that would be hella cool, to make like a monorail typoe thing and hook it up to a power source to just power the whole thing. seems like a rail craft thing though.
Yeah, the issue with RailCraft is kinda that it's not got any inherent power system. Covert seems to have kinda adopted the BC system, though.
The issue with the BC system is lack of energy storage. Might be possible as an addon or collaboration, though. Interesting idea.
Ok, well how about an adaptation into a tool. Making an actual cattle prod (i.e. something which can influence the behaviour of animals without damaging them). I'm aware that there's little damage done by hitting, but maybe a tool that just makes the animal want to get the hell away (I've had that situation more than once before).
Maybe daft, but worth considering?
I'd probably argue differently. Have the "electric cart" as a storage-less movement generator, which only works either remotely (with the addition of a lapotron crystal in the slot, or MFE/MFSU cart trained along), or with powered rails (as it tends to be in the real world).
Adding overhead cables would likely be a bit too much of a pain for most people, so allowing powered track (requiring relativly significant amounts of power to move) would mean that the cart could continue to zip along as reuqired.
For balance and intrigue, you could add resistance to the track similar to the cables, giving you the option of one huge generator at one end, or a collection of smaller ones (possibly topped up en route, with the railcraft unloaders and the suchlike).
Yeah, I think the easiest way of doing this would be to set up some manner of flip-flop system, with a buildcraft gate turning the output off when the MFSU is full, and another one activating it when it's empty. It's possible to do with vanilla redstone, I think, but not easy.
My advice would be to use redpower and buildcraft gates (if you're on 1.3.2, then you might be a while waiting for redpower)
I'd probably say the easiest way of doing this would be some form of auto-crafting auto-dispensing turtle system, a la Elo's strip mining system.
If you started with 4 turtles on each cardinal point, and had them strip the entire area below them, then, when that's done, each turtle places 1 to one side, programmed for the same refuel/dropoff solution. The all turtles move forwards one and mine out everything below them.
For each advancement, the cardinal turtles make another drone to the left, so you'd end up with a complete harvesting in a diamond pattern working out from a central point.
I'm sure that wouldn't be the most efficient method, and it wouldn't be able to chunkload dynamically, so it'd only stip out until the turtles got unloaded, but it's probably the easiest method I can think of, in terms of initial effort to reward. There'd obviously need to be an ender chest system and autocrafting of the turtles, as well as the fuel and storage (after a while you'd need turtles automated and extending a storage system indefinitely.
From my perspective, it's become a lot more accessible. The capital cost in time has been lessend quite a bit (less tiered crafting to get the bits you need), and I'd probably argue that more reactors with more specific abilities makes it easier to work out what is needed where.
For example, pre 1.3.2 I would tend to sit above ground, and play with solars and RP-fed watermills, never really touching nuclear, unless I went out of my way to do it.
I'm now sat in my underground base, with my 120EU/tick 12M EU total reactor chugging away quite happily, and I've even got a breeder further off, automated with logistics pipes. I've had a lot more fun with the new system, and have actually used some of the buildup of damn copper!
Now, if only I could find an activity to dump tin into ...
My standard setup is a Geo-gen when I'm starting out. I'll use 2 if my initial excursions give me a lava surplus quickly. Two will happily keep the miner running full out.
When the resources start coming in properly, I tend to switch to MFE/MFSU and crystals for energy transporting. It's a fairly significant initial cost, but makes life easier, and you don't go through tin quite as quickly.
I think that there is a fairly fine line between workaround and method. And that distinction is usually made by the person in charge (Albaka, in this case).
Take the mining thing for example.
The miner is, pretty much by definition a mobile device. You can use it repeatedly in the same spot, but it'd be a little pointless. The generators usually aren't that mobile. Either they take a large area, and lots of setup to get running at a decent rate (most renewables), or they take a fair amount of raw materials (standard, geo, nukes, etc.).
This leads to some creative ways around the problem. Some like plonking down a few standard gens, loading them with charcoal, and leaving them be. My personal preference is usually towards geos, until I have the resources for an MFE/MFSU and the relevant transformers, to move energy more efficiently. I've heard the method of using a solar flower, or MK1 nuke to power it. None of these are wrong, none are right. They all use blocks in ways that they weren't intended (i.e. frequent pick and place), because trying to supply a hungry miner with batteries is a little silly.
I am aware that there is a use-Lap crystal line in the config, and I've been trying it out with it on recently (while doing a little beekeeping with forestry), but I think I'll reset it back to the default, and go back to finding a way of powering the miner with the minimum amount of waste possible, because it was more fun that way, and I think that's why it's off by default.
To swing this back to the topic at hand, it's perfectly possible to run around with a whole mess of RE batts to keep your drill charged because you want protection while working. That's no less valid a method than the alternative of changing for the bat/lap-pack to charge, and then suiting back up. It's a price you pay to be protected. I tend to be more cautious, but keep my lappack on most of the time, unless I'm specifically exploring, so I don't need to worry about power, but that's just me.
As I tried to say in the previous post, you're not going to get a magic-bullet type item, because that would make it, inherently useless. You'd work towards it, and then have nothing to do.
I think that the major point of contestation here is the compromise. In this case between the protection of a straight armour chest, and the utility of a charger piece, and the simple answer is that that is kind of the point of the game, and can be seen everywhere.
Take EU generation: Wind/water are low-gen low-cost. Reasonable to set up, cheap to make, reasonable output. Solar are High cost, easy set-up decent output. Coal/lava are easy set up, quite high maintenance. Nuclear range from expensive, low maintenance, low energy, to expensive, high maintenance, high energy. You don't have 1 generator that does everything for everyone, because then there's no challenge to subverting the challenges and living around them.
Similarly, if you are wanting protection, you sacrifice additional work keeping your tools charged. If you want hassle-free mining/building, you accept that you're up a creek when ambushed by a creeper.
The recent trend in Al's suggestions/ideas is MORE diversity at the top level, rather than a single all-in-one piece that does everything (note: the solar helmet and static boots, and the recent armour suggestion thread).
If you're wanting a quick way of bypassing the limits of the mod, then go creative, but, if you take the challenge, you take it all.
It would be nice to have a few boxes available which wouldn't screw up the picking up any time you needed a tool from another one. Also, didn't I hear a while back about the possibility of adding armour switching to the toolboxes?
The major point to argue, on the side of EV in this case is the resource cost of transference.
To transfer the 10M EU mentioned previously over the 300 blocks would take 75 sets of fibre cables. That's 75 diamond and 150 redstone, which is a fair whack for a not altogether significant distance.
On the other hand, the EV route would cost you 75 Ref. Iron, and 300 rubber, which equate to 33 Iron ore and 100 sticky resin (or just over a stack and a half), which makes the cost of the transport less significant, at the expense of the aforementioned 1M EU loss extra.
Please bear in mind that this equation is not taking into account the cost of the HV transformer on each end (2 diamonds being the primary issues on that front).
Now, I don't know about you, but the cost of 1M EU as opposed to 75 diamonds is a no brainer, in my eyes, even when you consider that it equates to a 10% loss.
EDIT: It's 900 rubber for completely insulated HV. Also, these links might help in demonstrating and calculation:
Resource calculator
Cable Loss Calculator
Another possible route with this could be to freeze a block of water. A (very far fetched) freeze ray, or (slightly more believable) ice cell could be used for this. Have a stack of them, right click to freeze, and get your building started before it thaws again. Could also have the side effect of turning lava to obsidian (would make lava lake traversal a little easier). Not sure about it's effect on oil, though.
I would +1 to the Apiarist's chest-like idea. I'm not overly fussed about having to organise them myself, but it's more annoying that we can't see the values outside of the cropnalyser.
A GUI with the screen on one side, and the seed-space on the other would mean that, when hovering over a packet, it could show you the relevant information about that particular seed. Certainly in forestry, when the screen isn't displaying any relevant information, it shows general stats for the world/user (cumulative count of the bees produced).
there is no way to discover 3 plants without source data, this is not right.
also entire system is random driven, you must 1 spam everything then 2 pick best results and goto 1.
Not entirely. That is what it appears at first, but there are rules that we are learning slowly. We know that breeding two plants gets GGR values based somewhere around those of the parent, and the recipes are becoming more and more apparent. The influence of biomes is also being investigated and valued.
The only real issue that we have at the moment is one of documentation. We note down some of the findings, but not everyone participates, so it takes longer to narrow things down.
Personally, I welcome an aspect where there is a challenge to the discovery, and where the randomness means that you could easily make a new discovery by accident (somewhat like actual science).
If you do not like the agriculture system as is, then you do not have to use it. There are no items that are specific to the crops, and there is no way of getting them without making the cropsticks. There isn't really any reason to use it unless you want to.
Watching the chest works well, when you have a diamond drill at full charge, and can easily see which block is being pulled in. Watching the drill charge is reasonable when you're starving it of power (diamond + OV on a Geo is my favourite), but, when you get to the MFSU stage, the transformer handles a lot of the charge (holding on to a lot of the power for a while), so the MFSU display doesn't change as much (it does, still, just more slowly).
I just think it'd be interesting, especially to have a marker as to what it got jammed on, so you can remember the location for lava pumping, etc.
Aside from simplification of placement, I can't really see many advantages to this. It'd get rid of some of the unsightly cables, but that's part of the challenge of good base design.
I was wondering about this recently. Would it be worth displaying the current status from the drill and the scanner underneath them, for instance, the current level, and the OD/OV values, as a kind of progress indicator.
Also, possibly worth some manner of error indicator. I know that I can have issues sometimes working out whether the drill has stopped because it's hit a liquid, or whether it's just taking a while on that level.
Maybe redwheat needs to be near the bottom of the map (i.e. near the darkness down there)?
Otherwise, it'd be difficult to control the light level of the plants, under ideal growing conditions, for any extended period. Mainly because they need a direct line to the sky, which pretty much gives them level 15 light for half of the day.
Otherwise,without impeding the air around the plant block, the closest that you could do would be to place a redstone torch 1 block away, giving a light level of ~6-7 (I forget the actual levels).
Or possibly, they need complete darkness, for the redstone to glow itself (as it does in ore, dust and torch form.
I'm assuming that you aren't supposed to apply redstone dust like fertiliser or something as far fetched as that?
Ok, I do have a little problem with teslas as they stand at the moment.
At present, they are more like electro-mines. They will be activated, and then sit there until they find something nearby, and zap the hell out of it. However, this means, if I want to, for example, clear my roof of spiders, I either need to activate ONLY the coil nearest the spider, or not want to go up on the roof for a while, without being zapped to buggery.
My suggestion would be that the redstone signal will activate the targeting system, as it does at the moment, but will deactivate it when the signal disappears.
This would mean that you could make a setup to clear an area without said area then being a minefield for yourself.
The previous behviour could be replicated either with a GUI toggle (probably more work than it's worth), or a flip-flop for activation (not entirely sure about a reset on that one, though).
I don't think that this idea would be OP, but might make the teslas a little more accessible.
Also, if you're wanting to really throw some randomness into the mix, give it a chance to electrify creepers (low, but possible). That'd mean that you still need to be on your guard.
Well if I have something even more abundant than Copper it is redstone
Whereas, if I'm trying to build a solar plant, redstone is a scarce material, while copper is practically unused!
