Opinions on EE with other mods

In you scale I give it
It's practically creative mode after four or five hours.

You must be new around here... Its pretty old news that 80 to 95% of the trolls that live under this bridge Engineers that works in this company Losers people that comes to this forum hate EE.

The mod can be described as a mountain, the climbing(Start of the game) is difficult, but getting down(End of the game) its a breeze, unlike regular minecraft that sort of try to keep the difficulty up.

So yeah kinda pointless think to ask.

I like it when it is stand alone, it takes a lot of time in order to obtain the really high up items, my problem is when it gets used with other mods. Personally I think that copper and tin shouldn't have EMC values and that it should stay away from other mods in general, because while it may be balanced by itself in the extremely high cost of endgame items, when combined with mods like IC2 which have relatively low costs for endgame items comparatively, it ends up being an all day afk fest just cloning red matter over and over again. If I were to suggest one change to it, it would be to get rid of the transmutation tablet entirely and give more block and item transmuting functionality to the philosophers stone. This would make it so that if I want to obtain more of a certain item I would have to actually have one of those items handy and not just stick some red matter in a tablet and pull items out of thin air, or simply change the tablet so that it only applies to fuels so that it makes accumulation of redstone easier, although once again I don't think it should be touching on uranium in any way, especially with the nuclear buffs that are coming soon

EDIT: I have decided upon using your scale, it's good for a little fun on the side, or in someone's early days of mod exposure, but overall I find it's overpowered when used with other mods and occasionally when used just on its own

There are a few good things about EE. First of all it provides good balance for a short game when you focus mainly on EE. It also allow beginners to get to know other mods better. EE construction makes maps like FTB possible, which is awesome challenge impossible if EE would be balanced with other mods in normal gameplay.

You can't also forget EE items, no more going around with inventory full of buckets just to make space optimal reed farm (used with forestry for biofuel). Swiftwolf is a lot better at flying then jetpack ( in your scale). Philosopher's stone is great, providing easier mob farming (e.g. ender pearls, slimeballs), crafting on the go and changing your cobblestone into smooth stone, or grass into sand to plant cacti for bees. Mercurial eye is invaluable while building, or changing your base. Destruction catalyst is great for clearing large amounts of land (but OP if you use it for mining). RM axe is my tool of choice every time I see a jungle. Last but not the least, bags are awesome, when you use many mods, standard inventory (even with forestry backpacks) is just to small.

However if you want to have long game, using EE in its full potential makes your game boring. Why would I mine (or construct frame quarries), construct automatic farms, make massive cobblegens for recyclers -> scrapboxes, experiment with crops, be an apiarist; if I could just transmute everything from EMC spilling everywhere? In current game I don't use transmutation tablet and energy condenser at all, this way getting items like evertide amulet feels like an achievement. The only pstone transmutation I use is charcoal from forestry treefarm to coal to make diamonds, but I don't think it is OP in SSP (but taking gold from scrapboxes and transmuting it to diamonds IMO would be OP).

Using your scale, . but for all the haters, who dosn't like EE. it is a very fun mod and who dosn't like being supreme ruller of your world (it is especially satisfying to fire bomb NPC's and shoot a lightning bolt at the Ender Dragon )

The way I see it, Equivalent Exchange is a variation on NEI -- I can and have played with NEI in cheat mode without pulling anything out of it, and I can similarly choose not to go into outright chEEting while still allowing myself the occasional useful toy (flight, lava immunity, etc). Ultimately, it's no more OP than you allow it to be.

Then again, what do I know -- after two years of Minecraft I have trouble convincing myself to run the game in the first place.

I remember using EE while following DW20S2.
I got bored by it and it completely destroyed my willpower to build anything interesting.
However, stopping right there is not the true description.

EE has a couple of flaws when coupled with other tech mods:
-Time investment equivalence:
The amount of time investing is in unbalance. Alchemy was always described as a tedious process, yet at the moment EE2 can transmute any item within milliseconds and create matter our of nowhere.
This could be fixed by:
1. Setting variable time-scales to transmuting stuff from lower tiers to higher ones.
2. More separation between kinds of matter. (ie: atm it is Fuel/Matter, It might aswell be divided in tiers of matter, low, valuables, etc)
3. In contrast to it's name, configurable losses per transmute or exponentially rising costs when creating high-tier items from lower tiers. (Mass reed farm into mass iron, etc)

- Learning curve:
Currently the EE tech tree is literally
Get collectors
Get more of them
Get the next tier
Spam those too
*Viscious cycle of EE.wmv.*

Whilst combined with IC/RP/BC/PC/Whatever tech mod, this learning curve is unbalanced.
Sure you could create this awesome autofactory with RP computers and retrievulators, but why would you when a bunch of condensors could do the same for you?
(Note, this was my main drop on the mod in question)
On servers this problem also occurs, to be a bit competitive qua construction skill, it did not matter how well you were at setting up factories/stuff. Your neighbour with his 400 collectors had more yield and used literally 20% thinkpower for it. This could be a possible demotivation too.

Sure one could say that the main point is having fun, and if you have fun with EE then that is fine. There are some that say that they mess with IC/BC/RP/etc just because they have EE, fine, everyone can play on his/her own ways.
I use EE too, but on a local bukkit server with most recipes disabled, edited/whatever. Just to make sure that my build is not easy-to-win.
Everyone is free to differ on this. I'm merely describing the phenomenon I see.
The whole conversation about EE being imba is a bit biased, EE just needs some improvements here and there.

-Decay/loss of invested time.
v
As far as I have seen, almost No EE tool ever wears down or loses it's worth overtime. All tools never break, all invested time is repayed on an unlimited timeschale.
This contributes to the ''Time Investment vs Time repayed'' debate.
This could essentially be fixed by making ALL EE tools dependant on fuel, which would actually make sense.
And with 'Fuel dependancy' I mean an actual drain, that is scalable with the income from collectors/potential mined materials.
I know of a guy named sp0nge(Or his dev) that made his EE config have an additional setting: Breakcostmultiplier: 10. Which multiplied the block-destroy cost of each tool by that respective number. So using a Dcatalyst would make mining 1 block cost 10x the normal cost, while 10 may be a bit over the edge, this is made so because using a tool that saves you time should backfire with one or more dependencies/downsides. IC for example demands energy and materials+setting it up to start mining, along with the time it takes.
Redpower demands complicated circuitry/contraptions, BC just needs energy and time.

A D catalyst has none of that, it consumes a little bit of fuel and instantly repays that cost by mining 64 deep holes for example.

In my eyes these are the main problems EE has, and EE3 has some interesting features that will compensate for that.
Maybe I'll give it a shot, maybe not, I'll see what the future brings.

Let me cite wiki from one of the best mods I'm using ;): "Now, Minecraft has three Elements. Mine, mine and craft.1. Mine = it's YOUR world". Many mods have exploits. For example Railcraft is overall very well balanced, on a more conservative scale. But with RedPower you can change 4 charcoal into 1 iron, which is not balanced. IC2 with redpower give you a way to convert tin into iron, or bronze into iron, which gets worse with forestry (cheaper bronze). IC2 with compact solars give you similar exponential growth to EE (a little bit more expensive, but with 1 HV array you can just idle). Mining laser and nether ores is also very OP. In mystcraft multiple dense ores ages with forestry backpacks you can get more resources than you will ever need. While idling near them, Endenic bees grant you enough XP to equip your whole family with enchanted equipment. With a little amount of work you can make frame quarry, which will devour your whole world in no time, exercising only your sorting systems.

These leave one question. Why?

It is a lot better to use these features of multiple mods, which make your game fun. It is "your world", if you want to be god, you can be, but if you want to have fun, you can't be to greedy. This is sandbox game, you get objectives from yourself. Discussions about which mod is too OP are a bit pointless, you use these mods as tools to make a fun game for yourself. This is a thing, which I like the most in MC modding scene.

^ If I could upvote you, I totally would. Excellent post, Zjarek.

Quote from Zjarek

Let me cite wiki from one of the best mods I'm using ;): "Now, Minecraft has three Elements. Mine, mine and craft.1. Mine = it's YOUR world". Many mods have exploits. For example Railcraft is overall very well balanced, on a more conservative scale. But with RedPower you can change 4 charcoal into 1 iron, which is not balanced. IC2 with redpower give you a way to convert tin into iron, or bronze into iron, which gets worse with forestry (cheaper bronze). IC2 with compact solars give you similar exponential growth to EE (a little bit more expensive, but with 1 HV array you can just idle). Mining laser and nether ores is also very OP. In mystcraft multiple dense ores ages with forestry backpacks you can get more resources than you will ever need. While idling near them, Endenic bees grant you enough XP to equip your whole family with enchanted equipment. With a little amount of work you can make frame quarry, which will devour your whole world in no time, exercising only your sorting systems.

These leave one question. Why?

It is a lot better to use these features of multiple mods, which make your game fun. It is "your world", if you want to be god, you can be, but if you want to have fun, you can't be to greedy. This is sandbox game, you get objectives from yourself. Discussions about which mod is too OP are a bit pointless, you use these mods as tools to make a fun game for yourself. This is a thing, which I like the most in MC modding scene.

Can do no other thing than agree with this.
Essentially as I said, play how you want. I merely compared the effects of combining them.
EE takes quite some time when run vanilla. The real problem starts when comparing it to other one's gamestyle.
Which is essentially the exact thing you are stating. Everyone wants to play their own game, this is no problem
It's just when people start comparing 'their' playstyle to others

It's your own world, your own fun. The problem starts when other people want to play in your sandbox, or start saying their sandbox has superior macerated sand, saying it will make finer glass than your sandbox. Etcetera.
And then internet happens.

It involves smelting Minecarts that are made from steel ingots.
Coke oven>Coal Coke.
Coal Coke> BlastFurnace+iron
>Steel
5 Steel= 2x Minecart
2x Minecart = 10 iron.
./loop

Quote from XFmax-o-l

It involves smelting Minecarts that are made from steel ingots.
Coke oven>Coal Coke.
Coal Coke> BlastFurnace+iron
>Steel
5 Steel= 2x Minecart
2x Minecart = 10 iron.
./loop

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That still takes a lot of time and more resources, getting slimeballs in vanilla for a few blast furnaces can take quite a while, although you could just automate it with a forestry tree farm. By the point you have the slimeballs you could easily be already farming RM with EE. I'll express my thoughts like so: "still more balanced than EE lol"

Not really, the slimeballs aren't that hard to get and with 2 blast furnaces and 12 coke ovens each.
Just UU matter the coal and have some starting Iron.
That's it, you are trading .3 uu matter per iron bar iirc.