Why do people like Thermal Expansion so much?

zilvarwolf

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I admit, I haven't used the FTB launcher for a while(peeked at it again whist trying to locate some old java parameters for running the game smoother), but Horizons is sounding more and more interesting.

As long as it doesn't have any sort of "Meteor Mod" I think I might use it. IIRC it has AM2 in it, so I'd be basically set.
There's no meteor mod.

But there's also no real focus to the mod. It's a showcase of stuff you might or might not have used before, and while some of it has 'interesting' written all over it, some of it has 'ugh, really? More <insert useless item here>'. I'm actually looking at Metallurgy and Pam's Harvestcraft here. Both are interesting mods and provide some nifty stuff, but after a while, you get another batch of Lemurite (or some other, equally useless material) and throw it in the trash chest because you can do better. It's like Underground Biomes. I love have 44,000 colors of cobblestone, but after a while, storing it gets old. And with Pam's, once you can make fruit salads, you're only farming because you enjoy it.

I do agree with AlanEsh a bit. Gold has actually been a challenge to find, but part of that might be the sheer number of structures around my base. Someone else on the server has several stacks of it already, and as long as you can find midasium in the nether, it's gettable.

And STILL no Chisel! A crime against cool things, I tell you!
 

kittle

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Jul 29, 2019
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Adding my $0.02 in here.

With TE, I can start a new world... find the resources I need to build the basic machines, and put them in a vanilla furnace to get the the materials to make my beginning ore processing machines. No intermediate tools are required.

Other things I like is the wrench: Its optional vs required. Need to move your furnace? Whack it with your pick enough time, pickup the block and go. No worries about it randomly degenerating into something else. In a hurry? use your wrench for 1-click breaking. Same goes for conduits: I can choose to use a pick or a wrench. The only difference is how much time i want to spend.

Having done BC pipes since 1.4.7, im just discovering conduits. The ability to upgrade your existing conduits is really nice. no more stacks of obsolete stone pipes cluttering up my inventories.

a suggestion: Currently here is only 1 tier of dynamos. Higher tiers (hardened steam dynamo?) would be lots of fun. Same for other machines.
 

Loufmier

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a suggestion: Currently here is only 1 tier of dynamos. Higher tiers (hardened steam dynamo?) would be lots of fun. Same for other machines.
steam dynamo is a equivalent of industrial steam engine(8mj/t), but better. why would you need even more powerful version of that, when TE3 doesn't have means to utilize that power?
 

dragonmaster0283

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As others have said, TE just has a greater ease starting out when making over IC2 and is a bit more friendlier with setups. However I generally have always swapped over to IC2 later game since TE machines are pretty much 1 speed. With IC2's overclocking makes material process much faster then the pulv/furn works.
 

Loufmier

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As others have said, TE just has a greater ease starting out when making over IC2 and is a bit more friendlier with setups. However I generally have always swapped over to IC2 later game since TE machines are pretty much 1 speed. With IC2's overclocking makes material process much faster then the pulv/furn works.
overclocked IC2 machines only win over TE3 machine when you occasionally manually process singular items. when you process big chunk of items there is no difference, because TE3 with itemducts allows you to spread load across multiple machines, instead of using overclockers.

IC2 machinery is like powerful single core processor. TE3 machinery is a multicore processor that has proper software support.
 

Alcheya

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BC pipes, as they stand, are not intuitive enough. The fact that I can put a chest next to a TE machine with a hopper on top and have automation early on make it better. The stuff that follows is a direct result of the power system already being in place to get my initial machine running. Macerator (before this "exp") was just as easy, if not easier to make, than a pulverizor. Once I realized that the new TE (RF) energy was still compatible with BC machines and the other mods that use MJ, it was an easy decision to make.

Eventually I'll probably have an IC system, purely for the speed upgrade, but it will come much later. TE will still be the base of all my machines as the power system and automation are much more fluid, compatible, and forgiving than IC.
 
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ScorpioOld

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Eventually I'll probably have an IC system, purely for the speed upgrade, but it will come much later. TE will still be the base of all my machines as the power system and automation are much more fluid, compatible, and forgiving than IC.

Most likely you will move toward Rotary craft (not an easier mod, but rewarding in some aspects) in conjunction with TE and AE.
 

KingTriaxx

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If you want speed, TC4's Arcane Bellows work on vanilla furnaces. Stack at at time? Infernal Furnace with Ignis Aspect, easily automatable.
 
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rymmie1981

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@Jadedcat While your resource analysis is excellent, material costs in an infinite world are meaningless. Given that every resource is inexhaustible due to each Minecraft world being far larger than any person could possibly explore in a single lifetime, the only resource that counts is time.

Start from a brand new world and mark the time. Gather the resources and make the machines. The mod with the least time from a fresh world to a fully automated ore processing setup wins. That is the only measurement that truly matters. Fully automated is defined here as you place your ore in a chest and it is placed into another chest as ingots without any further intervention. Processing time until the first ingot is produced counts.
 

Adonis0

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@Jadedcat While your resource analysis is excellent, material costs in an infinite world are meaningless. Given that every resource is inexhaustible due to each Minecraft world being far larger than any person could possibly explore in a single lifetime, the only resource that counts is time.

Start from a brand new world and mark the time. Gather the resources and make the machines. The mod with the least time from a fresh world to a fully automated ore processing setup wins. That is the only measurement that truly matters. Fully automated is defined here as you place your ore in a chest and it is placed into another chest as ingots without any further intervention. Processing time until the first ingot is produced counts.

The thing is, rarer resources take more time to gather..
So the materials cost is something that can be used as a measure because that converts into time

It's better than actually timing yourself actually, because the resources are generated under a random number system, one time it could be really short, and then another time really long. To actually put a useable time on it would require making excessive trips from scratch to get a proper data set. While a materials list is something we can relate to and does not require a big time investment to accurately report.
 

kittle

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steam dynamo is a equivalent of industrial steam engine(8mj/t), but better. why would you need even more powerful version of that, when TE3 doesn't have means to utilize that power?
When you have multiple furnaces / pulverizers / etc to power, then you need much more RF generation than a single engine (or single block) can supply. Having the option to do that in a single (and more expensive) block appeals to me.

Plus with more and more mods accepting RF power, your usage climbs even more.
 

YX33A

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@Jadedcat While your resource analysis is excellent, material costs in an infinite world are meaningless. Given that every resource is inexhaustible due to each Minecraft world being far larger than any person could possibly explore in a single lifetime, the only resource that counts is time.

Start from a brand new world and mark the time. Gather the resources and make the machines. The mod with the least time from a fresh world to a fully automated ore processing setup wins. That is the only measurement that truly matters. Fully automated is defined here as you place your ore in a chest and it is placed into another chest as ingots without any further intervention. Processing time until the first ingot is produced counts.
The thing is, rarer resources take more time to gather..
So the materials cost is something that can be used as a measure because that converts into time

It's better than actually timing yourself actually, because the resources are generated under a random number system, one time it could be really short, and then another time really long. To actually put a useable time on it would require making excessive trips from scratch to get a proper data set. While a materials list is something we can relate to and does not require a big time investment to accurately report.
Time has massive value. Such a high value, in fact, that it can not be said to have a value, because we can not name a price high enough for it. Even worse, we all have only a limited amount of time, and that amount is impossible to track until it is all but gone.

No. Time can not be used to measure how good a method is. It is too valuable. We have to use things we can count and actually measure. Ore counts are easily counted. Time is not.
 

RedBoss

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Rotarycraft is now RF compatible, no?
I think Rotary Craft & Eng. Toolbox jumped on the RF API as soon as it was released

@kittle
There's also a LOT of mods that generate RF. For a "single block" that produces large amounts of RF, take a look at Big Reactors. It's a multi block reactor that can be automated and configured to custom sizes. It allows huge energy production.
 
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snooder

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steam dynamo is a equivalent of industrial steam engine(8mj/t), but better. why would you need even more powerful version of that, when TE3 doesn't have means to utilize that power?

I would also like higher tiers of dynamos. Mostly so that I can streamline my base better. I'd prefer to have 20 machines producing 160RF/t rather than 40 producing 80RF/t. The space savings would mean I can have more space to expend on aesthetic touches and also be able to fit it all within a tighter footprint for chunkloading purposes.
 

Adonis0

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I would also like higher tiers of dynamos. Mostly so that I can streamline my base better. I'd prefer to have 20 machines producing 160RF/t rather than 40 producing 80RF/t. The space savings would mean I can have more space to expend on aesthetic touches and also be able to fit it all within a tighter footprint for chunkloading purposes.
Dream bigger my friend

I'm waiting on something that can produce 10,000 RF/t at the cost of my firstborn child.