Writing FTB "How To" Guide [Community Input Appreciated]

[Bielbo]

Hi Everyone,

I would like to reach out to the community for help and support for what may be an ambitious project at best. Something that will help new players learn FTB. Currently it's learning curve looks like this!

I can't seem to find any decent guides that are written. Most guides are in video form which sometimes isn't the best way to learn so I'm looking to the community to see if we can put together some kind of guide.

What I want to do is have a "Core" section that will be like the essentials such as build a house, mine for basics etc then show other tiers that are more advanced.

Your suggestions are welcome and I hope we can work together.

How can you help:

• Provide a list of steps you take from the beginning towards the later game.
• Provide a list of steps you recommend for a new user.
• Provide ideas to the development of this guide.
• Suggest layout changes to improve user-friendliness.

To Do List:

• Concepts (ore doubling, auto-mining, farming, breeding, fuel production). Brief explanation and intro to relevant areas.

Please take a look at the guide here!

 

[Lambert2191]

everyones playstyles are different. With TE theres an alternative to IC2 (many more examples of alternatives.. foresty trees vs steves carts for one) so any guide would either have to include ALL the alternatives or be horribly lacking.

 

[Bibble]

Might be worth going through the concepts (ore doubling, auto-mining, farming, breeding, fuel production), with brief explanations and links to relevant areas (wiki would be a good place to go). That way you can give an idea of the fundamentals of mods, and the comparisons and alternatives between different methods.

EDIT: Or, you could do a much more basic listing of the items, links to info, and description of tier and use.

 

[Guswut]

ultimate guide.

I assume this is in reference to the guide being the ultimate resource, not the modpack you wish to have it address. If that is the case, you're going to need to make a a few different copies to deal with Ultimate, DireWolf20, MindCrack, Magic World, etc, if you want it to be the "ultimate guide".

 

[Hydra]

Why not just add to the FTB wiki instead? A 'document' guide is not very suitable for this kind of info, a wiki would be a lot better, also because others can add or change stuff when there are gaps. I would personally really like a 'better' FTB wiki that also gave some info on how to get stuff working.

 

[Bielbo]

I assume this is in reference to the guide being the ultimate resource, not the modpack you wish to have it address. If that is the case, you're going to need to make a a few different copies to deal with Ultimate, DireWolf20, MindCrack, Magic World, etc, if you want it to be the "ultimate guide".

Maybe I should omit the "Ultimate" from the title and start with Direwolf20 or something. haha[DOUBLEPOST=1363617295][/DOUBLEPOST]

Why not just add to the FTB wiki instead? A 'document' guide is not very suitable for this kind of info, a wiki would be a lot better, also because others can add or change stuff when there are gaps. I would personally really like a 'better' FTB wiki that also gave some info on how to get stuff working.

I believe the Wiki to be extremely lacking when it comes to new players of FTB. It doesn't help that the stuff is confusing already when they go to the wiki and cant find a lot of help.

 

[Guswut]

Maybe I should omit the "Ultimate" from the title and start with Direwolf20 or something. haha

You need to be more clear about which modpack it is for. And, as Hydra just stated, you would be much better off working through the wiki (or at least, ONE of the dozen wikis).

 

[slay_mithos]

There is also the fact that some people spend quite a long time above ground before doing anything else, gathering food, wood, and exploring to find a nice place to settle.
Others will go digging right after the first tree is chopped down.

As Lambert said, there are so many alternatives to nearly everything that it makes it hard to come up with a guide.

Will you advocate for lava pumping?
Will you go for a steve cart + TE sawmill + 36LP solid boiler for early-ish energy?
What sorting system would you go for, now that there are even more than before?
Would you use turtles? Would you prefer strip mining with enchanted gear over quarrying?

It's a nice idea to make a "How to start" guide, kind of like the old "How to survive your first night", but I think it might be hard to keep it simple enough for the new players, while still providing enough choice for "older" players.

And "how to build a house" is still subjective, some people just dig a hole and stick a bed in it, where other spend hours and tons of resources to make a nice building early to serve as a safe home.

 

[Bielbo]

There is also the fact that some people spend quite a long time above ground before doing anything else, gathering food, wood, and exploring to find a nice place to settle.
Others will go digging right after the first tree is chopped down.

As Lambert said, there are so many alternatives to nearly everything that it makes it hard to come up with a guide.

Will you advocate for lava pumping?
Will you go for a steve cart + TE sawmill + 36LP solid boiler for early-ish energy?
What sorting system would you go for, now that there are even more than before?
Would you use turtles? Would you prefer strip mining with enchanted gear over quarrying?

It's a nice idea to make a "How to start" guide, kind of like the old "How to survive your first night", but I think it might be hard to keep it simple enough for the new players, while still providing enough choice for "older" players.

And "how to build a house" is still subjective, some people just dig a hole and stick a bed in it, where other spend hours and tons of resources to make a nice building early to serve as a safe home.

Those are very good points to make. I appreciate your feedback. I'm looking at whats simple to begin with so that someone could pick the game up and follow the guide and later swap machines out or something when they learn of more efficient ones for example. I just want to find a way of making it easier to play than the learning curve it currently has.

 

[Guswut]

I just want to find a way of making it easier to play than the learning curve it currently has.

Oh, is that all? Tell people to start out as if they're playing vanilla (although if Applied Energetics is in the pack, then you will want to make a quartz grindstone and use it as a low tech ore doubling solution as soon as possible) until they have enough resources on hand to start getting into either Thermal Expansion or Industrial Craft Two. From there, they should review one of the many existing guides that are specific to those mods, and play through with them until they've gotten most of the way through the tech. tree for that mod. After that, they should look at another mod, but only after they have the resources to start really being able to support such things.

It's not rocket surgery, as all you need to do is continue to play the resource gathering/balance game.

 

[Hydra]

I believe the Wiki to be extremely lacking when it comes to new players of FTB. It doesn't help that the stuff is confusing already when they go to the wiki and cant find a lot of help.

Yes, and since the wiki is currently lacking and it's probably the first place they find it's best to go and add to the wiki. You could easily write a "getting started" guide there. I personally do not like 'document' guides because wiki's with interlinking pages are IMHO a much better source.

Guswut is right in that "getting started" with FTB is exactly the same as with vanilla; you build the shelter for your first night and then go mine for your first materials. After that there's loads of options, and there aren't any that are the 'best'.

I personally feel that there are a few distinctive phases in FTB:
- early game: here you just enter the world with nothing but your firsts to punch wood
goals:
* get enough wood for a crafting table
* build a shelter where you can craft and are safe from creepers
* get a furnace running to make torches
* start mining for the basic resources
* get an ore-doubling setup

- mid game: you have a basic setup and want to move toward automatic resource gathering such as quarries and farms
* get an automatd setup for fuel (lava, charcoal, biomass)
* get an automated setup for resources (quarry, turtle)
* get a setup that pulverizes / smelts for you

- late game: you tend to have plenty of most of the resources, you start securing the more hard to get resources
* build mob farms for ender pearls, blazerods
* build other cool stuff

- end game: you have easy means to get pretty much anything you need to craft stuff.
* build a gravichest
* get bored enough to build a GT fusion reactor

 

[YX33A]

I'd suggest not doing a "Ultimate Guide" but a series of guides, listing people's options without Bias. It helps to be Enthusiastic about a method, but a much like a proper wiki, you need to be without bias on a subject.
And the more options you suggest, the better. I'd even suggest mods which aren't in FTB if I think they do something better.(for instance, Immbis Microblocks for pretty much all your Microblock needs, except for covers on Redpower 2 stuff, which they don't work on)
Also, just my opinion, but FTB Ultimate's Learning curve is more like This when you don't try to do everything with all the mods at once. The learning curve for Beekeeping in Forestry, On The Other Hand... Just kidding, it's also not all that hard to understand if you remember to analyze your bees and don't just randomly throw strange bees into a hive and hope for the best.(though sometimes this is the best way to learn new mutations, even more so with some breeds with Extra Bees, but keep your Apiarist's Database on hand when doing so and you can learn things so you don't have to have horribly mutated bees later on)

 

[BeastFeeder]

I think it's a good idea. I would have loved to have something like that when I was first starting.

• • Provide a list of steps you take from the beginning towards the later game.
  • Provide a list of steps you recommend for a new user.
  • Provide ideas to the development of this guide.
  • Suggest layout changes to improve user-friendliness.

To help a new user I'd recommend playing vanilla style until you get a couple chests full of materials and at least about 10-15 diamonds. The problem with that is that new FTB users are probably playing FTB because they're bored with vanilla minecraft and they can't wait to start doing something that is high powered and uniquely NON-vanilla.

So, I'd give an easy early game goal for something they can't do in vanilla. Like a mining well or iron mining drill and battpack. Once they have something like that the early game mining would at least be new and different compared to vanilla mining with iron pickaxes.

That was the most frustrating thing for me. I came to FTB because I was tired of only getting resources by mining and caving and I couldn't wait to get my first quarry. Getting those first diamonds for it was agonizing and seemed to take forever. There were all these new features, but they were still just out of reach.

 

[Enigmius1]

Just a couple of cents on the topic.

First, the poll at the top is poorly phrased. The question asked is "Do you think it's a good idea?" and then you give two options. One is a vote in the affirmative, the other is a passive aggressive shot at the voter. You aren't asking people if they want to provide information, you're asking if they think it's a good idea so the opposing vote would ideally be written to reflect that. Something like, "No, I don't think it would be helpful."

More to the central topic, what you're proposing is what a wiki is for. If people don't want to observe a process in video format it's usually because they're looking for specific information, and that's the purpose of a wiki. And based on what I've seen on the FTB wiki lately, they can use all the competent writing help they can get. It's very difficult to crowd source a guide. A good guide would ideally be written by someone who was sufficiently versed in the topic to cover all of the core aspects. Mining options suited to a tech mod are this, this, and this. Popular means of generating energy are this, thus, and that. Methods of processing resources are comprised of such and such, and automated storage and crafting systems may include bleh, bleh, and blah. Beyond that, it's mod by mod for gits and shiggles. That's one person writing that,. And if ya can't manage it on your own, leave it for someone else because crowd sourcing it is the sure road to awful.

 

[ILoveGregTech]

Yes, and since the wiki is currently lacking and it's probably the first place they find it's best to go and add to the wiki. You could easily write a "getting started" guide there. I personally do not like 'document' guides because wiki's with interlinking pages are IMHO a much better source.

Guswut is right in that "getting started" with FTB is exactly the same as with vanilla; you build the shelter for your first night and then go mine for your first materials. After that there's loads of options, and there aren't any that are the 'best'.

I personally feel that there are a few distinctive phases in FTB:
- early game: here you just enter the world with nothing but your firsts to punch wood
goals:
* get enough wood for a crafting table
* build a shelter where you can craft and are safe from creepers
* get a furnace running to make torches
* start mining for the basic resources
* get an ore-doubling setup

- mid game: you have a basic setup and want to move toward automatic resource gathering such as quarries and farms
* get an automatd setup for fuel (lava, charcoal, biomass)
* get an automated setup for resources (quarry, turtle)
* get a setup that pulverizes / smelts for you

- late game: you tend to have plenty of most of the resources, you start securing the more hard to get resources
* build mob farms for ender pearls, blazerods
* build other cool stuff

- end game: you have easy means to get pretty much anything you need to craft stuff.
* build a gravichest
* get bored enough to build a GT fusion reactor

Fusion Reactor: Ultimate POWAAAH!

 

[Saice]

I would agree a stright step by step would actully not be all that useful to everyone.

More a covering of the basics would be better. With alternitive routes and the such.

I do agree mostly in the idea of game phases Early, Mid, Late, and End but even that has wiggle room as diffrent play styles will move goals between these phases based on what they want to do.

A basic sort of intro to each phase and some small mini guides to the varius things during that phase would be much better then go get X of this and built Y and Z so you can start doing A.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I've written a number of guides and QuickTips on my blog in my sig. I generally tend to have the format of: 'this is what you need to get started. This is generally where you start with it. These are the concepts you need to really get this mod going. Now have fun.'

 

[Saice]

I've written a number of guides and QuickTips on my blog in my sig. I generally tend to have the format of: 'this is what you need to get started. This is generally where you start with it. These are the concepts you need to really get this mod going. Now have fun.'

Yes basicly that is what I would like in an over reaching How To.

Only broken down into the varuis phases of game play and coving some of the alternate paths.

This is what you should have in this phase... this is what you can do... this is where you will be moving to the next phase.

But keep in mind even that gets wonky bepending on what power your going with BT,MJ or EU and what systems your focusing on. Do you have Thaum or Bees all that effects just how you can do things and opens up any alternative paths for progress.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Yes basicly that is what I would like in an over reaching How To.

Only broken down into the varuis phases of game play and coving some of the alternate paths.

This is what you should have in this phase... this is what you can do... this is where you will be moving to the next phase.

But keep in mind even that gets wonky bepending on what power your going with BT,MJ or EU and what systems your focusing on. Do you have Thaum or Bees all that effects just how you can do things and opens up any alternative paths for progress.

Yea, it would pretty much have to be a different guide per mod pack, because of all the different options presented. So 'how to start out in DW20 pack', 'how to start out in Mindcrack', 'how to start out in Ultimate pack'...

Hmmm... this gives me an idea, in point of fact...

 

[Saice]

Yea, it would pretty much have to be a different guide per mod pack, because of all the different options presented. So 'how to start out in DW20 pack', 'how to start out in Mindcrack', 'how to start out in Ultimate pack'...

Hmmm... this gives me an idea, in point of fact...

Actully yes basicly that. And this could be done just by doing something like

Phase
Pack A
Pack B
Pack c

sort of format.