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In Defense of Equivalent Exchange


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HV solar panels are in tekkit and you need 8x8x8 regular solar panels each and they output 512 eu/t. It's not that big of a deal to make them if you automate the resource condensing and make them with automatic crafting tables.

So to clarify, you just create a massive 8x8x8 block of solar panels and they all have a singular output? Neat! Thanks for clarifying.

Based on that information, it is definitely more cost effective to create the extra recyclers. Solar panels and recyclers are extremely similar in cost. So if the main consideration here is maximizing UUM output for a fixed amount of resources, overclocking is vastly inferior.

It is true that overclocking takes less space and tubing, but those are the only real advantages. That said, it comes down to matter of personal preference whether to go for "optimal" or "tidy."

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So to clarify, you just create a massive 8x8x8 block of solar panels and they all have a singular output? Neat! Thanks for clarifying.

Not quite. You craft 8 solar panels around an lv transformer, and it makes a solar panel with 8 times the output.

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So to clarify, you just create a massive 8x8x8 block of solar panels and they all have a singular output? Neat! Thanks for clarifying.

Yes as Jay? says, there are new crafting recipes to create compact solar panel blocks:

8 IC2 Solar + 1 LV Transformer = 1 LV Solar (emits 8 EU/t)

8 LV Solar + 1 MV Transformer = 1 MV Solar (emits 64 EU/t)

8 MV Solar + 1 HV Transformer = 1 HV Solar (emits 512 EU/t)

So it takes 1 HV Transformer, 8 MV Transformers, 64 LV transformers and 512 IC2 solar panel to make 1 HV Solar panel.

I find the MV solar panel to be the most useful, in combination with some MFEs or an MFSU it will power most non-massfab IC2 factory setup. They will also happily power a Quarry or Filler using Energy Link or Electrical Engine.

I use HV panels to power a Tesla coil based mob grinder, as well as the ever-greedy massfab.

LV panels I don't find much use for, but they are good for powering the Forestry machines w/ electrical engines.

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Yes as Jay? says, there are new crafting recipes to create compact solar panel blocks:

8 IC2 Solar + 1 LV Transformer = 1 LV Solar (emits 8 EU/t)

8 LV Solar + 1 MV Transformer = 1 MV Solar (emits 64 EU/t)

8 MV Solar + 1 HV Transformer = 1 HV Solar (emits 512 EU/t)

This is very helpful, thank you for the details. I suppose this is an add-on to IC2 because I couldn't find information on the IC2 wiki. I'll give it a whirl when I'm back home.

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This is very helpful, thank you for the details. I suppose this is an add-on to IC2 because I couldn't find information on the IC2 wiki. I'll give it a whirl when I'm back home.

http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=4827

Also, worked this out awhile ago, I believe the recipes are still the same.

LV Array

8 Solar Panels

1 LV Transformer



MV Array

8 LV Arrays

1 MV Transformer



HV SOlar Array

8 MV Arrays

1 HV Transformer





HV Solar Array Parts list (From Scratch)

1 HV Transformer

8 MV Transformers

64 LV Transformers

512 Solar Panels







1 HV Transformer Parts

	2 Insulated Copper Cables

							1 Copper Bar

							2 Rubber

	1 MV Transformer

		2 Insulated Copper Cables

							1 Copper Bar

							2 Rubber

		1 Machine

							8 Refined Iron

	1 Electronic Circuit

		6 Insulated Copper Cables

							3 Copper Bars

							6 Rubber

		2 Redstone

							2 Restone

		1 Refined Iron

							1 Refined Iron

	1 Energy Crystal

							8 Redstone

							1 Diamond



8 MV Transformers Parts

	16 Insulated Copper Cables

							8 Copper Bar

							16 Rubber

	8 Machine

							64 Refined Iron



64 LV Transformers Parts

	128 Insulated Copper Cables

							64 Copper Bar

							128 Rubber

	192 Copper Bar

							192 Copper Bar

	256 Wood Plank

							256 Wood Planks



512 Solar Panels Parts

	1024 Electronic Circuit

		3072 Insulated Copper Cables

							1536 Copper Bars

							3072 Rubber

		1024 Redstone

							1024 Restone

		512 Refined Iron

							512 Refined Iron

	512 Generator

		512 RE Battery

			512 Insulated Copper Cables

							256 Copper Bar

							512 Rubber

			1024 Redstone

							1024 Redstone

			2048 Tin Bar

							2048 Tin Bar

		512 Machine

			4096 Refined Iron Bar

							4096 Refined Iron Bar				

		512 Furnace

			4096 Cobblestone

							4096 Cobblestone

	1536 Coal Dust

							1536 Coal Dust

	1536 Glass

							1536 Glass



Diamond - 1

Wood Planks - 256

Glass - 1536

Coal Dust - 1536

Tin Bar - 2048

Redstone - 2058

Copper Bar - 2061

Rubber - 3738

Cobblestone - 4096

Refined Iron - 4681

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The main problem I have with EE is how it messes with /other mods/ curves.

Progress in IC2/Buildcraft is usaly hampered by redstone, tin, iron, diamonds e.t.c. You run out of one? your whole project halts untill you go mining or quarry up.

For example, just getting your first quarry, your going to need to find 8 diamonds, or 8 stacks of coal and the time/energy/obsidion needed to make diamonds.

Have EE? Just exchange all that spare gold you found into diamonds. Or set up a IC2 Pumpkin farm. Just need to find /1/ diamond to get started on that. (And heck, that can be gotten with a IC2 setup if needs be, if your strugling to find a diamond)

It gets worse when you consider more active combinations of the mods. The volcante amulet allows for infinate geothermal which outstrips a lot. A Ice condensor makes redicluious SUC reactors easy to make.

Forget comparing how long it takes to get to X diamonds a second out of thin air with each mod independently, with the combinations you can create /crazy/ fast diamonds just from easly generated matter. (I dread to think whats going to happon with IC2's Crops harvisters)

And the end game EE creates when you get there is nuts. It's creative on crack.

Love EE2 for what it does. But I would never use it when I wanted more sensable curves and a more 'quarry everything' endgame.

Heck, we wouldn't even bother with our crazy store room we just made if we had EE2 enabled. Why make a complex sorting system when you can turn everything into EMC?

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Heck, we wouldn't even bother with our crazy store room we just made if we had EE2 enabled. Why make a complex sorting system when you can turn everything into EMC?

Because when working on large projects it'd still be easier to just retrieve what you need. That's why my base has 150 mini-flowers (1/5) with each condenser containing a different target (I may expand it in the future). That was it's self-replenishing. The sorting system is used for non-transmutable items and those that have been or are auto-crafted.

Either way, Minecraft is about doing what you want to do right? Maybe some people like working toward super creative mode ;p

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EE2 eliminates the excitement of exploring caverns for diamonds. {...}

We are disabling a very large number of EE2 items for our next world (especially Energy Collectors!), but we are keeping a few select items. Alchemy bags are awesome inventory management, and they allow you to keep your hard-earned valuables safe. Condensers and transmutation tables give players more freedom to "trade" their unwanted resources for what they need for their projects.

Be sure to come back and tell us how long it takes before someone sets up a large scale automated operation to feed a condenser. Should take about a day to build one that generates a diamond per minute. :)

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Be sure to come back and tell us how long it takes before someone sets up a large scale automated operation to feed a condenser. Should take about a day to build one that generates a diamond per minute. :)

It would take a lot longer than a day for a new world, but aside from the exaggeration you're totally right.

In fact, the feedback from my players is that we should rip out EE entirely. The reasoning is that certain resources are intended to be super rare, not just super expensive. This obviously covers diamonds as you have mentioned, but also extends to mob drops, clay, and various other things.

Turning off EE means player and admin shops will actually have a reason to exist again, which I'm excited about.

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WOAH, I loved this post. EE is a fucking awesome mod, I love it in many ways... however, I think that it's overpowered in various ways. In my Let's Plays, I try to not use stuff that are so fucking OP in the beggining, to set up some IC2 and Buildcraft stuff before. I think that's good.

A sugestion I would do to the creator of EE is to make stuff MORE expansive. When I found the mod the first time i tought HOLY FUCKING SHIT, THIS IS SO EXPANSIVE! I'LL NEVER GET THESE STUFF! And now on my server I have everything.

I just think that Dark Matter should be as expansive as Red Matter, and this last one should cost at least 20 diamonds. Also, re-aranging the EMC values should be good. Glass = 1 EMC? And the colector's speed should be decreased by 4.

Altought I like the mod very much, I try to avoid it sometimes.

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A sugestion I would do to the creator of EE is to make stuff MORE expansive.

All upping the cost will do is add a slight delay before you get the higher end stuff. Same with slowing down collector speed. You just keep expanding your collector array until you get the output you want. Given the geometric returns of EE, it's not possible to put a realistic check on it by increasing the cost. Even making it 10 times more expensive would only add an hour or two into how long it takes me to set up my standard array. Even making it 100 times as expensive (or 100 times as slow); it would only take 7 times as long to set up 100 of them. At that point the only thing you're really adding to is server load.

I just think that Dark Matter should be as expansive as Red Matter, and this last one should cost at least 20 diamonds.

Red Matter already costs 57 diamonds.

My normal array does make collecting everything simple, stack a couple of blocks where the middle of the array will be. Put a sequencer on top, surround the sequencer with transposers with tubes running down and into a condenser (to make it easy to output exactly what you want). Put 4 condensers on top of the transposers (set for diamond), surround those condensers with relays and surround the relays with collectors. At level 3 they make enough light that you don't need any extra light, but what the heck, glowstone is cheap enough to duplicate if you need to make it look pretty.

2012_04_14_04_11_40.jpg

Cut away view cut down to show the center sequencer.

This array will output 8 diamonds in a bit over a minute. A full night of building and you can make an entire stack of Red Matter.

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Solution :

1. Slow down the collector arrays. The problem is geometric growth : the collector arrays make enough EMC to double themselves every 4.5 hours (per the author of equivalent exchange in IRC). If they took say, 96 hours to make enough EMC for a doubling, they would not be so stupidly overpowered. You'd have to run quarries to mine enough materials to make more collector arrays rather than creating them from their own EMC.

That means slowing them down by a factor of at least 20 times.

2. Add losses when you liquify items to get EMC (using antimatter relays, etc). If you lost ~50% of the potential EMC when you "burn" an item to get EMC, many of the imbalances of this mod would be fixed. Now, you could choose to convert iron to diamond, or diamond to iron...but you lose resources in the conversion, so it's more efficient to find the resources you need directly. Conversions are just there for the convenience factor when you have a huge surplus of one resource and a shortage of another.

In fact, making the losses 75% or even 90% would still make conversions to EMC a good idea when it's a junk resource, but it would actually make finding expensive resources still worthwhile.

Granted, this does change the mod's title to Equivalent* Exchange

*Some taxes and fees may apply

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Solution :

1. Slow down the collector arrays. The problem is geometric growth : the collector arrays make enough EMC to double themselves every 4.5 hours (per the author of equivalent exchange in IRC). If they took say, 96 hours to make enough EMC for a doubling, they would not be so stupidly overpowered. You'd have to run quarries to mine enough materials to make more collector arrays rather than creating them from their own EMC.

That means slowing them down by a factor of at least 20 times.

Unfortunately that only delays the issue rather than eliminate it and not by a factor of 20 either.

2. Add losses when you liquify items to get EMC (using antimatter relays, etc). If you lost ~50% of the potential EMC when you "burn" an item to get EMC, many of the imbalances of this mod would be fixed. Now, you could choose to convert iron to diamond, or diamond to iron...but you lose resources in the conversion, so it's more efficient to find the resources you need directly. Conversions are just there for the convenience factor when you have a huge surplus of one resource and a shortage of another.

The problem I see complained about the most isn't that you can turn 8,192 cobblestone into a diamond or vice versa, it's that you can easily start a self-sustaining process that requires very little investment that turns out infinite amounts of pretty much everything (except Uranium IIRC) at whatever rate you care to build up to with the free resources this process gives you. Even if drastically slowed down, this process requires no work other than stacking a few blocks and one could just set it up and every few hours expand production with almost no input at all while they did other things like mine or build. At some point you will have enough production to overcome any artificial reductions (even at 20 times slower and 50% loss for conversion I could still get a stack of diamonds every 8 hours by building 40 arrays). This also wouldn't take 40 times as long due to the geometric progression involved and frankly would just add to server lag for no real good reason.

From what I've seen, a lot of people who have a problem with this are often the people who wouldn't blink twice at building a couple of dozen compact HV solars, cobble generators and recyclers to feed mass fabricators to turn out UU to turn into diamonds and other stuff. It's merely a matter of the perceived work involved in setting up whatever their chosen system is for getting the free stuff.

The only way to stop it would be to eliminate the Energy Collector, leaving players to do things like create an entire building full of compact cobble generators to feed a Condenser. Worst case scenario this they do it with a transmutation table and a Klein Star, but even then it wouldn't be hard, just take longer. You can also seriously put the brakes on by eliminating the Mk2 and Mk3 versions of the Energy Collector and Anti-Matter Relay but it will only be a matter of time before someone just piles on enough low level arrays to get their former output.

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Unfortunately that only delays the issue rather than eliminate it and not by a factor of 20 either.

The problem I see complained about the most isn't that you can turn 8,192 cobblestone into a diamond or vice versa, it's that you can easily start a self-sustaining process that requires very little investment that turns out infinite amounts of pretty much everything (except Uranium IIRC) at whatever rate you care to build up to with the free resources this process gives you. Even if drastically slowed down, this process requires no work other than stacking a few blocks and one could just set it up and every few hours expand production with almost no input at all while they did other things like mine or build. At some point you will have enough production to overcome any artificial reductions (even at 20 times slower and 50% loss for conversion I could still get a stack of diamonds every 8 hours by building 40 arrays). This also wouldn't take 40 times as long due to the geometric progression involved and frankly would just add to server lag for no real good reason.

From what I've seen, a lot of people who have a problem with this are often the people who wouldn't blink twice at building a couple of dozen compact HV solars, cobble generators and recyclers to feed mass fabricators to turn out UU to turn into diamonds and other stuff. It's merely a matter of the perceived work involved in setting up whatever their chosen system is for getting the free stuff.

The only way to stop it would be to eliminate the Energy Collector, leaving players to do things like create an entire building full of compact cobble generators to feed a Condenser. Worst case scenario this they do it with a transmutation table and a Klein Star, but even then it wouldn't be hard, just take longer. You can also seriously put the brakes on by eliminating the Mk2 and Mk3 versions of the Energy Collector and Anti-Matter Relay but it will only be a matter of time before someone just piles on enough low level arrays to get their former output.

I hear this tired argument every time I suggest nerfing something.

Yes, if you weaken something that lets you get resources without effort, in the long run people will build a lot more of that something. But consider this : quarries let you get resources without effort. HV solars let you get resources without effort. And tree farms, etc, etc, etc.

The problem with EE is twofold

1. It lets you get ALL resources without much effort or even thought or creativity as to how to accomplish it. With quarries, you have to figure out a way to sort and process the mountains of loot : it doesn't come in ready to use (unlike an energy condensor which can give you an ingot or even a finished product ready-made). With quarries, you will eventually exhaust the resources you mined, leaving a gaping hole in the ground, and have to move elsewhere. With EE, you cause no such consequences and the free resources never stop coming.

With a forestry treefarm, you have to craft humus or the farm will eventually stop. You can automate this, but it requires a hugely complex setup for the automation to be reliable(I've done it before)

2. It gives you a LOT of resources, with insane geometric growth.

If you slow the geometric growth down enough, EE would actually be WORSE than building quarries or making UU-matter. There has to be a penalty, a reason to use another mod instead of the much easier method in EE.

So, I agree with you partially : the proposed nerfs don't go far enough. You should probably lose 75% of the EMC when you burn resources, cobblestone should give precisely ZERO EMC when when burned, and energy collectors should be slowed down 30-40 times.

This would let you eventually build arrays to get stacks of diamonds, but it would require immense resources that would have to come from elsewhere (aka other mods would still have a use for a long time)

Now, after weeks have gone by, if dedicated players have mined up huge amounts of ground to find the resources, and built tons of infrastructure, they would have enough resources that EE would make sense at this point. That's fine : I'm fine with it being in the endgame, I just don't think the endgame should take 10 hours to reach. A few weeks to a month is fine with me.

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The mod is called Equivelant Exchange for a reason. Yes some things are overpowered, but you can't just make red matter from nothing. Transmutation changes items into energy that you use to get other things. Diamonds require 8,192 energy (EMC). That can't come from nowhere. Now, using a buildcraft quarry to mine massive amounts of cobblestone, then turning it into diamonds is overpowered. It's not just EE that's overpowered, it's kinda the whole pack. Everything working with everything results in massive amounts of everything.

If you are worried about overpowered stuff, you might as well not use tekkit.

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And the energy collector is nowhere? Also, people should stop clamping on to the Vanilla defenition of endgame. It's shifted in Technic/Tekkit.

My point was that once you have an energy collector, it produces EMC without requiring items to burn into EMC.

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