What would YOU change about BuildCraft?

[WildWinni]

Instead of a knight doing this, how about an energy-carrier which can be set to either transfer energy between RF source and receiver blocks, or seek out robots (active, inactive, or both) and juice them up enough to get home. It will always track its distance to "home" and return there once it hits its limit, but have a much higher RF storage than other robots, letting it seek in a wider radius and still have a bit of RF left over for others to share.

The problem with that is that bots don't actually use that much energy. The main reason bots are lost is either cause their home dock was broken, so they don't know where to return to, cause no power dock was available or because the tried to fly into an unloaded chunk. At current all these options result in the bot dropping to the ground and sitting there idle.
The current way to find them is to spawn in the 'debug tool' using cheats or creative mode but the ability to locate bots that aren't responding any more really does need to be a built in feature for one of the bots. The knights make the most sense cause they're the least likely to be doing anything. Plus it fits with the image of "knight".

Re the Façades thing. Why not just make it like Carpenters blocks.
Change the recipe so you craft the façade out of wood, then cover it with any other block. Then all façades will have one recipe ...

Re the comment about ghost blocks for builders... This has been mentioned and discussed before. The builder object and the builder robots both have a flaw in the way they work. The most efficient way would be for the blueprint to be stored similar to the clipboard saves from worldedit, then when the builder machine or robots operate it first removes all blocks from the area occupied by the blueprint (in the case of robots by using diggers and miners to remove blocks) - then it places the blocks starting from the bottom x/y to top x/y (as one would expect)

Right now cause the blueprint is dependent on copying what's already in the map there are too many ways for the build to crash. The idea of ghost blocks might make it easier but I don't see as being necessary.
And I still think builders / diggers / miners could be used for a lot more things if you had a way to give them better instructions. Again - some kind of control console for advanced programming instructions.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

NEI has a way to disable certain blocks from withing its gui, if the facades are listed in its own subset you can easily turn them on or off, not sure if they are though.

Double click the options in the 'Item Subsets' dropdown menu. Double click the menu button to toggle all modules.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Last I tried, they hadn't been added to a subset.

 

[Zeeth_Kyrah]

Last I tried, they hadn't been added to a subset.

You can right-click an NEI tab to hide its contents, and I believe you left-click on the tab to reveal them again. I go through and do this every time I start a new world now. That includes looking through the tabs for creative stuff. That way I can hide multiblocks (but not the saws), facades, and other large groups of stuff I don't need to ask about most of the time, then if I need to find something I can look it up later.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Understood. I mean that last time I looked, the only options were hide all of Buildcraft or none of it.

 

[mineman74]

I have good news for you. This is completely do able in vanilla using a source water block and a pistion.

And a dispenser with clock

 

[reteo]

Well, my thought would probably be some shifting around of items between modules.

The quarry is a way to produce massive amount of materials without having to dig it yourself, rather than a tool to build anything, so I would place it in "Factory," rather than "builders"
The liquid oil and fuel are in the energy module, so it seems to make sense that the pump and refinery should also be there... that way, I can make use of buildcraft energy, even if the factory module is not needed.

 

[asiekierka]

The quarry is a way to produce massive amount of materials without having to dig it yourself, rather than a tool to build anything, so I would place it in "Factory," rather than "builders"

The Quarry is a large-scale world manipulator, just like the Filler and Builder. "Factory" only contains small-scale world manipulators. (Also, the Quarry is the only way to dig out areas while retaining drops.)

The liquid oil and fuel are in the energy module, so it seems to make sense that the pump and refinery should also be there... that way, I can make use of buildcraft energy, even if the factory module is not needed.

For pumps, no. That way, you can use other mods' pumps with BC's energy system. For refineries, I had actually considered that.

 

[immibis]

The Quarry is a large-scale world manipulator, just like the Filler and Builder. "Factory" only contains small-scale world manipulators. (Also, the Quarry is the only way to dig out areas while retaining drops.)

It doesn't belong in Builders either; the other machines in Builders are designed to assist with (manual) building, while the quarry is designed to make a profit.

 

[Rewyn]

For pumps, no. That way, you can use other mods' pumps with BC's energy system.

Not sure if I get that. Do you mean the way it is now, or if you'd move the pump to the energy module?
The current problem is, what if you have the energy module enabled, but no pump that can easily pump up the oil?

 

[LuigiHutch]

Not sure if I get that. Do you mean the way it is now, or if you'd move the pump to the energy module?
The current problem is, what if you have the energy module enabled, but no pump that can easily pump up the oil?

He means the way it is now. So if you have the energy module but not the factory module, just use a pump from another mod such as extra utilities.

If you have the energy module but no pump from any mod, that's tough luck and poor pack planning

That's like saying you have the builders module with most blocks needing power, but you don't have the energy module or any other RF producers from other mods meaning the machines can't work. Just poor pack planning IMO.

 

[Rewyn]

Well, it's not like there's no pump at all. It's simply not exactly suited for pumping it up. Also, the pack is designed so that there's not 20 different machines that do the same thing.
Thanks for the answer anyways!

 

[asiekierka]

It doesn't belong in Builders either; the other machines in Builders are designed to assist with (manual) building, while the quarry is designed to make a profit.

Of course, but I decided that it belongs there slightly more than it does in Factory.

Not sure if I get that. Do you mean the way it is now, or if you'd move the pump to the energy module?
The current problem is, what if you have the energy module enabled, but no pump that can easily pump up the oil?

The way it is now, yes. If you have Energy but no pump, that is indeed poor planning (or possibly intentional!).

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Normally I wouldn't suggest something like this due to dev time needed and overall feasibility, but given the number of machines in question it may be viable to expand the config with a true/false enabler for the main ones.

 

[reteo]

The Quarry is a large-scale world manipulator, just like the Filler and Builder. "Factory" only contains small-scale world manipulators. (Also, the Quarry is the only way to dig out areas while retaining drops.)

True enough. However, the quarry and filler effectively have the exact same use in this regard, except the quarry allows you to keep what was taken. Even if the quarry was removed to the factory module, the filler would have no problem picking up that slack. And I don't know how you use it, but I've never used the quarry as a tool in a construction project; I've always used it as a way to get a landslide of ores without having to work for them.

In short, I use the filler for what it does to the world, and the quarry for what it gets from the world.

For pumps, no. That way, you can use other mods' pumps with BC's energy system. For refineries, I had actually considered that.

Huh. What tipped the scales? Seems to me that without the refinery, there's really no point in having the fuel (or oil, for that matter) in the energy module, since they'd be useless if the factory module is disabled.

 

[GreenZombie]

True enough. However, the quarry and filler effectively have the exact same use in this regard, except the quarry allows you to keep what was taken. Even if the quarry was removed to the factory module, the filler would have no problem picking up that slack. And I don't know how you use it, but I've never used the quarry as a tool in a construction project; I've always used it as a way to get a landslide of ores without having to work for them.

The one thing I would change about Buildcraft would be:

* Remove the quarry and make it a multiblock extension of the Filler. This would allow the quarry to operate over a 3d area - so the depth of the quarry could be controlled - and remove the utterly inane objections to fillers not dropping blocks when used to excavate.

 

[reteo]

Of course, but I decided that it belongs there slightly more than it does in Factory.



The way it is now, yes. If you have Energy but no pump, that is indeed poor planning (or possibly intentional!).

Poor planning? Yes. Intentional? Yes. Of course, each is by a different person.

For clarification, the modpack is a RotaryCraft themed pack; buildcraft is included for its effectiveness in construction projects. I had also hoped to use the fuel as a component in jet fuel, but without an effective pump and refinery (the factory module would short-circuit the intended progression), that plan's dead in the water... Er, so to speak.

We were considering adding a custom pump and refinery, but you have quite the advocate in Reika; he seemed rather uncomfortable with the idea, so I figured I'd broach the topic here.

Sent from my SM-T217S using Tapatalk

 

[asiekierka]

We were considering adding a custom pump and refinery, but you have quite the advocate in Reika; he seemed rather uncomfortable with the idea, so I figured I'd broach the topic here.

Normally I wouldn't suggest something like this due to dev time needed and overall feasibility, but given the number of machines in question it may be viable to expand the config with a true/false enabler for the main ones.

Added in BuildCraft 7.1, actually. "objects.cfg" lets you fine-tune what blocks/items/pipes/engines are enabled. (This might let you use Factory's pump and refinery only, but I urge you to keep things like the tank)

Huh. What tipped the scales?

Me quitting BuildCraft development and moving on to work on Charset. (Also, the plan was to make the refinery a multiblock structure and make oil a lot more useful, then move the Stirling Engine to a different module and make a module for everything oil-related? Or something.)

 

[reteo]

Added in BuildCraft 7.1, actually. "objects.cfg" lets you fine-tune what blocks/items/pipes/engines are enabled. (This might let you use Factory's pump and refinery only, but I urge you to keep things like the tank)

Well, given that the tank is a component in the refinery and pump recipes, and it doesn't really short-circuit much of anything, that seems like a no-brainer.

Me quitting BuildCraft development and moving on to work on Charset. (Also, the plan was to make the refinery a multiblock structure and make oil a lot more useful, then move the Stirling Engine to a different module and make a module for everything oil-related? Or something.)

Well, then I guess you just made a suggestion yourself.

 

[Someone Else 37]

Poor planning? Yes. Intentional? Yes. Of course, each is by a different person.

For clarification, the modpack is a RotaryCraft themed pack; buildcraft is included for its effectiveness in construction projects. I had also hoped to use the fuel as a component in jet fuel, but without an effective pump and refinery (the factory module would short-circuit the intended progression), that plan's dead in the water... Er, so to speak.

We were considering adding a custom pump and refinery, but you have quite the advocate in Reika; he seemed rather uncomfortable with the idea, so I figured I'd broach the topic here.

Sent from my SM-T217S using Tapatalk

FYI: RotaryCraft has its own pump. It's normally used to produce water for steam engines and the like, but it *should* also work on oil spouts. You'll still need a refinery from another mod to produce something that the fuel enhancer can use, but maybe BC's refinery is in a module that doesn't include anything progression-breaking?