Buildcraft Recipe Evaluation

[randomone18]

After playing this modpack for a couple of days, I have noticed a nice balance curve between a few of the new major mods, such as Thermal Expansion. This curve has been improved by the sharing of the new metals and constructs between the mods; one example would be the use of the machine frame between four of the major mods present in this pack. However I feel a few of the mods are lacking in both their crafting balance and logic. One of the mods that comes to mind first is Buildcraft.

While Buildcraft is unique in being one of the first mods to integrate pipes and automation into Minecraft, I feel like it has become a bit dated in the integration of itself. While there are other parts that need to be fixed with it (and are fixed with both Thermal Expansion and the new Tekkit fork of Buildcraft) I feel the recipe changes would be the easiest to go after first in terms of balance.

So here are some of the proposed changes I have come up with:

Cobblestone pipes would be built with 2 iron and 1 glass, similar to the old recipe. The amount created per recipe could be adjusted to match resources put in. It would be renamed simply "Pipe." Should make more since then loose stone and glass creating a pipe.

Wooden pipes would instead be created with one of the newly renamed pipes and one or two gears. The types of gears could be used to control balance. Renamed "Extractor Pipe."

Stone pipes would simply be created by simply combing some type of dye with the regular pipes. I'm not sure how to justify the speed duration increase with this recipe, but I'm sure someone will come up with a better idea here. Renamed Pipe.

Gold pipes I'm kinda fine with, with the vanilla booster rails using the same sorta logic. Maybe use redstone or some related product in its recipe.

Diamond pipes would be created with the combination of a regular pipe and some type of control mechanism. The control circuit from Modular Powersuits mod comes to mind, althoughthere are a ton of different combinations of various alloys, dusts, and random circuits that could also be used. Renamed Sorter Pipe.

Mining Well is fine, recipe makes since. The Quarry not so much, just a jumble of different gears. I suggest having the top row consist of two diamond gears and a diamond pick (Or just three diamond gears as the drill head), the middle row would have a machine body surrounded by invar bars, and the bottom row would have a redstone reception coils and two redstone energy conduits.

All the gears would be revamped to not continually build on the previous gears, but instead just use either a wooden plank core for wooden and stone gears (which would also use smooth stone instead of cobble), an iron ingot core for the iron and gold gears, and a shiny ingot for the diamond gear.

So these were all the changes I could come up with so far. There are a lot more recipe changes I could come up with, but I would like your opinon on these changes before I continue. Also these recipes are guidelines, so any recipe overlaps should be ignored until implementation.

[theprolo]

I'm pretty sure the Tekkit team don't actually make the mods, so I'd suggest asking the Buildcraft team this, not the modpack team.

[randomone18]

The Tekkit team already has a github branch of the Buildcraft source they are using for bugfixes. I just figured it would be simple to toss in some recipe changes too.