Mekanism is kinda totally useless now as an ore processing mod.
Before this new functionality for the enrichment chamber, Mekanism was THE mod I went to for ore processing. Right out of the gate you can basically TRIPLE your production speed with the greatest thing in mekanism, FACTORIES. Factories are PHENOMENAL for just dumping your ore and getting them processed into ingots very quickly and in bulk. Or actually, they WERE. NOW, I assume because Mojang changed how ore drops work, no longer does the enrichment chamber take an ore and double it, which to be fair if fortune works on all ores now, not just gems, that's fine. No problems, a 25% increase is reasonable.
However, you CANNOT sacrifice function. NOW if you put a raw iron into the enrichment chamber, it does NOTHING. You HAVE to put 3 raw iron into that machine in order for it to convert that into 4 dust, that dust can then be smelted like normal. But that 3 iron requirement is a MASSIVE pain in the ass! Do you have ANY idea how mind numbingly annoying it is to make ANYTHING in this game, with ALL the mods at your disposal, place THREE of an item into something consistently without jamming it? THEN to repeat that with depending on your mod loadout, over a DOZEN different items!?
So annoying it would take someone suffering some manner of psychosis to actually do it! Especially EARLY GAME, it's LITERALLY impossible to do early on. The only way to stop any smelting system from getting blocked up is to have a unique line of machines for EVERY ore you want to process. Which is ludicrous at the start of the game and painstakingly aggravating even at the end! I know, I've done it before on a previous version. BEFORE the enrichment change.
Any machine you constantly need to babysit from the start of the game to the end ISN'T worth it. I don't care about 25% more iron, I just DON'T. If I was STILL doubling my ores, MAYBE but that would also fix the block anyway so there's no point even thinking about it. If the author wants to maintain 25% boosts to ore production, he should have the enrichment chamber turn ONE raw iron into ONE iron dust, then there's a percentage chance instead of getting one, you get TWO. Do that for each ore and voila, problem solved. Take 100 iron, run it through, and see what percentage most consistently nets you 125 iron ingots.
No matter how you look at it, if you put ANY amount of raw ores into a machine that is made to process raw ores, it should start spitting out the next step, whether an ingot or dust, whatever. If it stops working until it gets the correct AMOUNT of raw ore, then you've made a useless machine. If I run 3 different ores through this, and it just so happens I had enough ores to get down to TWO in each slot, the machine will stop and all the ores I mined aside from these three will just sit there doing absolutely nothing until I go to the machine, take out the raw ores, and clear up the system. Then it'll do it AGAIN because what are the odds every single resource you mine will be divisible by three? I may as well just scrap the enrichment chamber and only build the smelting factory and just forgo any bonuses. And since Mekanism starts with enrichment, there's no point in going down that tech tree, so that means I'm hardly going to use the mod full stop, which is a shame because it used to be so good.
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Let's just air out the trash.
Mekanism is kinda totally useless now as an ore processing mod.
Before this new functionality for the enrichment chamber, Mekanism was THE mod I went to for ore processing. Right out of the gate you can basically TRIPLE your production speed with the greatest thing in mekanism, FACTORIES. Factories are PHENOMENAL for just dumping your ore and getting them processed into ingots very quickly and in bulk. Or actually, they WERE. NOW, I assume because Mojang changed how ore drops work, no longer does the enrichment chamber take an ore and double it, which to be fair if fortune works on all ores now, not just gems, that's fine. No problems, a 25% increase is reasonable.
However, you CANNOT sacrifice function. NOW if you put a raw iron into the enrichment chamber, it does NOTHING. You HAVE to put 3 raw iron into that machine in order for it to convert that into 4 dust, that dust can then be smelted like normal. But that 3 iron requirement is a MASSIVE pain in the ass! Do you have ANY idea how mind numbingly annoying it is to make ANYTHING in this game, with ALL the mods at your disposal, place THREE of an item into something consistently without jamming it? THEN to repeat that with depending on your mod loadout, over a DOZEN different items!?
So annoying it would take someone suffering some manner of psychosis to actually do it! Especially EARLY GAME, it's LITERALLY impossible to do early on. The only way to stop any smelting system from getting blocked up is to have a unique line of machines for EVERY ore you want to process. Which is ludicrous at the start of the game and painstakingly aggravating even at the end! I know, I've done it before on a previous version. BEFORE the enrichment change.
Any machine you constantly need to babysit from the start of the game to the end ISN'T worth it. I don't care about 25% more iron, I just DON'T. If I was STILL doubling my ores, MAYBE but that would also fix the block anyway so there's no point even thinking about it. If the author wants to maintain 25% boosts to ore production, he should have the enrichment chamber turn ONE raw iron into ONE iron dust, then there's a percentage chance instead of getting one, you get TWO. Do that for each ore and voila, problem solved. Take 100 iron, run it through, and see what percentage most consistently nets you 125 iron ingots.
No matter how you look at it, if you put ANY amount of raw ores into a machine that is made to process raw ores, it should start spitting out the next step, whether an ingot or dust, whatever. If it stops working until it gets the correct AMOUNT of raw ore, then you've made a useless machine. If I run 3 different ores through this, and it just so happens I had enough ores to get down to TWO in each slot, the machine will stop and all the ores I mined aside from these three will just sit there doing absolutely nothing until I go to the machine, take out the raw ores, and clear up the system. Then it'll do it AGAIN because what are the odds every single resource you mine will be divisible by three? I may as well just scrap the enrichment chamber and only build the smelting factory and just forgo any bonuses. And since Mekanism starts with enrichment, there's no point in going down that tech tree, so that means I'm hardly going to use the mod full stop, which is a shame because it used to be so good.