Posts by axlegear

Sounds tasty.

I dunno, I don't. I use LV only if the energy cost is extreme. But for like, washing? Macerating? Especially centrifuge? Double especially sifting? I'm working on going from 128v to 512v because that shit took me 3 RL days! I was processing 8 stacks of lazurite, 5 stakcs of sodalite, and 2 stacks of lapis. That crap is nuts.

But I do get what you're saying. Which is why I don't really feel strongly about changing the OC mechanics. I'm just content as-is.

Personally, i'm fine with the overclocking mechanics as-is. But I leave that to you. It's just the pollution that concerns me. The static variable is just a chore. The dynamic effects I suggested adds a clear penalty/reward system, has a logistical GT-oriented solution, encourages green energy, discourages high-yield powerspam options, and has realistic implementation and mechanics. Maybe i'm biased, but I can't see how anyone could disagree and say it's not better than a worldwide 'pollution slows everything' variable.

And i'm not a programmer, tried once and failed, don't have the mental acuity for it. Nor are any of my server's players. I don't even know what a fork or pull request IS, much less how to do them. So... I really have no option here but to give suggestions and present arguments and debate. So the 'it's open source, if you don't like it go make your own' mentality is kind of insulting and doesn't really help anyone. So I just do what Axle do: Come up with ideas and work out the logistics.

I violently believe that Gregtech should not be designed in a way that catours to other mods to such a level that it limits itself to THEIR parameters, because other mods do not have the same implementation, goals, or spirit as Gregtech, and this is thusly a flawed and very damaging mindset.

I understand that other mods add broken, cheaty water-generators. That should be irrelevent to Gregtech because Gregtech is Gregtech, not EnderIO or Railcraft. Furthermore, those who insist on having those mods probably aren't as interested in Gregtech in the first place, so it's another case of 'why cater?' Lastly, those who really want to 'greg up' mods can and will. If water pollution is implemented as I suggested, I will disable Railcraft watertanks (which I currently use!) and other potential pure-water-generators, which is very easy to do with Minetweaker. My players won't be significantly affected installation-wise because it's just a script to add. Alternatively, one could simply make raintanks and such harder to craft- I've considered making it require sealed wood and steel or iron screws instead of just wood and iron plates. This would add some obstacle and discouragement but not remove them.

I feel that limiting Gregtech's capabilities just because 'other mods are easier' is a devaluable position that will destroy it's development and spirit both. If you remove capabilities or never implement them, you are not giving users the chocie of whether or not to use them, you are denying the choice. If you add the capabilities but allow them to be toggled, this is entirely different- They either will or won't and noone misses out. Since I feel most users would not use the simplified 'pollution = less efficiency' variable idea Pyure initially suggested, it would be a waste of time to implement which he or Asp could spend on something more productive and valuable to the community. Whereas with my idea, it would be more work but would be toggleable at master and configureable with the appeal to those who want realistic pollution, and the option to be avoided by those who would rather not use it. After all, just 'disable it' is what they would be doing if they circumvent it using another mod anyway. And if that's the route they are going to go... why are they even installing Gregtech at all?

Edit:
Also, you could perhaps just have Pwater go into a centrifuge or electrolyzer or some pre-existing machine and output normal or distilled water. That would not require a whole new machine, just a new recipe. MUCh easier than my initial idea.

I agree willis. Probably best to leave nuclear sources pollution free. Too hard to implement and not very practical, considering the 'waste' is depleted cells and that exists already.

I just think my solution works well because it allows an area to have an over-arching 'pollution' variable, like Pyure wanted, but with more dynamic effects than just a strange blanket ban on productivity. While more complicated to implement, I feel it's not too difficult. Just stuff like so:

If > 4,750,000 Radioactivity V, Smog V, Toxic V
If > 4,500,000 Radioactivity V, Smog V, Toxic IV
If > 4,000,000 Radioactivity V, Smog V,
If > 3,500,000 Radioactivity IV, Smog V, Toxic III
If > 3,000,000 Radioactivity III, Smog V
If > 2,500,000 Radioactivity II, Smog V, Toxic II
If > 2,000,000 Radioactivity I, Smog V
If > 1,750,000 Smog V, Toxic I
If > 1,500,000 Smog IV
If > 1,250,000 Smog III
If > 1,000,000 Smog II
If > 500,000 Smog I

Smog I = 20% reduction of solar panels, +20% faster maintenance wear
Smog II = 40% reduction of solar panels, +30% faster maintenance wear, 10% slower muffled machines
Smog III = 60% reduction of solar panels, +50% faster maintenance wear, 25% slower muffled machines, water source blocks begin to be replaced with Polluted Water
Smog IV = 80% reduction of solar panels, +75% faster maintenance wear, 33% slower muffled machines, acid rain begins to fall, water source blocks replaced with polluted water all at once
Smog V = 99% reduction of solar panels, +150% faster maintenance wear, 50% slower muffled machines, acid rain also damages hazmat suits slowly, water still instantly replaced with polluted water
Toxic I = You take 1 damage every 5 seconds if not in a hazmat suit.
Toxic II = You take 1 damage every 1 seconds if not in a hazmat sjuit.
Toxic III = You take 1 damage every tick if not in a hazmat suit.
Toxic IV = Instant death outside of hazmat suit.
Toxic V = Your hazmat suit will melt quickly and then you'll die. Congrats, I don't know how you managed to fuck your world this badly. You're probably the kind of person who did a Genocide Run twice in Undertale, aren't you?

The above is just an example, not necessarily balanced out. But yeah, you can see how it becomes increasingly nasty if you keep stanking up the joint. Nature could handle say 1 pollution per tick. To get from Smog II to Smog I purely via natural difussion it would take 7 hours or so. I think that's fairly balanced but i'm sure Pyure can tweak it better based on expected playtime, since 7 hours is a long time for non-chunkloaded areas, but not that long for chunkloaded persistant servers.

Quote from Pyure

"Huge bonus idea: Rarely, random chunks/areas can spawn with pre-existing pollution levels. Could be a fun idea to have a new biome, 'Nuclear Wasteland' with a permanent Radioactivity I. :3"
I'm re-reading this and wondering if I botched my understanding.

Would these chunks spawn as a result of your industrial pollution levels, or just spawn naturally as part of world gen?

Either or. I don't know how easy it is to 'overwrite' a biome rather than generate one. But I figured in either case, in a Nuclear Wasteland biome, grass tiles could not spread and would, in fact, die and be replaced with clay or dried dirt or something. Water would automatically be polluted, if generated. And the entire area would be affected by Smog 1 to 5 (each level reducing solar levels 20%) and possibly Radioactivity 1 to 5 (thoroughly encouraging you to stay away!)

Plus you'll have some hippies that will want to build a base there to 'clean' the biome or something, but I dunno if that's possible or feasible. A naturally generated NWasteL would have a 'minimum' pollution level, else it would eventually become clean just with time.

Also, I should note that the pollution numerics should be rather high- not an 8-bit number but a huge one, so you have a lot of leeway and time to 'prepare'. I don't wanna see newbies throw a few boilers up then suddenly have it rain Co-60 and wonder what the fuck they did, but neither do I want to see someone with 12 lava boilers running constantly not pay a price with time.

Plus I like the idea of the mechanic of Pwater, especially if it's got other effects, such as slower swimming than normal water, or nausea on touch, etc. Like back in Gt4 days, some mods had that (MFR? I forget). Plus it wouldn't count as water for watermills, which combined with reduced solar levels from Smog 1 to 5, makes it harder and harder to 'go green' after you smut the place up initially.

I'm already picturing it. My laboratory powered with arrays of solar panels, pumping out clean, filtered water to bottle or can and sell to the lowly peasants of Smogtown whose water is as bad as Los Angeles'.

Quote from Pyure

"Cleaning pollution, besides going away super-slow by itself, could involve building a multi-block machine Air Purifier."
While I love the idea of a pollution-cleaning block, it defeats the underlying point of my implementation here. I'm not implementing pollution as a cool new toy. It's not supposed to do anything other than fix progression problems that exist already in the game. These problems aren't even problems for a lot of players, and so the implementation holds zero appeal for them. So even though the first thing people often brainstorm is "pollution scrubbing" mechanisms, and admittedly its one of the first things that crossed my mind too, ultimately I know its design-breaking.

In all my years in game design (and I have one or two), the key advantage is knowing what to trim away. Ideas are cheap, discipline is hard.

I disagree on this. A simple variable as you proposed is something which breaks the progression and immersion to me, not adds to it. At present, the progression is that you need to build bigger and better to make the really good stuff (such as distillation tower or matter fabricators), and to run those you need more power. To get the resources, you also need better machines. And you need resources, which are more quickly processed with bigger machines. This variable idea will, to me, not add to progression but greatly discourage advancement in favor of 'absolute minimalism', such as using a bronze macerator or LV macerator for life, because why upgrade when all it will do is require more power for very little gain? It won't be faster, because power = pollution.
I very, very, very strongly feel that it would have exactly the opposite effect on progression than you think it will.

The idea I proposed as a whole, in addition to the scrubbers, adds to the 'build it bigger, build it better, make it stronger' mentality that I feel embodies Gregtech. You can build bigger, more polluting power arrays for on-demand processing, but you also have to factor in the additional cost to power scrubbers and water cleaners. (more on the water later.) This will add another branch of logistic concerns in addition to the proposed ecological ones, rather than a variable-based barrier that encourages nothing and discourages everything.

As for water- the idea is that it replaces water source blocks, as metnioned, thus making pure water unavailable for pumping except from external mod sources or complex, costly, inefficient routes. Your options are to etiher purify your water, or deal with the consequences of Pwater (much more rapid maintenance for multi-blocks, slower ore processing, no autoclaving, no brewing, greatly reduced boiler efficiency). This achieves your desired lead-pipe-to-the-knee goal of pollution gumming everything up (and moreso), but in a way that it can actually be overcome with further development and logistics. An obstacle isn't fun if you can't work around it.

Here's a more specific example:
I could pump water into a bronze boiler and produce 16,000 steam/tick and use, say, 256 units of fuel every 256 seconds (1:1). So, 4,096k steam total. This would wear it down by whatever normal damage happens in 256 seconds.
But if that water becomes polluted, it would only produce 12,000 steam/tick and use 256 units of fuel every 128 seconds (2:1). So, 1,536k steam total for the SAME fuel and water. That's a 62.5% cut, very nasty. This is not acceptible! So you need to purify water. Plus it would further accelerate the maintenance, say double, requiring maintenance in half the time.
Now you need to provide the water flow plus 25%, since you lose 25% of your water when converting Pwater->Water. Plus it works at a set speed (haven't susses it out yet), so 8v is not gonna be suitable for supplying a bronze boiler. But maybe 32v would for part-time, and 128v is ideal. 8 and 32 would be more for gradual water to be stored in a tank, while 128+ is for on-demand. It works constantly, more or less, so the power draw would be painful. I imagine it would be 6EU/t for 8v, 24 EU/t for 32v, 96 EU/t for 128v, etc.
So now, you have your pure water, but at the cost of extra water pump power (possibly) and the power requirements of the water filter. So it STILL hurts your productivity, since a chunk of that boiler output will be eaten away cleaning water for itself. Water filtration is the 'dirty industry' route for keeping your machines working, and only counteracts the super-nasty Pwater effects. The other performance-hurting variables caused by 'air' pollution would also plague you: Say, a 25% faster maintenance cycle and gradually slowed production for muffled machines (thus assumedly requiring air intake). So you could get a total of, say, 25% slower/less output and 25% faster maintenance needs, PLUS the PWater for a grand total of 87.5% less production, 25% slower production as well, and 75% faster maintenance needs. That's pretty damn crippling!

Now, the numbers for the AIR filter could be made flexible based on output. IE, when you go to assign a 'pollution' variable for each machine, you can decide whether it's a positive or negative machine, based on whether it's a net produce or net loss of pollution compared to Pollution In vs. cost of Pollution Out. In other words..

A small coal boiler produces what, 5 EU/t maximum? 3 EU/t equivalent best-case? So if it is a 'red' machine with, say, a 50% output above equal, then it would require 4.5 EU/t of energy to an air filter to counteract- thus requiring MORE power than it produces. So your option is to either use something less polluting, use less of them to allow nature to filter it's rate out on it's own and try to avoid overloading it by keeping your machines part-time.
A steel coal boiler is, perhaps, even worse: Say +66%.
Lava would reasonably be better, but not ideal still, say, +33%.
An LHE I think would be zero, unless lava is used, and rely instead on the source of hot coolant to produce pollution. But that's getting into IC2's territory so that's a bag of worms i'll avoid.
Diesel would be nasty but not as bad as coal. Say, 10% for each tier.
Gas Turbines would be cleaner, say 5% per tier.
Solar boilers, wind turbines, water mills, steam turbines, and solar cells would, of course, be 0%. They don't generate pollution, unless some is made to power the machines that produce the materials they're made from or from the boilers that produce the steam in the first place.

I'm on the fence about nuclear. It doesn't realistically IRL throw radiation out into the atmosphere, it's all conveniently bottled into barrels and buried, usually, or reprocessed. So i'm still pondering a good way to handle this, naquadah reactors, and fusion. Those are tricky.

Currently by default, there's not much reason to use the solar/wind/nuclear power sources because fuel is cheap and easy, and their outputs are excellent and easier to design. This pollution model would make them a lot more valuable and viable, especially nuclear.

I really, really hate the idea of pollution the way Pyure is suggesting it as an indescript efficiency-cutting variable. It's not even just about realism, it straight up makes no sense and seems to be about making the implementation super-easy and not balanced, practical, or realistic. Very few machines are affected by pollution because they literally don't interact with it in any meaningful way. Pollution is not a logistic problem, it's an ecological one. The majority of effects should only affect players and animals. IE, a sufficient level of pollution would cause reduced sunlight, making solar boilers and solar panels produce less and less power as it worsens. At a certain level, rain would become acidic, damaging any living thing that the rain touches that isn't wearing a hazmat suit. Bad enough and it even damages the hazmat suit until it melts and hurts you. Think 'Twilight Forest' in how the acid rain works, except not block-piercing. Sufficient pollution levels would also randomly replace water source blocks with 'polluted water' source blocks, which would calcify or mess with machines. IE, if a boiler gets it, it would reduce the fuel value by 50% and also the steam value by 25%, making for a grand old fucking. This is the most painful impact I can see, besides acid rain. Polluted water getting into an ore washer would make it take 5 times as long to wash. In a autoclave, it would outright be unable to function at all. Cleaning the water would involve a new machine, a Filter Unit which would use filters made of wool and carbon fiber which would suck up, say, 16 liters of Pwater and produce 12 liters of regular water, with a chance of byproduct of dirt, dark ash, and tiny sulfur. The filter would wear down durability with each successive use, making it an expensive process to repeatedly clean water.
Lastly, a high enough level of pollution would blanket the area with Radioactivity I to IV, requiring constant careful use of a hazmat suit to even traverse. Machines which use mufflers would, in addition to outputting pollution, also work slower and slower (without using any less power) as it presumed muffler = output thus they require an air input and smeggy air is less effective. It would also make machines that require maintenance, require it more and more quickly, since the acidic humidity and air would corrode the machine (such as sulfuric and nitric compounds do IRL)

Huge bonus idea: Rarely, random chunks/areas can spawn with pre-existing pollution levels. Could be a fun idea to have a new biome, 'Nuclear Wasteland' with a permanent Radioactivity I. :3

Cleaning pollution, besides going away super-slow by itself, could involve building a multi-block machine Air Purifier. It uses a 3x3 grid of filters to make Filter Blocks in a star shape (3x3x3) surrounded by casings, the speed affected by power level (starting with 8v for the slowest), and extracting dirt, carbon, and dark ash from the air for slowest effect, or the option to build one for water (or one for each, but not both!) which will produce dirt, dark ash, sulfur, and sulfuric acid (as a liquid, in tiny amounts) from Pwater. If it gets only regular water, it will produce dirt only, at a very low (1%?) rate, and outputs regular water again. (In that way it could be an infinite dirt generator, but at the speed/voltage ratio, it would be an awfully expensive, awful way!)

In polluted settings, the above water-filter process would be required to have reliable, non-polluted water. All your water would have to pass through one or an array of them to even be useable. This, I feel, is a painful restriction that makes pollution a very big concern. (Or in my case, a goal! Make a sufficiently functional factory in a smog bowl! YAY MEXICO CITY!)

I hope you like my ideas. I feel it marries balance and utility with realism and logistics in the true spirit of Gregtech without being overly redundant or being too radically different from 'pollution hurts productivity'.

Also, semi-unrelated: I always wondered why there's no ash output from large boilers. Where it go??? I likey my mountain of ash blox!

I'm with Sapient on this one. There's not much reason to invest in huge, expensive machines if they're not going to offer a clear advantage. Progression balance is key!

Is there a way to make fuel ethanol in GT5u? Seems the fermenter and some water and sugar would be able to make this most important fuel.

I am confused as hell, still, on how to build a fluid reactor and use it with a LHE. Does anyone have a good, detailed, picture-by-picture explaining guide to this?

I have an automatic-ish zombie spawner trap that makes jerky fairly fast. It's more that I want it to go to good use than that I am actually farming it as a significant power source. I just like getting bonuses from it.

Currently my main power comes from solar boilers, 20 of them. I sleep pretty regularly.
When I need a bigger boost, I throw something, solid or liquid, into a bronze boiler. It juices me up a bit faster than I can use the steam. I use a large storage tank for 7.8mil L of steam.
If all else fails, I can throw some sulfuric light fuel into a 128v diesel engine. I don't do this often tho. I need to set up a chemical reactor and secure a source of hydrogen so I can make it into legit fuel, since it's 8 times more energy.

Sorry, jerky is MC slang for 'rotten zombie flesh'

Interesting and very useful information!

Wonder if a microwave works and, if so, how much EU it uses?

Also lastly, any use for Lutetium? IRL it's used for petroleum cracking and for alkylization, hydrogenation, and polymerization.
Lutetium aluminium garnet (Al5Lu3O12) is used for high-powered laser lenses.

A small amount is added to gadolinium gallium garnet which is used for magnetic bubble memory in computers.
Cerium-doped lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) is currently the preferred compound for detectors in positron emission tomography (PET)

Aside from stable lutetium, its radioactive isotopes have several specific uses. The suitable half-life and decay mode made lutetium-176 used as a pure beta emitter, using lutetium which has been exposed to neutron activation, and in lutetium–hafnium dating to date meteorites. The synthetic isotope lutetium-177 bound to octreotate (a somatostatin analogue), is used experimentally in targeted radionuclide therapy for neuroendocrine tumors. Indeed, lutetium-177 is seeing increasing use as a radionuclide, in neuroendrocine tumor therapy and bone pain palliation.

Lutetium tantalate (LuTaO4) is the densest known stable white material (density 9.81 g/cm3) and therefore is an ideal host for X-ray phosphors. The only denser white material is thorium dioxide, with density of 10 g/cm3, but the thorium it contains is radioactive.

Edit: Doing some rough math, it's 1716 steam per smelt with a 32V furnace. Each bamboo charcoal produces 4,000 steam in a bronze boiler at full throttle. So the ultimate net result is, at max, 2284 steam. A small but reasonable gain, considering the ease of bamboo to grow and harvest. (It breaks as if you had a timber axe, even if broken by hand. It also spreads automatically, up to IIRC 27 bamboo 'trees' per chunk). No way to auto-harvest tho, AFAIK

EDIT 2: HEY, is there a most-efficient way to turn jerky or other food into methane for a net gain in energy?

What would a fully loaded multi-smelter use in EU per bamboo smelt? It cooks the speed of normal stuff AFAIK, such as smelting wood into charcoal.

Does anyone know how much steam per execution is used by a steam furnace, versus EU to smelt in the e-furnace?

What's the absolute most efficient furnace? 32v electric or bronze steam furnace? I need to use it to smelt bamboo into bamboo charcoal (1/4 normal charcoal value) and make it efficient if possible.

Bug: Using up the last of a stack (or even single) fine soldering alloy wire will leave a colorless 'blank' version which, when dropped, turns to stone.

Bug: Cannot smelt Black Bronze, thus cannot make Black Steel, Blue Steel, and others. It says it's blasted in a blast furnace but the BF will never start. It won't smelt in any other furnace either.

Is there a good chatroom/IRC channel for GT5U? Or a wiki specific for the new content/changes? I looked but couldn't find it. But we all know how blind I am.

Mostly I want to know if there's a chatroom or IRC channel more than anything.