Aurrin

Mind linking to Big Reactors? My Google-fu is failing me...

What are the indispensable items that you always carry with you? I'm curious to find out what others have adopted as their must-haves. I'll go first: Hotbar: - Power Glove w/ All basic tools, Lux Capacitor, Tinker Table & Omniwrench - Bag of Tools Bag/Backpack of Tools: - Minium stone - Emergency linkbook to home workshop - Spare book for linking somewhere important - Ender bag linking to main intake for item processing (usually an AE import) - ME Wireless Terminal - Spare torches, crafting bench, furnace, chests (emergency kit) Inventory: - Extra Bag for storing ores - A few spare logs for crafting wooden items in a hurry - A stack of food (usually baked potatoes) So, what's in your inventory?

Well, one thing you can do to make it much easier to get back and forth is to use linking books from Mystcraft. Build a pair of bookstands (two sticks and a plank in a Y-shape), and a pair of books. When you 'craft' the book by itself, it links it to the location where you're currently standing & direction you're facing, becoming a linkbook. Craft one in your workshop, go to your Nether power station, place a bookstand (somewhere sheltered, naturally) and then the workshop linkbook on the stand. Craft the other linkbook in the Nether powerstation, use the workshop linkbook stand (right-click, then click on the rectangle on the right-side page to jump into it), and set up the second bookstand somewhere handy with the Nether power station book. Note that linkbooks don't work within the same dimension, they have to lead to another dimension. Still, quite handy, inexpensive, and far more precise than regular nether portals. You'll probably also want to start carrying a linkbook to your home with you at all times as an insurance policy: It'll take you instantly back home from anywhere outside the overworld you happen to end up.

Guide: How do I <X> like I did in IndustrialCraft / RedPower?

The recipe-crippling was horrible, but some of the higher-tier things it brought were quite interesting. For instance, the item equivalent to a tessaract but with built-in super energy storage, or the fusion reactor with new fourth-tier wiring, or the multiblock battery, or the lightning rod... It wasn't necessarily worth it to install, but there were some good ideas there.

For simple applications, yes. But don't understimate the creative applications of ComputerCraft - they can be far and away beyond a PRC.

How do you auto-supply the bio reactor with a mix of materials, keeping it from filling up with all one type?

There's no replacement functionality yet. It's planned to be addressed soon, but it will be a while.

Iron is the only metal I ever seem to have in excess, and I expect that will stop when I start using it for decorative purposes...

Yes, reusable nets work, but not single-use. I eventually had to build a 'creative mode lab' on my world to diagnose why it wasn't working.

Is this a bug, or by design?

That's what the storage bus should be doing by itself. I'd use the export bus to drain all the cobble into the DSU, then replace it with a storage bus and it should direct all the cobble to the DSU from then on. You may need to change the priorities on the system, I think you can get to that by shift-rightclicking the storage bus.

And fusion reactors. Or even antimatter reactors. If I had leet modding skills, I'd probably make a Treknology mod with very high-tech themed machines, on the level of Applied Energistics.

I interpret 'maintenance' to mean an artificially added mechanic which cannot be automated, to force players to spend time on the system after it's been constructed. I don't mind if the automation is somewhat complex: I built rather complicated reactor setups for IC2, and enjoyed the design and implementation. However, I *do* mind when the setup cannot be automated, such as when MFFS added 'forcicium' because they didn't want people to be able to run force fields indefinitely. It doesn't matter if you can mine it, you can't automate the mining (without frames), and thus you can't automate the system. I'm not sure where that falls among your definitions, but that's how I see it. That's good to know. I confess that the new splash art for it had me worried: I was beginning to believe that it was being viewed as for lazy people or whiners, and thus I was afraid it might be in danger of falling to the wayside.

I'll admit that's somewhat disappointing, but not altogether unexpected. I just hope Big Dig doesn't eventually fade away or stop advancing. I was so excited to see GalacticCraft in Tekkit, given that many of the larger builds I wanted to do were space-related.

The connection is that requiring regular maintenance on everything eventually precludes building large systems: They're a waste of time to build, because you can't leave them alone and expect them to continue to function. Maybe you don't see moving to a new pool of lava every so often as a grind, but that doesn't make the complaint illegitimate. Other people who play the game differently may find it a much larger burden than you do.

And what happens, a few months or a year or so from now, when I go to show someone an elaborate space station I built, but nothing works anymore because I didn't go to it every day or two to maintain all the systems that can't be left alone? Not even in a fun way, where it's an 'abandoned space station' with new and interesting challenges, just a jumbled mess of systems that are broken. You're looking at it from the perspective of someone who expects to be in close contact with everything they build on a more or less daily basis. Not everyone plays it that way.

With respect, that is an opinion, not a fact. I like to build technological setups and then use them to build other things. If I have to spend all my time maintaining what I've already built, then eventually I can't move on to new and interesting projects, and I get bored. Not everyone plays Minecraft the way or style and finds the same parts enjoyable that you do, and the sooner you square with that, the happier your players will be. That's appreciated, and more in the spirit of power that doesn't need eternal maintenance. Given how many people lament the demise of EE2, I think you're kidding yourself - or at least categorically excluding players who enjoy Minecraft as a sandbox rather than an MMO where you must grind to get ahead. That's an old debate, I know. But it's inevitably where the cries of 'OP!' lead. No matter how badly you limit players to make it take longer for them to climb the mountain, someone is going to get there first, and others will complain that it's overpowered. Also, everyone will get there eventually, and then the game is over. You'll get far more replayability out of the game by providing new destinations (in the form of technologies, literal destinations, capabilities, etc.) rather than trying to stretch out the one you already have, metaphorically speaking. GalacticCraft is a step in the right direction. Repeatedly nerfing power systems is not. You can't control how people have fun or what they enjoy, and it's futile to try. The obligatory XKCD response for rage over people enjoying the simpler path: "Stop having fun!"

I disagree, strongly. This is a large part of why players have such negative impressions of BuildCraft engines, and are annoyed with the TE engines 'locking up', even if it's nondestructive. They want to be able to set up reliable power and then *not* have to revisit it over and over and over. The lengths to which players went to obtain solar power in IC2, even though it was a very low return on materials and the crafting was a time-intensive process, should tell you something about how important that is.

I'm very glad you've found it helpful. I've been toying with writing a 'getting started' guide as well, if I have time I may do that. Yes, the main difference being that the powered glove can have all of the tools on it simultaneously. And then some. It frees up a lot of inventory space. The only downside is that it's a bit more expensive to get started, though not by much. Make a powered glove and a tinker table, and look through the tool modules when you bring up the tinker table's GUI. You should be able to install pickaxes, axes, and shovels with a few iron, copper, and silver. ME networks do indeed take care of the higher-tier logistics, and neatly solve all overflow problems. It's also much more convenient than a room full of chests. Teleport pipes are being phased out (pardon the pun) in favor of item/liquid/power tessaracts, which do much the same thing. I need to add that to the replacement guide, come to think of it. There is a filler machine that can be used to fill back up the holes that the quarry makes, and you could use the Igneous Extruder machine to make an infinite supply of cobblestone. I haven't tried that, so I don't know how well it works, but it's an option at least. Agreed. It's definitely needed.

Yeah, but it's also in prerelease. I would sincerely hope that it would be given strong consideration for inclusion in Tekkit once it's ready, as it would really flesh out the magic content.

Has Thaumcraft 3 had an official release yet? Last I checked, the restrictions were only going to be for the pre-releases until the mod creator decided it ready for release.

Ah, good point. I should probably see about making a bootstrapping guide as well to help people figure out the 'best' way to get into the tech tree in early game.

If I'm following along correctly, the implementation code holds a map of all endpoints among each connected group of conduits, and storage in each grouping, which only updates when a conduit is added/removed/reconfigured, and then directly updates the endpoints and storage on each tick rather than simulating 'pumping' through each intermediary block? Thus, there would only be a flat 5% loss whenever energy is moved from a storage block anywhere in the grouping to an endpoint in the grouping, no matter what the specific configuration is inbetween? Just curious to see if I'm anywhere close. ;)

Thank you very much. I think that the longer road to bootstrapping a full TE workshop, most notably the wiring, is the biggest reason many people were hesitant about it. One easy fix might be to allow it to be made of something other than hardened glass, which in turn requires an induction smelter and obsidian dust, which requires a pulverizer and diamond pick, which requires three diamonds... basically you have to do quite a bit of manual mining and machine building before you can even touch on the ability to wire power to said machines. Doable, but understandably somewhat frustrating for players used to being able to make rudimentary power distributions after just a bit of iron and copper. Maybe a regular glass version of conduits that is much more power lossy depending on length of cable (or manhattan distance if you want to fudge it for computational efficiency)? That'd make it easier to get started, but with a fairly compelling reason to upgrade as you start to spread out and automate larger things. (That kind of scheme worked pretty well in IC2, which was fairly effective at compelling you to upgrade to glass fiber when you reached a point of being ready to do large-scale farming and automation.) It would also allow you to create it with only two machines (or perhaps fewer if you just allow the dust to be packed in by shaped crafting) before you can wire power about. Just some thoughts, mind you. Not trying to be too pushy.