[Suggestion] Silicon and Semiconductors

I'm not positive, but I believe Alblaka does not want to add new ores.

Quote from Shadowclaimer

Is there a reason behind that? I understand it sucks that new worlds have to find new terrain and such, but new ores just add so much flavor to the game and add a lot of gameplay time.

Block ID pollution. Short version: new ores == BAD BAD BAD

You're more likely to have success lobbying for sandstone + compressor == silicon /item/ further crafting to get wafers.

there's a loads of IDs only if you dont have many mods
personally i think is silicon should be added then as a sandstone product
this one is massively underused and sort of can be imagined like silica sand, at least it appears near sand and is more rare than sand
to compensate for being relatively common block there's always energy costs and cycle like macerate-smelt-compress-refine-etc

Why does silicon have to be some kind of block? Can't the silicon products just be items? There's thousands of itemID slots, aren't there?

I agree with you, I love mining and would love to see silicon ore of some sort.

actual electronics-grade silicon is waaaay more of processing the sand than getting it, just the water purification required for the process cost more than base material
ore looks more of a nonsense to me

just my 2c

Sand + Macerator = Sand Dust
Sand Dust + Furnace = Impure Sillicon
Impure Silicon + Furnace = Silicon Blob
Silicon Blob + Compressor = Silicon Chip

Complex, but meh.

But then Wafers would have to be added to the Ore Dictionary for those who are already using Redpower 2, lol...

What would they be used for, anyway?

You could use them for many things. They could replace glowstone in advanced circuits as one example.

And don't confuse silicon with silicone. Silicon is Si, which could be processed into wafers, but it is extremly difficult (because you need monocrystalline silicon).

First you need a reduction. This could be done with simple Coal to produce Silicon out of SiO2 (basically sand), then you could use the induction or any other powerful furnace to resmelt the silicon to produce a monocrystal. Then again you have to cut it, which IC2 lacks a machine. If they are processed similar in terms of cost you could put them in the dictionary.

Basically Silicon is something we use permantly all day. Because all our electricity is based upon it. You could use it to create splitter and Detector-cables, it should be part of advanced circuits instead of glowstone it could be made into silicone (maybe Steve needs new breasts), which again could be used in many ways.

And really... Silicon is the core-element of solarcells...

Silicone could be used for isolation (could be used for hv-cables, to directly isolate 3 times), it could be used as a piece of construction foam.

But IC2 works fine without and implementing silicon would only change recipes, because all you could do with silicon is somehow substituted in IC2 with other materials (like Glass/Coal-Dust for Solars). It would make some things like Solars more expensive and would reduce the need to go to the nether (because less Glowstone-Dust-use) which might be good for servers, but again there isn't a higher good you will achieve with this, but on the other hand it is only some new items and some recipe-changes to implement.

I am one of those that dont like 132165478 different kinds of ores which only have 1 use each (Aside from the usual Armor/Tool Crafting Shenanigans) its just simply not effective unless you like to use those ores for decoration or something, with technological mods like BC/IC2/RP2 its better to run with the minimum possible number of new ores just to keep more simple recipe wise. (Although i didnt like RP2 adding Ruby, Sappire and Emerald because aside from basic tools and covers, they are mostly useless :/)

Quote from FenixR

I am one of those that dont like 132165478 different kinds of ores which only have 1 use each (Aside from the usual Armor/Tool Crafting Shenanigans) its just simply not effective unless you like to use those ores for decoration or something, with technological mods like BC/IC2/RP2 its better to run with the minimum possible number of new ores just to keep more simple recipe wise. (Although i didnt like RP2 adding Ruby, Sappire and Emerald because aside from basic tools and covers, they are mostly useless :/)

There are uses in the future. I would like a RP2/IC-Mining-Laser which is colored by using one of the gems and shoots blue, green or red lasers

But again Silicon doesn't need a new ore, because silicon-ore is already implemented in vMC... we call it sand. It's a bit odd, that you could make sand into sandstone, because you need high pressure or some kind of clue like CaO (IC2 does the high-pressure thing), but well...

Quote from sirbrandino

I agree with you, I love mining and would love to see silicon ore of some sort.

Make a mod to let sandstone spawn as ore , done XD , but i think block id pollution is a big thing
a server containing ic²,Redpower,Buildcraft and railcraft is modded to the limit of block id's nearly full , (exept 2 or so block ids)
clients are a diffrent story becouse there now is the 4048 block data values mod

Quote from Dino2306

a server containing ic²,Redpower,Buildcraft and railcraft is modded to the limit of block id's nearly full , (exept 2 or so block ids)

In singleplayer I have IC2, RedPower, BuildCraft, RailCraft, AdditionalPipes, Advanced Machines, Rocket Science, Logistics Pipes, Equivalent Exchange, Forestry, MineFactory Reloaded, Power Converters, and ComputerCraft, and I'm not out of block IDs yet. (I don't have an ID extender mod either)
New blocks can use the same block IDs as existing ones, but existing blocks can't be merged like that because it would break existing worlds.