Edit: So this is important, a lot of economy servers price gold a lot higher than iron, so if you use mine carts on an economy server, this would be much cheaper
The title tells it all. I found a way to bring the old mine cart boosters from Minecraft Beta 1.4 and lower back to the current day Minecraft.
The basic concept is that we can use the same old boosters but instead of 2 mine carts we use 4. Here's a picture:
You may ask, "So what do I care?? Mine cart booster tracks are easier to setup and use."
And I'll respond, "Would you like to spend 20 gold for the power of 20 iron? Because I don't want to waste my gold on useless powered rails!"
Here's a map that puts a simple mine cart booster against 20 powered rails: Download
I don't demonstrate how to use boosters in the middle of a track instead of the beginning but I can assure you that its possible, here's a picture of one that I built:
This picture is pretty straight forward except that you cant see that there are 4 mine carts, not one. And that the mine carts are on a turned on powered rail.
Video:
Feel free to complete the poll and tell me what you think in the comments. If you like the idea, make sure you share it with other people!
What else is there to spend gold on? It's either craft a billion powered rails and build an epic rail system, or let the gold sit in your storage room gathering dust.
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me, and when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
You can make golden apples and god apples which are SUPER useful when doing PVP, Fighting the ender dragon or fighting the wither!
Oh, golden apples, for breeding horses. I have enough horses, and apples don't appear very often
I play single player, and haven't felt the need for the extra healthiness of a golden apple over a nice juicy steak, which my auto cow-farm produces in far greater quantities than I need. I never run out of steak.
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me, and when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
What else is there to spend gold on? It's either craft a billion powered rails and build an epic rail system, or let the gold sit in your storage room gathering dust.
Gold has a lot of other uses in the game, potion brewing, blocks for beacons, golden apples as said, and clocks (Clocks are so olden tech, no one makes them anymore xD) imho a 1 gold to 1 rail ratio isn't worth it when I could be using iron instead.
Powered rails are EXTREMELY cheap; it seems like everybody thinks you need nothing but powered rails to make a good rail system; not so at all - you can use as little as one powered rail every 38 blocks and maintain top speed (for a player in a minecart).
Similarly, I lay down 32 regular rails, then one powered rail when laying tracks, except at corners and inclines, mainly because I can just take a stack of rails and split in in half, then lay the tracks without really counting; this means that a stack of gold (powered rails) can make a bit over 2 km of track. Meanwhile, I have nearly a double chest of gold blocks in one of my worlds, and easily find a stack of gold in a one day caving session; indeed, I find more gold relative to the iron required, as that 2+ km of track would require 768 iron/12 stacks (which is still cheap, I've mined over 1,100 iron before in one day).
Imagine how much track I could lay with this - hundreds of kilometers:
And no, you do not need to mine that much or do nothing but mine all the time - as mentioned above, a stack of gold and 12 stacks of iron makes 2 km of track and I can easily mine that much in a few hours, and how many people need to make hundreds of times that? You can also farm gold, giving you unlimited amounts, same for iron, so overall rails are hardly expensive or nonrenewable; now if they required diamond...
Also, you might note that I never made any regular rails - I just took them from mineshafts, getting plenty by the time I made my first railway. I even get more than enough gold from them as well, making mining it redundant (the total number of gold blocks I've made slightly exceeds the amount of gold ore I've mined divided by 9 because of this) - and what other use do I have for it? A couple golden apples to cure zombie villagers? That's it; what use are golden apples when I can basically get the same effects from armor and enchantments (i.e. blocking more damage means you effectively have more health and natural regeneration becomes more effective; for the same reason I never use potions aside from a couple splash potions of Weakness for curing zombie villagers and Fire Resistance in the Nether, only because you can't use water buckets, or potions dropped by witches and even then I usually keep them as a sort of trophy). Beacons can use the much more common iron and don't care what you use (using gold/diamond/emerald does not give you special powers), golden carrots work just as well when breeding horses and use 1/9 the gold, and so on.
Also, nothing can beat a redstone block with a powered rail on top for space and simplicity; my rail lines are mostly just 1x2 tunnels:
I seem to remember reading a couple of months ago that the mechanics had changed and that the most effective spacing is now one powered rail every 15 standard rails. Not that it makes much difference. Like you, I have so much gold and iron (although mine is farmed rather than mined) that I could use all powered rails except for bends without any material impact on my stockpiles of metal.
You might be thinking of storage minecarts, which do need more rails, up to one every 16 blocks, though I imagine that chunk loading is a bigger limitation (minecarts only work in loaded chunks), or perhaps the changes they made to minecarts (much faster) in early 1.8 snapshots (since reverted).
Powered rails are EXTREMELY cheap; it seems like everybody thinks you need nothing but powered rails to make a good rail system; not so at all - you can use as little as one powered rail every 38 blocks and maintain top speed (for a player in a minecart).
Similarly, I lay down 32 regular rails, then one powered rail when laying tracks, except at corners and inclines, mainly because I can just take a stack of rails and split in in half, then lay the tracks without really counting; this means that a stack of gold (powered rails) can make a bit over 2 km of track. Meanwhile, I have nearly a double chest of gold blocks in one of my worlds, and easily find a stack of gold in a one day caving session; indeed, I find more gold relative to the iron required, as that 2+ km of track would require 768 iron/12 stacks (which is still cheap, I've mined over 1,100 iron before in one day).
Imagine how much track I could lay with this - hundreds of kilometers:
And no, you do not need to mine that much or do nothing but mine all the time - as mentioned above, a stack of gold and 12 stacks of iron makes 2 km of track and I can easily mine that much in a few hours, and how many people need to make hundreds of times that? You can also farm gold, giving you unlimited amounts, same for iron, so overall rails are hardly expensive or nonrenewable; now if they required diamond...
Also, you might note that I never made any regular rails - I just took them from mineshafts, getting plenty by the time I made my first railway. I even get more than enough gold from them as well, making mining it redundant (the total number of gold blocks I've made slightly exceeds the amount of gold ore I've mined divided by 9 because of this) - and what other use do I have for it? A couple golden apples to cure zombie villagers? That's it; what use are golden apples when I can basically get the same effects from armor and enchantments (i.e. blocking more damage means you effectively have more health and natural regeneration becomes more effective; for the same reason I never use potions aside from a couple splash potions of Weakness for curing zombie villagers and Fire Resistance in the Nether, only because you can't use water buckets, or potions dropped by witches and even then I usually keep them as a sort of trophy). Beacons can use the much more common iron and don't care what you use (using gold/diamond/emerald does not give you special powers), golden carrots work just as well when breeding horses and use 1/9 the gold, and so on.
Also, nothing can beat a redstone block with a powered rail on top for space and simplicity; my rail lines are mostly just 1x2 tunnels:
I like your reply a lot, the goal of this post it to inform users that there's more to just powered rails still. And you have informed us of more information on powered rails. Thanks for your argument it adds a lot to this discussion
As TheMasterCaver said, powered rails are cheaper. In the tests powered rails were used in the most inefficient way possible.
But nice find nonetheless.
Yeah I thought it was pretty cool to still see boosters. Even if I looked through everyone else's eyes and said that using the booster would be more expensive than the gold, I'd still use the booster because its more fun and different (imo).
I hardly think that anyone is being bullied or belittled. Apart from anything, you are under no compulsion to vote at all. It was supposed to be funny - it's not a general election.
The OP's attempt at humor was not lost on me, and my reply was meant to be a little more lighthearted than that. I'm sorry I offended you.
Mine cart boosters had their uses back in the day versus the alternative which was to use the powered mine cart. Now though my sense of nostalgia is tempered by my knowledge that powered rails are much easier to use than boosters ever were. Not as interesting though.
Edit: So this is important, a lot of economy servers price gold a lot higher than iron, so if you use mine carts on an economy server, this would be much cheaper
The title tells it all. I found a way to bring the old mine cart boosters from Minecraft Beta 1.4 and lower back to the current day Minecraft.
The basic concept is that we can use the same old boosters but instead of 2 mine carts we use 4. Here's a picture:
You may ask, "So what do I care?? Mine cart booster tracks are easier to setup and use."
And I'll respond, "Would you like to spend 20 gold for the power of 20 iron? Because I don't want to waste my gold on useless powered rails!"
Here's a map that puts a simple mine cart booster against 20 powered rails: Download
I don't demonstrate how to use boosters in the middle of a track instead of the beginning but I can assure you that its possible, here's a picture of one that I built:
This picture is pretty straight forward except that you cant see that there are 4 mine carts, not one. And that the mine carts are on a turned on powered rail.
Video:
Feel free to complete the poll and tell me what you think in the comments. If you like the idea, make sure you share it with other people!
Your bias is pretty clear from the poll options (emphasis mine):
Trying to belittle and bully poll respondents into choosing the option that you want them to pick sort of defeats the purpose of a poll, no?
What else is there to spend gold on? It's either craft a billion powered rails and build an epic rail system, or let the gold sit in your storage room gathering dust.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me, and when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Oh, golden apples, for breeding horses. I have enough horses, and apples don't appear very often
I play single player, and haven't felt the need for the extra healthiness of a golden apple over a nice juicy steak, which my auto cow-farm produces in far greater quantities than I need. I never run out of steak.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me, and when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
As McModmadness said its just my twisted humor xD If it bothers you that much I can always change it
Gold has a lot of other uses in the game, potion brewing, blocks for beacons, golden apples as said, and clocks (Clocks are so olden tech, no one makes them anymore xD) imho a 1 gold to 1 rail ratio isn't worth it when I could be using iron instead.
Powered rails are EXTREMELY cheap; it seems like everybody thinks you need nothing but powered rails to make a good rail system; not so at all - you can use as little as one powered rail every 38 blocks and maintain top speed (for a player in a minecart).
Similarly, I lay down 32 regular rails, then one powered rail when laying tracks, except at corners and inclines, mainly because I can just take a stack of rails and split in in half, then lay the tracks without really counting; this means that a stack of gold (powered rails) can make a bit over 2 km of track. Meanwhile, I have nearly a double chest of gold blocks in one of my worlds, and easily find a stack of gold in a one day caving session; indeed, I find more gold relative to the iron required, as that 2+ km of track would require 768 iron/12 stacks (which is still cheap, I've mined over 1,100 iron before in one day).
Imagine how much track I could lay with this - hundreds of kilometers:
And no, you do not need to mine that much or do nothing but mine all the time - as mentioned above, a stack of gold and 12 stacks of iron makes 2 km of track and I can easily mine that much in a few hours, and how many people need to make hundreds of times that? You can also farm gold, giving you unlimited amounts, same for iron, so overall rails are hardly expensive or nonrenewable; now if they required diamond...
Also, you might note that I never made any regular rails - I just took them from mineshafts, getting plenty by the time I made my first railway. I even get more than enough gold from them as well, making mining it redundant (the total number of gold blocks I've made slightly exceeds the amount of gold ore I've mined divided by 9 because of this) - and what other use do I have for it? A couple golden apples to cure zombie villagers? That's it; what use are golden apples when I can basically get the same effects from armor and enchantments (i.e. blocking more damage means you effectively have more health and natural regeneration becomes more effective; for the same reason I never use potions aside from a couple splash potions of Weakness for curing zombie villagers and Fire Resistance in the Nether, only because you can't use water buckets, or potions dropped by witches and even then I usually keep them as a sort of trophy). Beacons can use the much more common iron and don't care what you use (using gold/diamond/emerald does not give you special powers), golden carrots work just as well when breeding horses and use 1/9 the gold, and so on.
Also, nothing can beat a redstone block with a powered rail on top for space and simplicity; my rail lines are mostly just 1x2 tunnels:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
You might be thinking of storage minecarts, which do need more rails, up to one every 16 blocks, though I imagine that chunk loading is a bigger limitation (minecarts only work in loaded chunks), or perhaps the changes they made to minecarts (much faster) in early 1.8 snapshots (since reverted).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I like your reply a lot, the goal of this post it to inform users that there's more to just powered rails still. And you have informed us of more information on powered rails. Thanks for your argument it adds a lot to this discussion
Yeah I thought it was pretty cool to still see boosters. Even if I looked through everyone else's eyes and said that using the booster would be more expensive than the gold, I'd still use the booster because its more fun and different (imo).
OMG I love minecart boosters <333
they were awesome, I know powered rails are more awesome but nostalgia has kicked in :3
There we go! Someone like me xD
The OP's attempt at humor was not lost on me, and my reply was meant to be a little more lighthearted than that. I'm sorry I offended you.
Mine cart boosters had their uses back in the day versus the alternative which was to use the powered mine cart. Now though my sense of nostalgia is tempered by my knowledge that powered rails are much easier to use than boosters ever were. Not as interesting though.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..