I can out run it on foot.)

Good idea! Though you could just disable BC's chunkloading.

All of which subvert the server operators ability to set a chunkloading policy.
The ForgeCraft2 S8 lets play by direwolf20, they decided to as a matter of policy, to solve server lag, disable/remove chicken chunks, allow free use of railcrafts personal anchor, and "fueled" use of railcrafts local anchor, where ender pearls only last 1 hour RT and cannot be piped in.

That's why BC lets you disable quarry chunkloading altogether.