What's the point of RotaryCraft?

[Reika]

Well it depends on what you mean by obsidian. If you're trying to get a nether portal, then all you need is wood>wooden pick>stone>stone pick&furnace>iron>bucket.

If you're attempting to get an enchanting table, and hence need the blocks in item form? Yeah. You get to go through the oh-so-strenuous "tech gate" of: Get one log, make crafting bench, get two more logs, make more planks, make sticks with two of those planks, make a wooden pickaxe, mine into the ground, make a cobblestone pick with the spare two sticks in your inventory, make a furnace, find and mine 3-6 iron, find another log, make more planks, make more sticks, make a pickaxe (and a bucket if you aren't going to aquaduct water to lava), find diamonds, mine 3, make a pickaxe, mine obsidian.

If I recall the steps correctly, that's easier to describe than making a tech tier 1 generator in IC, not even IC2 or IC2-Exp, if more time consuming due to mining requirements. So why is an enchanting table considered to be higher tech, or later game than an IndustrialCraft generator? Because vanilla's "tiers" are based on the flawed assumption that rarity = difficulty. It doesn't, it just means (statistically speaking) more time. For some people, it will take less time to build an iron golem farm (sans villagers), or a castle, or a cathedral, or pretty much any other megaproject, than it would to make and fully stock an enchanting room. Because they can't find cows, or reeds, or diamonds are extremely elusive for them.

Whereas Rotarycraft involves you finding redstone, iron, a carbon source (which one for the life of me I can't remember right now), and creepers to get started (yes, I dropped out the obvious steps of making the various pickaxes, and the furnace, and the stone bricks... Stuff that any game which isn't peaceful or creative will have you do). I have yet to meet any minecraft player that knows the simplest things about MC, like redstone is deep in the earth and mobs spawn in the dark, who could not have a piece of HSLA steel by their first or second MC dawn if they decided to dedicate themselves to doing that. One time I spent an entire MC month trying to find the reeds and cows needed to make books.

If you take it to the extreme and want to be particularly focused on the exact definitions? Any mod that doesn't rely 100% upon things you can harvest completely by hand is "tech gated" or has a "tech tier". But just because you will probably manage to not find lava or a cave underneath you, doesn't make digging the block you're standing on a good idea. What is technically true, or even probable isn't always the point, especially when one is talking in broad terms.

Assuming that you have 100% completed vanilla's "tech" You should be perfectly able to build a MFE from any industrialcraft version without crafting a single machine first. The same goes for every single machine in MFR except for the Laser Drill Precharger (you need a slaughterhouse for pink slime first).
Thaumcraft requires a wand, a bookshelf, a research table, ink and scribing tools, and a thaumometer to unlock (nearly) the entire tech tree; only the special unlocks aren't obtainable after you've Scanned All The Things.
Botania only has pre-botania, the petal apothecary, the pure daisy and a mana generator to get living rock/wood, the altar, and then IIRC you're at the top "tier" of the mod; you can craft anything.
IC2 (pre-liquid UU), got Compressor and Macerator? You can make anything else in the mod.
Buildcraft requires a single engine, an assembly table, and a laser to fully unlock the mod.
The same basic progression happens for nearly every mod out there. There generally isn't any tier you can't reach in less than 6 steps, assuming you've gotten a diamond pickaxe.

Some exceptions are Blood Magic, Gregtech, and RotaryCraft, (probably ReactorCraft and Electricraft too). There are large portions of those mods that simply cannot be obtained without having done work in the previous tier, often multiple things. Try making a fusion reactor from Gregtech with the completely raw unprocessed materials in front of you. How about a Bedrock Breaker, a Master Blood Orb, or a Tokamak reactor? You're going to have to progress up the tech tiers for those mods to do so.

The way I look at it is this: Assume you have a fully stocked vanilla base and literally infinite raw worldgen resources. Can you make every item in the mod without having use or place any mod items? Then there are no tiers. If you only need a single mod item/block to get all the tech, it's got 1 tier. If you need two items/blocks and one of them requires another mod item/block to be made? 2 tiers.

IC2 Exp has 4 tiers, because liquid UU is made in a T3 machine, in other words making it requires another industrialcraft machine to be made first. In this case, a macerator, a compressor, and a power generator of some sort. Those machines cannot be made without the hammer and cutters , which are vanilla crafting recipes.

I'd list off the Gregtech or RotaryCraft tiers... but I don't know them well enough, and the research on a wiki or in-game would take significantly more time than I care to put into this post, because at this point, my point should be clear.

Edit: It might look as though there are a few mistakes in my early tech tree examples, like forgetting about the IC2-EXP hammer and cutter requirement for making an MFE, but I was discounting tools when I first started this post and I've already re-written this entire wall of text too many times to want to do it again.

Beautifully worded and entirely accurate.

Can't you use TNT to assplode the diamond ore block? Or will it always destroy the item as well (for sake of blärgh we assume that no mod affects TNT)

TNT normally has a 30% drop rate.

 

[Moasseman]

TNT normally has a 30% drop rate.

Yeah, take that whoever said that you need iron! You don't need a pickaxe at all!

E: Unless TNT is really silky and good for your skin and returns the block itself like a silktouch =(

 

[Someone Else 37]

If you're attempting to get an enchanting table, and hence need the blocks in item form? Yeah. You get to go through the oh-so-strenuous "tech gate" of: Get one log, make crafting bench, get two more logs, make more planks, make sticks with two of those planks, make a wooden pickaxe, mine into the ground, make a cobblestone pick with the spare two sticks in your inventory, make a furnace, find and mine 3-6 iron, find another log, make more planks, make more sticks, make a pickaxe (and a bucket if you aren't going to aquaduct water to lava), find diamonds, mine 3, make a pickaxe, mine obsidian.

If I recall the steps correctly, that's easier to describe than making a tech tier 1 generator in IC, not even IC2 or IC2-Exp, if more time consuming due to mining requirements. So why is an enchanting table considered to be higher tech, or later game than an IndustrialCraft generator? Because vanilla's "tiers" are based on the flawed assumption that rarity = difficulty. It doesn't, it just means (statistically speaking) more time. For some people, it will take less time to build an iron golem farm (sans villagers), or a castle, or a cathedral, or pretty much any other megaproject, than it would to make and fully stock an enchanting room. Because they can't find cows, or reeds, or diamonds are extremely elusive for them.
-snip-

How is going from nothing (a reasonable place to start in Vanilla) to diamond tools in 3-4 steps (unless you get lucky) different on a fundamental level from going from diamond tools to jet fuel or liquid UUM in about as many?

While I don't doubt that the rarity of metals, diamonds, and other things plays a large role in that time it may take to reach the higher tiers of vanilla Minecraft, it's not the only thing in play. I do not see how the inability to get diamonds before stone and iron (without taking shortcuts like TNT or looting villages or dungeons) is any different from the inability to make jet fuel before a fractionator, worktable, and blast furnace.

I cannot disagree, however, with what you've said regarding the general lack of tiers in most mods. I had never thought about it that way- I learned something. I'll keep this in mind if I ever get around to writing my own mods.

Can't you use TNT to assplode the diamond ore block? Or will it always destroy the item as well (for sake of blärgh we assume that no mod affects TNT)

You certainly can do that, although most people don't want to blow up their first diamonds.
Even better: Use a creeper. Does attracting and detonating a creeper even count as a tech tier, since they do that on their own? If not, that makes diamonds tier 1. But the tools are definitely still tier 2 (at least- if not 3 or 4) in my book, because crafting table.

 

[TomeWyrm]

Technically yes, which would set the "tech tier" back a bit. There's a 75% chance of destruction though... so not really recommended
Also, there's the obvious time sink (and risk) of getting enough sand and gunpowder

How is going from nothing (a reasonable place to start in Vanilla) to diamond tools in 3-4 steps (unless you get lucky) different on a fundamental level from going from diamond tools to jet fuel or liquid UUM in about as many?

While I don't doubt that the rarity of metals, diamonds, and other things plays a large role in that time it may take to reach the higher tiers of vanilla Minecraft, it's not the only thing in play. I do not see how the inability to get diamonds before stone and iron (without taking shortcuts like TNT or looting villages or dungeons) is any different from the inability to make jet fuel before a fractionator, worktable, and blast furnace.

I cannot disagree, however, with what you've said regarding the general lack of tiers in most mods. I had never thought about it that way- I learned something. I'll keep this in mind if I ever get around to writing my own mods.

Like Pyure said:

Scale

Also the general assumption (at least for me, and it looks like a lot of other people, from the way they phrase their arguments) is that unless a mod changes vanilla mechanics beyond the commonly accepted tweaks like no-mob-griefing, turning fire off, or adding alternatives (tin buckets, or quartz tools); it is ignored for the purposes of a discussion of modded minecraft.

In addition, you can skip most of the tiers through purely vanilla mechanics. Villagers are T0, so you could conceivably get anything from villager trading early. Dungeon loot is a thing. Creepers, TNT, and Ghasts can drop blocks. Zombies can drop iron gear. While it does have some tiers, they're very VERY broad. There's a pretty staggering amount of vanilla content that can be experienced without ever making a crafting bench. Wood tools open up another pretty large chunk, and stone tools only really unlock your ability to get Iron. Iron then unlocks everything except for beacons, ender chests, and enchantment tables. Except you CAN find obsidian in village chests, and iron tools... so technically, if you explore enough, all of Minecraft is t1-reachable, just add crafting table!

Really though, if we don't focus on the technicalities? Vanilla is actually a reasonably well (if very broadly) gated game.

 

[Narc]

Yeah, take that whoever said that you need iron! You don't need a pickaxe at all!

I believe that's what a friend of mine terms the "Premature Optimization" achievement: acquire diamonds before making a pickaxe. It's not impossible, you just need a cave with some diamonds and a well-placed creeper...

 

[Ieldra]

While I don't doubt that the rarity of metals, diamonds, and other things plays a large role in that time it may take to reach the higher tiers of vanilla Minecraft, it's not the only thing in play. I do not see how the inability to get diamonds before stone and iron (without taking shortcuts like TNT or looting villages or dungeons) is any different from the inability to make jet fuel before a fractionator, worktable, and blast furnace.

I disagree that rarity =/= difficulty. For me, it has always been its most defining part. You see, tiered tech progression, with advanced stuff requiring machines from lower tiers to be used, I don't perceive that as difficult. It feels natural, unless I jump into a new tech mod late and already have advanced stuff of other mods running. That's why I say RotaryCraft, on the whole, is easy to use. As a rule, progression does not depend on acquiring significant quantities of rare resources, but on the use of certain machines instead. A CVT takes a bedrock shaft unit to create, but while getting that may take some time, bedrock is easy to find. You'll need tungsten for the gas turbine, and while that *is* rare, you only need a small amount and you don't need to grind for it. Run an extractor for some time and you'll have it.

Meanwhile, RotaryCraft does much to ensure that resources aren't your main problem. With the possible exception of Mekanism's digital miner, an enchanted boring machine may be the most efficient all-purpose mining machine in modded minecraft, in terms of the amount of useful resources you get out of it for the power you invest and taking into consideration that it mines horizontally, which means you can mine at set elevations. I can't say how much of a relief that is. While I have complained that RoC goes all-out in the complexity of fuel production, I rather have that than "this setup requires another stack of diamonds to build". IC2-EXP MFS unit = 40 diamonds. No thanks. Oh, and never mind mods like MFFS (Calclavia version). I like MFFS for its versatility, but it takes tons of diamonds to make it do anything at a tolerable speed.

The thing is, "rarity-gating" may become meaningless as the game progresses, but while it still works to make things difficult, it is the frustrating kind of difficult. So yes, it is very different from things like "you need to make machine A before you can make B".

 

[Reika]

That's why I say RotaryCraft, on the whole, is easy to use. As a rule, progression does not depend on acquiring significant quantities of rare resources, but on the use of certain machines instead.

A huge number of people cannot even begin to understand how to use RC, making it the hardest mod ever made for some.

 

[Ieldra]

A huge number of people cannot even begin to understand how to use RC, making it the hardest mod ever made for some.

I find this very odd. I mean, creating a production chain for wood and saplings for biofuel production is more complex than the basics of RoC's power system. OK yes, I am an old-school programmer used to thinking in powers of 2, and yes, I have actually studied some math and physics, so of course things are easy for me, but RoC's power arithmetic is really very basic. I would've had no problem understanding it at an age of 16. Can it be that those people didn't even seriously try? I can understand being somewhat daunted by RoC and discouraged before even starting, but being unable to understand if you actually try? That I don't get.

 

[YX33A]

A huge number of people cannot even begin to understand how to use RC, making it the hardest mod ever made for some.

They can even into RotaryCraft, but they refuse to do math. That said, it's a great mod, but a bit of guiding would do them a world of good. Just writing in the handbook a "suboptimal progression chain" will suffice. You give them a handful of tools and toys, but too many people have no idea how to use them or even get them, or why one should use a certain machine.

I still suggest people who have never used RoC before to try making a T5 Magneto Static Generator. The process will guide one through the soft tier system you use just fine.

 

[McJty]

I still suggest people who have never used RoC before to try making a T5 Magneto Static Generator. The process will guide one through the soft tier system you use just fine.

Actually that's very true. A simple guide focusing *only* on how to make a T5 magnetostatic genetaror would pretty much cover most important areas of RotaryCraft.

 

[Ieldra]

Actually that's very true. A simple guide focusing *only* on how to make a T5 magnetostatic genetaror would pretty much cover most important areas of RotaryCraft.

Perhaps, but it also draws attention to where RoC can be outright frustrating: Magnetizing, easy enough to do but man, it taxes your patience. Ethanol production: easy to do but just try to automate it, and unless you have EnderIO or Logistics Pipes, you won't know where to put the countless pipes you'll need. Jet fuel. My first reaction was "It requires...*what*? I won't bother."

Usually, I tend to learn mods by mod spotlight. Unfortunately, there are few for RoC, and maybe it's just me but Danilus' voice is like a sleeping pill. His spotlights are the most comprehensive, but the concentration I'd usually spend to learn is used up trying to stay awake.

 

[namiasdf]

The difficulty lies in design, imo. Achieving different tiers, etc. is a matter of time and resource acquisition. A bit of luck and a lot of waiting/mining and you pretty much have all paths open to you.

The real challenge in sandbox games is design. Building something from scratch, when you know that you start in a place that is not significantly representative of the end state, mean that a large portion of good design requires a lot of forward planning. Space, energy, resource, and time considerations are all apart of the process.

The focus of any person's FTB progression should be cross-mod integration. Since the value of a modpack, is in fact having multiple mods to play with. It has taken me 3-4 worlds to fully develop my system of energy gen/transfer, item/resource management/acquisition, tool set acquisition/maintenance, and building strategies (resource and time management).

Understanding key features of all mods, and how they work in conjunction with one another require one to know the finer specifics of each individual mod. IC2 back in 1.4.7 with GT installed was a volatile place to be for a noob. Something as simple as plugging a batbox to a line of LV tin cable meant losing all that cable. Antics of EU/t vs. EU/p and how to properly transform EU both ways required a lot of playing around.

You also had to consider that various machines only took MJ, such that focusing on building a system which centralizes on EU production, meant strategies for handling MJ were required. Yes, you could build multiple, separate energy systems, but from an engineering standpoint you are being quite inefficient with your resources. You will never be able to fully utilize the full potential of your system.

Choices of which end-game tier of armour/tools/weapons, or even machine you wanted to use was a matter of what type of tech path/mod-favoured systems you have built. Nano/quantum require a relatively robust EU generation system, storing ~ 100 million EU in total. Even at 512 EU/t generation that's 200 000 ticks, or 10 000 seconds (3 hours +).

Where does RoC stand? It sounds to me like RoC is a tier based, all-inclusive, do everything tech related mod. This is similar to IC2 and TE. I feel that (after watching the fusion reactor tutorial by Reika) that RoC/ReC(?) attempts to utilize multi-blocks as much as possible, avoiding the 1-block solution type of deal. This is the same as IC2 GT. Additionally, requiring one to understand that a moment = force and how fast you choose to use that moment (rotational speed) will make you think about what you are doing. Similarly to IC2 EU, which is a pain to deal with and one mistake meant blowing up some pretty expensive multiblocks.

The reason why TE is popular, is because there are so many other things to do in FTB. Not everybody playing this game is an engineer, scientist, or mathematician. Already, I can observe the psychology of our scientist players, laymen players, and personal to myself, engineer players. What each of us want and get from FTB is very different.

So, in the end if you want to know why RoC exists, is because Factorization exists beside IC2, TE, BC, etc. All have their own power system, item/liquid/energy transport, and machines that (whether in a system or singular) do precisely the same things. This is what people want from modded Minecraft and is what sets it apart from vanilla. This is why almost all the major mods focus in on these key things. Even TC4 has evolved into a realm which a new genre of automation is being developed.

 

[McJty]

There are different ways to tackle RotaryCraft. What I usually do is the following steps:

- Make a DC engine + Fermenter to make ethanol
- Make a simple canola seed farm (manual to start with)
- Make a gasoline engine + Grinder to do early game ore processing (3x ingots per ore) and also to make lubricant with canola seeds
- Make a DC engine + Steam engine + pump + fans to make an automated canola seed farm and send that to a grinder setup for lubricant production
- Make 4 hydrokinetic engines + diamond gearbox + diamond shafts + bedrock breaker to make bedrock
- When I have enough bedrock I use the hydrokinetics to convert that power to RF into a tesseract

From there on I go to the multiple magnetostatics tiers and extractors.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Here's an odd one, why does running silver through the extractor produce a different flavour of silver flakes than the silver flakes you get as a byproduct of processing gold?

I mean it's simple enough to unify them but it really makes my neatfreak side twitch violently

 

[Reika]

Actually that's very true. A simple guide focusing *only* on how to make a T5 magnetostatic genetaror would pretty much cover most important areas of RotaryCraft.

But I do not want to encourage magnetostatics as a goal for users.

The reason why TE is popular, is because there are so many other things to do in FTB. Not everybody playing this game is an engineer, scientist, or mathematician. Already, I can observe the psychology of our scientist players, laymen players, and personal to myself, engineer players. What each of us want and get from FTB is very different.

I would argue that TE's popularity came from two main factors:

• A reputation for being extremely light on render and computational load
• RF and TE dynamos being so easy to use that it is literally "plug and play".

Here's an odd one, why does running silver through the extractor produce a different flavour of silver flakes than the silver flakes you get as a byproduct of processing gold?

I mean it's simple enough to unify them but it really makes my neatfreak side twitch violently

The byproduct ones predate the Extractor's mod ore support by a long time and were added as a way to make silver obtainable in RC. The latter are autogenerated from a script that handles all mod ore.

 

[namiasdf]

The reason why TE is popular, is because there are so many other things to do in FTB. Not everybody playing this game is an engineer, scientist, or mathematician.

[T]here are so many other things to do in FTB.

 

[Pyure]

But I do not want to encourage magnetostatics as a goal for users.

If you feel the Magnetostatics are sufficiently balanced by now, its as good a target for a guide as any. And as stated, it provides the best gating tutorial.

An alternative would be to somehow tier the extractor, as its an extremely* popular first-target for your mod. I have no particular suggestions on how to achieve this or what the tiers would provide.

*(Doesn't everyone first look at this and aim for it?)

 

[danidas]

A huge number of people cannot even begin to understand how to use RC, making it the hardest mod ever made for some.

Math is hard, if only there was a built in calculator to do the work for you. But then that would make things too easy.

If you feel the Magnetostatics are sufficiently balanced by now, its as good a target for a guide as any. And as stated, it provides the best gating tutorial.

An alternative would be to somehow tier the extractor, as its an extremely* popular first-target for your mod. I have no particular suggestions on how to achieve this or what the tiers would provide.

*(Doesn't everyone first look at this and aim for it?)

That and the bedrock breaker are the two most popular options to try to power your way to. As for the the magnetostatics they were just the easiest route to them and is why they were so popular. Since RF is currently one of the easiest energy systems to use and produce.

 

[malicious_bloke]

That and the bedrock breaker are the two most popular options to try to power your way to. As for the the magnetostatics they were just the easiest route to them and is why they were so popular. Since RF is currently one of the easiest energy systems to use and produce.

Pretty much this. The changes to the magnetostatics really did the trick though, I started looking for faster engines precisely because trying to magnetize tier 2 upgrades off a line of tier 1 magnetostatics is a cripplingly slow process before you can break bedrock for a CVT

Never looked back though, even when my fully automatic jet fuel farm crashes my framerate

 

[JoeDolca]

A huge number of people cannot even begin to understand how to use RC, making it the hardest mod ever made for some.

It's 2hard4me, sadly. And constant shaft maintenance doesn't sound that much fun... It sounds more like unnecessary innuendo.