gavjenks

People move around a lot more than 50 blocks around the centers of their bases when they are offline. If somebody is 450 blocks from you, and render distance is 12 chunks, then you are almost guaranteed to have your base periodically loaded as they fly around doing their daily business.

When somebody has banned the first 63 ways of doing something that you want to do, then continuing to try and come up with new ways is cheating. They obviously do not want people to get dark matter without spending tens of hours mining. If you disagree with me, then how about this: whatever idea you decide on as the best one, go and explain it to your server administrator and see if it's okay. If you're not cheating, as you say, then they should be totally okay with it.

Have you considered... you know, not being a douche and trying to subvert your server admin's wishes? It is very blatantly obvious that they don't want anything that creates massive amounts of EMC automatically. if that's what you want to do, join a different server. Why would people here help you cheat on your server?

Dunno about that... Making 7 batboxes every 34ish blocks (to allow for spread) and multiple parallel tin lines at the start and end of every length doesn't sound that great. Compared to just copper cable in a line with a batbox every 5, it would cost about the same. And the tin version is vastly more complicated, finicky, hard to understand, and laggy (due to massive numbers of cable intersections and more packets). Super / cheaty 400 EU/t tin cables are, however, pretty nice if your total transit distance is less than 40 though.

1) So far you've named one actual example as far as I can tell: Fortune enchanted tools. Which are actually a pretty lame example, since like an hour killing random zombies can get you one of your own (i.e. still not a very high barrier at all to entering into competition). Factories are not a good example, because they're only really worth it if you're using EE or UU to supply materials. if not, it's silly to make a solar panel factory, since it will just sit dormant 95% of the time. Quarries are not that great of an example, either. Slightly better, but to say "one player has a lot of quarries and the other doesn't" implies that one player started with vastly more resources, or started earlier. If so, they probably ALSO have automated tree cutting, etc. If so, then this would have virtually zero effect on trading. 2) I think it has to be assumed that before you start talking about economies, that EE is not in any way involved whatsoever, for obvious reasons. Probably not UU either. having either of those things makes an economy pretty much hopelessly impossible, no matter what.

1) Whoever said iron blocks are solid? 2) Minecarts go about 20 miles per hour maximum (non-HS rails), or about 40ish I think on high speed rails, not "hundreds of miles per hour"

I'm pretty sure there is nothing special about induction furnaces. They also take 32 EU/packet maximum, I believe. The actual exceptions are, off the top of my head: Mass Fab: can take up to HV Teleporter: can take up to HV Terraformer: can take up to HV Energy Link: can take up to HV MFE and LV transformer: obviously can take up to MV. MFSU and MV transformer: can take up to HV. HV transformer: can take up to EV. Everything else, I think, is max. LV, unless it has a slot for upgrades on the right, AND you have added one or more transformer upgrades. In which case, every transformer upgrade adds one level to what it can take (one upgrade = can take MV, two = can take HV, three = can take EV)

I thoroughly disagree. Boosters were neither complicated nor fun. It was just another piece of track next to the first one... on a slope. Not complex at all. And it was so blatantly unrealistic and absurd that it felt really dumb and made the game seem much less polished and stable. Nor did it provide any actual gameplay mechanic that boosters now do not provide. I'd say this is a classic and prototypical example of #1 actually. Regardless of our disagreement about that, though, it seems clearly a good thing to talk about this issue in terms of physics, either way. Physics is indeed probably the primary reason they changed it to the way it works now, whether for better or for worse. If you don't consider physics, youll neither understand why the change happened, nor will you be able to usefully contribute to any argument or discussion about why it was good or bad or how it should evolve in the future.

I have no idea what you're implying. Are you saying those things are bad for the game? good for the game? That they are realistic? unrealistic? And what does it have to do with the value of considering physics? None of this is clear. Please rephrase in complete sentences.

No, I don't need more examples, because I don't understand what your point is in presenting these or any examples in the first place? Those and every other example are worth talking about in terms of real world physics. By having that discussion, we can either: 1) Change the game to make it more realistic by adjusting that feature. This is the correct solution if and when a feature is unrealistic AND is not providing any particularly necessary or useful gameplay value. 2) Realize that the example is actually physically realistic, and not worry about it. OR 3) Decide that it is unrealistic, BUT that it provides a truly important gameplay value that makes it not worth changing to make it more realistic. ALL of these outcomes are useful and/or informative, and are worth considering. In the case of your particular examples: In order This is outcome #1 and #3 sort of at the same time: it's obviously unrealistic. And at hard levels of gameplay, it would definitely make a more enjoyable game if it were changed to be more realistic. Hardcore players would certainly appreciate the added challenge of having to plan your mountain climbing better, or having to gauge the depth of water for safety. At easier levels of gameplay, it would probably annoy casual gamers if they had to worry about that. So by thinking about physics, we have arrived at a useful conclusion: it might be worth suggesting that the game be changed for hardcore players to MAKE it more realistic. Perhaps a good idea for a mod, etc. This is a very similar outcome to the first example. Easy mode should probably ignore it, but it might be worthwhile to make hard mode actually slow you down, like you say. Also, in SMP, it would make sense to slow you down, to discourage people from turtling away from danger in OP armor, and making pvp more enjoyable. Again. Useful conclusion and good ideas for mods or changes, thanks to considering physics. By thinking about this in terms of physics, I thought of an actual gameplay balance issue that exists right now and that could be solved by changing physical realism. This is an example of outcome #2: It's just simply a bad example, because you're incorrect about it being unrealistic in the first place. Minecarts are in fact quite realistic in their motion. A minecart moving along a straight track will have friction, and will require boosters just to keep moving (how many boosters is arbitrary, since we don't know how much friction tracks have). And if you applied an obscene number of boosters, then the cart would speed up until it was moving very quickly, but as you say, it would hit terminal velocity. This would be a function of air resistance, track friction, track elesticity, lift from the cart acting as an airfoil, etc. etc. Since you know literally NONE of those values, you have no way of saying what terminal velocity "should" be, or whether it "should be enough to kill somebody" or not (you also have no idea what the mass of a minecart is, so you can't calculate momentum. A piece of paper thrown at 80 miles an hour won't hurt you at all, for example). If air in minecraft is just especially thick, or whatever, then it might make perfect sense that terminal velocity is in fact 8 blocks per second. This means that we probably should not take physics into account in the case of minecart speed, because there is no reasonable realistic number versus an unrealistic number. Instead, it should entirely revolve around a speed that balances well with the cost of minecarts and how far apart people build things.

That won't actually make them all work, or "solve" your "problem" (which is not actually a problem or a malfunction) It will temporarily light up all your geos, but as soon as the MFE fills up, it's going to go right back to 4 of them being black and one of them flickering on and off. And it's important that you understand why, if you want to make more complicated things in the future. Your macerators only need 3 EU/tick to stay running. If you have 2, you only need 6 EU/tick, for instance. Each geothermal generator produces 20 EU/tick. So why on Earth would you need 5 geothermal generators, when one alone already produces far more than you need? No matter how many batteries you add, eventually they will all fill up, and your TRUE energy usage will still just be those macerators, causing the unnecessary geos to turn off (because they only run when they are needed). And causing the last one to flicker, because you don't even need one full geo (so if you're using 6 EU/t, it will flicker in a way that makes it on 30% of the time). That's not a problem with the mod. That's a problem with you building too many generators for what you need. The true "solution" is to dismantle the 4 unnecessary geotherms and use them somewhere else.

Yeah that would work. I only tested it on one tree, so it was sitting still like 95% of the time and it didnt matter. But if you had one turtle managing a whole forest, then you would probably want to do it your way, yes.

The turtle cant start below the logs, because a sapling needs to be there to grow, and saplings cant be on top of turtles. Thus, the turtle must be to the side of the logs. The digging up is to get rid of LEAVES in the way, not to harvest the logs. That's why I said every step you dig forward (for the logs) and up (to make a path through the leaves). Thus, if you only ever check up to decide whether to move up, you'll only be checking the leaves. There might be logs higher up than the leaves, and if so, you'll miss them and everything will get screwed up. ideally youd want to check the logs forward one and up one from you, but turtles cant check diagonally. Thus, it's simpler to just have it go up a fixed number of blocks more than the max height trees can grow.

Ah, well that is incorrect. In SSP, apparently, it sends you to 0,72,0. In SMP, it sends you to the same coords as the portal, but in the End. Feel free to update the wiki if you'd like with that information.

Won't always work. Sometimes the trunk extends above the highest leaf in the ring immediately around the trunk. In such situations, your turtle wouldn't get the whole tree, and it would sit around blocking light and potentially stopping tall (or even any) new trees from growing.

Uh yeah, that is what is supposed to happen. Endstone and the dragon are at coordinates (0,0). You have to fly over from wherever the stronghold was (never at 0,0 as far as I have seen) to there to see anything interesting. It has nothing to do with tekkit, and you would know all this if you actually read the basic minecraft wiki page for the End... (it even goes so far as to give you strategies about how to get from the platform to the island if you can't fly)

Neither person is correct, actually, and there's a third MAJOR source of chunks loaded that nobody in the thread above included. Three things load chunks: 1) About one render distance surrounding the spawn point of each of all 3 dimensions (overworld, nether, end), as well as around the spawn of any other worlds you might have (mystcraft, etc.). These are about 640 chunks each and stay loaded even if nobody is online. It MIGHT actually be one render distance around (0,0), not around spawn, I'm not sure. Haven't had a map recently where the two were far enough apart to test it. 2) One render distance surrounding each player. 3) Small numbers of chunks surrounding teleport tethers (one each), world anchors/anchor carts (9 each), or dimensional anchors (variable). These devices do not always keep everything loaded that a player or the spawn area would. For instance, world anchors do not keep buildcraft liquid tanks loaded for some reason. Also, world anchor blocks don't work on airships (the block will move, but the 9 loaded chunks will stay where they were). AND I think most of these devices only keep chunks loaded if somebody is online and in the same dimension as them.

What's this have to do with the conversation? I'm confused. You're discussing specific strategies about how to trade when people are interested in trading. The last several posts, however, were about how the Minecraft world does not encourage people to want to trade in the first place nearly as often as in real life. As long as you brought it up though, this is a pretty bizarre strategy for trading, if you apply it without adjusting for ore rarity. Ore rarity in tekkit (assuming you are only talking about actual blocks that drop as "ores"): Gold: 387 Tin: 3944 Iron: 4373 Copper: 5114 First of all, I assume you aren't including gold in your deal, otherwise it would be pretty easy to rip you off. Second of all (if we remove gold from the list), trading for 1.5x the amount of ore will always net you a profit, but: A) This will only really work if you consistently trade with dumb (and lazy) people. You can get all three types of ore (copper, tin, and iron) yourself easily in like 10 minutes of mining. To spend 5 minutes trading with you (and losing ores in the process) instead of spending those 5 minutes mining is almost always going to be a bad deal for that person. Even if we assume that you are always trading with dumb, lazy people, this is not the best way for you to make profit anyway. You would still benefit according to classic economic principles by adjusting to people's willingness to pay. And since people are generally aware that copper is more abundant than tin, they would be willing to pay a higher exchange rate when trading in copper for tin. You are not taking advantage of that higher willingness to pay. For example, if people on your server are willing to consistently pay 1.5 tins to get one copper, then you should be able to charge them approximately 2.5 coppers to get one tin, and the same people would be willing to pay, if they are roughly aware of the distributions of copper and tin in the earth. Also, if they "are more willing to pay" when you provide services, then the services are not, by definition, "Free." ... All you're doing is selling them ores and then separately selling them smelting services, essentially. It's another side business, and if you're treat it as "free" right now, then that means you're probably not doing a very good job of optimizing it, either.

No this doesn't really explain anything either. Let's say it takes 5 minutes to gather a stack of logs. And 20 minutes to gather a stack of iron. Since both thing have virtually no specialization and anybody can gather them instantly, the exchange rate would be about 1 iron to 4 logs in this case. If so, then there is actually ZERO time savings from trading. If I require 1 stack of iron and 4 stacks of logs for a project, I could: 1) Gather only wood, and trade for the iron: I would have to gather 8 stacks of logs, and trade half of them for iron: 8 * 5 = 40 minutes + time spent trading. 2) Gather only iron, and trade for the wood: I would have to gather 2 stacks of iron, and trade half for wood: 20 * 2 = 40 minutes + time spent trading. 3) Gather it all myself, and don't trade: 4 * 5 + 20 = 40 minutes. Thus, in fact, without high barrier to enter an industry (which mining and logging do not have), you are actually BETTER OFF NOT TRADING, due to the time you save by not having to negotiate and go meet somebody, etc.

Logistics pipes are nice, I agree. However, logistics pipes are not part of tekkit. So right now, you still have the choice: 1) Wait months and months until you can actually use that feature (without modifying your server and making it vastly more difficult for players to connect) OR 2) Do the same thing with very slightly more effort with a mod that already exists in the standardized modpack. If and when logistics pipes are added, I will certainly endorse limited use of BC to take advantage of those in appropriate scenarios. Also not part of tekkit and thus not really relevant. ALSO, you have to keep in mind that by the time these mods are released in stable SMP, etc. to be included in tekkit, it is entirely possible that Eloraam will have also upgraded HER mod to do many of the same things. Logistic pipes still won't be a reason to use BC, if in three months when they actually get added, RedPower has already introduced 3 different new and better ways to handle remote item requests, etc. It's impossible to say.

RP filters can stroke reliably about once every 6 ticks, and pump stacks of 64 each time. Thus, in the same timeframe that a redstone engine would pump approximately 2.5 items, or a steam engine would pump 24 items, the RP filter will pump 204. Same goes for a retriever too, which can also pull from multiple inventories. Assuming you have fully spun up rotary macerators, you're getting 5 blaze rods every 0.85 seconds, or one every 3.4 ticks. Which means a single redpower retriever could keep up to pace with over a dozen rotary macerators at a time. And a single filter (possibly even a transposer) could easily supply all those same macerators with blaze rods again. So 4 solar panels or so + retriever + filter + 2 timers = 8 blocks to supply a dozen macerators with RP. VS. 12 steam engines out + 2 steam engines in + at least 4 dozen blocks of pumps and cooling setup (or about 4 dozen blocks of vanilla timers and wiring and blocks to hold the wires and crap to make cooling unnecessary) + about maybe 3 dozen blocks of piping and stuff to supply coal to all those steam engines without crossing other pipes = about 100 blocks to supply a dozen macerators with BC.

Fine, that's a reasonable argument. So it's the second best tube mod out there. I still see no reason to spend an hour fixing the shortcomings of the second best mod when I already have the best tube mod installed on my machine right now, which doesn't cause any of the problems in the first place. And whether or not it is open source is completely irrelevant to anybody except programmers who are interested in contributing (of whom there don't seem to be very many, or they would have fixed all these things such that they didn't even require special "advanced pipes" in the first place) Apparently, from the rest of warp's post, your options are: 1) Wait for several months perhaps for all the mods to update so that the new buildcraft gets ported and included. At which point you get to learn how to use a whole bunch of different unnecessary pipes. OR 2) use the mod already installed in tekkit that has all of that basic pipe logic already built into the pipes themselves (or much more intuitive and color coded sorting machines for more complex stuff), and don't wait any time at all. Yes you're right that if we didn't have BC or RP, our third best option would be something even worse than either of those 2 above. But that doesn't make option #1 any more attractive compared to option #2. Hmm...

I don't think you understand. If physics are irrelevant, then why was he complaining about linear motion being translated into electricity...? That is basically the same thing as saying "it's physically impossible!" To which the only reasonable response is one that likewise involves physics, since that's what he asked for. Secondly, why shouldn't physics be involved in minecraft? Just because a lot of things are unrealistic doesnt mean it makes no sesne to discuss how they could be, or how they might be. Nobody has actually given any real argument for this... Not only is it amusing, but many of the mods could benefit from being a little bit more realistic, in situations where it doesn't obviously conflict with gameplay value.

I guess they aren't so advanced after all, eh? My suggestion is stop using crappy BC, and switch to an advanced mod, instead of an advanced pipe. Just use RedPower, and you'll never have any items go missing or have to worry about things spilling on the floor or bizarre pipe logic ever again.

I didnt bring physics into it. Somebody else was complaining about how linear motion could possibly generate electricity...