A lot of noob questions

[Lyikos]

Tekkit post

Hello, I want to convert a bukkit server to tekkit and have questions mostly regarding nerfing some of the plugins.

I know I can disable the recipes, I like a lot of those broken items and believe they could be made to be balanced by amping the energy requirement. I didn't find any file that lets me do this in the configs, did I miss something? If there in fact is none is there any bukkit mods made for scaling tekkit stuff?

Energy Sources: I already disabled EE completely, and I plan to disable recipes for the renewable energies. I don't want to disable nuclear power, but want to decrease its output significantly.

Buildcraft Stuff: in the buildcraft wiki it told me that quarries and certain other machines that normally require at least a steam engine can be made to run off a redstone clock, made with vanilla components. Is this still true, because it seemed like this was changed in later versions? If it is how fast/slow is it? I prefer to avoid having free energy like that unless it literally takes an hour or more to quarry a block of a redstone clock.

The mining laser: while a cool item as a pvp weapon I'm concerned about its terrain destructive abilities, is there anyway to nerf those as well? I didn't find any other futuristic or modern weapon in the pack, and it seems if I disable it, I'd be left with a musket, is there something I missed.

Last thing, in the video it shows a moving airship, is that still in tekkit, I didn't find it in the mod list on the website.

[Omicron]

1.) You generally can't modify things like energy or resource cost.

2.) I don't think nerfing nuclear power is really necessary. Give your players something cool to work for. These are reasonably expensive without EE, and run on finite fuel.

3.) The Redstone power framework is an optional setting in the Buildcraft config file that's off by default. You can basically switch between using engines and using Redstone; one or the other, never both at the same time. Engines are enabled by default.

4.) Can't nerf it, just disable the recipe...

5.) The moving airship is built using components from the Redpower mod, called Frames. This is still a part of Tekkit and very popular.

6.) Bonus: consider disabling Computercraft or at least the Turtles. These things are like user-programmable quarries for a third of the cost that never consume power and never wear out.

[gavjenks]

I plan to disable recipes for the renewable energies. I don't want to disable nuclear power

2.) I don't think nerfing nuclear power is really necessary. Give your players something cool to work for. These are reasonably expensive without EE, and run on finite fuel.

AFAIK, nuclear power IS renewable, not finite. With breeder reactors, you can breed more spent uranium than it takes to breed it, allowing you to run the reactors indefinitely, without any mining.

[Omicron]

Really? I thought the chance to receive a depleted cell was so small this wasn't really feasible. Guess I underestimated the power of Breeders...

[Lyikos]

AFAIK, nuclear power IS renewable, not finite. With breeder reactors, you can breed more spent uranium than it takes to breed it, allowing you to run the reactors indefinitely, without any mining.

After checking the wiki I found that depleted isotope cell is a recipe requiring a near depleted cell and coal dust, so disabling that recipe should take care of that problem. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Moridrex]

So far playing with reactors on my server, out of 47 cells that were in the reactor less than half usually become depleted cells that I can breed back into regular cells; the others are simply permanently lost. Or I am doing it wrong, not sure. Since I play with EE enabled doesn't really make a difference, my nukes run 24/7 and provide power to the whole base.

[gavjenks]

So far playing with reactors on my server, out of 47 cells that were in the reactor less than half usually become depleted cells that I can breed back into regular cells; the others are simply permanently lost. Or I am doing it wrong, not sure. Since I play with EE enabled doesn't really make a difference, my nukes run 24/7 and provide power to the whole base.

Yeah, I think some just flat out disappear.

However, a breeder can still make about 4 replenished cells for every 1 fresh one spent, so even if you lose half in the main reactor, it's still 2:1, and sustainable (plus the breeder still makes some electricity itself, so a little better than 2:1)

After checking the wiki I found that depleted isotope cell is a recipe requiring a near depleted cell and coal dust, so disabling that recipe should take care of that problem. Thanks for pointing it out.

That would work, but it's kinda lame. Anybody who makes an automated production and slave breeder reactor system pretty clearly IMO deserves to have a renewable energy source.

I don't know if it is possible to change recipes easily, but if so, it would be better to do something like "3 depleted cells + 3 coal dust = 2 replenished cells" so that it is still sustainable, but much harder to actually CREATE uranium out of nothing.

Sustainable nuclear reactors are pretty realistic (real life breeders can get about 100 times more life out of the same fissile material!), but making uranium out of nothing is not realistic. Thus making it more of a fine tuning of recipes issue more so than a "hey let's just cut out one of the most advanced, complex, and satisfying parts of the energy game entirely" solution.

[Moridrex]

I'm still not sure I see the sustainability of breeding. Let's say I put 47 cells into the main reactor, they deplete, I get 25 out (If I'm lucky). I have to put those 25 into a breeder with roughly 8 more NEW cells (so I have to have that on hand from mining or trading it - since there is no EE), which may deplete out to only 4 cells (or none if you're really unlucky, I had a cycle on a reactor leave 3 cells out of 47...) but they recharge the 25 you put in. Then you have to put those 25 back into the main reactor with an additional 22 you pulled from...somewhere, to get it going again. So, it is 'sustainable' as long as you keep mining/trading for Uranium to make up the difference in the luck game of what you are left with afterwards. Ofc, that all depends on your reactor setup...I'm new to Tekkit (about 5 weeks old....but I took the 'safe' 47-cell EE Ice-fed reactor and turned it into a fully automated/RP fed system with ComputerCraft controls on my own, and am automating a breeder as an exercise in knowledge since that's pointless with EE-fed uranium). Diminishing returns I don't see as sustainability; it's only sustainable if you use EE to produce your uranium, otherwise you have to keep mining or trading for Uranium like mad. The breeder just helps the uranium you have last a little longer essentially.

Or am I missing something?

[gavjenks]

Or am I missing something?

Yes. You can craft one full uranium cell into 8 depleted cells.

So start with 3 uranium cells, let's say. Craft one into 8 depleted cells. The other 2 enrich those 8. Even if you lose both the fresh ones, you now have 8. And you created at least 5,000,000 EU in the breeding process alone (the cells make energy in addition to enriching their neighbors), which is enough to make about 8 tin ore in a mass fab, or enough for 16 ingots or 64 new empty cells.

So from 3 uranium cells, you got 8 uranium cells and 56 spare tin cells, with nothing else being put in.

Lather, rinse, and repeat.

[Moridrex]

....good god. I didn't know the bit about breaking a standard uranium into 8 depleted. Dunno how I missed that when doing my initial research. Ooops. Sorry. Nice info tho....

I need to learn to make better breeders, my current one only produces 20eu per tick....the full reactors tho put out 2040 which is nice.

[Omicron]

Maybe disabling the recipe for breaking one cell into 8 depleted ones is a good way to reign in nuclear reactors then?

That makes Breeders still work perfectly fine, but you first need to run your cells through a reactor in order to get some depleted ones back.

[Lyikos]

Anyone know of a way to disable the mining laser's terrain breaking ability? It's such a cool pvp weapon but when used to mine it's far too broken.

[Jay?]

Keep in mind that if you disable even the low output renewable energy sources, like solars, you'll start seeing people build horrifying lag monsters like redstone engine arrays.

[Lyikos]

Keep in mind that if you disable even the low output renewable energy sources, like solars, you'll start seeing people build horrifying lag monsters like redstone engine arrays.

Plan to disable those as well, not sure how I want to do it yet though, I may ban converting BC power to EU all together by disabling the energy generators, or even the redstone engine itself.

[LazDude2012]

Why disable any form of renewable energy? You seem to be the sort of admin that gets on everyone's nerves.

Secondly, you want the mining laser to be used for everything except mining? Sounds legit. :/

[warpspeed10]

Plan to disable those as well, not sure how I want to do it yet though, I may ban converting BC power to EU all together by disabling the energy generators, or even the redstone engine itself.

You will most definitely want to disable trees as well. Charcoal is a form of renewable energy that totally destroys the experience your are trying to create on your server.

[jojomoep]

So in fact you want to disable EE and all renewable energy generation + nerf the other energy generation? And redstone engines? And Block-breakers? And Frames? And Computercraft?

That's an interresting idea...

In then end you just force people to build huge machines to get energy. Like Combustion arrays hooked up to an engine generator (if you dont disable them too) that will start lagging the server pretty fast.

Imho, it's a good idea to nerf some stuff, for example the solars, they are just too op but you can't limit the players too much.

With all the stuff you want to disable there is no real sense of trying to build anything even half advanced machines wich is the sense of tekkit.

[LazDude2012]

Seriously, man. Just have a vanilla server. Or, with the atmosphere you want, try Better than Wolves.

[Lyikos]

I want an energy based economy, that's why I wan't to disable a lot of the renewable stuff. I'm fine with charcoal because it still requires you to gather the wood, or build a machine to farm it, and I'm fine with that.

[gavjenks]

I want an energy based economy, that's why I wan't to disable a lot of the renewable stuff. I'm fine with charcoal because it still requires you to gather the wood, or build a machine to farm it, and I'm fine with that.

That makes little to no sense, sorry. Solar energy requires building a machine to farm it, as does wind, etc. What's the difference between two LV solar panels (8 Eu/tick total) and a small tree machine (could be a single turtle) + one generator (10 Eu/tick total)? Tree machine is probably easier to make, and makes more energy.

Also, if you'll notice, in real life, solar power is not free. Renewable does not mean "non-economic."

What you need to disable is stuff that allows exponential growth easily by making the materials that you need to make more of that thing. Specifically, disable all of EE, disable mass fabricators (and lava and oil fabricators), disable IC2 miners, disable quarries and mining wells.

And possibly disable or ideally just nerf turtles (you could install ComputerCraft 1.4 if youre okay with players having to install something. That allows turtles to have to consume fuel).

Those 6 things are the real culprits with regard to the actual problem you are describing, I think.

[LazDude2012]

See, gavjenks's idea sounds reasonable. Exponential growth is very OP, but things like solars, i mean, have you tried making an HV solar array? Just an MV took 12 stacks of rubber, almost 20 stacks of refined iron, 6 stacks of coal dust, not to mention the tin, copper, redstone, etc. They're super expensive.

[warpspeed10]

See, gavjenks's idea sounds reasonable. Exponential growth is very OP, but things like solars, i mean, have you tried making an HV solar array? Just an MV took 12 stacks of rubber, almost 20 stacks of refined iron, 6 stacks of coal dust, not to mention the tin, copper, redstone, etc. They're super expensive.

Assuming you do not have EE enabled that is.

[LazDude2012]

We have EE enabled on our server, but we don't use it to generate resources. (well, most of us don't, anyway)