SemiPr0

I'm going to drop this for now due to allowing for a certain level of incapability to accept the differences between Technic and Tekkit(Originally just Technic or Tekkit) Classic/Tekkit Lite/Tekkit (Naming conventions are very telling to how concentrated a project is). I'm going to assign my basic incapability to accept the main build of Tekkit to a certain level of PEBKAC and a need to compare base tech mod builds side by side before understanding the depth of differences. So perhaps this isn't a platform problem as much as it is a personal problem, I'm going to do what I can to expand on that and educate rather than continue to postulate....regardless if I find a direct reason to continue to hold the same opinions after having spent some time fully analyzing it all, I'll do that...but for now I'm going to spend some time reanalyzing Tekkit 1.2.6b as a central platform modpack.

Its not that I don't like progress its that I kind of enjoy games with a strong core experience and community. For a fair amount of time in "internet time"...though technically only a brief flash in actual chronological time...Technic/Tekkit were literally what made Minecraft interesting again. I had actually owned Minecraft since the early beta days but hadn't played it in ages because even with its creative aspects it just became boring. Technic/Tekkit...in its original incarnations had a great combination of mods (admittedly there were controversies involved of course but thats not worth even going back over any more) which provided an extremely strong extensionary core experience on the Minecraft base....the pack as it was designed literally seemed designed from the ground up by someone that actually had a good handle on the mechanics of games systems design and understood, implicitly, the core experience of putting tiered solutions to ever more complex problems right within the grasp of the user if they were willing to put in the effort to achieve it. Conversely, since the advent of the Platform, this has become far less the case. While it definitely makes life easier for server owners, and I respect that you guys put the effort into building a system to simplify the system of development and distribution for specialized servers, the core experience of the primary team products has lost strength (largely not due to developmental team deficiencies but due to mod turn over and compatibility problems). So while catering to the server owners is of course a laudable thing, from the stand point of presenting a "game" (I would use the term mod but Technic/Tekkit with the combined efforts of the modders who made the mods and Kaker and the team who did the interop and balance to get them all working together logically, Technic/Tekkit were more a game of its own than it was simply a mod of Minecraft), its left the core user experience as a secondary concern. Tekkit in its current primary incarnation is a shadow of what Tekkit 1.2.5 was, is this because less streamers and tubers are covering it and using it as a base for their video series? I don't really think so, its largely because comparatively, Tekkit now, even with Galacticraft and the additions its seen since its initial release versions, as compared to its antecedent namesakes, is providing and continues to provide a linear system of technical development to what is, overall, a single goal. Hexxit lacks the same strength of core experience, and Big Dig....well thats not even something to debate because its more or less just a tech mod with ore generation cheats, and Voltz is languishing in the hell of non-development because of its UE base being superceded and split up. Simple facts are, the platform is good because it at least attempts to provide mods with well thought out interop and balance, but even those remain few and far between and most packs are server specialized and/or individual pack efforts which have a community of probably less than 100 people that can share it. In the end, while providing a strong support system for individual MC communities is a great thing, in the process the core experience that was Tekkit has been sharded into a hundred different pieces. Did you like <aspect X> of Tekkit...well play <modpack Y> did you like <aspect Z> of Tekkit? Well you should play <modpack A>, did you like EE2? Well f**k you, you can play Minecraft from two years ago if thats how you like your games (not specifically harping on EE, I'm well aware the developer of EE hasn't done anything with EE since releasing the EE3 initial alpha). So in the end...the Platform is a great help to the online MC community and a great achievement in regards to ease of access for server owners, but....what about us? What about the players that actually came into this because of what Technic/Tekkit had achieved? What about you guys? The people that have been developing the packs since the beginning and have dealt with all the LUL drama that the Minecraft based internet can throw at you and still kept on going? Isn't continuing to present a strong core product important? I mean if I wanted to play a modpack that "someone else" thought was a great pack...I'd be drinking Direwolf20's koolaid...not browsing through the platform and trying to find gems amongst the 800 copies of Minecraft+Counterstrike+Left4Dead clones in there, or the 1500 different versions of "Tekkit..but different" that are literally mod for mod the same as Tekkit just with that one "special" mod that the pack author is dreadfully convinced makes Tekkit better. Simple facts are....I'm not against progress at all, I'm astonished...somewhat, by the lack of it. Technic/Tekkit made me wonder how I ever played Minecraft without it. When do you guys plan on achieving that level of strength in your core experiences again? Or do you even care to? And I'm not asking that passive aggressively, its a genuine question Sct. Apologies for the length of my response.

I've actually played MineTek and Moonquest too and I like your work I'm not saying that the modpack community is "splitting" but its basically a case of oversaturation. Technic/Tekkit were special in their time because they were unique. They took a great game that everyone more or less likes...Minecraft and turned it into a super powered tech challenge pack that gave people so many different ways to solve the same various problems. Now what we have is a bunch of packs that are individually interesting, but are all doing more or less the same things just in very minorly different ways. Just like I pointed out, Tekkit and Moonquest are not ostensibly different from each other, the difference between them is largely UE based Mekanism and Tinkers Construct and thats mostly it. And I do agree...one size doesn't fit all, this is why, say, in the soft drink industry there are thousands of different options of things to drink..but somehow Coke and Pepsi still hold the largest world wide market shares regardless of this variety. And what I'm saying is that the specialization of the platform and custom modpacks hasn't strengthened the core experience, instead of "Coke" having the largest overall market share of Minecraft modpack players, the modpack player community is so heavily split between all the variants that the primary experience is weak and less interesting comparatively.

I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet. I appreciate the work that goes into modpacks and the "Platform" was a fairly neat idea, but it has, by its very existence, killed the very thing that made Technic/Tekkit good. Heres the bullet points on why Technic/Tekkit was good. I could give a friend one link and they could play the exact same game I was playing. I could give a friend one link and they could have a nice texture pack for the game I was playing. My friends and I could play the same game together with relatively no hassle...and this made Technic/Tekkit awesome. Now with the platform we've got going on several hundred mod pack variants and whats more Tekkit itself is constantly evolving and updating, which isn't potentially bad, but I wouldn't say the current main branch version for Tekkit is all that good either, its functional but I consistently find myself having to add mods to it that I want to use to make it something that I enjoy playing. Now I could sit here and spout verbal diarrhea about why I personally think Tekkit is now "bad"...but that serves no purposes but to generate needless negativity, so overall the problem isn't really Tekkit, its the fact that the "Platform" took away Tekkits basic one click "awesome" that allowed tens of thousands of people to all share the same experiences and come up with a bunch of really creative and variant ways to solve the same problems. Now I know you can still play the "old Tekkit" but I'm not so much concerned about playing "old Tekkit" as compared to being able to play a game I enjoy with my friends and doing so in a relatively hassle free manner. I realized the "Platform" allows me to "easily" share my own mod pack creations with my friends, but that diaspora of the tech pack mod community was already bad enough with FTB coming into play, while Tekkit was still the go to modpack experience for people, simply cutting the pie into so many pieces did the entire idea behind what Technic was no favors at all, cause now instead of one modpack I need at least 10 or so to play on various servers where friends of mine and I play...and depending on what the server is doing, I might not even be able to do that...depending on the competence of the modpack designer that made the modpack the server was playing. So..in the end....I kinda miss the "good old days" where we all kinda played the same thing and had different answers to the same challenges. Thats what made Technic great....being able to see and share so much creative fun with other people in the pursuit of MOAR POWER. So yeah, sorry if I'm rehashing some shit someone said 20 years ago or something, but its really been something thats been on my mind since the Platform's launch and has only served to get worse as I've watched the MC Modpack community split into smaller and smaller and smaller little specialized cliques. The option for having user created modpacks is really good, don't get me wrong, but the Technic experience, with all the main branch modpacks developed internally, should really be the big attractions..and they're kinda not..so much. Most of my friends are playing ScareCrowKrone's Moonquest build atm...why? Cause Yogscast...thats why, and the ostensible differences between Moonquest and Tekkit is what? Mekanism? Archimedes Airships? Tinkers Construct? A Hat mod? Oh and a distinct lack of Dimensional Doors? Its almost the same modpack just with a few key primary mod differences and thats it. Anyways thats my completely meaningless rant which will change nothing at all. I just wanted to get it out of my head.

Any Sphax patches for 1.2.5? I suppose I could do individual mod compilations but was wondering if anyone had a link...1.2.5 looks interesting, Project Reds there finally....if we could get Tinkerer's Construct and Mekanism into the mix, Tekkit might actually be less than boring again.

Balance and interop are always good, but the biggest problem with Tekkit main is its wild diversion from Tekkits previous mod structures which gave a good system of early/mid/late technical progression. Tekkit Main..definitely in 1.0.6 and still now in 1.1.10 simply lacks that good hand off from layer to layer of complexity. The jump from using BC pipes to transport power, to RE Conduits is a rather large and expensive jump. Theres no middle of the road variable that bridges the gap between early power generation and management and late game power generation and management solutions. Its all very linear. IC2 wiring at least gave a good road of power distribution increases that went in line with your increasing technical capabilities, right now power distribution is either low tech....which is literally pushing power through BC pipes...or extremely expensive tech, such as building up to a magma crucible and liquid transposer...simply to make the other method of power distribution which is more efficient and effective for high voltage loads. And to actually just be able to power a magma crucible and liquid transposer the basic power generation required even at the BC level is rather ridiculous because those machines have such a high demand. I've played Business Elite a bit myself..especially since its the most updated pack and also includes Project Red (god how I've missed Basalt), and I do agree there are some interoperability issues between the various mods in the pack. But everyones hanging on to Thermal Expansion as if its some kind of unmutable standard. Are the machines better? Sure...but only in an "all around" kind of manner, they're definitely not faster and even the earliest machines are far more expensive to build than their IC2 parallels. The same production load I used to be able to manage with IC2 with two lines of machines requires around six of their TE equivalent machines and the TE equivalent machines cost more to make. Tekkit Main is good but its not as good as Tekkit in its previous incarnations...its just simply not providing enough stage to stage options to even hold a candle to its earlier incarnations in Technic/Tekkit/Tekkit Lite and its largely because it feels like everythings built around trying to force Tekkit around the MJ standard...which is fine, but maximum interop would mean using mods that have a compatibility between EU and MJ and giving people as many options as possible. The lack of solar, wind, hydroelectric and thermal energy solutions in Tekkit Main is literally unbelievable, I do realize that Tekkit Main in 1.1.8 did add "a solar panel"....awesome, thats great, one solar panel. And simple energy storage...hey, thanks for the early game battery, except someone doesn't seem to have considered that the MJ draw from a TE pulverizer and TE furnance off a Makeshift Battery is about 3 times as much demand to supply as the comparable solution of the IC2 Batbox/Macerator/Powered Furnace. 10000MJ in a Makeshift Battery as compared to 10000 EU in a Batbox are two very different things. Lets add in the fact that to meet the speed of IC2's upgradeable equipment, you have to have twice as many machines from TE. So twice as many machines drawing nearly three times as much early game power, all being powered through inefficient BC pipes that can overload and explode with an option of...this engine, that engine, or this other engine to deal with early game industrial demands. There are reasons why FTB Unleashed is pulling as much activity as its pulling, and its not specifically because its "better" than Tekkit Main, its because despite of its rather clunky implementation nature, its providing options that Tekkit Main has, for some reason deemed completely unnecessary. Options are important, being able to build an industrial base that meets your technical needs is what these modpacks are about, Tekkit Main's industrial layers are literally Stone Age straight to Coal Age then to Nuclear Age, its missed a lot of stuff in between, Tekkit Classic used to have that even Tekkit Lite had better technical progression hand off. So in the end, Tekkit Main doesn't just need Ender I/O, it needs Project Red, it needs Mekanism, it needs Factorization, it needs UE. It needs options that fit the players needs given the players engineering interests, not just a handful of options that are "good enough" to get the job done...which has really been my major issue with Tekkit Main since its release and the issue still stands regardless of them having at least given a small amount of ground on power generation but even that addition is "just enough" to get the job done and no further than that. Sorry that got a bit long and ranty but after several days of trying to enjoy 1.1.10 because hey..finally at least there is one more power generation method outside of BC engines and MFR biofuel...its still not enough. Tekkit Main is missing so many minor steps in favor of making large technological leaps from one technical stage to the next...its just sad. And its not half as fun as the modpack that literally made modpacks a standard in Minecraft either.

Well aesthetically you'd have to admit that the Ender I/O conduits definitely look better in a space station or moon base than BC pipes at least. And Tekkit's always been about having options after all. I mean I took a break after reviewing the 1.0.6 build because the only logical power methodology was biofuel, BC engines couldn't hold a candle to it, now we have Atomic Energy which gives...yes, options, now I can step up from engines to biofuel and finally to nuclear reactors or use a mix anywhere in between all of that. Also E I/O conduits are probably just better in general for item and resource management as far as moving physical items into an Applied Energistics network goes, BC Pipes are just....yeah thats like 2011 called and wants their mod back.

So...how about it? Its free to add with credit given, perms are quite clear and it seems like a far superior method of item and power management over BC pipes...which to be frank are cumbersome and clunky as all hell in comparison. Tekkit Main has always kind of suffered from a gap based on the lack of IC2, I understand that IC2 is off the table and thats fine but it seems like Ender I/O would nicely fill the gap in regards to the loss of IC2's wiring systems which would potentially get over that early and mid game power generation hump with a cleaner and more effective solution than the BC pipe system. Redstone Power Conduits are nice but they also require a Magma Crucible and a Liquid Transposer to create them. BC pipes are cheap to make, but very space consuming and clunky and sometimes laggy for servers. I think Ender I/O would fit more in line with Atomic Energy and Applied Energistics as well given the more streamlined nature of these systems and I'd love to see it in Tekkit Main as an addition at some point. Also given the fact that Thermal Expansion machinery is more or less the backbone of Tekkit Main industry and its fixed and unalterable speeds require multiple machine lines to produce anywhere near enough hard industry to handle BC quarry input, the simplicity of Ender I/O over BC pipes in this regard would be immensely helpful. Just my thoughts, I suppose I could just hack it in myself as part of my own personal modpack but I think it could be potentially beneficial to Tekkit Main itself.

Has nothing to do with being satisfied with less. I'm not screaming NERF BIOFUEL as much as I'm pointing out that the BC alternatives are pointless in comparison to it. I am really hoping Big Generators or Mekanism make their way into the pack...because we really need options. Biofuel can stay just how it is right now as long as I have other options that can match its capabilities which allow me to approach my engineering path with different paths if I choose to. There is no logical reason to choose anything but biofuel at the moment, but that doesn't mean nerf it....it means give me something else that can match it cause BC cannot.

This is just an example. But you can use a harvester and planter set up to basically plant 4 5x5 squares using cheap range upgrades on the harvesters and planters, you don't even need to use the most expensive ones. For maximum efficiency with biofuel you need to use multiple types of biomass but in volume simply using trees does work over time its not half as efficient but it still fills up fuel tanks just the same. Wood, leaves and saplings to the bioreactor, 1 in 5 saplings back to the planter. With a small application of steam engines for a short period to generate enough biofuel to run the system itself, it then literally becomes self sustaining and the steam engines can be removed from the equation entirely and the whole system generates far more fuel than it consumes. You can start this with as little as one bio reactor and one biofuel generator, and literally in a very short span of time have enough biofuel to sustain the usage of an inordinate amount of biofuel generators which can then output power on a scale that can sustain a large TE machinery factory with a quarter of the resource investment attempting to do the same thing with any other power gen method would require. Magmatic Engines would require extraneous support machinery as well, so the harvester and planter set up is no different than the Magmatic array's need for Tesseract's (not cheap), BC Pumps, and power supply from redstone engines and a dimensonal anchor. Actually the harvester/planter set up is cheaper in total block requirements. You can do this with as little as one planter and two harvesters and a bunch of pipes and redstone energy conduits. And you can keep the chunk loaded with one dimensional anchor versus requiring two in the biofuel set up, as compared to the magmatic which would require one at the lava site and one at the engine generator site depending on how far apart they were. Less resources and more power, and its literally almost a hands off system once you have it set up correctly. Magmatic's will never be hands off, you'll always need to be moving pumps and uncovering new lava lakes at the < 14 level in the Overworld, or you have to go to the Nether and efficiently transfer power out of there to the Overworld using Tesseracts and even then...you can eventually drain the area of the nether you're working of source blocks too...so even that isn't infinite energy.

A picture says 1000 words...so I won't bother TLDRing everyone. This is insane, theres absolutely no reason to use anything other than biofuel. 4 Biofuel reactors are INSANELY cheap to build compared to 16 Magmatic Engines which require Invar out the wazzoo to build. Whereas Biofuel Reactors costs no invar at all and could only be considered "expensive" if you consider 2 blaze rods expensive but you only need ONE blaze rod and then you're NEVER out of blaze rods unless you're just bullheadedly stupid. The Biofuel generators are outputting 8 to 10 times the power output of 4 times as many magmatic engines. And they're using LESS resources, and less fuel from an inexhaustible fuel supply. It is the ONLY power option for large engineering operations because the speed of TE machinery doesn't change which means instead of upgrading to faster machines you need MORE of them to get things done more efficiently in a supply line...only Biofuel can keep up with the demand. Two Magmatic Crucibles will drain the Redstone Energy Cell storing the magmatic's power, the biofuel generators will be able to keep up with the demand and continue filling the cell as well. Anyways...I realize that there are more power options being investigated but this is so wildly out of balance its literally the only option. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars..go directly to BioFuel cause you're wasting your time and resources doing anything else. Build a couple steam engines to process what you need to process to make your Biofuel reactors then chuck it all in your trash chute and forget about it after that.

Preferentially I'd like to see something out of Galacticraft that actually takes radiation exposure and reduction into account. I think its a great mod and its inclusion with a Tekkit modpack set really gives some more directions to go in in a modpacked Minecraft experience. I'm not really bagging the developer as much as I'm saying that I'd love to see more of the technical challenges actually introduced other than just making airlocks and oxygen sealing actually work. Space should be a difficult endeavor, it should require inordinate amounts of resources to achieve and manage efficiently and it should require a lot of extraneous technical engineering to survive in. I'm all for having to condense water, electrolyze it, combine the gases...I mean I'll take the full nine really. I hope that Micdoodle actually achieves it all eventually.

That doesn't stop the server from launching. I saw it yesterday when rebooting my server, the server still comes online without any issues.

Except that some of us might feel that the whole tree farm, harvester/planter solution being the ONLY viable and sustainable solution is a little limited in scope? Plus not sure about you but I wouldn't want my server to be full of 25x25 grids of trees that randomly get auto harvested, especially in an environment where people are keeping those chunks loaded 24/7, the amount of constant block change going on with multiple fully loaded tree farms chunks going 24 hours a day 7 days a week is bound to be a bigger problem with server performance than the huge solar farms run in early IC/IC2 that led to the addition of Advanced Solar's, and all those panels were doing was SITTING there. these tree farms are constantly planting, growing and harvesting trees, constantly changing the block structure of these loaded chunks. Now don't get me wrong I think this biofuel solution is about 1000 times better than IC2's Biofuel approach...which was basically laughably incapable of being an efficient solution to even mid tier power generation requirements and completely unscalable to high tier power requirements. But this is just the same problem in reverse. In Tekkit, you will go Biofuel, because its 100% self sustainable (which is thermodynamically impossible) and Combustion and Magmatic engine arrays are more or less pointless in comparison for the amount of space and materials required as compared to Biofuel. The point of adding more to the power generation schema is to give people options that fit their environment or suit their engineering interests. Saying stuff like "biofuel works, just use it and stop asking for more" is kinda completely out of phase with what Tekkit has always been or at least has always attempted to be.

That all aside its a little odd that in this version the only block with any real blast resistance at all is unfinished raw obsidian is all. Even the Obsidian Bricks which likely require some crafting time, have zero blast resistance whatsoever. As everyone that has played Tekkit up to now is aware there have always been varying degrees of block blast resistance and its seems like all the common blocks have none in this version. So its not really a case of "OBSIDIAN R EZ U JUST NEED QRRY" its a case of nothing but obsidian being able to deal with explosions. If you're on a PvP server this could be quite a problem. One TNT Cart could fuck up your entire world. The blast resistance of blocks doesn't just apply to OMG CREEPERS. I suppose it doesn't really matter for PvE servers and single player but....in a PvP server environment not having any resistance to explosions whatsoever is kinda....bad?

I was ruminating on giant killer robots as a possible creeper solution since there, yanno, aren't any. Shooter Carts don't count btw, the damage from those is hilariously bad and the amount of arrows, for just one cart to patrol on a 3x3 square as a defense "turret", required to kill mobs is horrifically bad. And yes I know I have a sword and all that...but I've got science to do....thus the need for giant killer robots. Golems wander off unfortunately.

My imagination, for the moment.

It does if you're building giant killer robots.

Wow you mean you can't grow trees in the vacuum of space? How unrealistic. Now with my tongue OUT of my cheek, the way to generate oxygen in space is through electrolytically separating water molecules. And storing the gases. Hydrogen to Hydrogen (for fuel), Oxygen to Oxygen (for air, but of course you actually need nitrogen too, in fact about 70% nitrogen 30% oxygen to survive, you'd need to boil barium and capture the free nitrogen gas from the boil and yeah we don't have any barium..just water.) So we need an electrolyzer, and an aqueous accumulator..and a way to keep water from boiling off into a vacuum....and something to get Nitrogen from. Then a gas storage and compression system. Hrrm....

Doesn't really matter because even running 12 Magmatics in tandem and outputting 48mj/t to a Redstone Energy Cell, it still takes 15 minutes to fill the damn thing. And thats just ONE Redstone Energy Cell. There seem to be a few....missing links in the tech tree potentials in this current Tekkit version, early power generation is pathetic compared to the previous IC2 methods (not saying I want IC2, just saying a couple steam engines outputting what one coal generator could output...and costing twice as much in resources and more floor space kind of sucks), top end power is literally what I'd consider mid tier power generation. Anything that could potentially open up the power generation schema for this version of Tekkit could only be a good thing.

Even converting wood to obsidian with the minium stone, you are right, the amount of time and diamond pick wear going into trying to make adjustments to your design if needed would be a problem. (I'm not up to power armor as yet so I don't know if that makes it irrelevant or not).

No concrete at all. No hardened stone, there is hardened glass though. Regardless building entirely out of obsidian to blast proof isn't going to be cheap or easy.

I just went with common building blocks but I'll test regular obsidian now and see how it goes. Pure obsidian blocks, a full ground base completely contains the explosion. A 3x2 with a dirt base blows a hole in the ground but also completely contains. Very odd.

Just thought I'd share this given as I was going to actually ask the forums about it but decided to run my own tests instead and the results were kind of dismal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6ZcJXYXa-Q Explosions will definitely be problems.

Applied Energistics kinda strikes me as EE2 just coming from the technological direction. So good its almost cheaty....though looking at the mat requirements its not cheap to get into so...probably balances out in the long run.