Where do you start?

[Alice]

With the inclusion of Greg-Tech in the FTB Launcher (presuming you have it kept enabled), and the exclusion of various IC2 machines - What are the first machines and/or items that you build?

I used to go the same old route; generator, macerator and electric furnace - but now obviously I cannot do this (which I am actually quite glad about) I am a bit stuck on where to start.

So what "basic" setup will everyone be starting with?

Alice

 

[Evil Hamster]

I have the basic IC2 stuff built, but just watched an intro to factorization- that might be a good alternate path.

I'm still trying to learn all the stuff in these mods, it can be overwhelming.

 

[Lawbroken]

I also have the normal IC2 way and then once i built my base up i muck around with other mods. Not a big fan of slow start ups but i love trying to make big builds.

 

[Meldiron]

I've fallen a bit back to vanilla after the macerator got changed. So this time i started out with a vanilla tree farm followed by a 9x9 farm that i grow wheat, carrots and potatoes on. Made a small pen for some cows that i breed for food and leather, aimed towards getting cheap armor and to get the enchantment table up early. Then i stocked up on supplies, found myself a nice cave and grabbed as much raw materials as i could carry followed by starting on thermal expansion machienes. After that i started with a little bit of everything and my base is now a propper mess.

 

[enoch]

On our SMP, we didn't realize how much more difficult macerators would be, so instead we built the other things first (generator, furnace, compressor, extractor, etc). Built six coke cove ovens to convert wood to charcoal as our primary fuel source. Made a rubber tree farm, and then jumped into Forestry a bit for automatic wheat farming powered by seed oil. Now we're just trying to find diamond to go to the nether.

 

[Greedseed]

Forestry and factorization are two mods fun to start off in. Also thermal expansion is a good way to start off in a blast.

 

[darR3Ke]

My starts allways vary cause i dont like doing the same stuff over and over.

This start i just started out with a nice wooden house, a weed-, carrot- and potato farm to get my grub on, a cow pen for basic leather needs. After that i started with thermal expansion to get my ore production up, a peat farm to produce power for my thermal expansion machines and a treefarm to get sand for the peat farm. I set up some coke ovens to get a head start with creosote oil production and got my beas up to cultivated and nobles.

Future plans include a spider farm with the spider spawner i found to get string to get my frame production up, more railcraft stuff and expanding into factorisation to tripple my ore production.

 

[Jugg3rV]

I start with some nice spot, for a small house to cover basic needs, then i ventured onwards in search of nice places. If i am lucky to find a village, i fence it in, light it up and lock at least 2 villages up so this village will not die of zombie invasions. Now i start thinking about what a village in this place would need. Increase the farms, build new houses, perhaps create a mine, a smithy and so on

 

[RivingtonDown]

I haven't played with Gregtech but a Pulverizer (Thermal Expansion) would have to be the go-to alternative to the Macerator, it has the same functionality except it runs off MJ instead of EU (so you need a couple of engines). It's not expensive; 3 redstone, 2 gold, 4 iron, and 2 copper (plus a few flint, wood, glass, and cobble).

Before that though make sure you cook everything in the Slag Furnace (Factorization) it has something like a 20% chance to double your ore production and it costs nothing more than 22 Cobblestone... plus you can get Lead out of Silver. If you're lucky and get a good silver deposit or two early on you can build a wind turbine, a battery box, and a handful of mirrors along with a heater (all Factorization). With that setup you can power your Slag Furnaces and regular Furnaces without using any Coal, it'll only really work during the day but it's a fun alternate start to Solar Panels for renewable energy.

Coke Ovens are also very very handy early on. You just need a metric ton of clay, sand, and patience.