What would YOU change about BuildCraft?

[WildWinni]

The only way for that to work is to keep the game running in the background, which sounds like a terrible idea for multiple reasons.

Technically you could totally do that, it's already a feature in the game (one of the hot-keys on the F3 screen) to not pause while out of focus. But I agree, kinda silly ^_^

On a side note that's related but not related. You could create a "Macro" robot
Hold a recording device, and perform a series of actions (movement, left clicks and right clicks - nothing too complicated) Then use the programming table to program the recording into the robot.
Once activated the robot will go from it's dock, to the starting point of the macro, carry it out, then return to the dock.
With some simple redstone/pulser/gate commands you could automate a process that normally requires more interaction than redstone can accomplish!

 

[OreCruncher]

One thing I liked about DartCraft was the auto-smelt pipe. It was useful for converting mob drops into ingots and such. Not that I recommend doing that specific pipe, but I think it would be helpful to have two new pipes:

* Packaging pipe - takes a stream of items and attempts to craft in 4x4/3x3 in order to convert to blocks.
* Unifier Pipe - has a ghost inventory where the player can specify what they want an item to be converted into. It would help manage inventory when there are N different types of copper in a pack.

(Note: Not sure if there is a mod out there that does these things. If there are I would be interested in knowing.)

EDIT: My grammar is bad this AM.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Factorio has a Packager that does just that, and MFR's unifier does the same.

 

[OreCruncher]

Factorio has a Packager that does just that, and MFR's unifier does the same.

Yes, I am aware there are mods that have devices that do those things. I am looking for them in pipe form.

 

[GreenZombie]

Having just gotten into BC robots finally, what really needs to change is the utter lack of any documentation that my google skills can find at least.

The most official BC wiki I could find mentioned the robots but I could not find any description of the new emerald and Quartz gates and why they might be preferable to diamond, the zone planner, the map that records positions, What the brushes are for, and so on.

Advanced questions, such as what happens to robots that fly into unloaded chunks / are instructed to work in unloaded chunks also need answers.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Emerald and Quartz gates are specifically intended for robots, giving far more slots for 'condition:Filter/action' for emerald, and just a couple slots for quartz, but at a much lower price than a diamond.

That said, I find the lack of documentation... disturbing.

 

[GreenZombie]

Emerald and Quartz gates are specifically intended for robots, giving far more slots for 'condition:Filter/action' for emerald, and just a couple slots for quartz, but at a much lower price than a diamond.

That said, I find the lack of documentation... disturbing.

Hmmm. Experimenting with the builder Bot in direwolf20 1.8.0...
Seems as buggy AF - I made a blueprint of a simple structure, stuffed that into a construction marker, discovered painfully that "supply Items" needs to be on a gate on a wooden pipe next to a chest. And watched the bot pickup a stack of blocks, hurl them at the building area, and they never materialized. Just gone.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Lumberjack, and planter work better. Supplier as well. Brink on Youtube did an awesome Buildcraft based series, and had robots running a tree farm powering a quarry mining operation.

 

[Zandorum]

The quarry be changed to be less taxing on the server without losing its old feel.

 

[asiekierka]

Hmmm. Experimenting with the builder Bot in direwolf20 1.8.0...
Seems as buggy AF - I made a blueprint of a simple structure, stuffed that into a construction marker, discovered painfully that "supply Items" needs to be on a gate on a wooden pipe next to a chest. And watched the bot pickup a stack of blocks, hurl them at the building area, and they never materialized. Just gone.

The Builder bot is absolutely useless and will likely be removed. We hoped to fix it, but it's just too much effort to maintain two builders where one of them is far less useful.

 

[GreenZombie]

The Builder bot is absolutely useless and will likely be removed. We hoped to fix it, but it's just too much effort to maintain two builders where one of them is far less useful.

That is a pity. I was hoping to use the builder bot to build in The End - away from the island. (in much the same way that direwolf used pneumaticcraft drones in his S8 lets play).

To be perfect it really just needs (a) a bigger inventory, (b) the ability to have its schematic and starting position set abstractly so it can start building without an anchor block (which is difficult to attain in a void), and (c) to actually place the blocks...

 

[asiekierka]

That is a pity. I was hoping to use the builder bot to build in The End - away from the island. (in much the same way that direwolf used pneumaticcraft drones in his S8 lets play).

To be perfect it really just needs (a) a bigger inventory, (b) the ability to have its schematic and starting position set abstractly so it can start building without an anchor block (which is difficult to attain in a void), and (c) to actually place the blocks...

And there's also the long-standing bug of (d) not supporting composite blueprints.

The problem is that there's not enough developers to maintain everything and the kitchen sink, as well as that I am a bit of a minimalist myself: in fact, you can use a Delivery robot to send necessary items to a Builder remotely - there's a special gate action which will tell the docking station to request the specific items the Builder needs!

 

[GreenZombie]

Admittedly, the things I want to build in the end are going to be about 5x5(x5) chunks in size. Just a tad to big to fit in a regular blueprint.

But ... composite blueprints? Another topic I never saw a hint of on any dox :/
And ... wtf is a List?
Is the ONLY place to find any info on this the YouTube videos from years ago?

 

[asiekierka]

It is not the only place, but a team of three people have spent three months trying to document all of BC and they still haven't begun the robots...

On top of that, I am reluctant to write my own docs before BC 8.0...

EDIT: Here it is, but it is already outdated in some areas, such as Lists. For Lists, one of my videos covers them.

 

[OreCruncher]

Documentation - the bane of a software developers existence.

I like the idea of robots in BC - I just haven't spent time trying to figure them out because of the lack of written documentation. I am a person that learns more by skimming written word than watching videos where over half the content could be edited out.

But definitely - place documentation on the "feature" list for the next release. I would avoid in game documentation via books. It was a novel idea when mods first started using it, but... It doesn't lend itself to dynamic update, and adds bloat to language files and Minecraft runtime.

 

[asiekierka]

Books aren't that bad if done right. I have some novel ideas related to them.

 

[Adagiovibe]

I agree with books not being that bad. Personally I find it more convenient to use in game documentation than some random wiki.

 

[GreenZombie]

I agree with books not being that bad. Personally I find it more convenient to use in game documentation than some random wiki.

In context, ftb.gamepedia.com would be an appropriately unrandom wiki

 

[Adagiovibe]

In context, ftb.gamepedia.com would be an appropriately unrandom wiki

True, but it needs work, there are many incomplete sections

 

[sgbros1]

ftbwiki.org is kinda slightly better though...