Arc'E'Tech aims to provide a concise compilation of mods with extended game-play, actual survival, and as little feature redundancy as possible.
Player Input is always welcome, I am always willing to discuses anything about this pack.
Notice
This pack contains Fastcraft, by Player. Enabled by default. Fastcraft enhances Minecraft with increased performance. Bug reports being made directly to Mod Authors should state that Fastcraft is enabled.
Also contains the Element Animation's villager voices from their resource pack as its own small resource pack, much better then Minecraft's default villager sounds. This will be removed if Element Animation asks me to, I could not find any way to ask for permission but I also did not see anything forbidding it.
Mod being considered for the pack (Indents are reasons for inclusion and prerequisites, feel free to discuss):
1. Run the Forge installer for Forge 10.13.3.1428.
2. Open the Launcher and click on “New Profile” in the bottom left, put a name for the profile in the top text box, and set the "Use version" to the version of forge you installed.
----Recommended: Check the “Game Directory” option directly under the name field and add the profiles name to the ----file path, do not forget the “\” before it. This makes it work like multiMC.
3. Click on “Save Profile” in the bottom right.
4. Launch then close Minecraft to create the file directory.
5. Click on the “Edit Profile” in the bottom left and then click the “Open Game Dir” button in the bottom right.
6. Drag everything from within the pack zip into the file window that was just opened.
7. Enjoy Arc'E'Tech.
AT Launcher Installation:
Not yet Implemented, lots of hoops to jump through to get this done.
FTB Launcher Installation:
Not yet Implemented, lots of hoops to jump through to get this done and I would not have direct update control by the looks of it.
Technic Launcher Installation:
Not yet Implemented, lots of hoops to jump through to get this done but not as much as the others it seams.
Help & Information:
If you encounter a crash with the pack please let me know. I will handle tracking down and fixing problems so that mod creators do not get swamped with reports.
Beginnings of a Material Consistency Guideline for that I will use for recipe editing, Feel free to discuss.
Iron - Low grade structural component
Steel - Normal grade structural component
Dark Steel - Advanced grade structural component
Electrical Steel - Electrical grade structural component
Conductive Iron - Weak power conduction
Pulsing Iron - Conduit for transpatial (Ender) energies
Pulsing Crystal - Focus for weak transpatial (Ender) energies
Energetic Alloy - Power storage and universal conduction
Vibrant Alloy - Hyper power storage and conduction
Vibrant Crystal - Power storage and focusing
Soularium - Soul energy (exp) storage and channeling
Ender Crystal - Focus for strong transpatial (Ender) energies
To do list (not in order):
-Find some way to make the first day easier, at this point if you do not know exactly what to do it is very difficult to not die the first night. High Priority.
-Finish balancing Power IO.
-Determine a good Mob essence to Liquid XP ratio.
-Reevaluate recipes, especially high end tech ones.
-Add pack to FTB, AT, and Technic Launchers.
-Add more EnviroMine support.
-Look into vain generation for the EnviroMine cave dimension.
Known Issues:
-Blood for the Blood God exploit: Not much that can be done about this, not saying what it is but if you find it you will know.
-Some times commands do not work when they should, seams to be inherent to Minecraft/Forge.
-Seems that some mods info for the "/help" command ("/help 4" being the lowest I have seen) causes a NullPointerException crash, not sure which mod is causing it as the crash log is not being very helpful. So for now be careful.
-Something is making Tinker' Construct tools enchantable in an anvil, the only up side is being able to apply soulbound, the rest of it is just... unbalanced.
-Some blocks loose data when they fall with EnviroMine physics, let me know if something does so I can let the modders know and make it immune to physics until that is fixed.
Obtained Permissions:
Change log:
0.3
-Fixed MFR Chunk Loader recipe.
-Added crafting the Davy Lamp out of Aluminum Brass.
-Made some Enhanced Portals recipes harder, and more consistent with the rest of the pack.
-Added crafting recipes for Bibliocraft to use Aluminum Brass instead of gold.
-Added enviromine stats to more foods.
-Added Storage Drawers by jaquadro.
-Updated Forge to 10.13.3.1428
-Updated mods.
0.2
-Decreased the dye drop rate for ChromatiCraft trees from 100% to 20% in its configs, because that was too much. *coughrainbowtreescough* Not sure if it worked...
-Disabled EviroMine Village Mineshafts, they like to clip other buildings and make it to easy to get to low Y levels.
-Updated mods.
-Toned down ambient torch temperature, getting heatstroke from your main light source as fast as you do is a bit much.
-Added crafting Fresh Water from Water Clay Bucket.
-Made Lava Clay Bucket affect the player like a normal Lava Bucket.
-Moved the Status Effect to the left side so as to not conflict with ChromatiCraft information.
-Made most Big Reactor parts immune to EviroMine Physics, it made building them more challenging then is necessary.
-Removed the custom Capacitor upgrade recipes. Ender IO now has its own, more expensive versions.
-Fixed the accidental removal of the silent Dark Pressure Plate recipe.
-Added preliminary Mob Essence to Liquid XP Vat recipe. 1-to-1 experience value ratio at the moment. 1000mb Mob Essence = 300mb Liquid XP.
-Made GeoStrata cobbles grind-able in the SAG Mill just like vanilla cobble.
0.1
-Slime islands will no longer fall from the sky.
-GeoStrata stone now falls as cobble under EviroMine physics, just like vanilla stone.
-Added recipes to craft GeoStrata stairs and slabs back into their blocks. There has to be a better way then what I did... 3 lists of 272 blocks each *shivers* and that is not even factoring MineTweekers 260 item per list/loop limit...
-Added preliminary EviroMine mod armor support.
-Added recipes for Highlands Stairs back to blocks, opps.
-Removed gold and iron horse armor exploit.
-Redused the number of ingots per ore in the smeltery to one, doubling is not needed at the very start of the progression.
-Updated Reika's mods and EnviroMine.
-Gravestone graves, EnderIO conduits/facades, and ChromatiCraft Pylons are no longer affected by EviroMine physics, it caused data loss.
-Made EviroMine elevator MUCH more expensive.
0.0
-Initial release.
-Nerfed Blood for the Blood God exploit.
-Made Ender IO Conduit tiers follow an upgrade path.
-Made Ender IO Capacitor Bank tiers follow an upgrade path.
-Made Advanced Photovoltaic Cell require the normal Photovoltaic Cell in its crafting.
-Made redstone devices require redstone in their crafting.
-Made Spice of Life's Lunch Box easier to craft then my redstone device tweak would have it.
-Made SAG Mill recipe harder.
-Made Conduit Binder require Binder Composite and 3 Plastic in the Alloy Furnace.
-Added crafting recipes to turn various stairs back into their source blocks.
-Made Multipart saws craft like the ones added by Iguana's Tinker Tweaks.
-Removed Stone Torch, Slab Furnace, and Slab Pattern Chest... just no.
Thank Yous and Contributions:
-The modders for their wonderful mods.
-Those of you that decide to give Arc'E'Tech a try.
Why don't you upload the pack on Technicpack? Would be easier for most people, who don't necesarily want to install it manually!
I plan to add support for all the launchers, I just have to get around to it. I do not use them much myself, might be a good idea to put that higher on the priority list though.
Lots of hoops to jump through for using the launchers, looks like Technic will be the easiest to get onto and FTB will be the hardest. Also I do not think that I will be able to distribute the Element Animation's villager voices via these methods, so some flavor will be lost.
Probably wouldn't use this. I'm not much a fan of Cheaty Locomotion for the way it makes frame machines way too easy (among other things), but I thought I'd mention that you are allowed to include Fastcraft. You just have to have a free modpack, include an up-to-date version of it, and provide attribution...and stroke their ego a little by giving more information on the mod than just putting it on the mod list, because apparently the author is a special snowflake like that.
Probably wouldn't use this. I'm not much a fan of Cheaty Locomotion for the way it makes frame machines way too easy (among other things), but I thought I'd mention that you are allowed to include Fastcraft. You just have to have a free modpack, include an up-to-date version of it, and provide attribution...and stroke their ego a little by giving more information on the mod than just putting it on the mod list, because apparently the author is a special snowflake like that.
Balance is important to me, if you have an objection to a mod I want to hear it. I have Minetweaker and Quadrum in for a reason and I am not afraid of configs. As a last resort I can always remove it, it is honestly a bit of a novelty in this pack.
On the note of Fastcraft's requirements, now that I know about them and have read them, they are not outrageous. It is not so much about Player being "a special snowflake" as you put it, it has more to do with what Fastcraft attempts to do. I have looked at loading logs and Fastcraft seems to do very specific tweaks based on what is installed, including make some changes to other mods it seams. So ensuring that users inform modders that Fastcraft is present and, therefor changes to how things work that they were not expecting, is not unreasonable.
Via experimentation and looking at MFR and EnderIO's code I have found that Mob Essence is about 200/3 (slightly less) mb per experiance point and XP Juice is 20 mb per experience point. XP Juice is what Ender IO is scaled to but Mob Essence can be made using MFR, plus Tinkers' has Essence Berries. So I am thinking I will add a Vat recipe to turn Mob Essence into XP Juice using Essence Berries.
So The questions are:
Should we be able to turn Mob Essence and Essence Berries into XP Juice at the ratio of Mob Essence to XP Juice or should there be a slight boost (I am leaning towards the latter)?
What should the other ingredient(s) be along side the Essence Berries?
Balance is important to me, if you have an objection to a mod I want to hear it. I have Minetweaker and Quadrum in for a reason and I am not afraid of configs. As a last resort I can always remove it, it is honestly a bit of a novelty in this pack.
On the note of Fastcraft's requirements, now that I know about them and have read them, they are not outrageous. It is not so much about Player being "a special snowflake" as you put it, it has more to do with what Fastcraft attempts to do. I have looked at loading logs and Fastcraft seems to do very specific tweaks based on what is installed, including make some changes to other mods it seams. So ensuring that users inform modders that Fastcraft is present and, therefor changes to how things work that they were not expecting, is not unreasonable.
I was really just being my usual snarky self with the "special snowflake" remark. I don't find their requirements unreasonable either.
As far as the balance, I'm not sure how useful my input would be, since I generally like things a little harder than most people seem to, but I can explain my complaints with Funky Locomotion at least in part. It's basically a re-creation of RedPower frames, which Iactually found reasonably costed and limited in use back in the day, but those with more technical aptitude generally considered to be in the "uber tier" of machines. When I first looked at Funky Locomotion, it struck me as a less expensive and more powerful version...albeit not as utterly broken as, say, RiM/ReiM. Going back and looking at it in more detail, though, I've found that they actually have gone and increased the cost of most things, and that the power consumption requirement (which wasn't listed in any documentation I saw previously) actually is there. So, I would actually withdraw my complaints there.
Now, I could go off on a tangent about how TiC adds ore doubling, while also vastly reducing tool costs, obsoleting enchanting, and vastly skewing the risk/reward value of most actions in game to favour the player, and how Iguana Tweaks only compounds the issue by further removing player skill as a factor, making things arbitrarily grindy and luck-based, and on the whole further reducing the cost to get good tools in many cases...but that's a whole separate rant, and the inclusion of said mods in almost every pack in existence strongly suggests that, overall, the rest of the playerbase disagrees with me.
I was really just being my usual snarky self with the "special snowflake" remark. I don't find their requirements unreasonable either.
As far as the balance, I'm not sure how useful my input would be, since I generally like things a little harder than most people seem to, but I can explain my complaints with Funky Locomotion at least in part. It's basically a re-creation of RedPower frames, which Iactually found reasonably costed and limited in use back in the day, but those with more technical aptitude generally considered to be in the "uber tier" of machines. When I first looked at Funky Locomotion, it struck me as a less expensive and more powerful version...albeit not as utterly broken as, say, RiM/ReiM. Going back and looking at it in more detail, though, I've found that they actually have gone and increased the cost of most things, and that the power consumption requirement (which wasn't listed in any documentation I saw previously) actually is there. So, I would actually withdraw my complaints there.
Now, I could go off on a tangent about how TiC adds ore doubling, while also vastly reducing tool costs, obsoleting enchanting, and vastly skewing the risk/reward value of most actions in game to favour the player, and how Iguana Tweaks only compounds the issue by further removing player skill as a factor, making things arbitrarily grindy and luck-based, and on the whole further reducing the cost to get good tools in many cases...but that's a whole separate rant, and the inclusion of said mods in almost every pack in existence strongly suggests that, overall, the rest of the playerbase disagrees with me.
I have played Better Than Wolves and Reika's mods. (Okay, I never got far enough to try ElectriCraft or ReactorCraft but I want to at some point if for nothing else then to say I have.) So I have no aversion to challenge, give all the input you want.
I could make FL even harder, by ether increasing the power cost or making it need more expensive materials. (Dark Steal for the frames anyone?) But only if I feel it is necessary.
Please, tangent away. That's the beauty of this, and one of the reasons I released so early in development. I want input, and I am not afraid to change or customize things, In fact I already have quite a bit. With configs I can change a majority of things, and I also have Minetweaker and Quadrum. Game design is something that I am very interested in (I liked the link in your sig), I may be a computer science major but game design is my end goal, and this is a good chance to flex that mussel. So let me go over what you mentioned:
Ore doubling itself is not a bad thing, there are more things that call for the resource so a way is provided to get more. But with how early the smeltery is in my packs progression your comment has me thinking I might set it to 1.
On the note of tool cheapness... Ya, I wish I could make different parts have different ratios (like make heads cost more, like 2 for an axe head and 3 for a pickhead) even among the different materials (1 flint for a pickhead or 3 iron). That is not an option (one of the few things I can't change) so the best I can do is design around it, I can always increase the repair cost.
For enchanting, honestly. Never liked it, to much RNG. 30 levels for a Punch I bow? No thanks. Tinkers modifier system gave more uses to resources that were already in the game and does so in a quite balanced way with vanilla in mind. As for mods breaking that balance, that's what configs and tweak mods are for.
As for skewing risk/reward towards the player is there something else besides what you mentioned above? From what I see Tinkers' was balanced mostly around vanilla and does a fairly good job. Putting mods together often causes exploits and overpowered interactions do to different balance points. This is something that I am explicitly trying to avoid with Arc'E'Tech unlike a lot of other packs that just through things together.
When it comes to "further removing player skill as a factor, making things arbitrarily grindy and luck-based, and on the whole further reducing the cost to get good tools in many cases", I can only assume that you are talking about the leveling mechanic. Because everything else from the modified mining levels to the tool part restrictions, heck even the part of the leveling mechanic where you do not get all of your modifier slots right off the bat make the game quite a bit more challenging and are a core part of what allows me to increase the playtime of this pack.
To go into more detail on the leveling mechanic, I do not care much for the random modifier at level up even if it is weighted and constrained, it is still to random but I do not want to discard it offhand, I want to see what I can do with it first. I do, on the other hand, like that I can hide the modifier slots behind the levels. This causes you to have to put work into getting something good, but is not to punishing due to the fact that you can upgrade your first tool thanks to part replacement, and if it is not punishing enough I can change the numbers.
In fact those things that I just mentioned increases the cost of tools in my opinion.
One of my biggest grievances has been that, leaving off RNG for the moment, Mojang has made it pretty clear at this point that getting an ideal tool is meant to be a costly process, and keeping it indefinitely next to impossible. I find that Tinker's Construct largely negates the first, as many favourable effects become possible to obtain much earlier on. In particular, the quartz for sharpness is fairly easy to obtain for any experienced player (as many people forget that it is entirely possible to skip diamonds altogether and jump straight to the Nether through clever use of buckets) and lapis for Fortune is practically a give-away, given its low demand for other uses, and relatively accessible placements. I would love to see enchanted books added to the cost to enhance, much like they are used to make magic wood in...I think it's Extra Utilities?...to add a limiting factor there. Unfortunately doing it well (where enchantment strength mattered) would probably take special coding that no existing mod has.
With the levelling mechanic, that is part of what I meant. From the sound of it, you're already doing what I would about that, though. The other thing, however, is the part replacement mechanic. Making tools in TiC is already cheap. Repairing them is cheap. Then in Iguana Tweaks they added part replacements. So you get all the benefits of upgrading to a new tool, but keep the enhancements you already got on the old one, without paying. So that makes the cost-reduced system even cheaper. The standard levelling system will actually limit that, to an extent, since you can get stuck with a sub-optimal modifier, and have to start over on a new tool...but if you get lucky, you're getting a tool you will never need to replace, for free. Taking out the randoms forces the player to spend resources, but it also means that they will get a tool they don't ever need to replace 100% of the time, vs. having to buy all their upgrades again every tier with just TiC.
One of my biggest grievances has been that, leaving off RNG for the moment, Mojang has made it pretty clear at this point that getting an ideal tool is meant to be a costly process, and keeping it indefinitely next to impossible. I find that Tinker's Construct largely negates the first, as many favourable effects become possible to obtain much earlier on. In particular, the quartz for sharpness is fairly easy to obtain for any experienced player (as many people forget that it is entirely possible to skip diamonds altogether and jump straight to the Nether through clever use of buckets) and lapis for Fortune is practically a give-away, given its low demand for other uses, and relatively accessible placements. I would love to see enchanted books added to the cost to enhance, much like they are used to make magic wood in...I think it's Extra Utilities?...to add a limiting factor there. Unfortunately doing it well (where enchantment strength mattered) would probably take special coding that no existing mod has.
With the levelling mechanic, that is part of what I meant. From the sound of it, you're already doing what I would about that, though. The other thing, however, is the part replacement mechanic. Making tools in TiC is already cheap. Repairing them is cheap. Then in Iguana Tweaks they added part replacements. So you get all the benefits of upgrading to a new tool, but keep the enhancements you already got on the old one, without paying. So that makes the cost-reduced system even cheaper. The standard levelling system will actually limit that, to an extent, since you can get stuck with a sub-optimal modifier, and have to start over on a new tool...but if you get lucky, you're getting a tool you will never need to replace, for free. Taking out the randoms forces the player to spend resources, but it also means that they will get a tool they don't ever need to replace 100% of the time, vs. having to buy all their upgrades again every tier with just TiC.
What your saying seems to break into basically two things: good tools should be hard to obtain, and good tools should imposable to keep. So I will address them in that order.
Good tools should be hard to obtain:
This is the easier one, I do not think there is anyone with good design sense that disagrees with this, though there might be disagreements about how hard or even what kind of difficulty.
I agree that quartz is probably to easy to obtain in in vanilla TiC (although one could argue that the player should be reward for being clever enough to use buckets in that manner) though it does still take 72 pieces of quarts for only an extra 2 hearts of damage. Arc'E'Tech makes it quite harder to get quartz. Not only does Iguana Tweaks make you need to be able to mine obsidian before you can mine quartz (make the bucket trick pointless), but EnviroMine make the nether quite dangerous with the need to balance the four stats of hydration, heat, sanity, and air quality, all of which are effected in the Nether without even factoring mobs, of which there are new ones thanks to Natrua.
When it comes to lapis I lament its lack of utility and may try to give it more uses in my pack in the future, but I am not sure I completely agree with you. I grant that anything balanced around vanilla can be a bit easy if they don't throw in a lot of new stuff. But even with lapis having little (no) use in vanilla it still takes 100 lapis to get the first level, that is about 17 ore on average, and you need 200 more to get the next level which is about 25 more ore if you use the upgraded pick. You got me on the last one though... 150 more for level 3, about 14 more ore... I don't get it, why less? It should be more. Any way, in Arc'E'Tech ore spawns in rarer, larger veins making them harder to find on top of needing iron first (which I could make harder), and like I said I will probably look into trying to give it more uses.
The idea of using enchantment books as a limiter is an interesting one, maybe you would use the book to add the modifier at 0 out of the amount required to get to that level of the enchantment. Like use a Fortune I book on a pick and get Luck 0/100, add another Fortune I to get Luck 0/300 or start with a Fortune II book for Luck 0/300. Of coarse adding levels to it would require a book equal to its currant level to stay consistent with anvil mechanics, therefor to get to level three from 2 would require another Fortune II book.
Good tools should be imposable to keep:
While Mojang/Vanila may say this (not convinced it actually does, would take more time then I am willing to give atm to test), almost every mod out there disagrees. From electric tools, to repair enchantments, to blocks that restore damage, to even just changing the repair cost in the anvil everyone seems to agree that if you put in the effort to get something good you should be able to hold on to it. And while I see that this could very well be an bandwagon argument, I agree with it. Yes, I agree that TiC makes it too easy to keep your tools, I wish I could could lower the restore value on repairing or use the diminishing returns on repairing that an older version of Iguana Tweaks had, but I can not.The best that I can do is place a limit on the number of times a tool can be repaired and force people to spend 2 slots on a flux modifier (or wait long intervals waiting for moss to work) to keep their tools, which I am mostly okay with that other then fact that there is no in-game indication of this repair limit, and what is to follow.
Part Replacement making it cheaper:
While I see what you are saying, I have to disagree. I see part replacement as costly (with respect to TiC's costs) convenience. Any player with enough foresight will wait until they have made their best tool before adding modifiers, you can see this often in vanilla, players will wait until they have diamond gear before enchanting. Part replacement makes it so that you do not have to wait that long and that most of the tool experience you have gained so far is not wasted (also saving on the tedium of leveling a new tool), at the cost of having to have a fully repaired tool and probably loosing some tool experience. Again, I would probably make things costlier if I could, if through no other means then costlier parts and repairs.
PS: Maybe someone should point Boni towards this conversation, there are some good points and ideas here. Plus it would be interesting to get the dev's prospective on all of this.
Regarding balance: It's your modpack, all up to you.
Regarding good tools being hard to get and not lasting forever: TiCon tools actually cost more to repair over time, the only offenders are moss and the flux modifier. The material balance simply never makes you notice it because good stuff usually also has high durability and then you put flux/moss on it. However making them not last indefinite is pretty terrible imo, since then it turns into "get more stuff(quarry) to create new tools so you can get more stuff to create the tools again".
Regarding Part replacement: It has an experience cost.
Regarding balance: It's your modpack, all up to you.
Regarding good tools being hard to get and not lasting forever: TiCon tools actually cost more to repair over time, the only offenders are moss and the flux modifier. The material balance simply never makes you notice it because good stuff usually also has high durability and then you put flux/moss on it. However making them not last indefinite is pretty terrible imo, since then it turns into "get more stuff(quarry) to create new tools so you can get more stuff to create the tools again".
Regarding Part replacement: It has an experience cost.
Ya, I was thinking mostly just in terms of TiCon and Iguana Tweaks for your weigh in, not whatever tweaks I make. Because that seams to be more what Anon has concerns about.
Its nice to know that the diminishing returns is a thing. I agree, tool impermanence seam like a bad cycle, but it would be cool to be able to tweak some of the costs, not just max durability. (Not feature request, just passing thought)
PS: I admit it, I messaged him. Slightly surprised he responded.
Regarding balance: It's your modpack, all up to you.
Regarding good tools being hard to get and not lasting forever: TiCon tools actually cost more to repair over time, the only offenders are moss and the flux modifier. The material balance simply never makes you notice it because good stuff usually also has high durability and then you put flux/moss on it. However making them not last indefinite is pretty terrible imo, since then it turns into "get more stuff(quarry) to create new tools so you can get more stuff to create the tools again".
Regarding Part replacement: It has an experience cost.
I was really not aware of any XP cost to part replacement. That is interesting to note. I would love to know if tying modifiers to enchanted books and their strength is possible, though. It need not be a hard limit, though that is one of three ways I could see it done; Either with the book needed to unlock the ability and then using materials to strengthen it, as an alternative material, or needing to be combined with a material and limiting how much can be added at once.
Ya, I was thinking mostly just in terms of TiCon and Iguana Tweaks for your weigh in, not whatever tweaks I make. Because that seams to be more what Anon has concerns about.
Its nice to know that the diminishing returns is a thing. I agree, tool impermanence seam like a bad cycle, but it would be cool to be able to tweak some of the costs, not just max durability. (Not feature request, just passing thought)
PS: I admit it, I messaged him. Slightly surprised he responded.
As I said, balance is completely up to you. Go make wood the strongest material or something.
The defaults are just there because it's impossible to not have defaults, but they should be reasonable.
I was really not aware of any XP cost to part replacement. That is interesting to note. I would love to know if tying modifiers to enchanted books and their strength is possible, though. It need not be a hard limit, though that is one of three ways I could see it done; Either with the book needed to unlock the ability and then using materials to strengthen it, as an alternative material, or needing to be combined with a material and limiting how much can be added at once.
Probably because nearly everybody has it turned off, since it's %based. If you set the bonus-mining-level stuff to 100% you'll have to level it up every time after replacing the head for example. For the other levels it depends on your current % and you can also increase the xp needed in the configs.
Lastly, it is mostly balanced around a reasonable amount of levels/modifiers given out, so I wouldn't take ME^4 or similar as reference.
-Slime islands will no longer fall from the sky.
-GeoStrata stone now falls as cobble under EviroMine physics, just like vanilla stone.
-Added recipes to craft GeoStrata stairs and slabs back into their blocks. There has to be a better way then what I did... 3 lists of 272 blocks each *shivers* and that is not even factoring MineTweekers 260 item per list/loop limit...
-Added preliminary EviroMine mod armor support.
-Added recipes for Highlands Stairs back to blocks, opps.
-Removed gold and iron horse armor exploit.
-Redused the number of ingots per ore in the smeltery to one, doubling is not needed at the very start of the progression.
-Updated Reika's mods and EnviroMine.
-Gravestone graves, EnderIO conduits/facades, and ChromatiCraft Pylons are no longer affected by EviroMine physics, it caused data loss.
-Made EviroMine elevator MUCH more expensive.
My highest priority at the moment is to try and find a way to make the very start of the game easier. As it stands right now you have to know exactly what to do when you spawn in or you are very likely to die the first night. This is a fake difficulty that I wish to avoid, players should not be immediately punished for not knowing something.
One suggestion I have had is to include the Hard Core Questing mod, this might work but it is designed for much more liner game-play then I want in this pack. So it would probably not go very far in the progression. Is it worth it to put in a mod that would have so little scope?
If anyone has any other suggestions I would love to hear them.
I'm personally not a fan of the HQM bandwagon trend, as I think that many people throw it in when it isn't needed just to be part of the popular group. However many people do enjoy it. So, in the interest of fairness, I'll point out that there are many ways to use it. For instance, you can throw in repeatable quests, with or without a forced delay on how often they can be turned in. You can have quests with no prerequisites. You can have hidden quests that only reveal themselves when the player has already met the requirements to turn them in. Balancing can be tricky, but there are many ways to use the Quest Book. Some mods use it as a shopping catalogue, with quests that require a currency item of some kind be consumed. Some use it more or less just as a tutorial. Or you could use it as a "bounty board" of sorts, rewarding players for successful hunts. Or have it track important milestones. Or combine any of those, and/or anything else you can come up with.
Or, go with your instinct. If you think it's an awkward fit, it might not be best to include. There are probably other ways to help players along. Maybe a combination of the mod that lets you customize loot and a required/recommended bonus chest? Or, if you have/know anyone with the skills, maybe make/get a custom mod for your pack that can disable certain things until a condition has been met, time or progression, to let players get set up. Or do something completely different. Ultimately, it is your modpack.
Edit: As a side note, after having played Regrowth on the FTB launcher for a bit, I have a word of warning about Ender Zoo. It might just be that Regrowth messes with the spawn rates, but I found it to be one of the most annoying mods to play with. Not in terms of difficulty, but due to two things in particular. Firstly, that the little miniature endermen were attacking creepers constantly, and invariably just causing them to blow up. Even with mob griefing turned off, it's meant having random explosions going off all the time. The second problem is dire wolves. This one was certainly exacerbated by tweaks to spawning, but besides being an almost excessively tough mob (at least in that pack), they're also just plain loud. They howl a lot, and the howl sound effect is at a boosted volume that, even with the game sound turned way down, and my speaker turned down, scared my flatmate in the other room...with their T.V. on.
Player Input is always welcome, I am always willing to discuses anything about this pack.
Notice
This pack contains Fastcraft, by Player. Enabled by default. Fastcraft enhances Minecraft with increased performance. Bug reports being made directly to Mod Authors should state that Fastcraft is enabled.
Mods Currently in the Pack:
-Bspkrs Core, ArmorStatusHUD, and StatusEffectHUD by Bspkrs
-CodeChickenLib, ChickenChunks, CodeChickenCore, NotEnoughItems, and Forge Multipart by chicken_bones
-AppleCore, The Spice of Life, TiC Tooltips, and Waila Harvestability by squeek502
-Hunger Overhaul by squeek502, progwml6, and Parker8283
-BiblioCraft by Nuchaz
-Big Reactors by E. Beef
-DragonAPI, ChromatiCraft, GeoStrata, LegacyCraft, and VoidMonster by Reika
-CoFHCore and MineFactoryReloaded by Team CoFH
-cookiecore and Tinkers' Steelworks by EphysPotato
-CoroUtil and Zombie Awareness by Corosus
-Custom Ore Generation by noogenesis
-Death Counter by iChun
-EiraIRC by Blay09
-EnderIO and EnderZoo by CrazyPants and tterrag1098
-EnhancedPortals 3 by Alz454
-EnviroMine by TimbuckTato
-Simply Jetpacks, NEI Integration, and Fancy Grass by tonius11
-FastLeafDecay by Olafski
-Funky Locomotion by RWTema
-GraveStone by NightKosh
-Highlands by fabricator77
-Mantle, Tinker's Construct, and Iguana's Tinker Tweaks by boni
-Improving Minecraft by pifou92000
-JABBA and WAILA by ProfMobius
-MineTweaker 3 by StanH
-ModTweaker2 by jaredlll08
-Morpheus by quetzi
-Natura by progwml6
-NEI Addons by bdew
-NotEnoughKeys by dmodoomsirius
-Pam's HarvestCraft by MatrexsVigil (AKA Pam)
-Perfect Spawn by lumien
-Quadrum by dmillerw
-Tinkers' Mechworks by Glassmaker
-Torch Levers by HitchH1k3r
-ttCore by tterrag1098
-Fastcraft by Player
-Storage Drawers by jaquadro
Also contains the Element Animation's villager voices from their resource pack as its own small resource pack, much better then Minecraft's default villager sounds. This will be removed if Element Animation asks me to, I could not find any way to ask for permission but I also did not see anything forbidding it.
Mod being considered for the pack (Indents are reasons for inclusion and prerequisites, feel free to discuss):
-AgriCraft by InfinityRaider
----Adds more to do and another way to get crops.
-Forestry by SirSengir
----Adds more to do.
-Adventurer's Amulets by GustoniaEagle
----Adds more rewards to exploration.
----Baubles by Azanor
----Enchiridion 2 by joshiejack
-Realistic World Gen by ted80 (once it is more developed)
----Adds better world gen.
-Fluxed Crystals by jaredlll08 and DarkByte (once it is more developed)
----Adds a way to renew resources. Would be made vary late game.
-Railcraft by CovertJaguar
----Adds a good system for various methods of transport.
----Could be set as a step before teleportation tech, or as an alternative.
-Dynamic Sword Skills by coolAilas
----Adds more skill to combat.
-Sound Filters by Tmtravlr
----Adds flavor.
-Loot++ by Tmtravlr
----Adds more customization, from chest loot to mob/block drops.
-Applied Energistics 2 by AlgorithmX2
----Adds better logistics and denser storage at the cost of power.
-Modular Force Field System by Calclavia
Rules:
-All rules in the MC terms of use.
-Re-uploading and redistributing this pack is forbidden.
-Extracting and re-hosting the mods in this pack is forbidden.
Download:
Version 0.3
If shortened link is refusing to work here is the full URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qk2hup5y633eox2/Arc'E'Tech-1.7.10-0.3.zip?dl=0
Vanilla Launcher Installation:
1. Run the Forge installer for Forge 10.13.3.1428.
2. Open the Launcher and click on “New Profile” in the bottom left, put a name for the profile in the top text box, and set the "Use version" to the version of forge you installed.
----Recommended: Check the “Game Directory” option directly under the name field and add the profiles name to the ----file path, do not forget the “\” before it. This makes it work like multiMC.
3. Click on “Save Profile” in the bottom right.
4. Launch then close Minecraft to create the file directory.
5. Click on the “Edit Profile” in the bottom left and then click the “Open Game Dir” button in the bottom right.
6. Drag everything from within the pack zip into the file window that was just opened.
7. Enjoy Arc'E'Tech.
AT Launcher Installation:
Not yet Implemented, lots of hoops to jump through to get this done.
FTB Launcher Installation:
Not yet Implemented, lots of hoops to jump through to get this done and I would not have direct update control by the looks of it.
Technic Launcher Installation:
Not yet Implemented, lots of hoops to jump through to get this done but not as much as the others it seams.
Help & Information:
If you encounter a crash with the pack please let me know. I will handle tracking down and fixing problems so that mod creators do not get swamped with reports.
Beginnings of a Material Consistency Guideline for that I will use for recipe editing, Feel free to discuss.
Iron - Low grade structural component
Steel - Normal grade structural component
Dark Steel - Advanced grade structural component
Electrical Steel - Electrical grade structural component
Conductive Iron - Weak power conduction
Pulsing Iron - Conduit for transpatial (Ender) energies
Pulsing Crystal - Focus for weak transpatial (Ender) energies
Energetic Alloy - Power storage and universal conduction
Vibrant Alloy - Hyper power storage and conduction
Vibrant Crystal - Power storage and focusing
Soularium - Soul energy (exp) storage and channeling
Ender Crystal - Focus for strong transpatial (Ender) energies
To do list (not in order):
-Find some way to make the first day easier, at this point if you do not know exactly what to do it is very difficult to not die the first night. High Priority.
-Finish balancing Power IO.
-Determine a good Mob essence to Liquid XP ratio.
-Reevaluate recipes, especially high end tech ones.
-Add pack to FTB, AT, and Technic Launchers.
-Add more EnviroMine support.
-Look into vain generation for the EnviroMine cave dimension.
Known Issues:
-Blood for the Blood God exploit: Not much that can be done about this, not saying what it is but if you find it you will know.
-Some times commands do not work when they should, seams to be inherent to Minecraft/Forge.
-Seems that some mods info for the "/help" command ("/help 4" being the lowest I have seen) causes a NullPointerException crash, not sure which mod is causing it as the crash log is not being very helpful. So for now be careful.
-Something is making Tinker' Construct tools enchantable in an anvil, the only up side is being able to apply soulbound, the rest of it is just... unbalanced.
-Some blocks loose data when they fall with EnviroMine physics, let me know if something does so I can let the modders know and make it immune to physics until that is fixed.
Obtained Permissions:
Change log:
0.3
-Fixed MFR Chunk Loader recipe.
-Added crafting the Davy Lamp out of Aluminum Brass.
-Made some Enhanced Portals recipes harder, and more consistent with the rest of the pack.
-Added crafting recipes for Bibliocraft to use Aluminum Brass instead of gold.
-Added enviromine stats to more foods.
-Added Storage Drawers by jaquadro.
-Updated Forge to 10.13.3.1428
-Updated mods.
0.2
-Decreased the dye drop rate for ChromatiCraft trees from 100% to 20% in its configs, because that was too much. *coughrainbowtreescough* Not sure if it worked...
-Disabled EviroMine Village Mineshafts, they like to clip other buildings and make it to easy to get to low Y levels.
-Updated mods.
-Toned down ambient torch temperature, getting heatstroke from your main light source as fast as you do is a bit much.
-Added crafting Fresh Water from Water Clay Bucket.
-Made Lava Clay Bucket affect the player like a normal Lava Bucket.
-Moved the Status Effect to the left side so as to not conflict with ChromatiCraft information.
-Made most Big Reactor parts immune to EviroMine Physics, it made building them more challenging then is necessary.
-Removed the custom Capacitor upgrade recipes. Ender IO now has its own, more expensive versions.
-Fixed the accidental removal of the silent Dark Pressure Plate recipe.
-Added preliminary Mob Essence to Liquid XP Vat recipe. 1-to-1 experience value ratio at the moment. 1000mb Mob Essence = 300mb Liquid XP.
-Made GeoStrata cobbles grind-able in the SAG Mill just like vanilla cobble.
0.1
-Slime islands will no longer fall from the sky.
-GeoStrata stone now falls as cobble under EviroMine physics, just like vanilla stone.
-Added recipes to craft GeoStrata stairs and slabs back into their blocks. There has to be a better way then what I did... 3 lists of 272 blocks each *shivers* and that is not even factoring MineTweekers 260 item per list/loop limit...
-Added preliminary EviroMine mod armor support.
-Added recipes for Highlands Stairs back to blocks, opps.
-Removed gold and iron horse armor exploit.
-Redused the number of ingots per ore in the smeltery to one, doubling is not needed at the very start of the progression.
-Updated Reika's mods and EnviroMine.
-Gravestone graves, EnderIO conduits/facades, and ChromatiCraft Pylons are no longer affected by EviroMine physics, it caused data loss.
-Made EviroMine elevator MUCH more expensive.
0.0
-Initial release.
-Nerfed Blood for the Blood God exploit.
-Made Ender IO Conduit tiers follow an upgrade path.
-Made Ender IO Capacitor Bank tiers follow an upgrade path.
-Made Advanced Photovoltaic Cell require the normal Photovoltaic Cell in its crafting.
-Made redstone devices require redstone in their crafting.
-Made Spice of Life's Lunch Box easier to craft then my redstone device tweak would have it.
-Made SAG Mill recipe harder.
-Made Conduit Binder require Binder Composite and 3 Plastic in the Alloy Furnace.
-Added crafting recipes to turn various stairs back into their source blocks.
-Made Multipart saws craft like the ones added by Iguana's Tinker Tweaks.
-Removed Stone Torch, Slab Furnace, and Slab Pattern Chest... just no.
Thank Yous and Contributions:
-The modders for their wonderful mods.
-Those of you that decide to give Arc'E'Tech a try.
-Mouse1230 for the name Arc'E'Tech.
-Creepercakes61 for the banner
Banner Code:
I plan to add support for all the launchers, I just have to get around to it. I do not use them much myself, might be a good idea to put that higher on the priority list though.
Lots of hoops to jump through for using the launchers, looks like Technic will be the easiest to get onto and FTB will be the hardest. Also I do not think that I will be able to distribute the Element Animation's villager voices via these methods, so some flavor will be lost.
Probably wouldn't use this. I'm not much a fan of Cheaty Locomotion for the way it makes frame machines way too easy (among other things), but I thought I'd mention that you are allowed to include Fastcraft. You just have to have a free modpack, include an up-to-date version of it, and provide attribution...and stroke their ego a little by giving more information on the mod than just putting it on the mod list, because apparently the author is a special snowflake like that.
Balance is important to me, if you have an objection to a mod I want to hear it. I have Minetweaker and Quadrum in for a reason and I am not afraid of configs. As a last resort I can always remove it, it is honestly a bit of a novelty in this pack.
On the note of Fastcraft's requirements, now that I know about them and have read them, they are not outrageous. It is not so much about Player being "a special snowflake" as you put it, it has more to do with what Fastcraft attempts to do. I have looked at loading logs and Fastcraft seems to do very specific tweaks based on what is installed, including make some changes to other mods it seams. So ensuring that users inform modders that Fastcraft is present and, therefor changes to how things work that they were not expecting, is not unreasonable.
Via experimentation and looking at MFR and EnderIO's code I have found that Mob Essence is about 200/3 (slightly less) mb per experiance point and XP Juice is 20 mb per experience point. XP Juice is what Ender IO is scaled to but Mob Essence can be made using MFR, plus Tinkers' has Essence Berries. So I am thinking I will add a Vat recipe to turn Mob Essence into XP Juice using Essence Berries.
So The questions are:
Should we be able to turn Mob Essence and Essence Berries into XP Juice at the ratio of Mob Essence to XP Juice or should there be a slight boost (I am leaning towards the latter)?
What should the other ingredient(s) be along side the Essence Berries?
I was really just being my usual snarky self with the "special snowflake" remark. I don't find their requirements unreasonable either.
As far as the balance, I'm not sure how useful my input would be, since I generally like things a little harder than most people seem to, but I can explain my complaints with Funky Locomotion at least in part. It's basically a re-creation of RedPower frames, which I actually found reasonably costed and limited in use back in the day, but those with more technical aptitude generally considered to be in the "uber tier" of machines. When I first looked at Funky Locomotion, it struck me as a less expensive and more powerful version...albeit not as utterly broken as, say, RiM/ReiM. Going back and looking at it in more detail, though, I've found that they actually have gone and increased the cost of most things, and that the power consumption requirement (which wasn't listed in any documentation I saw previously) actually is there. So, I would actually withdraw my complaints there.
Now, I could go off on a tangent about how TiC adds ore doubling, while also vastly reducing tool costs, obsoleting enchanting, and vastly skewing the risk/reward value of most actions in game to favour the player, and how Iguana Tweaks only compounds the issue by further removing player skill as a factor, making things arbitrarily grindy and luck-based, and on the whole further reducing the cost to get good tools in many cases...but that's a whole separate rant, and the inclusion of said mods in almost every pack in existence strongly suggests that, overall, the rest of the playerbase disagrees with me.
I have played Better Than Wolves and Reika's mods. (Okay, I never got far enough to try ElectriCraft or ReactorCraft but I want to at some point if for nothing else then to say I have.) So I have no aversion to challenge, give all the input you want.
I could make FL even harder, by ether increasing the power cost or making it need more expensive materials. (Dark Steal for the frames anyone?) But only if I feel it is necessary.
Please, tangent away. That's the beauty of this, and one of the reasons I released so early in development. I want input, and I am not afraid to change or customize things, In fact I already have quite a bit. With configs I can change a majority of things, and I also have Minetweaker and Quadrum. Game design is something that I am very interested in (I liked the link in your sig), I may be a computer science major but game design is my end goal, and this is a good chance to flex that mussel. So let me go over what you mentioned:
Ore doubling itself is not a bad thing, there are more things that call for the resource so a way is provided to get more. But with how early the smeltery is in my packs progression your comment has me thinking I might set it to 1.
On the note of tool cheapness... Ya, I wish I could make different parts have different ratios (like make heads cost more, like 2 for an axe head and 3 for a pickhead) even among the different materials (1 flint for a pickhead or 3 iron). That is not an option (one of the few things I can't change) so the best I can do is design around it, I can always increase the repair cost.
For enchanting, honestly. Never liked it, to much RNG. 30 levels for a Punch I bow? No thanks. Tinkers modifier system gave more uses to resources that were already in the game and does so in a quite balanced way with vanilla in mind. As for mods breaking that balance, that's what configs and tweak mods are for.
As for skewing risk/reward towards the player is there something else besides what you mentioned above? From what I see Tinkers' was balanced mostly around vanilla and does a fairly good job. Putting mods together often causes exploits and overpowered interactions do to different balance points. This is something that I am explicitly trying to avoid with Arc'E'Tech unlike a lot of other packs that just through things together.
When it comes to "further removing player skill as a factor, making things arbitrarily grindy and luck-based, and on the whole further reducing the cost to get good tools in many cases", I can only assume that you are talking about the leveling mechanic. Because everything else from the modified mining levels to the tool part restrictions, heck even the part of the leveling mechanic where you do not get all of your modifier slots right off the bat make the game quite a bit more challenging and are a core part of what allows me to increase the playtime of this pack.
To go into more detail on the leveling mechanic, I do not care much for the random modifier at level up even if it is weighted and constrained, it is still to random but I do not want to discard it offhand, I want to see what I can do with it first. I do, on the other hand, like that I can hide the modifier slots behind the levels. This causes you to have to put work into getting something good, but is not to punishing due to the fact that you can upgrade your first tool thanks to part replacement, and if it is not punishing enough I can change the numbers.
In fact those things that I just mentioned increases the cost of tools in my opinion.
One of my biggest grievances has been that, leaving off RNG for the moment, Mojang has made it pretty clear at this point that getting an ideal tool is meant to be a costly process, and keeping it indefinitely next to impossible. I find that Tinker's Construct largely negates the first, as many favourable effects become possible to obtain much earlier on. In particular, the quartz for sharpness is fairly easy to obtain for any experienced player (as many people forget that it is entirely possible to skip diamonds altogether and jump straight to the Nether through clever use of buckets) and lapis for Fortune is practically a give-away, given its low demand for other uses, and relatively accessible placements. I would love to see enchanted books added to the cost to enhance, much like they are used to make magic wood in...I think it's Extra Utilities?...to add a limiting factor there. Unfortunately doing it well (where enchantment strength mattered) would probably take special coding that no existing mod has.
With the levelling mechanic, that is part of what I meant. From the sound of it, you're already doing what I would about that, though. The other thing, however, is the part replacement mechanic. Making tools in TiC is already cheap. Repairing them is cheap. Then in Iguana Tweaks they added part replacements. So you get all the benefits of upgrading to a new tool, but keep the enhancements you already got on the old one, without paying. So that makes the cost-reduced system even cheaper. The standard levelling system will actually limit that, to an extent, since you can get stuck with a sub-optimal modifier, and have to start over on a new tool...but if you get lucky, you're getting a tool you will never need to replace, for free. Taking out the randoms forces the player to spend resources, but it also means that they will get a tool they don't ever need to replace 100% of the time, vs. having to buy all their upgrades again every tier with just TiC.
What your saying seems to break into basically two things: good tools should be hard to obtain, and good tools should imposable to keep. So I will address them in that order.
Good tools should be hard to obtain:
This is the easier one, I do not think there is anyone with good design sense that disagrees with this, though there might be disagreements about how hard or even what kind of difficulty.
I agree that quartz is probably to easy to obtain in in vanilla TiC (although one could argue that the player should be reward for being clever enough to use buckets in that manner) though it does still take 72 pieces of quarts for only an extra 2 hearts of damage. Arc'E'Tech makes it quite harder to get quartz. Not only does Iguana Tweaks make you need to be able to mine obsidian before you can mine quartz (make the bucket trick pointless), but EnviroMine make the nether quite dangerous with the need to balance the four stats of hydration, heat, sanity, and air quality, all of which are effected in the Nether without even factoring mobs, of which there are new ones thanks to Natrua.
When it comes to lapis I lament its lack of utility and may try to give it more uses in my pack in the future, but I am not sure I completely agree with you. I grant that anything balanced around vanilla can be a bit easy if they don't throw in a lot of new stuff. But even with lapis having little (no) use in vanilla it still takes 100 lapis to get the first level, that is about 17 ore on average, and you need 200 more to get the next level which is about 25 more ore if you use the upgraded pick. You got me on the last one though... 150 more for level 3, about 14 more ore... I don't get it, why less? It should be more. Any way, in Arc'E'Tech ore spawns in rarer, larger veins making them harder to find on top of needing iron first (which I could make harder), and like I said I will probably look into trying to give it more uses.
The idea of using enchantment books as a limiter is an interesting one, maybe you would use the book to add the modifier at 0 out of the amount required to get to that level of the enchantment. Like use a Fortune I book on a pick and get Luck 0/100, add another Fortune I to get Luck 0/300 or start with a Fortune II book for Luck 0/300. Of coarse adding levels to it would require a book equal to its currant level to stay consistent with anvil mechanics, therefor to get to level three from 2 would require another Fortune II book.
Good tools should be imposable to keep:
While Mojang/Vanila may say this (not convinced it actually does, would take more time then I am willing to give atm to test), almost every mod out there disagrees. From electric tools, to repair enchantments, to blocks that restore damage, to even just changing the repair cost in the anvil everyone seems to agree that if you put in the effort to get something good you should be able to hold on to it. And while I see that this could very well be an bandwagon argument, I agree with it. Yes, I agree that TiC makes it too easy to keep your tools, I wish I could could lower the restore value on repairing or use the diminishing returns on repairing that an older version of Iguana Tweaks had, but I can not.The best that I can do is place a limit on the number of times a tool can be repaired and force people to spend 2 slots on a flux modifier (or wait long intervals waiting for moss to work) to keep their tools, which I am mostly okay with that other then fact that there is no in-game indication of this repair limit, and what is to follow.
Part Replacement making it cheaper:
While I see what you are saying, I have to disagree. I see part replacement as costly (with respect to TiC's costs) convenience. Any player with enough foresight will wait until they have made their best tool before adding modifiers, you can see this often in vanilla, players will wait until they have diamond gear before enchanting. Part replacement makes it so that you do not have to wait that long and that most of the tool experience you have gained so far is not wasted (also saving on the tedium of leveling a new tool), at the cost of having to have a fully repaired tool and probably loosing some tool experience. Again, I would probably make things costlier if I could, if through no other means then costlier parts and repairs.
PS: Maybe someone should point Boni towards this conversation, there are some good points and ideas here. Plus it would be interesting to get the dev's prospective on all of this.
Well, guess i'll say something then
Regarding balance: It's your modpack, all up to you.
Regarding good tools being hard to get and not lasting forever: TiCon tools actually cost more to repair over time, the only offenders are moss and the flux modifier. The material balance simply never makes you notice it because good stuff usually also has high durability and then you put flux/moss on it. However making them not last indefinite is pretty terrible imo, since then it turns into "get more stuff(quarry) to create new tools so you can get more stuff to create the tools again".
Regarding Part replacement: It has an experience cost.
Ya, I was thinking mostly just in terms of TiCon and Iguana Tweaks for your weigh in, not whatever tweaks I make. Because that seams to be more what Anon has concerns about.
Its nice to know that the diminishing returns is a thing. I agree, tool impermanence seam like a bad cycle, but it would be cool to be able to tweak some of the costs, not just max durability. (Not feature request, just passing thought)
PS: I admit it, I messaged him. Slightly surprised he responded.
I was really not aware of any XP cost to part replacement. That is interesting to note. I would love to know if tying modifiers to enchanted books and their strength is possible, though. It need not be a hard limit, though that is one of three ways I could see it done; Either with the book needed to unlock the ability and then using materials to strengthen it, as an alternative material, or needing to be combined with a material and limiting how much can be added at once.
As I said, balance is completely up to you. Go make wood the strongest material or something.
The defaults are just there because it's impossible to not have defaults, but they should be reasonable.
Probably because nearly everybody has it turned off, since it's %based. If you set the bonus-mining-level stuff to 100% you'll have to level it up every time after replacing the head for example. For the other levels it depends on your current % and you can also increase the xp needed in the configs.
Lastly, it is mostly balanced around a reasonable amount of levels/modifiers given out, so I wouldn't take ME^4 or similar as reference.
HI people its me Demi aka Shadowlink666 as for my in put this pack is for pro's ONLY
that aside if u ask me what the blood for the blood god exploit is I MIGHT tell you"probably not"
cuz I'm the one who found it and if I'm playing while arc is streaming
you will probably see me setting it up but like "Arc" said in the KNOWN ISSUES tab
" -Blood for the Blood God exploit: Not much that can be done about this, not saying what it is but if you find it you will know."
New version of Arc'E'Tech:
0.1
-Slime islands will no longer fall from the sky.
-GeoStrata stone now falls as cobble under EviroMine physics, just like vanilla stone.
-Added recipes to craft GeoStrata stairs and slabs back into their blocks. There has to be a better way then what I did... 3 lists of 272 blocks each *shivers* and that is not even factoring MineTweekers 260 item per list/loop limit...
-Added preliminary EviroMine mod armor support.
-Added recipes for Highlands Stairs back to blocks, opps.
-Removed gold and iron horse armor exploit.
-Redused the number of ingots per ore in the smeltery to one, doubling is not needed at the very start of the progression.
-Updated Reika's mods and EnviroMine.
-Gravestone graves, EnderIO conduits/facades, and ChromatiCraft Pylons are no longer affected by EviroMine physics, it caused data loss.
-Made EviroMine elevator MUCH more expensive.
Download in OP.
My highest priority at the moment is to try and find a way to make the very start of the game easier. As it stands right now you have to know exactly what to do when you spawn in or you are very likely to die the first night. This is a fake difficulty that I wish to avoid, players should not be immediately punished for not knowing something.
One suggestion I have had is to include the Hard Core Questing mod, this might work but it is designed for much more liner game-play then I want in this pack. So it would probably not go very far in the progression. Is it worth it to put in a mod that would have so little scope?
If anyone has any other suggestions I would love to hear them.
I'm personally not a fan of the HQM bandwagon trend, as I think that many people throw it in when it isn't needed just to be part of the popular group. However many people do enjoy it. So, in the interest of fairness, I'll point out that there are many ways to use it. For instance, you can throw in repeatable quests, with or without a forced delay on how often they can be turned in. You can have quests with no prerequisites. You can have hidden quests that only reveal themselves when the player has already met the requirements to turn them in. Balancing can be tricky, but there are many ways to use the Quest Book. Some mods use it as a shopping catalogue, with quests that require a currency item of some kind be consumed. Some use it more or less just as a tutorial. Or you could use it as a "bounty board" of sorts, rewarding players for successful hunts. Or have it track important milestones. Or combine any of those, and/or anything else you can come up with.
Or, go with your instinct. If you think it's an awkward fit, it might not be best to include. There are probably other ways to help players along. Maybe a combination of the mod that lets you customize loot and a required/recommended bonus chest? Or, if you have/know anyone with the skills, maybe make/get a custom mod for your pack that can disable certain things until a condition has been met, time or progression, to let players get set up. Or do something completely different. Ultimately, it is your modpack.
Edit: As a side note, after having played Regrowth on the FTB launcher for a bit, I have a word of warning about Ender Zoo. It might just be that Regrowth messes with the spawn rates, but I found it to be one of the most annoying mods to play with. Not in terms of difficulty, but due to two things in particular. Firstly, that the little miniature endermen were attacking creepers constantly, and invariably just causing them to blow up. Even with mob griefing turned off, it's meant having random explosions going off all the time. The second problem is dire wolves. This one was certainly exacerbated by tweaks to spawning, but besides being an almost excessively tough mob (at least in that pack), they're also just plain loud. They howl a lot, and the howl sound effect is at a boosted volume that, even with the game sound turned way down, and my speaker turned down, scared my flatmate in the other room...with their T.V. on.