Posts by VermillionX

I have one word for you:

Eloraam

What's the next step? Because i'd rather use IC2-Classic over IC2 "Experimental" any day. Only, every day is 1.12.2 and IC2c isn't.

Why is IC2 still called "experimental" and not just go IC3. People are gonna get the wrong impression thinking IC2X has anything to do with the original IC2.

Is IC2 Classic abandoned now? I haven't seen an update in months.

Railcraft is basically dead. The most recent versions don't have boilers, steam turbines or engines anymore. But they were a prime example of a boiler and turbine system that's simple to use and difficult to master. Which should be the goal of all game content in every mod and any game. More so with RC's old steam system functioning more in line with IC2's than say Thermal Expansion's boilers and steam dynamos (which are ridiculous, and overpowered).

Boilers had configurable sizes, required large amounts of fuel to achieve the right temperature and produced steam and consumed fuel relative to their temperature. Simple. Fuel + Boiler = Heat. Heat + water = steam. Higher heat = more steam. Highest heat = less fuel. Water + Dry Boiler = Boom.

No unlabelled buttons, no mysterious numbers that do "something", no water output instead of steam, no fatal steam explosions for looking at it wrong.

The turbine too: Expensive to build, requires a Turbine disc like IC2 (more expensive though) outputs power relative to steam, outputs water byproduct. Not much different from IC2, but it's SIMPLE. It's UNDERSTANDABLE. It won't kill you 20 times because it doesn't come with a manual. Both the turbine and the boiler have clear and concise GUIs that show a water gauge, a steam gauge and a temperature gauge. The IC2 ones have none of these. They're entirely guesswork.

Once again, being special is only fine if it makes you stand out above the rest. Not the kind of special that requires a caregiver to wipe your ass.

Solid Canning Machine

This is another "Why does this even exist?" There's already a Solid/Fluid Canning Machine which is CHEAPER than the solid canning machine with 5x more functionality. So why's this still here? It's just more dead weight and longer load times.

Suggestion: Completely remove the solid canning machine. Rename the Solid/Fluid Canning Machine as just "Canning Machine", like the old IC2.

Weighted Item/Fluid Distributor

If convoluted and insane had a face, it would be these 2 blocks. Unlike other blocks in IC2, these 2 aren't even referenced in any documentation. Their GUI is a scrabble board of letters with only a passing relevance to their direction. I can figure these out, sure. But in no situation would I choose to use such a hideous block over a dozen other better-presented options in other mods.

Suggestion: Once again, make the GUI presentable and modern. Surely, you've seen the EnderIO side configuration before? Yes? That. A representation of the block, that you can rotate around and select sides and assign priority. Though, that may be a bit too much work. How about the Immersive Engineering Router then? Each side of the block has a different color slot. Put some simple arrow buttons in the GUI to change the priority instead of that ugly scrabble board of tiles.

Magnetizer

Honestly, I think this is a great thing that's unique to IC2. One that's completely unused by everyone. And until I started making this thread, I knew what it did but never used one in all my years. Likely because it's too situational. It requires you be wearing metal boots to use it and that is likely the biggest failing of the magnetizer.

Suggestion: Remove the need to use Metal Boots to use it, allow the use of any footwear that's not leather. Yes, I know it wouldn't be scientifically accurate. But better that, than having an unused feature that may as well not exist. Just throw a tooltip on the block so people using JEI can see that it both exists and makes a great elevator without uninteresting teleportation. (also, nano boots are carbon fiber, not metal but they work.)

Bottling Plant

As far as I can tell, the only purpose of the Bottling Plant is to take fluids out of containers, or extract them. I guess that's useful for automating the conversion between canned and free-range fluids. Bulky and unnecessary, sure.

Suggestion: Give it more functions beyond just filling and emptying cells/buckets. Similar to the ThermalExpansion Fluid Transposer, with the ability to fill the CF sprayer and any other modded fluid-containing machines, or make some wet/hot blocks by infusing them with water or lava (mossy cobble/brick, obsidian, etc...). And ofc, JEI support, because it doesn't show up as having any uses.

Also, it needs to be able to empty fluid containers from other mods without deleting the empty can/capsule/bottle. Very important.

JEI Support

Half of IC2 machines aren't supported by JEI. You can't see what a machine does, or what you can get from it. Some of the things that do show up, like the blast furnace have the wrong displayed recipes (doesn't include the Air requirement) so it's a no-brainer what needs to be done.

Kinetic Unit System
Now, The EU system is IC2's true power, and heat is perfectly fine as a means of producing power or being used to run heat-specific machinery. But KU is too far. Not only is there no way to transfer this in any way, shape or form, rendering it almost completely useless from the get-go, the things that produce KU already come in EU-producing versions. Seems more like another half-baked idea that wasn't thought through.

Suggestion: Remove it. Plain and simple. All the machinery involved with the Kinetic System already has EU versions which will ALWAYS take priority over their kinetic counterparts. No machines use it, IC2 doesn't have any viable add-ons anymore to use it. It's just more dead weight.

The Future:

It seems to me that IC2 has stagnated in recent... years. After going experimental, all the aspects of IC2 have spread out down obscure and untenable paths, down which no player wants to tread. With the addition of heat and kinetic energy units and no progress in either method, the main EU system has been neglected.

What I think you should focus on? Heating and Fluid automation for now, then onto power-consuming utilities that are unique and new. Things that aren't overpowered or "productive".

There are suggestions for pipes already, though lacking in detail. But that should be the first step for fluid control, with a seperate type of pipe (duct) for the transference of heat, with an "overheat" penalty, much like overcharging a machine.

I'll detail those below. But those are for after IC2 has gotten all it's $h!+ together.

Industrial Pipes:

You know how they look and how they function. IC2 was built to work with BuildCraft in those long-ago days, so pipes that move fluids like that are ideal. Non-transparent to alleviate the strain on large setups. Lead Industrial Pipes (25mb/t), Iron Industrial Pipes (100mb/t) and Steel Industrial Pipes (250mb/t) with corresponding Industrial Gauge Pipes to allow viewing into the pipe.

Fluids being output into pipes with fluid automation upgrades at the machine, or in more complex setups a powered Vacuum Pump. Similar to the fluid distributor. Able to push or pull from each different side to and from machines in the same pipe network. Overclockers increasing the the amount of mb/t it can push/pull.

Heat Unit Management:

If heat is frontlining, it should play a more important part in machine management. At present it's used only for the Blast Furnace, that hideous mess of a boiler and the fermenter. Anything else using heat is entirely optional, usually being just like the useless Kinetic System: A double of the EU system.

So... rather than have heat as an unpunished sub-energy source like it is now, have it function a bit more dangerously. If a block that holds or builds up heat reaches its maximum temperature, it sets the surrounding blocks on fire and converts into a basic machine block; Requiring the management of temperature as well as EU. This doesn't apply to any machines that don't use heat at present (macerator, extractor, ore washer, etc...).

To manage heat, a seperate pipe-like system: Thermal Ducts would exist. Copper, Bronze and Silver ducts. Each with varying heat capacity and heat loss, much like EU cables. Overheating thermal ducts likewise destroys the duct and turns it into a flowing lava block that'll dissipate on its own.

Exact block temperature can be measured with a Thermometer tool, that those familiar with Nuclear Control would know well.

Heat can be dissipated through long coiled ducts (cheap but space intensive), A Heat Sink (a block that dissipates some of HU/t, upgradeable with reactor vents) or conversion into power via boiler (with loss. No loops.)

For continuity, the Fluid Nuclear Reactor could likewise be configured to output heat. Larger boilers would be nice too, and nerfed small boilers. Alternatively, the EU reactor ditched for a Heat Reactor using the Fluid Reactor Pressure Vessels, so both facilitate automation (which thus far has proved impossible without AE2 or xnet on an EU reactor).

Heat-based upgrades:

Branching out from the Heat Unit management could also include machine upgrades. The ability for your Macerator/Extractor/Compressor to produce a small amount of heat while running at the cost of slightly lowered power consumption. Stacked upgrades cause it to produce more heat with diminishing returns (-10%, -17%, -22%, -25% EU/t). The actual maximum heat capacity of upgraded machines being extremely low, causing them to melt down after a few seconds without cooling.

You end up sacrificing access to one side of your machine, an upgrade slot and a fair amount of resources for a not-overpowered gain. The amount of heat produced by the upgrade isn't enough to heat a boiler without constant running, but is enough to melt your machine. A bank of machines all running constantly however, would be enough to heat a boiler or even two, if you have enough work for them to keep running.

Check out GregTech from 1.4.5 when it was best, for some new machines that is. There's currently a lack of consumers and an abundance of generators.

I think i've gone on long enough.

I'll need to break this into multiple parts, since these forums, like twitter, don't like big messages. And while it must be under 10k characters, it doesn't say how many i'm using.

I've been using IC2 for years. Since 1.2.5 in fact. However in recent years the mod has become bloated with convoluted and frankly retarded features that go nowhere, poor mod compatibility and machines with no use, but still manage to get later support added to them.

So what am I suggesting? That IC2 be cleaned of all its convoluted mess. And while i'm sure some of the things that need to be cleaned/removed make sense to a small minority, they're unintuitive to the rest of the minecraft world. Already IC2 has declined from being the best tech mod with the most active community to a mod that's actively avoided being put in modpacks, with the least active community.

Now, i'm not saying to tear apart IC2 machines and replace them with a 2-slot interface, with one for fuel and one for output that do everything and cost nothing. Because that would be just as stupid, if not worse. There are enough terrible mods like that that somehow end up popular and spawn dozens of add-ons (*cough*MFR*cough*).

I'm also not going to say that requiring wrenches, power loss and exploding machines are stupid, because I think the people who say that are stupid. Wrenches, power loss and incorrect energy management is a defining aspect of IC2, if not what it's best known for. ("Fairness")

First, i'll start here, outside the mod.

Bug Reporting

It seems to me, to be a completely insane way to report bugs in IC2. I've found one or two bugs and have simply not bothered to report them because of your Mantis bugtracker. No other mod developers use it, and that's not a good thing. Being "special" isn't always a good thing. Especially if involves special caregivers. If it didn't require a new account for it, that might be fine. But as it stands, i'm surely not alone in not wanting to make yet another account for an obsolete bugtracker.

Suggestion: Change to github like every other major developer out there, and never again will bugs fail to be reported. It'll also be easier to sort through and navigate. It doesn't matter if you (the devs) don't like github for some personal preferences, it's about getting bugs reported and github is what all the cool kids use, and because of that no one else needs to make a new account for it.

Changelogs

Seriously, wtf? The last 10+ updates to IC2 have no changelog. The changelog page on curse simply says "bugfixes", not what's been fixed or what, if anything has been added or changed.

Suggestion: Please try to release a concise and short changelog with each update. People always read these to see what's new and what's been fixed. A lack of changelog says "lazy dev".

Now, into the contents of the mod.

Electrolyzer

Why does this even still exist? IC2 has zero inter-mod compatibility in the fluids department, so the oxygen and hydrogen output has no use to other mods, and i've yet to encounter any such use for these two fluids within IC2. So I ask again: Why does this machine even still exist? It's just dead weight and added load time. Once upon a time it made electrolyzed water cells for... I believe it was MFFS forcefields, but that was around 1.4, when IC2 was better... and everywhere.

Suggestion: Remove it until it either has a use, or add something to use the outputs. A gas turbine, fusion reactor, something. Though at this point, a nuclear reactor will likely always take priority over fusion unless there's something bigger and better to use the power, or nuclear reactors get nerfed.

Steam Boiler

I've played with IC2eX for a long time, and never in all my time playing other mods have I ever seen such a terrible boiler design. This boiler is so disasterously convoluted that i've avoided since my first attempt to use it a long time ago, and every few months against my better judgment i've tried to make this thing work time and time again and failed. In fact, on the server I played on once an event was made for players to set up an IC2 steam boiler within an hour. Not a single person even succeded. Half of them gave up, many died from steam explosions (instant disqualification).

IC2eX's steam system is just that bad. Not only is it virtually undocumented, no one has ever done a tutorial, let's play or really anything regarding it. It's firmly avoided by 99% (Rough estimate) of all minecraft players. Hell, Even GregoriousT hasn't touched it, and he's the king of convoluted tech.

Suggestion: Goes without saying: Simplify it. Remove those stupid pressure buttons whose sole purpose is to drip out water and cause explosions, and the static graph that depicts nothing even remotely useful; Follow in the steps of Railcraft. A heat gauge, an internal tank and upgrade slots. If you want to keep your convoluted pressure system in some state, simplify it into a single adjustable valve. A blowoff valve or something. I don't care, as long as it doesn't require a 60 page manual and 3 years of engineering training at a high-paid university in Germany.

Steam Turbine

On the surface, the turbine seems simple enough. Stick in a turbine blade, supply steam, get power. Right? Wrong.

There's an outflow for water, or magical "cold steam" if you're using superheated steam that needs to be taken into account. Unfortunately, if you've never used the turbine before, there's no notification that it outputs anything other than power. So by the time that you get the notification (by supplying steam), you're dead by a steam explosion. *slow clap* It doesn't even use any of the steam, so if you respawn anywhere in the vicinity of the steam turbine, you'll die over and over as steam explosions ensue infinitely.

Because of all the problems brought about by the steam turbine, I suspect this is why the Nuclear Fluid Reactor is virtually unused (surely you've noticed the complete absence of reactor schematics for fluid reactors?).

Suggestion: So what's the steam turbine need? A better GUI, like most IC2 machines. You have a big window with a whole lotta nothing in it. It's a big waste of space. Give the turbine internal tanks of 4 buckets input and 4 for output that's clearly labeled with "steam/superheated steam" when mousing over the input tank and "water/steam" for the output tank. No abrupt explosions from non-existant documentation anymore.

Hell, give it an animated turbine inside the GUI too, that turns when it's functioning to show that it's working and because it "looks cool". Looking cool gets mods far these days. Just look at Immersive Engineering. It's one of the single-worst balanced mods in modern modded minecraft with the compatibility of a home-schooled spoiled millenial redneck. But because it looks cool and is easy to use it makes its way into every modpack now.

Tanks

At first glance, you'd think that a tank would be fairly straightforward. Once again, nope. Not only can you not put anything directly into a tank, you can't even supply anything to a tank from anything within IC2 without multiple pre-configured fluid pulling and ejector upgrades.

As far as storage capacity goes, the IC2 tank is unupgradeable, but stores more than average (used be 8 buckets via BC, now 16 via TE. Behold, the powercreep in action!) at 24b. Once again, the lack of an actual Tank GUI sets the IC2 tank far below its competition. It has what can be described as an item slot, without it saying or showing what its max capacity is.

Suggestion: Another GUI overhaul. Add an item slot for the insertion and removal of cells, buckets, cans, whatever. Along with an actual internal tank graph that rises like any other GUI'd tank with a clearly visible max.

When are we likely to see a stable update?

I could probably help. I normally do mod support for Sphax and Glimmar's Steampunk, but I can do vanilla ones too. Whaddaya need?
Note: I don't frequent the IC2 forums much, so it may take a while.

Of course, of course.
The main differences between biome types is merely the grass and tree color and whether or not it rains, snows or fogs. In the case of Forestry and other biome-requiring mods, they're usually designed for vanilla biomes first and foremost.

Quote from Chocohead

The mushroom one does

Indeed it does. My mistake.
Though of all possible biomes, mushroom island biome is far less useful than say... a plains biome for building. Thus, my suggestion for other biome modules that function in the same manner as the mushroom one.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.
Are you saying that one of the terraformer TFBP modules already does that? Well, I can confirm that none of them do that.
Desertification on an Extreme Hills = Extreme Hills with sand, but nonetheless an Extreme Hills biome. Which is why the Terraformer is completely unused.

Suggested Modules:

TFBP - Desert Biome (Converts nearby area into desert BIOME - Does not change the terrain, only the biome type. The Desertification module is for terrain.)
TFBP - Snowy Biome (Converts nearby area into Ice Plains BIOME. Same as above, with the chilling module.)
TFBP - Plains Biome (Converts nearby area into Plains BIOME. Same as above.)
TFBP - Jungle Biome
TFBP - Swamp Biome (No idea why someone would actually want a swamp biome, but okay...)

With the ability to manually change the biome on servers in survival, players will be able to expand their biome type into ugly neighboring biomes and build there without having to deal with snow, rain and ugly grass color. With Forestry it also allows the breeding of biome-specific bees in places they don't have access to.

Hey Speig, are you open to a suggestion of adding additional Terraformer modules that can change a biome, like Thaumcraft can with Pure/Sinister/Tainted Nodes?
The ability to physically change a useless Ice Plains biome into a normal Plains biome would be invaluable on any server, for both buildings and forestry beekeeping.

You can make a cheap T5 soul shard from any other shard by forging it with any tier of creeper soul shard. If you have portal gun or gravity gun installed, you can pick up spawners and drop them on something like a torch for a 100% pig spawner (good way to unify spawners for shard consumption).
Tier 0 Creeper Soul Shard + Tier 5 Pig Soul Shard + Anvil (11 levels) = Tier 5 Creeper Soul Shard.

One of many reasons why the soul shards mod is such a piece of shit.

If you have soul shards, use it properly.
You don't farm creepers from soul shards with a chainsaw. You use a CC melee turtle or a MFR mob grinder. Hell, you can do it vanilla and drop them down a shaft and collect the items at the bottom if you dont have either.

Quote from CrazyCrafter

For convenience, how about adding an assembly machine recipe to remove upgrades, & make it take 120 seconds or longer. This would remove one of the upgrades in the following order: Overclocker, storage, transformer. This would discourage switching upgrades between machines & make it possible to fix mistakes concerning adding too many upgrades.

A seperate upgrade module for the assembler would be better. Once upgraded with the Disassembly Module the (dis)assembler consumes 32EU/t for 10 minutes to remove an upgrade from a machine in the above order.

On the subject of radioactivity. The placement of Blocks of Uranium (with the addition of Thorium and Plutonium blocks) should inflict an area of status effects around the block. (9x9 maybe) Instead of having the item in your inventory (Is it even possible for an item to inflict status effects while in your inventory?).
If it is possible for an item to inflict status effects while in your inventory, the effect could be muted, as said, by a lead box (item) that works like a forestry backpack and takes damage every time you open it for the purpose of carrying radioactive ores, dusts and reactor components.

Monazite is already added by the MFFS mod and you can get thorium from it by putting it in the industrial grinder.

Quote from SpwnX

Instead of moving an iron block, just move the player at insane speed.
Who needs a down-way elevator? Jump into 3-deep water.

Yeah, but the magnetizer requires the player wear iron armor. Though i'm pretty sure it also works with bronze, nano and quantum as well. Besides, an elevator is more stylish than simply flying up and down a few levels. Might as well use a jetpack.
And landing in water is so low-tech.

Epic suggestion of failness!
Advanced Magnetizer!!
Works just like a vanilla IC2 magnetizer except it takes 128 EU/t and can move an iron block (instead of the player = elevator!!) up 128 blocks at about the speed of a non-hovering jetpack.
Attaching the iron posts to the bottom of the advanced magnetizer will move an iron block down the posts at the speed of a hovering jetpack (maybe a little faster. Assuming you aren't taking fall damage the whole way).

Quote from Chocohead

Electric Grafters. Nuff said.

Thaumium Grafter from thaumicbees. 'Tis epic and can be enchanted with Repair.