Re: (PHCC)Minecraft server

[Vergil]

Unfortunately this is doing a really good job of making me want to not proceed further with 78 excavation till these mods are out...and those tunnels aren't going to dig themselves...

[Cptadder]

Unfortunately this is doing a really good job of making me want to not proceed further with 78 excavation till these mods are out...and those tunnels aren't going to dig themselves...

You should really sit down and look over 78 before you say I'm going to give up on that.

Not to mention we of course will be pursuing all avaiable means to port over Somberville and it's environments to Feed the Beast.

[Vergil]

Unfortunately this is doing a really good job of making me want to not proceed further with 78 excavation till these mods are out...and those tunnels aren't going to dig themselves...

You should really sit down and look over 78 before you say I'm going to give up on that.

Not to mention we of course will be pursuing all avaiable means to port over Somberville and it's environments to Feed the Beast.

I didn't mean that I was going to give up on it, just wait a bit before proceeding further so I better understand what I can do with it using all that stuff.

[Harmony Ltd.]

A discussion has come up about the mods, and which aspects of them could be considered overpowered ; and I think everyone should know about it to make the jump to "Feed The Beast" knowing what it's going to involve, and to, worst come to worst, know which mods to disable.


Before starting, I'll let you know that I am of the opinion that modding the game make it overpowered, from the start. You're from the start breaking the balance that was wished by the game designers. So I'm going to list what could be considered WAAAAYYYY Overpowered and would turn the server basically into a Creative Mode server (infinite diamonds, quasi-invincibility, etc...).


First, let's start with the Holy Trinity : Buildcraft, Industrial Craft and Redpower.

What these mods basically add is the capability of AUTOMATING a lot of things in the game, such as mining and crafting. Which you could say is kind of idiotic in a game called "Mine"-"Craft". Maybe.
The attraction of these three mods, for me, is of building complex machineries that will do stuff, for you. It's a real puzzle game. Some people may be attracted by it, some may find it tedious or even contrary to the spirit of Minecraft... One thing is sure, is that they are the core of the modpack - if we get rid of them, we may as well not install the modpack at all. So we should think about that first.

Secondly, come the addons for these three mods, I'll only talk about the most notable ones.


For Industrial Craft, we have the following addons : MFFS (Modular Force Field something-something), Nuclear Control, Compact Solar and Gravity Suite.

MFFS allow the player to create force fields that are resistant to pretty much anything, and which can kill other unwanted players who would want to trespass in the protected area. I like this mod, I really do, and it would go great with the Fallout-y-ness of the server ; but I would perfectly understand if we got rid of it, because admittedly it IS waaayyy overpowered.

Nuclear Control allow to build devices that can monitor nuclear reactors and shut them down automatically when they become too hot. This allow building ridiculously safe and powerful nuclear reactors. On the more atmospheric side, this mode provide an ingame siren/alarm that just require a redstone signal to be activated.

Gravity Suite / Gravity Chestplate allow building one item, the aforementioned gravity suite, which not only store as much energy as an MFSU (the biggest energy storage device in Industrial Craft), but allow you to fly freely. The good point, from a balance standpoint, is that it require an almost literal shitton of resources to build even only one of them, and that flying require LOTS of energy ; but the downside is that once you wear them you are pretty much invincible, and the flying is pretty much Creative Mode flying, maybe even faster if you don't fear draining your battery in less than a minute. Also, once you have enough resources to build them, it means you have so much resources as be, in practice, in Creative Mode (I'll develop on that if asked about it).

Finally, one I would recommend getting rid of (not because I don't like it but because it REALLY is too much overpowered), is the Compact Solar addon. It allow the players to build "solar arrays", which are singular blocks outputting as much energy as several normal solar panels. Low-Voltage solar array produce as much energy as 8 solar panels. Medium-Voltage solar arrays produce the same amount of energy as 64 solar panels. High-Voltage solar arrays produce as much energy as 512 solar panels. All of these arrays take only one block of space, when a normal solar panel take, alone, one block of space. I think you can see how much overpowered that may be. There's only advantages and no real real drawback apart from the cost of it.


For Buildcraft, I'll only talk about the most notable one : Logistic Pipes.

What this mod basically allow you to do is to totally automate crafting and item storage management. It's as simple as that. Just set up you system, request what you want, and if you have the resources everything is done automatically. The real game with this mod is setting up the system.


Redpower, as a mod, has a pretty large scope - I encourage those interested in knowing more to watch let's plays of it or to search it's wiki for more information -, but basically it's all about simplifying the use of redstone logic (with logic gate blocks or in-game computers), automation (with a number of special "machine" blocks), or building structures that can move (using Frames : it's a whole game within the game... Could be fun trying to build a Raptor with it ).


Forestry is a mod that started as a Buildcraft addon, but grew to be its own mod when more features were added. What it basically allow is to automate farming. As a standalone mod, this isn't much, but combined with The Trinity (IC, BC, RP), you can build self-sustaining systems working on biofuels and other agricultural byproducts.


Thaumcraft 3, is basically the Science of Alchemy. You have to research "alchemical" recipes, that allow you to build special things that give you more power - an example is the enchanting table that allow you to choose which enchantments you're going to put on your equipment. It adds a number of thing to world generation, such as Obelisks, Tainted Areas, and minable crystals. I'll give more details if asked about it. I like that mod, it has a good balance on its own, and is getting to get even more balanced as Thaumcraft 3 is going to get out (current version is V2). The problem, as always, is when you start using other mods to automate certain process.


Now, to the REALLY problematic mod : Equivalent Exchange. Don't get me wrong, I love this mod. In singleplayer. In multiplayer, it's basically giving Creative Mode to the players. I'll just give one simple example : The Morningstar is an item that allow you, with one simple right-click, to mine a roughly 10 by 10 by 10 area. Just like that. This mod also allow, like I said, to produce with little original investments, diamonds from thin air - literally, you just let the Collectors run alone, without supplying them anything, and they provide you with "EMC" - which you can transmute into practically anything, such as diamond, gold, redstone, coal, iron, stone, wheat, etc...

I recommend, if it is possible, that we get rid of Equivalent Exchange on the server - disabling it in the configuration options. If it isn't possible, then we should put really hard limits on what one is and is not allowed to do with it.


Then come ComputerCraft. this one is hard to classify. On the one hand, it makes building computer really cheap (stone, redstone, glass pane), and you can build with it "turtles" (programmable robots) which can mine an area or craft things for you. On the other, the mod is useless if you don't know how to program. The things is, if you know you way around programming (it's all done in LUA), you can build self-replicating swarms of robots that willl eat the world - and crash the server because of how much computing resource it eats from it.


Ender Storage allow building Ender Chests and Ender Pouches. The feature has been introduced in vanilla minecraft as of 1.3, but this mod stay far more powerful than the vanilla implementation, as it allow 16 at the power of 3 (4096) different interdimensional storage spaces, that can work between players or Mystcraft Ages : just use pigments on the top of the chest to set a color combination, and all ender chests sharing the same color code will share the same inventory. And destroying all the chests sharing the same color code will not destroy the inventory, as the inventory is independent from the chests themselves. Ender Pouches are portable Ender Chests, which you can use to put stuff in - see it as an inventory expansion.


Finally, MystCraft. The idea is really simple : In vanilla minecraft, you have the Overworld (the world you originally spawn in), The Nether, and The End. Mystcraft allow you to create more dimensions, that you can tailor to your own desires. I linked a bit ago to a mod spotlight on it. Watch it for more details. What this mod basically mean for the server, is that we can do all our mining on another world, without having to go far from Somberville or Stable 0 to find the new resources introduced by the other mods. And we could set up a traveling nexus that allow us to basically teleport from one place to another - think about the consequences on the gameplay.

A hard limit should, in my opinion, be imposed about what everyone can do with this mod if we are to use it, for a very simple reason : the more "Ages" (the name of the dimensions created by Mystcraft) created, the more resources it will take from the server, the badder the lag will become.



As for the other mods, that aren't really overpowered, as much as they add new features. I don't have much to say about them in this post that already quite long enough as it is.


And I don't know why I typed it already...

Well, do of it what you want. I just want everyone to know what we could be getting into.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Blargh wall of text.


What I'm basically getting at is that the mods totally change the dynamic of the game, and some may not like it. So we should think for a bit, as a group, about what we want, to decide what mods we should keep, what mods we should discard and what we should put limits on.

[Vergil]

Personally I'm there to build stuff. It doesn't really matter to me how I do it as long as the end result is awesome.

[Kippershy]

I'm game for anything really.

[Aonee]

I would just venture to say that the cost for a solar array is more than enough to balance what it gives, even if you make a flower of HV Solar Arrays, which would take something like an hour for just the crafting alone, you would still need either Glass Fibre or HV cable to send it anywhere.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Logistic pipes. Once you set your system and have the necessary resources, you just have to send a request, and it should be done in less than 10 minutes, without any player input.

[Harmony Ltd.]

[using just UU-matter as the primary resource]

I just tried in my single player world. There's a bug in my system (the sheer scale of the request put too much strain on it, and Logistic Pipes return an error message), but at least I can automatically produce all the Low-Voltage Solar Arrays and the Medium Voltage Transformers I need to make the 8 MV-Solar Arrays necessaries to make an HV-Solar Array.

The only thing I have to do by hand is craft the High-Voltage Transformer, and the HV array itself.



What I have seen on youtube, though, is plants using just buildcraft, redpower and industrialcraft that continually produces HV-Solar Arrays as long as you provide them with UU-Matter.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Not saying that it doesn't take time, just that if someone really want it, they can get an exponentially growing production of the stuff without player input once it's set up.



Anyway, I'm fine with anything everyone will agree upon. I'm just providing additional informations for those not familiar with the mods.

[Valikdu]

I like setting up hueg solar power plants with the standard ones.

[Necr0maNceR]

The fact of the matter concerning things like HV-Solar Arrays is not the cost or the time required to build them, but the fact that you only have to do it once and you'll be set for the rest of the game. You'll have so much energy, diamonds, etc., that you won't even need to mine anymore. Not to mention that all enemies will die in one or two hits of your overpowered weapons, and it will be almost impossible to kill you due to the super strong armor you can make. It would be god mode, which would be boring.

Don't get me wrong, I support most of what these mods have to offer. I just think we should avoid things like the aforementioned Equivalent Exchange.

[Kippershy]

So it is settled - no compact solar arrays, what-so-ever.
If it can be disabled, disable it.
The effects a CSA has is just too much, even for the effort it takes.

Want solar power? Have a solar farm! Not a single block item that looks weird on its own and powers your whole city effortlessly.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

YOU KNOW ME, IF yOU WANT SOLAR ARRAYS, AND yOU TELL ME TO MAKE THEM, THEN YOU WILL LIKELY END UP WITHA HUGE FARM OF THEM

[IncoherentOrange]

Well, if we want solar, we have plenty of coal, redstone, iron, and glass to use. All we need is copper and tin, which could probably be reached with a 1KM bridge through the Nether. I figure eight kilometers is far enough.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

how many blocks of cobblestone is that?

[IncoherentOrange]

A couple thousand. No huge deal. The worst part about it would be building the damn thing.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Under constant Ghast attack, unless you make it enclosed. Cobblestone is resistant to Ghast fireballs explosion.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

do a barrel roll?

[Aonee]

Ya know, the idea of a massive field of solar panels is growing on me. We probably need to do this now.

[Ketchup]

Aonee, you should bring your group to Adder's server. The more slaves players the merrier!

[Aonee]

Ehhh, they're off of minecraft right now, you missed that phase by about a month or so. But don't worry, wait long enough and they'll probably come bal to it.

[Necr0maNceR]

Zombie XP grinder complete. It's located at x= -685, y= 17, z= 73. It's just off the road near the wheat field, and marked by a cobblestone pillar with torches.

You just wait as the zombies cycle through the system, get dropped, and are reduced to half a heart (still takes two punches to kill them, though). It may not seem too terribly fast, but if you wait and don't kill them, they won't stop accumulating (I think). So, if you wait 30 minutes or an hour, or something, it can accumulate a LOT of zombies. Then, instead of killing them one at a time, you can use a splash potion of healing to kill them all at once. So yeah, it's pretty broken. Assuming you have something else to occupy yourself with while waiting for the zombies to pile up.

[Cptadder]

Server is down today. Something on my router just went bork bork and I can't get home till this evening to fix it. It worked fine when I left does not work now. I'm guessing a power loss at my place resetting the router. Even if my sever is on an UPS the router is not and a power loss might have borked the port forwarding setup.

Can't remote into it because it's the el-cheapo provided variety from Westell, been meaning to replace it with a good cisco router.

[Cptadder]

Server is back up, internet search revealed a way to telnet into the router and I got the port forwarding turned on for the other server again.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Ya know, the idea of a massive field of solar panels is growing on me. We probably need to do this now.

... Helios 1 ?...

[Cptadder]

Due to some actions under investigation the server will be reverting to the October 17th backup while I check chat logs. All those involves have been suspended until I get back home.

[Ketchup]

What happened?

[Cptadder]

What happened?

Suffice it to say bad stuff happened and lava and tnt were involved and it was intentional from initial reports. I'm holding judgment until I see the logs this evening.

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