Hmmm, the new polling system doesn't allow for particularly big descriptions
You could refer to a post instead…
I am currently considering essentia tubes and how they work.
They work fine. The problem is not tubes themselves, the problem is the number of different essentia you have to move around and the "one last point stuck" issue.
The rest of the issues is easily avoided by employing correct handling techniques.
You just have to teach people to avoid end to end transfers, and instead build feeding loops that self-balance the circulation.
May be make tubes cheaper to make, or allow to place multiple tubes into one block, I don't know.
I'm liking the new changes to far, Azanor! Nice work!
It's weird that I can't finish "Basic Thaumaturgy" for some reason, but I remember that the mod is in a WIP, so I will assume that it's made so that it can't be completed till a later version. I tried to make fire related Foci with 4.4 attack in mind, but end up with 5 fire damage instead. (Unless that wasn't intended...)
But this is definitely keeping me busy. I look forward to all the new updates!
I love pipes, but I feel like they need more decoration. Some gauges would be nice, for example. Besides, who checks a pipe with a tuning fork anyways?
I agree with this. A possible alternative would be to require transfusers to require line of sight and they can only transfuse in straight lines - in other words the sender and receiver has to be facing each other and opposite each other in at least 2 axis.
I love pipes, but I feel like they need more decoration. Some gauges would be nice, for example. Besides, who checks a pipe with a tuning fork anyways?
Nerdsplaining: You tap it against the pipe and because different essentia resonates at different frequencies the sound the fork makes will reveal the type and amount of essentia.
I am currently considering essentia tubes and how they work. I do like the puzzle aspect they add to the game, but I am very aware they can be quite complex. To alleviate that I added the essentia transfusers, but in a way they bypass the whole point of having tubes.
When I first added essentia tubes in TC 3 (not to be confused with VIS tubes from Tc1 & 2) they worked much the same way as they do now, except they could carry multiple types of essentia and thus could never get gummed up. Piping systems were a lot simpler to set up and stuff like buffers were not needed at all. The problem was they were a bit laggy. It was because of the lag that I switched to the current system.
The question I pose is: Do you guys prefer the current iteration of pipes, or would you like a return to v1.0 if I could solve the lag issues?
If the lag issue (which actually never seemed too terribly bad, to me) could be solved, I prefer the original behavior in which pipes could carry any number of different essentia types. But I can see arguments for both ways, and I do like the essentia transfusers too. Trying to get anything complex done with TC4 tubes was often an exercise in frustration, and I recall multiple occasions where I'd finally think I had everything working, then one piece of essentia would get stuck someplace it shouldn't have been and gum up the entire works.
(I note however that the emptying transfuser does not seem to work reliably in combination with a thaumatorium — it seems a single transfuser will pull one type of essentia, then stop, and any additional types required must be provided by other means.)
Disclaimer: I can see how essentia tube lag could be a problem with fifty players on a server all doing essentia distillation at once.
I agree with this. A possible alternative would be to require transfusers to require line of sight and they can only transfuse in straight lines - in other words the sender and receiver has to be facing each other and opposite each other in at least 2 axis.
At least 2 axes? Well, they can't be facing-and-opposite in all 3 ... they'd have to be in the same place.
Transfusers as a moderate-range pipeless transport system would be interesting. But then you get into, "Well, how does the infusion matrix manage it without transfusers without requiring straight lines, then?"
I really like the idea of complicated pipes, and had fun trying to make specialized builds that broke down a specific item. I was never very successful. I remember messing around a lot with the pipe "sleeves" that reverse suction - I feel like I never understood really what those were doing. In TC5 I just went straight for the transfusers (? flying essentia) for convenience.
That's just my experience, I don't know the right answer. If complex pipes were still in TC6 I would enjoy re-learning - and hopefully mastering them. If not, that makes sense to me too.
Honestly I like the aesthetic of the pipes, but they are bloody hard to figure out sometimes. I've always felt like the puzzle aspect should be in the automation not making to tools used for automation work. Maybe provide more incentives to make the piping essentia seem more viable and keep people from wanting to rush the transfusers. Like essentia distillers - to make essentia potions, or some ways to process essentia to increase yield that are just easier with pipes.
Or add more ways to transport essentia; like cart vats that work hold multiple types and are simply cheaper than buffers over long distances, or automatic vial fillers so people just have to transport the vials of essentia to rather than the essentia itself.
@Azanor: the problem is not that tubes can't contain different types of essentia. The problem is that tubes can't contain different types of suction. This is what forces people to ultimately prefer buffers instead of tubes. Nothing else. If I have
[1m]→29p↓→29m↓→29u↓
line, that 1m is stuck in the buffer forever, no amount of magic could help me pull it out, unless I apply more Xu at the end of pipeline. However, if you change it so that tubes could keep track of all suctions on the run, the line turns into
[1m]→29p↓(28m,27u)→29m↓(28u)→29u↓
and that 1m happily slide down the path.
While ideally a number of different essentias needs to be reduced, per se it is not an issue. Yes, managing almost 40 types of essentia is cumbersome. But not impossible.
Speaking of tubes themselves, I just had a thought. If we are not discussing reducing the number of different essentia to handle, and not discussing changing the system itself, I may have a thing to ease management just a little.
Saying the "circulation" word last time made me thinking and I finally realized, what Thaumcraft pulling mechanics remind me of. Electricity! And specifically microelectronics! The active (feeding) line always have a loop back to the power source on the other end. Thaumcraft works the same.
So, the idea.
Instead of transfusers, add a "magistral" block that house two tubes at the same time (the "red" and "blue" tube, crafted from 2 regular tubes, produces 2, not configurable and not connectable directly to regular tubing and apparatuses), and a connector block to link to the regular tubing system (crafted from tube and a "magistral" block, produces 2, right-click to choose which line to connect to, does not connect to itself(requires a trunk of regular tubing, if needs to be connected)).
It'll allow to compose schematics more easily, and on drawing they would look even more like real electronics schemes, with red "active" pipeline and blue "feedback" overflow drain.
On the matter of essentia resonator, make its output one line at a time. Use icons.
When it comes down to it a pipe is nothing more than a hollow tube for something to flow through, and how something flows through it is primarily decided by some outside factor, such as a pump, or gravity. Though essentia probably acts a bit different than normal fluids.
By this logic i'd say that pipes should be a straightforward manner of transportation, they get things from point A to point B, no more, no less.
And while pipes should act simple, that does not mean the network have to be simplified. What with filters, pumps, and levers.
Personally i've entertained the idea of having multiple pipes in one block. The execution of which seems simple:
Visually, Each pipe runs on a 8-Point system. Think of it as a block divided into a set of 2x2. (or a cube divided into four smaller cubes, with each of the smaller cubes representing where a pipe section can be placed. So each block can hold up to eight sections of pipe in it.)
Behaviorally they would functions much the same as they already do, you place the pipes down and then you connect them, the only notable difference being that as the pipes are placed more tighter in the same space, you'd need double as many pipes. Because of this, You could have up to eight separate or linked pipe sections in one block's space, each of the pipes can be configured independently from one another and can have levers or filters attached without affecting the others, and run each in their own separate directions. The only new rule would be that a pipe cannot travel in more than one direction at a time, so only L or I sections, and no T, or X sections. So buffers would need to being used instead, to so to say, cross the streams.
I'm certain you can imagine how this layout could quickly grow to resemble an alchemical construct block, with pipes tightly woven around each other within a single block-space.
While buffers would still take up a whole block's worth of space, parts such as filters and levers would instead be attached directly onto a pipe.
Some parts would also not be able to connect to others, such as a filter can never connect directly to another filter. (Not like you'd need to filter one essentia type twice.)
Another thought related to this idea is that the pipes would also not connect directly to most machines or a jar as they do now, instead they must be connected to another part first, like an injector, that then attaches to either a single machine or jar. perhaps even a tap that you can attach phials to.
And last thought, jars and machines would hold no suction themselves, the suction being produced by pumps that can be placed as a pipe section. (Or more likely as a separate block that the pipes can connect directly onto. Such as the top and bottom of the sides.)
---
Now on the topic of transfusers.
I don't think i can let them go. They're so convenient! (Not to mention pretty) Perhaps they would be better balanced if they actually consumed a processed resource you could stock up on or something to fuel their transmission they'd be more balance-able without losing their appeal, but as it is, we have no way to store and harness Vis from a stored state, and using essentia to transfer essentia seems a bit... Convoluted? Recursive?
One way to balance them might be that they can't just empty directly into a jar or machine, they can only transfer between receivers and transmitters.
That way you'd either need one receiver for every single jar/machine you want to fill, or set up a pipe network that would redirect the essentia from one receiver and into the jars/machines.
---
Regardless, that's my two cents. (Though it's looking more and more like a dime.)
I liked the pipes in general, but they were rather daunting to use because any time you had to set up something new that used them, you would have to keep hitting jars and moving things.
I liked clean work though, so whenever I used them, there was always valves in use. I would use directional pipes once or twice, but never the one that reduces suction. But if I recall from my last time playing thaumcraft...
For the automated alchemy, I Had the central pipe that had the connection to all the other jars. since starting a piece would produce the strongest suction, it would pull that out first. I might have used one pipe for reducing strength, I forget, but I then had buffer with a billow attached to produce suction. Once the machine was done with the current target, the buffer would then suck that up into the buffer, which was then fixed with another pipe leading back to the jars. By putting a directional pipe on that, the jars would usually suck their contents back up - but I had to use valves to seal off any jar that wasn't relevant or the target at the time.
That one was time intensive if you did anything complicated, so ultimate I resorted to a semi similar setup where I made three different connections each leading to the particular jars I wanted (I don't think any other recipes used more than 3 or 4 of them to be honest). The needed material would get sucked in, then pulled back out to its personal jar, and less issue. I once expanded this to work on several jars using one of the TC addon mods that let you do the phantom block relay, but that was as complicated as I ever made it, because I had limited reason to use the pipes for anything else.
Any time I had to break down a fluid into its components, I basically plugged in two jars with some pipes, and then the jar that the stuff gets sucked out of. That was easy, and I only needed it when I needed a specific part anyways so it never had to be complicated. It was easier to move jars around than try to set them up (It would have needed too many valves).
So I guess the question becomes how necessary do you want pipes to be? If you want them to be used more, they can be 'semi complicated' but not too much or it will make everyone go crazy (and part costs not too hard to deal with cause I needed a lot of valves. I did love those animations for them though). Apart from that one example, I don't think I ever found what I felt was a practical use for the filtering pipes (not without needing one for every single type of element anyways), or the suction reducer pipes. I just never made a network so big to make that distance an issue.
Although of one idea that comes to mind is a 'container' block that you can hook a pipe or three to, which pump the stuff into jars you stack inside.. Basically it just keeps track of the essentia counts and if you need a jar of it, you can basically 'pour' it into one and take it out versus having a small room filled ot the ceiling with jars. (might make a nice advanced block for later anyways). I dunno. Maybe if I had more reason to make large pipe networks i would be more in this, but all I know is that when I did make setups for the auto-alchemy, I never had to make it too complicated cause I only every really did particular recipes - most of the others were for use of a specific recipe once or twice if at all.
Saying the "circulation" word last time made me thinking and I finally realized, what Thaumcraft pulling mechanics remind me of. Electricity! And specifically microelectronics! The active (feeding) line always have a loop back to the power source on the other end. Thaumcraft works the same.
So, the idea.
Instead of transfusers, add a "magistral" block that house two tubes at the same time (the "red" and "blue" tube, crafted from 2 regular tubes, produces 2, not configurable and not connectable directly to regular tubing and apparatuses), and a connector block to link to the regular tubing system (crafted from tube and a "magistral" block, produces 2, right-click to choose which line to connect to, does not connect to itself(requires a trunk of regular tubing, if needs to be connected)).
It'll allow to compose schematics more easily, and on drawing they would look even more like real electronics schemes, with red "active" pipeline and blue "feedback" overflow drain.
You've completely lost me here. I don't understand what you're driving at. However, I'm pretty sure electronic circuits are the wrong metaphor here. Packet-switched telephone networks would be a closer model.
I just unlocked infusion enchanting. I have to say I am really disappointed at the disappearance of using infusion enchanting to apply vanilla enchants. I hate the vanilla enchanting system and always have. The only thing that makes it bearable/usable at all is enchanting books, because it means that if you get an enchantment you didn't want, you haven't just completely ruined and wasted all of your work and the experience you spent on it, you can just save the enchantment for later.
If I had to choose two single features of Thaumcraft that have made it a must-have to me, I would pick Thaumium Fortress armor and infusion enchantment. Thaumcraft infusion enchantment FEELS like painstakingly crafting a powerful magical artifact. Vanilla enchanting feels like playing a penny slot machine. (In context it's an improvement over roulette, but it's still a slot machine.)
Azanor, please consider bringing back infusion for vanilla enchants.
You could refer to a post instead…
They work fine. The problem is not tubes themselves, the problem is the number of different essentia you have to move around and the "one last point stuck" issue.
The rest of the issues is easily avoided by employing correct handling techniques.
You just have to teach people to avoid end to end transfers, and instead build feeding loops that self-balance the circulation.
May be make tubes cheaper to make, or allow to place multiple tubes into one block, I don't know.
Balancing something by cost alone never works.
I'm liking the new changes to far, Azanor! Nice work!
It's weird that I can't finish "Basic Thaumaturgy" for some reason, but I remember that the mod is in a WIP, so I will assume that it's made so that it can't be completed till a later version. I tried to make fire related Foci with 4.4 attack in mind, but end up with 5 fire damage instead. (Unless that wasn't intended...)
But this is definitely keeping me busy. I look forward to all the new updates!
Sky readings do not reset "today" at 0 time.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumI love pipes, but I feel like they need more decoration. Some gauges would be nice, for example. Besides, who checks a pipe with a tuning fork anyways?
My first mod =D
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumI agree with this. A possible alternative would be to require transfusers to require line of sight and they can only transfuse in straight lines - in other words the sender and receiver has to be facing each other and opposite each other in at least 2 axis.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumNerdsplaining: You tap it against the pipe and because different essentia resonates at different frequencies the sound the fork makes will reveal the type and amount of essentia.
If the lag issue (which actually never seemed too terribly bad, to me) could be solved, I prefer the original behavior in which pipes could carry any number of different essentia types. But I can see arguments for both ways, and I do like the essentia transfusers too. Trying to get anything complex done with TC4 tubes was often an exercise in frustration, and I recall multiple occasions where I'd finally think I had everything working, then one piece of essentia would get stuck someplace it shouldn't have been and gum up the entire works.
(I note however that the emptying transfuser does not seem to work reliably in combination with a thaumatorium — it seems a single transfuser will pull one type of essentia, then stop, and any additional types required must be provided by other means.)
Disclaimer: I can see how essentia tube lag could be a problem with fifty players on a server all doing essentia distillation at once.
At least 2 axes? Well, they can't be facing-and-opposite in all 3 ... they'd have to be in the same place.
Transfusers as a moderate-range pipeless transport system would be interesting. But then you get into, "Well, how does the infusion matrix manage it without transfusers without requiring straight lines, then?"
I really like the idea of complicated pipes, and had fun trying to make specialized builds that broke down a specific item. I was never very successful. I remember messing around a lot with the pipe "sleeves" that reverse suction - I feel like I never understood really what those were doing. In TC5 I just went straight for the transfusers (? flying essentia) for convenience.
That's just my experience, I don't know the right answer. If complex pipes were still in TC6 I would enjoy re-learning - and hopefully mastering them. If not, that makes sense to me too.
I don't actually love the pipes, because of the current complication factor of using them. If they were simplified, I'd consider it.
Honestly I like the aesthetic of the pipes, but they are bloody hard to figure out sometimes. I've always felt like the puzzle aspect should be in the automation not making to tools used for automation work. Maybe provide more incentives to make the piping essentia seem more viable and keep people from wanting to rush the transfusers. Like essentia distillers - to make essentia potions, or some ways to process essentia to increase yield that are just easier with pipes.
Or add more ways to transport essentia; like cart vats that work hold multiple types and are simply cheaper than buffers over long distances, or automatic vial fillers so people just have to transport the vials of essentia to rather than the essentia itself.
Pro tip: Do not craft heavy stuff on a new moon… Wait at least first quarter, or you dig a hole in the local aura that will not heal soon.
Has anyone figured out any way except buckets to fill the arcane spa?
If your solution involved golems, what got you enough epiphanies to unlock biothaumic minds?
@Azanor: the problem is not that tubes can't contain different types of essentia. The problem is that tubes can't contain different types of suction. This is what forces people to ultimately prefer buffers instead of tubes. Nothing else. If I have
line, that 1m is stuck in the buffer forever, no amount of magic could help me pull it out, unless I apply more Xu at the end of pipeline. However, if you change it so that tubes could keep track of all suctions on the run, the line turns into
and that 1m happily slide down the path.
While ideally a number of different essentias needs to be reduced, per se it is not an issue. Yes, managing almost 40 types of essentia is cumbersome. But not impossible.
Speaking of tubes themselves, I just had a thought. If we are not discussing reducing the number of different essentia to handle, and not discussing changing the system itself, I may have a thing to ease management just a little.
Saying the "circulation" word last time made me thinking and I finally realized, what Thaumcraft pulling mechanics remind me of. Electricity! And specifically microelectronics! The active (feeding) line always have a loop back to the power source on the other end. Thaumcraft works the same.
So, the idea.
Instead of transfusers, add a "magistral" block that house two tubes at the same time (the "red" and "blue" tube, crafted from 2 regular tubes, produces 2, not configurable and not connectable directly to regular tubing and apparatuses), and a connector block to link to the regular tubing system (crafted from tube and a "magistral" block, produces 2, right-click to choose which line to connect to, does not connect to itself(requires a trunk of regular tubing, if needs to be connected)).
It'll allow to compose schematics more easily, and on drawing they would look even more like real electronics schemes, with red "active" pipeline and blue "feedback" overflow drain.
On the matter of essentia resonator, make its output one line at a time. Use icons.
[Contains N{icon}[, M{icon}…][/{total}]. ][Suction X{icon}[, Y{icon}…].]Hmmm, Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.
When it comes down to it a pipe is nothing more than a hollow tube for something to flow through, and how something flows through it is primarily decided by some outside factor, such as a pump, or gravity. Though essentia probably acts a bit different than normal fluids.
By this logic i'd say that pipes should be a straightforward manner of transportation, they get things from point A to point B, no more, no less.
And while pipes should act simple, that does not mean the network have to be simplified. What with filters, pumps, and levers.
Personally i've entertained the idea of having multiple pipes in one block. The execution of which seems simple:
Visually, Each pipe runs on a 8-Point system. Think of it as a block divided into a set of 2x2. (or a cube divided into four smaller cubes, with each of the smaller cubes representing where a pipe section can be placed. So each block can hold up to eight sections of pipe in it.)
Behaviorally they would functions much the same as they already do, you place the pipes down and then you connect them, the only notable difference being that as the pipes are placed more tighter in the same space, you'd need double as many pipes. Because of this, You could have up to eight separate or linked pipe sections in one block's space, each of the pipes can be configured independently from one another and can have levers or filters attached without affecting the others, and run each in their own separate directions. The only new rule would be that a pipe cannot travel in more than one direction at a time, so only L or I sections, and no T, or X sections. So buffers would need to being used instead, to so to say, cross the streams.
I'm certain you can imagine how this layout could quickly grow to resemble an alchemical construct block, with pipes tightly woven around each other within a single block-space.
While buffers would still take up a whole block's worth of space, parts such as filters and levers would instead be attached directly onto a pipe.
Some parts would also not be able to connect to others, such as a filter can never connect directly to another filter. (Not like you'd need to filter one essentia type twice.)
Another thought related to this idea is that the pipes would also not connect directly to most machines or a jar as they do now, instead they must be connected to another part first, like an injector, that then attaches to either a single machine or jar. perhaps even a tap that you can attach phials to.
And last thought, jars and machines would hold no suction themselves, the suction being produced by pumps that can be placed as a pipe section. (Or more likely as a separate block that the pipes can connect directly onto. Such as the top and bottom of the sides.)
---
Now on the topic of transfusers.
I don't think i can let them go. They're so convenient! (Not to mention pretty) Perhaps they would be better balanced if they actually consumed a processed resource you could stock up on or something to fuel their transmission they'd be more balance-able without losing their appeal, but as it is, we have no way to store and harness Vis from a stored state, and using essentia to transfer essentia seems a bit... Convoluted? Recursive?
One way to balance them might be that they can't just empty directly into a jar or machine, they can only transfer between receivers and transmitters.
That way you'd either need one receiver for every single jar/machine you want to fill, or set up a pipe network that would redirect the essentia from one receiver and into the jars/machines.
---
Regardless, that's my two cents. (Though it's looking more and more like a dime.)
Said the word "moon", here's a little present: https://gist.github.com/AnrDaemon/41df63eb01f1ea3229f3a311e52cb891
It looks like this:
Which 1. complicates the setup needlessly and 2. reduce the gameplay value of suction, since you can now control it directly.
I liked the pipes in general, but they were rather daunting to use because any time you had to set up something new that used them, you would have to keep hitting jars and moving things.
I liked clean work though, so whenever I used them, there was always valves in use. I would use directional pipes once or twice, but never the one that reduces suction. But if I recall from my last time playing thaumcraft...
For the automated alchemy, I Had the central pipe that had the connection to all the other jars. since starting a piece would produce the strongest suction, it would pull that out first. I might have used one pipe for reducing strength, I forget, but I then had buffer with a billow attached to produce suction. Once the machine was done with the current target, the buffer would then suck that up into the buffer, which was then fixed with another pipe leading back to the jars. By putting a directional pipe on that, the jars would usually suck their contents back up - but I had to use valves to seal off any jar that wasn't relevant or the target at the time.
That one was time intensive if you did anything complicated, so ultimate I resorted to a semi similar setup where I made three different connections each leading to the particular jars I wanted (I don't think any other recipes used more than 3 or 4 of them to be honest). The needed material would get sucked in, then pulled back out to its personal jar, and less issue. I once expanded this to work on several jars using one of the TC addon mods that let you do the phantom block relay, but that was as complicated as I ever made it, because I had limited reason to use the pipes for anything else.
Any time I had to break down a fluid into its components, I basically plugged in two jars with some pipes, and then the jar that the stuff gets sucked out of. That was easy, and I only needed it when I needed a specific part anyways so it never had to be complicated. It was easier to move jars around than try to set them up (It would have needed too many valves).
So I guess the question becomes how necessary do you want pipes to be? If you want them to be used more, they can be 'semi complicated' but not too much or it will make everyone go crazy (and part costs not too hard to deal with cause I needed a lot of valves. I did love those animations for them though). Apart from that one example, I don't think I ever found what I felt was a practical use for the filtering pipes (not without needing one for every single type of element anyways), or the suction reducer pipes. I just never made a network so big to make that distance an issue.
Although of one idea that comes to mind is a 'container' block that you can hook a pipe or three to, which pump the stuff into jars you stack inside.. Basically it just keeps track of the essentia counts and if you need a jar of it, you can basically 'pour' it into one and take it out versus having a small room filled ot the ceiling with jars. (might make a nice advanced block for later anyways). I dunno. Maybe if I had more reason to make large pipe networks i would be more in this, but all I know is that when I did make setups for the auto-alchemy, I never had to make it too complicated cause I only every really did particular recipes - most of the others were for use of a specific recipe once or twice if at all.
I rambled. sorry. ^^;
You've completely lost me here. I don't understand what you're driving at. However, I'm pretty sure electronic circuits are the wrong metaphor here. Packet-switched telephone networks would be a closer model.
I just unlocked infusion enchanting. I have to say I am really disappointed at the disappearance of using infusion enchanting to apply vanilla enchants. I hate the vanilla enchanting system and always have. The only thing that makes it bearable/usable at all is enchanting books, because it means that if you get an enchantment you didn't want, you haven't just completely ruined and wasted all of your work and the experience you spent on it, you can just save the enchantment for later.
If I had to choose two single features of Thaumcraft that have made it a must-have to me, I would pick Thaumium Fortress armor and infusion enchantment. Thaumcraft infusion enchantment FEELS like painstakingly crafting a powerful magical artifact. Vanilla enchanting feels like playing a penny slot machine. (In context it's an improvement over roulette, but it's still a slot machine.)
Azanor, please consider bringing back infusion for vanilla enchants.