How would you customize EE to make it balanced?

[Naturam]

Currently EE is imbalanced to bloody hell. In a world where diamonds are supposed to be rare and valuable. EE requires tens of thousands of diamonds worth of "energy" to make its stuff. Its just not on the wavelength of any other mod. The alchemy bags granting you 500+ inventory slots with little to no effort.

The rings that shoot fire like a machine gun and uses no fuel or ammo.

people keep nagging that I switched EE off but bloody hell there doesn't seem to be a single thing in this mod that plays by the rules. Its like they just said "fuck it" and just emptied a truck full of stuff at the game without planning or forethought.

[tdog21]

um ok the condensers which creat items even with levle 3 energy collecters and anti-matter relays it can take like 3 hours to produce 1 diamond (hyperbole) and uses the equivilent of 17 diamonds to make 1 dark matter and most stuff beyond alchemy chests and philosephers stones require at least like 9 diamond to make. the rings use shit tons of redstone/glowstone/other fuels to power one blast i used a full stack of 64 redstone to fire 4 blasts with the destuction catalyst most of this stuff requires so many diamonds that it can take like 3 days to get to any decent stuff. having a massive 64x64 quary down to bedrock is like enough to get 1 redmatter so it's not as over powered as you say but yes some things are like swiftwolfes rending gale allows you to fly but all this is evened out a bit it uses alot of energy. that fire ring uses energy as well. i agree that some stuff is way too op but alot of it requires time and effort to get to you have to go to the nether and find a diamond before you can even really start in EE

[Naturam]

When I ran EE on the server it took 3 days for people to have diamonds in the thousands.

In the end I think I'll have to keep EE disabled.

[Chezzik]

Arguably, IC2 is the one that is not "balanced" with everything else. Its advancement path is complex and long, and that matches nothing else in the game!

Farming, in the base game, for example, has a trivial advancement path. You harvest 15 seeds, and in the next generation, you have 30. In under an hour, you've built a farm large enough that you'll never need food again, and there is no better upgrade than the wheat you started with.

Buildcraft also has a short advancement path. In a few hours, you can easily have your quarry running, generating free resources.

RP2 has a fairly short advancement path. It takes almost nothing to be working with bluetricity. Sure, there are some ovens that take a lot of resources to make, but they're hardly the focus of the mod.

EE2 seems to have a similar acceleration to everything non-IC2. Everyone hates it though, because it makes everything in the game unlimited, instead of just one or two things.

Don't get me wrong. I think Technic/Tekkit would be better with a nerfed version of EE. But, in the most technical sense, it's already "balanced" to everything else that is overpowered.

IC2 seems to be the one outlier. I think it really is by far the best mod in the pack. There's a long period where solar panels are too expensive to really run your fabs, so you focus on nuclear, which, frankly, is very hard. You have to set up miners, which need energy, just to get the uranium you need for the reactors! Eventually you get through that, build all the quantum armor you want, and then turn your attention to giant solar arrays. It's a complex path, and there are very few shortcuts.

There's very few mods that have such a complex advancement path. Once more of them pop up, I think the pack will really grow.

[Naturam]

I like IC because of the long advancement path. In classic minecraft once you have a set of diamond armor and a farm you're basically done with the game. Everything else is just fluff. IC on the other hand lets you advance on a much longer path where having a bigger base with more advanced machinery benefits you.

EE on the other hand is pretty stumped with mark 1-3 on the same machines and then it just multiplies with itself. People build more and more machines that generate free materials that then generate free machines that generate free materials and machines. its like making your calculator do 2x2 and then just hitting enter and watch the numbers fly.

Even in its prime. IC still requires you to gather materials and do actual work. UU matter can give you *some* materials but even getting 1 diamond costs as much power as 2-3 uranium cells.

[Arkalius]

The primary problem with EE is the geometric progression of EMC generation. I think this needs to be cut down, perhaps to a logarithmic progression. Basically, in order to increase EMC production by, for example, 10 EMC/sec you have to double the amount of collectors. Each collector you build provides less of a boost to your overall production than the last, a diminishing returns kind of thing. The 10EMC/s number was just an example, I don't know what would be fair.

Perhaps an integration with some of the other mods would be cool too. Maybe there can be a device that can increase EMC production rate by taking an input of EU from IC or energy from buildcraft. If you power up your relay, for example, it provides a bigger bonus for attached collectors. That way you attach some EMC-related value to a somewhat more limited resource (EU/energy).

[firstdeathmaker]

Actually, you can use IC2 as well to produce a lot of things:

With 64 HV Solars connected directly to a Mass Fab it will output 1 UU Matter per second. At that point you have the same effect as with EE, just that it takes a bit longer to reach that point.

I think the bigger problem is, that you can transfer everything with EE, so you dont need to gather that many "specific" ressources. Like you can just setup a cobble gen and produce ores.

But on the other hand: People ALWAYS try to get ressources due automatisation. So you have to decide if the people should build massive amounts of quarries or get that through EE or Industrial Craft.

[Naturam]

64 HV solars? That's nearly 33.000 regular solar panels.

Let me give you some material data for that

98.000 pieces of glass

98.000 pieces of real coal

262.000 iron ingots

131.000 tin bars

131.000 redstone

425.000 units of rubber

213.000 copper ingots

Those are materials that you have to gather up in real time. Mine it

And for what? So you can make a diamond every 9 seconds? After mining all those materials you would be sitting on thousands of diamonds to begin with.

People make way to big of a fuss over this UU matter business.

[OmegaJasam]

I would turn it off and use a diffrent mod.

There is no way to 'balance' EE with the other technic mods without it being an entirely diffrent mod. It's fundimental function (the exchange bit) will always leave it so a pupkin farm = infinate renewable diamonds, no scarcity.

The best thing to do at this point is to determine if you want a creative mode on steriods end game, and if not, turn off EE and focus on other mods.

If you do want it, then you may as well leave it as is, no matter what you change people are going to end up with infinate whatever they need, quickly.

Even simple things like being able to get easy ice for it make reactors stronger. I wouldn't worry about it from any aspect other then the amount of protections bypassing damage it can do.

ICE mass fabs are also iffy to be honest. The time scale and work is at least linar, but it sitll kills scarcity in an idle manner... And to be honest you /don't/ need more then say 128EU dripping idly into it to have whatever you need whenever you need it. IC2 has a limiar scaling and without EE to make it faster, a diamond an hour would still provide you with more then you need.

[DragnHntr]

I really like the idea of disabling Energy Collectors to somewhat balance EE with the other mods. That way it becomes an item sink instead of an item generator. You can still change items you have into items you do not have, but you are still required to go mining once you run out of high emc value items.

[derrikcurran]

A tax on transmutations might work. Everything could cost maybe 110% of it's EMC value to create. Granted, that contradicts the very title of the mod...

[Naturam]

A tax on transmutations might work. Everything could cost maybe 110% of it's EMC value to create. Granted, that contradicts the very title of the mod...

No collectors and a 50% value loss. That might work.

[DatOneGuy]

Interesting to see that you find EE to be the unbalanced one.

Crafting Table II recipes being broken (or otherwise) make a lot of things in IC2 to be the most broken, Quantum-Suits being the absolute worst offender as it seems to (bug or not) not consume a lot of energy at all, absorb all the damage you would take, and because it's mostly build up to the tech and then it's not that hard to replicate if you happen to die, which is hard to do with the suit on.

Alchemy Bags hold a lot and might ruin the gameplay for some but alongside some of the broken IC2 stuff it comes nowhere near it.

Some of the rings definitely need to take more energy out, I believe the problem here is that their fuel is easier to make due to bugs with Crafting Table II, and even not exploiting them (it's hard not to when UU->Diamonds are so broken), you can create so much diamonds with UU-Matter once you have a solar array up and a mass fabricator that making stuff from nothing becomes too simple and can break EE, even with this you can find that doing something like charging a Klein Star Omega can be a real chore.

I think a lot of balance could be done with the following simple fixes:

- Fix or remove broken recipes aka 'dupe recipes' from Crafting Table II

- If too hard to do, remove Crafting Table II or make it's recipe almost impossible to obtain

- Debuff Quantum Armor hard, for what it does you should have to charge it much more often, especially the body armor and legs.

- Give it a second bar if possible so that after it's energy runs out it does have it's own duration as actual armor (that is very fragile preferably) and will then break.

- Look at more interactions between EE and IC2 that break the game, most of them are here.

[DragnHntr]

You can't factor duping shit with crafting table 2 into balance discussions. It's a BUG. Anyone who still has crafting table 2 up on their server when it is broken clearly doesnt give a shit about balance.

[DatOneGuy]

There are some things that broke for me when not using CT II, namely Energy Crystals, whenever I make them with a regular crafting table it gives me, of the 2 they start stacked, but you can pull one off the stack and those stack til 64, but the others won't stack.

Obviously also bugs, most bugs are going to be the balance problems that really make a difference.

I still have to say from what I've messed around with Quantum Armor it is way too OP, haven't found a weapon I can hit a quantum armor guy with that will go through their armor, and the only way I've managed to die was falling deeeep into lava.

[DragnHntr]

Bugs are bugs. You can't factor bugs into balance equations. If you are exploiting bugs you obviously don't give a shit about balance.

It's like using thaumcraft with EE to make infinite vis and bitching about balance. The mods were not DESIGNED to run together, exploiting interactions between mods is always going to result in imbalance, it is foolish to expect mod designers to balance their mod around every other mod.

As for the quantum armor, i agree that it is better then gem armor. The nano sword also does more damage then the red matter sword and is arguably easier to get. I believe most balance arguments revolve around the base mechanics of the mods, not the weapons and armor. The utility items for EE are far more powerful. Compare the catalyst to the mining laser. SWG to jetpacks. Alchemical chest, bags, fucking archangels smite of kill anything in one click without even having to aim... i mean seriously.

That is not even touching the actual gameplay changing mechanics. In IC2 you spend a lot of time and accumulate lots of different mats to craft a large complicated setup for running machines that require a separate power system with additional maintenence or additional setup time for what... the ability to get two metal per ore, and smelt things without coal. You also get all the cool IC2 stuff, but the machines themselves are not all that powerful (not that getting 2 metal per ore isn't great). Compare that to EE2, you get enough EMC for a collector, a relay, and a klein star, and then it automatically generates raw EMC that you can use to make more collectors, and anything else you need. You never have to go mining again, once you get a few EE things set up you get infinite everything, forever.

I'm not saying I don't like the mod, it is super useful, but I have to impose limitations on myself for using it, or it makes every other mod trivial. Like some people said, why make a wood farm when you can just turn emc into wood? Why set up IC2 machines for making metal when you can just turn EMC into metal? I'm just going to go to bed now, I feel like I am ranting.

[Viktor_Berg]

I would personally eliminate the collectors and perhaps the relays. Also, increase EMC value of diamonds (to make them harder to synthesize from common materials) even further, and separate most if not all EE specific materials and tools into the Fuel category in the Transmutation Tablet. To balance the inability to spontaneously generate EMC out of thin air, somewhat decrease the price of dark matter and red matter, so that it's still possible to create them within a human's lifetime.

Klein Stars can still be charged in the Tablet, so the overall functionality of the mod shouldn't be hampered.

Thinking of which, I'd probably split the transmutation recipes even further, like separate organic matter and minerals/metals from the rest.

[Tjakka5]

I actually like EE,

why you ask?

I always hated mining, but, its is minecraft.

Quarry's never seem to have anything good for me...

What i do:

I set up my factorys, from al the other mods, getting a item like...sugar cane.

I then transfer those tons of sugar cane into 1 diamond.

The only thing that makes EE realy easy is the transmutation table and the rings and such.

For a server, i would keep those out.

[Cheap Shot]

I started enjoying EE as an aid rather then a main focus. It's much better imo when used SSP or on a smaller servers with friends. It's really nice when you run out of redstone constantly, or need lots of dirt for forestry stuff. The problems people run into are spergy people setting up diamond farms on large servers. Can get out of hand, but it's not really the fault of the mod or balance, just how it's being used and in what context.

[Truculent]

I'd personally split it up into tiers. Each of the tiers is transmuted using it's own type of energy, tier1 EMC, tier2 EMC, tier3 EMC.

Tier 1, common stuff - cobble, dirt, gravel, sand, plants & mob drops. Basically anything you can automatically farm or made solely out of things you can mass farm (for example charcoal, bookcases). Bottom 2 klein stars store this energy.

Tier 2, uncommon stuff - iron, coal, clay, redstone, glowstone, obsidian. Middle 2 klein stars store this energy.

Tier 3, rare and/or valuable stuff - diamond, gold, lapis. Top 2 klein stars store this energy.

So you can turn gold into T3 EMC and make diamonds, or turn clay into T2 EMC to make glowstone, but you can't turn mushroom stew into diamonds OR turn diamonds into bread.

Dark/red matter is transmuted using energy from all 3 tiers in appropriate ratio (tons more tier1 than tier3). They can't be turned back into EMC.

Get rid of all easy ways to convert between tiers, and adjust the cost & fuel usage of the power items. Remove all passive EMC generation. Nerf iron golems. Etc.

But then it's really a different mod.