Bringing use to the useless

1st Official Post

    One of my favorite parts of mods like this and buildcraft are how they give practical use to things that would otherwise be totally useless. For example, excess coal and redstone can be used on powering things or producing diamonds here, and cactus can be used to waterproof pipes in buildcraft. We can use plant material to make plantballs and then convert them into biofuel. Worst case scenario, we have a recycler to eliminate things that are still useless and perhaps use the waste to power a mass fabricator to make useful things.


    My suggestion here is to give more use to some things that are currently near-useless in the vanilla game. I feel that would add quality to the experience. They can either be used to make things that already exist in industrialcraft, in a different way; or they can be used to make something new, although that's not strictly what I'm suggesting.


    For example, dirt and cobblestone, seeds, vegetable produce, gravel, netherrack, all the things that quickly overwhelm our storage that we are currently just tossing out. Why not come up with something they'd be good for? Any ideas are welcome.

    • Official Post

    It's called a recycler. We use our crap to make scrap, no need to actually use it!

    145 Mods isn't too many. 9 types of copper and 8 types of tin aren't too many. 3 types of coffee though?

    I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you read was not what I meant.


    ---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
    // I just don't know what went wrong :(


    I see this too much.

    Quote from Chocohead

    It's called a recycler. We use our crap to make scrap, no need to actually use it!

    Did you read my entire post, or jump on it to say that? I specifically mentioned the recycler in my original post.

    Cobblestone could be thrown into a Thermal Centrifuge for a chance at producing mineral dusts, or bits of other kinds of stone, that can be made into blocks and smelted for cool building materials. Or, said dusts could be further processed to obtain valuable elements/compounds, or even used for energy. Netherrack could contain small amounts of Gold and Redstone, which are useful.
    There could even be added a machine, requiring no energy, being some sort of "Compost chamber", which produces Fertilizer from large amounts of waste plant/animal material. Maggots, rarely dropped from zombies, could be added to speed up the process. And the methane created by the process could be used as fuel.
    Heck, there could even be added an entire Maggot breeding mechanic, similar to Forestry's Bees - different breeds of Maggots could produce more fertilizer, different byproducts, etc., or even process crushed ores for more yield.
    That's just a few things I came up with. I hope it's helpful.

    Quote from SegFaulter

    Cobblestone could be thrown into a Thermal Centrifuge for a chance at producing mineral dusts, or bits of other kinds of stone, that can be made into blocks and smelted for cool building materials. Or, said dusts could be further processed to obtain valuable elements/compounds, or even used for energy. Netherrack could contain small amounts of Gold and Redstone, which are useful.
    There could even be added a machine, requiring no energy, being some sort of "Compost chamber", which produces Fertilizer from large amounts of waste plant/animal material. Maggots, rarely dropped from zombies, could be added to speed up the process. And the methane created by the process could be used as fuel.
    Heck, there could even be added an entire Maggot breeding mechanic, similar to Forestry's Bees - different breeds of Maggots could produce more fertilizer, different byproducts, etc., or even process crushed ores for more yield.
    That's just a few things I came up with. I hope it's helpful.

    I like your creativity

    • Official Post
    Quote from Joe

    Did you read my entire post, or jump on it to say that? I specifically mentioned the recycler in my original post.


    Yes I did, but I can't see why you wouldn't use the useless blocks to get scrap. What would you feed your recyclers with without useless things?

    145 Mods isn't too many. 9 types of copper and 8 types of tin aren't too many. 3 types of coffee though?

    I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you read was not what I meant.


    ---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
    // I just don't know what went wrong :(


    I see this too much.

    That's the fun of it, there would be a competition of whether you wanted to dispose of your stuff or wanted to put it to use doing something else. You can still use it in the recycler, or you can use it for other things. Ideally, everything would have uses in multiple ways.


    Remember how gold and lapis were made useful in Industrialcraft? I'm thinking of that kind of good feeling where nothing you work hard and get is junk.

    I do wish there was a Rotten Flesh --> Leather recipe though.


    Even if it costed 16 flesh apiece, since by the time you start on enchanting you probably have a decent food farm set up and you have no use for rotten flesh (especially since they nerfed it in the canning machine).

    Right here there sounds like some good ideas flowing. This is the kind of dialogue that makes magic happen.

    Quote from RawCode

    shout down your internal perfectionist.


    not everything shoud have use, minecraft is not console game.


    Not everything should, but everything could. Remember that the issue is that there is a huge buildup of useless items, and it is a shame that the best thing they can be used for is Scrap. The solution is to make some better ways to use said useless items, than just throwing them into a recycler. It would be better for IndustrialCraft to make things better, and a way to do that is to add a way to use the useless. Recycling is not good enough, as it uses up too much for too little return/profit.