Posts by Zjarek

I'm using crops from the beginning of every world. It is the most reliable source of dies (and I think only one with ink sac without diving, except maybe UU), which goes great with forestry stained glass and RP cables. With forestry and pumpkins you can get a lot of seed oil really fast, one standard farm plot (80 spaces) with pumpkin seeds give you about 2.5 stacks of pumpkins. Melons, which are quite easily bred from 2 wheats give you great early game food source. Coffee is very powerful, specially if you drink a few. Crops were also one of the ways to have netherwart in the overworld prior to 1.3.2 (similar with cocoa beans, but forestry provided heroic bees). In FTB pumpkins were a powerful early source of EMC. Current system needs some rework (specially with pumpkins/melons, they give to much from normal seeds) and more crops, but overall it is fun in normal game play. I can't say much about beer, because I didn't play with it a lot.

Edit: However, automatic brewing would be great (not crop collection, if this is too bothersome there is OP forestry addon for this).

Well, currently you can't burn creosote oil in a biogas engine, so transformers are not so viable. On the other hand the best fuel for turbine/engines is currently fuel (shocking). It really doesn't calculate well with transformers mods (e.g. all mods with 5/2 MJ -> EU conversion), one bucket of fuel with this conversion factor equals 1.5 MEU. Covert is balancing his mod around solar panels/forestry, not transformer mod.

Balancing energy with something like UU is really hard, specially with many different mods. There should never be the case, that mining, even using miners or (frame) quaries, would become obsolete. Huge part of MC is using natural resources and exploring to get more. With mods there is additional challenge with transporting the items and properly using them. UU is not OP per se, but when you start using huge renewable energy production systems, what's the point of the game?

Don't compare other electric sources to compact solars, because they remove major balancing feature from solars. Overall every renewable source of energy has it's drawbacks in IC2, solars use a lot of space, wind need big towers, water produce very small amount of energy (automated manned generators are laggy, these feature IMO should be removed and mills could be reworked). For fuel cans you need quite a lot of tin, which can be remedied using forestry bottler (which with default settings is more efficient than using biofuel generators).

Transformers mods are IMO OP. One bucket of fuel in combustion engine gives you 250 000 MJ, which using these mods is 625 000 EU. One bucket of biofuel is 500 000 EU, when using Biogenerator it is 32 000 EU (with bottler about 38 000). Forestry cheapens BC energy and coal measure isn't the best to compare these two energy systems (especially when coal in both systems is early game energy source). BC on it's own doesn't even have renewable energy (except redstone engine abuse), which is quite good for balancing aspects. I'd argue that with whole dimension full of lava geothermals should be nerfed when using pumped lava.

RC turbine looks great, from my previous experiance with this mod I can assume it is balanced. More ways of producing EU is a great thing. Expensive parts, which take damage, but last for a long time can be a good balancing factor. It works great with forestry apiaries, you have 3 options, very slow (10 % of old apiaries) cheap maintenance free, fast (70 %), but needs frames which are used while working, or alvearies which are fast, maintenance free but extremely expensive and big.

Overall renewable generators should stay as they are, huge, expensive or not 100 % cost-free. With them massfab produce matter from nothing, with addons like compact solars you get EE condenser. Normal (non-renewable) energy sources is an incentive for you to mine and explore world, which is a huge part of minecraft and mods shouldn't replace these experience (or be specifically made for this, like EE).

F4113nb34st You can have fractional coefficients if it is convinient or more natural (for example when writing series of similar reactions). Also for example in Polish you put "oxide" first.

In IC2 it seems that macerator is making electrochemical reduction (for example you get iron dust with grey colour). It would be very inefficient in comparison to coal based reduction. I think the best metal processing system is in TFcraft, it is not 100 % realistic, but plausible.

In minecraft there are very many simplifications, for example how could you make torch from stick and coal? IC2 isn't at all realistic mod, it is more in style of TV science fiction (or fictional science).

Wood production is balanced with new apiaries/alvearies (one alveary uses more than a 6 stacks of wood, one proven frame uses 16 wood). I wonder what will happen when arbioculture gets implemented, there is already teaser in NEI with new plank types. For tree chopping there is always computer craft, felling program (for EBXL fir trees) was my first "hello world" lua script.

Another option can be leaving forestry ore generation instead of IC2 one. Copper and tin is less common in forestry, but with wider mining level distribution. Forestry is mostly OP with power converters.

I checked source, reed grow after 16 random block update ticks which is consistent with my observations.

I used this forestry crop addon for a short time. It feels more OP than EE. I'd consider power converters to be also OP if they are used alongside forestry, simple peat fired engine can provide quite a lot of energy from one peat (which is about 3/8 tin or 1/10 beeswax). Beeswax is very cheap if you get an apiarist to your home, you get one comb for two wheat. I build 2 km of railways just to bring one to my testificate dungeon his new home, but unfortunately he suffocated. Normal reed farm can have quite high production of reeds, with double-decker design you can have about 690 growing reeds (80 % efficiency with some blocks used for harvester/engine). One cane is 200 biofuel, not 100. In one of my earlier worlds I used 4 sugarcane farms with one wheat farm for compost (5 wheat -> 4 compost, 1 -> 1 with recycling seeds to dirt) and it powered about 5 biogenerators with biofuel with a good excess for other BC/forestry stuff. I think if I would use some converting mod it could work with really nice output.

Edit: You don't need sand, dirt works equally well.

Edit2: Here is a picture of my old setup. In the end it was just a biofuel facility (after I started auto crafting UU to solar arrays). Sorry for overall architecture, but it was my first world with forestry and I was more interested in testing contraptions.

I would say that item ids conflicts are worse than block ids conflicts. With block ids you have clear information which mods are conflicting on which block id, with items you only see after a few hours of gameplay, that assembly table can make white stained glass instead of blue pipe wire. Of course it would be a lot better if there were some system of automatically assigning block ids/converting worlds, but your suggestion doesn't seem really thought out.

About laser, in 1.97 (I don't know if it still works in 1.106, but probably will) you could just harvest netherrack. It seems to destroy as quick as sand and it is quicker to harvest. In desert you only have 4 layers of sand, for netherrack you have full dimension of it.

I think the only reason not to use redpower is that it isn't updated yet for 1.3.2 and the same situation is with TE. Using my current quarry leftovers I think I can start with scrap production without any cobble generators: http://imgur.com/Rh8eH . It will be enough for almost a 3 stacks of UU ;).

Monoxide: I didn't saw any "known bugs" in 1.106 post and two posts about this bug in current version have rather vague titles. Fact, that this bug existed in previous versions is not a reason to ignore it.

I'm sure you could plant them on crops on 1.97. Are you sure that there is enough light, preferably daylight? Pumpkins and melons (probably warts too) can be planted also in night, but wheat, or flowers only in day.

I currently play 1.3.2 world with Forestry, BC, RC, Factorization and I feel that IC2 progression is too quick. Without IC2 there is need for prospector pick, steel tools (only in RC for 1.3.2), enchanting and so on. With IC2 you don't even have to make diamond pick, you just make diamond drill and backpack. When you would get good enchantments you have nano armor and mining laser. Quantum armor is not really that hard to get, with it you practically can't die (more energy consumption could be a good balancing factor). Compact solars are not a huge factor in early game balance, they are OP when you use mass fab like a transmutation tablet.

Thermal expansion provide cobblegen in the box, a little bit too cheap, but gets rid of lag. One double chest from snowmen provide enough space for 9 autocrafting tables and I don't think you can do better than warm redstone engine. However one chest should be enough for 8 recyclers (IIRC recycler needs 2,25 s for item, engine works once per 2,5 s, in autocrafting table you get only one craft per engine pulse).

I didn't really tested it with frames (I prefer tubes there), but BC sorting using diamond pipes is trivial to setup, although costly (1/4th of a diamond per chest). Just remember not to add any other pipes between diamond one and chest and provide place for overflow (recyclers/cacti). You can set up to 9 items per chest, but you also have to route all of the items through them, so it could get messy. With filters you can get similar effect using tubes, but always remember to handle overflow (RP systems always have some buffer space, but it also can get messy). For really cheap sorting just use chests filled with at least one item in every space and just connect them to tubes/advanced insertions pipes.

Also currently BC is the only option for 1.3.2 and some of the other mods already updated (e.g. forestry or railcraft). I must admit, that playing without sensible redstone systems feels really weird, but it is time to check out what new forestry/RC/BC bring to the table. However I should polish my vanilla redstone skills, I used RP2 about a month after purchasing MC.

There are also few more problems with predicting everything. First of all this type of machine would have to predict itself. If it would need googol of bits to describe whole universe without this machine, than this machine would need 2 googols of bits of information, to predict universe with this machine and its prediction. But this is veeery theoretical discussion. I saw, as a proof of concept and processing power, quite accurate simulation of defects propagation in crystal modeled as 1000x1000x1000 atoms cube (IIRC it took few weeks for some super computer, which modeled about 0,1 milisecond).

Modelling on such scale, to predict someone's death, with current speed (and acceleration) of science, specially algorithmics and electronics would be impossible for at least 500 years (I'd say it is impossible, but time often verifies such statements negatively, I hope that this 500 years is my overestimation). Modelling just human brain and eliminating "dangerous units" would be a lot easier. The easiest could be to just have well functioning cast system with e.g. Alphas, Betas and Gammas, correct division of responsibilities with a little bit help from medicine. Hopefully we can for as long as possible look into future scientific development with hope, not fear.

I used SUB once, in FTB insane to get tin before completing "burn rubber". In normal gameplay they are useless, by the time you get redstone, you have enough tin to build generator. I think it should be changed, maybe they would give more energy than simple burning coal (they give 2x more already, but it isn't enough to make them useful). Overall SUBs are useless, although hydrogen cells also need more attention (they would be great without 10 eu/t restriction).

Even with manual farming one jungle tree will get you a few stacks of wood in no time. Trees grow fast if you have enough of them planted, but I admit that with forestry and 5 diamonds it is a no-brainer. Bonemeal is trivial to get, anyone can make automatic mob grinder with RP2/BC, also recycler give you a lot of bones (RP2 required for smooth dispensing of scrapboxes, but overall RP2 is required for fun minecraft). With bonemeal farming trees isn't very hard. Also burning scaffolds I'd consider an exploit, with lack of sensible charcoal generation (TFC) I use coke ovens. Wood in furnaces is OP (for me).

Minecraft isn't optimized in any way. Features were always more important than performance. It is obvious by just looking on language used (there are many cases, where using safer "better" languages like Java is better choice than lower languages like C++, video games are rarely one of them).

Back to the topic, I fully support multi block machines. They add new degree of awesomeness to your builds. BC or RP transportation will give you a lot more lag, than properly implemented multiblock machines. You don't have to check for connection each tick, RC buildings are lag free in SSP and I suspect that in SMP as well. It is a little bit stupid, that building coke oven feels better, than building mass fabricator. Multi block structures are awesome, and we want them (also IC2 for TFCraft would be a really good thing to play).