...I was skeptical initially, but I think this idea has merit! With the Nether update, there's certainly a lot more reasons to go to the Nether- but especially with Nether Wart, there's really no reason to go back for more. It would be cool to see players set up brewing stations deliberately in the Nether, offering more of an incentive to build there.
Those are both interesting ideas! Mojang has stated the swamp is due for an update, which might include a unique wood type. We have crimson and warped planks- it would be kind of cool if whatever type of wood was unique to the swamp, (Mangrove, Willow, etc), had a greenish hue. Mud could also be useful- maybe you can make it from dirt in some fashion, and it can be hardened to make sod bricks? This could also be sort of like powdered snow, where having leather boots allows you to move through it without being slowed down.
Suffice to say the Swamp is one of the more underappreciated and unloved biomes in the game. Poor Swamp.
With most of the recent updates, outdated areas of the game have received updates, adding new content and a much needed overhaul- I here refer to the Nether, the Oceans, Villages, etc. I have loved the last few updates, and personally suspect the End will be next in line for such an upgrade. However, it's worth noting that there are some minor downfalls to this approach- namely, that big sweeping updates to underappreciated areas of the game leave smaller areas lacking. For example, the Aquatic Update made Oceans worth exploring, and the Nether update did the same to a dimension that was largely unpleasant to explore before, and is now both unpleasant and exciting to explore. But when was the last time anyone wanted to explore a swamp? Or a Birch Forest? Short of aesthetics, many biomes of the game have no practical purpose other than to contain certain structures. And this discrepancy is pretty apparent- many biomes have a great deal of potential but are aestheticly boring and/or not especially useful. Recent updates, (Esp. the Nether Update), have shown that upgraded areas can add both new mechanics/useful systems, as well as interesting aesthetics. (Anyone who says the new nether doesn't look cool certainly hasn't given it a look.)
I certainly don't propose overhauling the Overworld, that would be excessive, not especially necessary, and would probably wind up alienating a large portion of the player base. Rather, I would propose some minor tweaks to some of the game's underappreciated biomes in the interest of balancing some of the older content with newer content, without making any drastic changes. I've compiled some ideas along these lines below:
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Mining
This is something of a summary of a previous idea regarding tweaking ore distribution slightly based on biome climate, increasing some ore types in certain biomes to encourage more diverse base building. (Specifically, slightly more gold in hotter biomes, slightly more iron in colder biomes, etc.) Nothing drastic, and not something unheard of, (Though I wouldn't exactly call emerald ore in mountains equivocal.)
Forests
The Taiga biome, recently updated, is one of my favorites in the game- the Supertaiga in particular. With the towering trees, mossy boulders, and patches of coarse dirt, podzol, sweet berries, and ferns- it feels like a fully developed place, a biome worth building in. The same can be said with the Jungle- yes, it's difficult to travel through, prone to fires, and nearly impossible to build in; but it's filled with life, unique mobs, watermelons- it's a place worth going to.
Compare this to the Oak forest- which has grass, occasional flowers, and oak trees that, for the most part, resemble poles with leaves on them. I think there's some simple ideas that could make some of the more underappreciated forests a bit more interesting, or at the very least not all identical.
Firstly, parity between bedrock and Java forests. In bedrock, you can find fallen trees, tree stumps, vines on older trees, cobwebs, etc; small things that makes the forests seem so much more alive! (I wasn't even aware this was a thing until quite recently.)
Ground cover in most forests is pretty limited, usually consisting of grass and infrequent flowers. Forests should have more unique ground cover, (Which I'll go into more extensively in the following blurb.) There are several types of forests, and I wanted to go over them in just a little more detail, given that they're one of the game's most common biomes.
Flower Forests
Flower forests are already pretty cool to begin with, and are always a pleasure to find. Especially with shaders and a nice resource pack, flower forests look incredible and feel serene and peaceful. They're not exactly forests, given that the trees are pretty spaced out, but that's kind of the point. That being said, there are some slight improvements that could be made- namely, flower forests should primarily have birch trees, (Because I arbitrarily think birch trees are the prettiest), and bees nests should be more common. (The later is actually already the case, it's just not all that noticeable.) Otherwise, there really isn't that much to be said in regards to flower forests- they're both pretty, and they provide a good source of dye.
Dark Forests
In much the same vein, Dark Forests are kind of cool and unique. There's the weird (and kind of cool) mushroom trees, and the generally menacing aura is fitting given that they tend to sport a fair deal of monsters. The dense canopy makes them pretty easy to travel through, (Which I feel like wasn't intentional, but that's just my impression.) Once again, the dark forest is already a pretty interesting biome. It would be nice if there were patches of podzol for ground cover- or maybe even small patches of mycelium, given the mushroom trees? This might be a bit overpowered. And as I mentioned before, parity w/ Bedrock- dark oak trees look so much cooler with vines. It would also be interesting to have a larger dark oak tree variant that could occasionally replace normal dark oak trees, breaking up the otherwise flat canopy, and acting sort of imposing towards the player in its size.
Taiga
The Taiga is already pretty cool, and the super taiga is possibly my favorite biome in the game. For the smaller conifer forests, maybe smaller occasional bits of mossy cobblestone/podzol? It's kind of odd that there's podzol in the Super Taiga, but not other conifer forests. Also, Java leaves don't turn white in snow for some reason. (Presumably some sort of eccentricity in the code that makes it difficult to do so.)
Oak/Birch Forests
Oak and Birch forests are pretty common... and pretty dull, really. There's nothing unique to these biomes aside from their wood types, and they're otherwise really generic. At the very least, considering how common these biomes are, they could look a bit nicer. Ground cover doesn't have to be just grass, patches of podzol and coarse dirt could be mixed in. Furthermore, aside from grass, there rarely seems to be any undergrowth at all- maybe smaller shrubs from leaves and a single wood block, sort of like in the Jungle; or have ferns and other plants also occur in other forests, if only to break up the monotony. If it weren't for the wood types, there'd be no real way to distinguish the oak forest from the birch, and while it's far from the most important thing ever, it would be nice to have some smallish tweaks to make these biomes more unique. (Some resource packs accomplish this by giving the Birch Forest biome an autumn color pallete, but this seems a little drastic.)
Swamps
There is perhaps no biome more underappreciated biome than the Swamp, and with good reason. It's difficult to traverse, hard to set up a base in, the witch hut is perhaps one of the most useless structures in the game, and the thing with Slimes spawning under full moons would be nice, if it weren't so infrequent as to be almost irrelevant. (Yes, slimes can spawn in swamps under full moons.) They look kind of cool, but that's largely a matter of opinion.
One idea I had for swamps was that Coal blocks could be found in small patches beneath them, giving an incentive to mine in a biome that really isn't that suited to mining.
Couple ideas off the top of my head, because yes, the utter uselessness of the poisonous potato is more than a little annoying. That being said, perhaps its use should reflect how annoying it is!
-The Poisonous potato can be shot out of a dispenser like a projectile and inflicts a minor poison effect. (Maybe normal potatoes can also be shot out of dispensers, but only do knockback and no actual damage?) This is making me hungry. Yes, potato cannons are possibly one of the most ridiculious ideas I've come up with thus far, but in all fairness, this is a game with explosive moss creatures, floating trees, and whatever the heck the bats are supposed to be.
-The Poisonous potato can be used to breed some obscure/weird creature type, or, (As it's used in the Quark Mod), to keep a baby animal in its young state forever. Though I imagine you'd feel a little awful about doing that.
-Add a new and complex modular cooking system, revolutionizing how food works in the game, and then give the poisonous potato some sort of use in that. I mean, why not? (Don't answer that.)
-Poisonous Potatoes can be used in the suspicious stew recipe? Or they have their own recipe that makes an unusual potion, to actually give this semi-rare object a reason for obtaining. Some ideas:
A Potion of Nausea that gives the nausea effect to a considerable degree.
A Potion of Hallucination that causes imaginary mobs to attack you, (Mobs that aren't really there), and other weird visual effects.
A Potion of Slime that creates a patch of incredible slickness when used as a throwing or lingering potion, and causes the user to have little or no friction and less control over their movement when drunk. This would be quite useful for transportation/pranks, and, admittedly, has very little to do with the Poisonous potato, but I digress.
-Why can't we plant poisonous potatoes to get even more poisonous potatoes? I mean, they're so useful! Better yet, what if the poisonous potatoes, when planted, had a chance of growing an even more poisonous, even more useless object! This will certainly solve the problem.
Yes, please! One would think given how much effort it takes to get the thing it wouldn't be as easily destructible as everything else. (Losing the Nether Star to something that mundane is, yeah, pretty anticlimactic.)
I like the idea, and I do think these things ought to be added, (I usually play with an ambient sound mod, and something like terraforged- which improves terrain generation as well as trees and whatnot), but I don't think they qualify as a whole update on their own. I just feel like there's other areas of the game that have more potential to be updated/upgraded.
Autocrafting- it's been an idea for ages, with arguments on both sides. In this thread, I wanted to try and provide arguments for and against the idea, as well as some ways it could be implemented. Obviously, this is far from a complete analysis, and I will edit the OP accordingly. Feedback is appreciated!
Simply put, the premise is as follows: Players have found means of automating brewing, smelting, agriculture, even monster hunting- why (or why not) crafting? Which brings us to our first section.
PROS & CONS OF AUTOCRAFTING
If only in my opinion, there seem to be a lot more pros than cons to this idea- the main disadvantage being how drastic and unpredictable the repercussions would be.This would be such a fundamental change to the game that it would be very difficult to balance- and, generally speaking, large drastic changes that alter long accepted parts of the game are not generally appreciated.
However, there is a pretty simple counterargument for this- frequently, small unintentional changes have had huge repercussions that couldn't have been predicted, (Such as iron golems dropping ingots leading to the discovery of iron farms), at least if something this big was added deliberately, it could be properly tested. Secondly, Autocrafting would most likely be a late game feature, and, (ideally), wouldn't alter existing gameplay, but rather enhance it and provide new options. (As any good feature should.)
Another concern is that autocrafting could be overpowered- and this could very easily be the case if the feature were not carefully implemented. In the long run, however, I think this would mostly be a helpful, time saving feature that would give a new challenge to redstone builders, and itneresting new mechanics for various aspects of the game.
...So... so much for providing a double sided opinion. I'm definitely for Autocrafting being a thing, (even if I'm doubtful it's ever going to be implemented), if only because I'm finding it difficult to think of disadvantages that wouldn't simply be the result of poor implementation. (I'm sure someone could provide some more pressing concerns about this feature.)
IMPACTS & IMPLEMENTATION
The impacts of this would obviously be pretty far reaching. I'm going to describe a relatively simple concept for how this could be implemented, and then go over some of the effects. (Obviously, this is just one of countless ways this could work- consider it a thought experiment for the idea.)
A new redstone block is implemented called the Assembler. (Or Autocrafter, or something.) It's crafted using two diamonds, three netherite ingots, a crafting table, and three stone. Its redstone details light up when powered, and it makes interesting noises when functional. The block requires a silk touch pickaxe to mine, and otherwise just drops the netherite. It functions as follows:
Hoppers can be used to insert ingredients into the Autocrafter. It can hold up to nine at a time. Items can be inserted using a hopper on the top or sides of the block. Regardless of the insertation point, they enter the crafting grid from top to bottom, left to right. In order to design crafting recipes, players can make use of another additional item, the Assembler Node, crafted using one redstone dust and four stone. (It could have other uses, but right now I'm just focusing on autocrafting.) When inserted into the Autocrafter's interface, the nodes prevent items from being placed there, allowing players to make recipes that require a specific shape.
Now, obviously, the simpler approach would be to have a template recipe that determines what the Assembler is crafting, however, I do have a couple of reasons for this system. Primarily, this allows more complex autocrafting systems to be designed that can craft multiple different recipes without having to manually change the template. Secondly, it encourages more interesting, (and possibly more frustrating) redstone mechanics that would make this feature more inclined towards slightly more experienced redstone builders. (Not that anyone wants to deliberately make a feature frustrating, rather, more complex.) I concede that it could be needlessly complicated, and, instead of a devoted item, slots in the autocrafter could also just be turned on and off, as that would probably be simpler. (However, devoted items could be moved in and out of the crafter automatically to make for a more complex system.)
When the Assembler receives a redstone signal, it automatically crafts whatever is in its crafting grid. The result can then be removed from the output slot by means of a hopper below the block. Assemblers cannot craft multiple of the same recipe at once. A simple redstone clock could be used to craft things as quickly as possible, whereas more complex systems could craft items depending on what's needed.
...All in all, this isn't particularly complicated. In fact, an even simpler implementation could be achieved by simply giving redstone functionality to the crafting table. However, while the feature itself may be simple, the effects are, (for the most part obvious), but also very far reaching. (I can already imagine the folks on Scicraft making some ridiculous machine that can craft everything simultaneously.) Iron farms could automatically compact iron, (Other farms could similarly compact blocks), redundant crafting processes could be overcome through ingenuity, etc. It's honestly hard to predict the results of such a wide reaching change, but suffice to say they would be pretty drastic.
I like how copper oxidation adds a sort of sense of age to the game- and I for one think it would be cool if other blocks did something similar. (Stone bricks gradually becoming mossy, iron oxidizing, that sort of thing.) However, it is a pretty contentious topic. The main argument against is that people don't want existing builds to be ruined by these properties, and don't want such properties to be overpowered. (My idea, esp. for stone bricks, was that only some would become mossy- obviously, you wouldn't want to build a stone brick structure and have all of them become covered in moss.)
One of the troubles with iron oxidizing is that, given that iron farms are so useful, iron is a pretty common building material. I think it could still be a thing, BUT, the oxidized version ought to look as good or better than existing iron, (That is, it shouldn't look ugly), and preventing iron from oxidizing should be pretty easy. It's a fine balance between adding a sense of history to builds, and ruining them over time.
Elytra are one of the most powerful and desirable late game objects in the game. Which makes it a bit odd that, unlike nearly ever other aspect of the game, they can't really be customized or improved. In this thread, I won't to propose various new ideas to offer further enhancement of elytra, without modifying the difficulty to obtain them.
First of all, Elytra should be able to be dyed. (I was kind of surprised to learn that this was not the case), rather than capes being the only way to modify them. (Only sixteen colors, of course, but still better than the default purpleish grey.) This wouldn't at all change how the things work, but would offer a much wider range of personalization that would be much appreciated by the time players got this far. (This, incidentally, as the least drastic change I propose.)
Verging on the more unusual, Elytra should be capable of holding more enchantments with more unique affects. Specifically, Elytra can now be enchanted with the following: Aqua Affinity ~ Elytra with this enchantment allow the wearer to swim underwater as if they were flying, and to switch between air and water with relative ease, maybe even obtaining a small boost when leaving water, rather than being slowed down by it. Fire Aspect ~ The Elytra, when boosted with a firework, leaves a trail of flame that can damage nearby entities. This would look really cool, but would probably be a bit of an issue if you want to take off from, say, literally anything flammable. (Could be especially useful for, uh, airborne griefers? Who wouldn't want that?) Thorns ~ The Elytra does a considerable amount of damage when you collide with other players or entities, depending on how fast you're going. (It basically allows you to dive bomb your enemies like you always wanted.) Infinity ~ Does not, (as one might think), offer the rather overpowered option of endless fireworks. Rather, an elytra enchanted with infinity gains a sustained blast of speed from a firework that only cuts off when the player tells it to. This could be quite energy efficent, and offer a fair bit of speed, at the expense of being somewhat difficult to control. The boost only recharges once the player lands, and the Elytra still use durability. Efficiency ~ Fireworks give longer, (not more powerful) blasts for each level of Efficiency, saving on fireworks over time. Power ~ The Elytra performs a small speed boost when taking off. (Increases in power for each level- the idea is that you essentially get a free, extra powered firework immediately after taking flight.)
Finally, the last idea, (And by far the most unusual compared to the other, smaller tweaks), is that new Elytra could be added entirely. (Or rather, new, more specialized modifications of the Elytra.This could consist of the following, (Keeping in mind that these ideas aren't necessarily intended to all go together, but rather that these are mostly just different concepts I had.) Standard Elytra ~ The basic set of insectoid wings stolen from an alien spaceship in an alternate dimension that we all know and love. By combining them with another resource on the smithing table, you could gain some unique modifications.(Maybe an entire mineral block is needed?) Copper Elytra ~ Increases overall durability at the expense of speed- this makes the Elytra visibly smaller. The copper elytra would also allow for quicker turns, and more precise maneuvers- plus, being significantly cheaper and more durable, they make good starter Elytra. (Think a sparrow compared to a hawk, and you get the idea.) Iron Elytra ~ While slower and more short range than standard elytra, the Iron Elytra have a special ability that allows the user to hover in midair, and move around somewhat similar to creative flight. (Doing so would very gradually degrade durability to discourage overuse.) When boosted with a firework, they launch the player straight up instead of forwards. This would make the iron Elytra somewhat useful for building, and possibly just all around useful in other circumstances as well. (Not to mention extremely cool.) The hover ability, if deployed while in flight, would act as a brake, causing the player to slow down into a hovering position, from which they could move straight in any direction. The Elytra would disable once the ability was deactivated. They're visually bulkier than normal Elytra. Gold Elytra ~ More enchantable if more enchantments were added? I'm not entirely sure what the Gold Elytra would do either than look cool and allow you to wear the rest of your netherite set in the nether. One idea that occurred to me was that Gold could be the most intended towards PVP, and gives the user the ability to charge with a sudden burst of power on the ground or in the air in a straight line, dealing high damage and knockback to anything in their path. Diamond ~ The Elytra intended purely for epic flight, Diamond Elytra are primarily just improved standard Elytra, gaining more powerful speed boosts from fireworks,being able to generally dive and fly faster, and having increased durability. Netherite ~ Understandably the most powerful set of Elytra, the Netherite Elytra deal damage on impact like he Gold Elytra, can perform the hover/brake ability like gold, and have drastically increased ability, as well as being (nearly) as fast as diamond. Needless to say, the most desirable pair. (Admittedly, I tried to make these somewhat balanced, if only because you're bound to have a fair bit of resources by the time you obtain Elytra.)
All of these would have different flight patterns to make them unique. (Copper is better for reserved, efficient flight patterns, Iron is slow but very easy to aim and control, gold is prone to short bursts of speed, diamond is just all around fast, and Netherite is some combination thereof.)
Another kind of ridiculous idea- if you really did want your elytra to have an unlimited supply of speed boosts, but didn't want the difficult to control Infinity enchantment, use a smithing table to combine the Elytra with a nether star- resulting in a pair of 'God Elytra.' (There has to be a cooler name than that... 'Ascended' Elytra? 'Transcendent Elytra?' That's a bit long. 'Celestial Elytra?' I don't know, something like that.) God Elytra allow you to turn a firework boost sort of thing on and off at will- meaning you can also hold other stuff while boosting, and don't have to use fireworks again. The Elytra would be unbreakable, and capable of traveling significantly faster than other Elytra. In addition, (purely to show off to your companions), they leave a trail of glowing particles in their wake. (If other ideas were also implemented, the Star could be applied to any existing Elytra type. Not that you'd probably want to give it to, say, copper. That would be pretty cursed.)
One idea is that one obtains, instead of the regular Elytra, an 'Elytra core' from the End Ship, which could then be combined with other resources to create the desired type of Elytra. (This would be another pretty significant change, but it could be sort of interesting.)
Are any of these ideas worth considering? I've provided (rough) concept art for different Elytra types below.
I wouldn't mind improvements to the cooking system- but yeah, only if they serve a helpful niche or make the game more interesting in one way. (This is one issue I have with a lot of food mods- they add a ton of new stuff, but there isn't really much use for it aside from its novelty.) The Culinary construct mod is interesting in that it gives you the ability to make modular foods using bread (for sandwiches) or bowls (For soups and stuff.) The problem here though is similar- they're all just powerful food items that are more or less identical, in spite of their variety.
Another issue I have with the existing food system, (As long as I'm whining about it), is the lack of necessity for variety. Rather than being encouraged to develop multiple unique food sources, the most efficient existing food source consists of, no joke, shoving a bunch of cows in a hole and breeding them rapidly. There's no real reason to have multiple food sources when its easier and more efficient to simply have a single food source.
Changes wouldn't need to be drastic- the modular foods are a decent idea within reason, but ought to have unique ambient benefits depending on their ingredients. I'd also be open to more biome specific foods, (like sweet berries and melons), to make exploration a bit more interesting. In addition, some ambient saturation benefits for a more varied diet, (And corresponding slight disadvantages for eating the same food over and over again), would be appreciated. The main trouble here is that most advantages can be obtained from potions, which would mean more ambient, long term advantages would be necessary. (I mean, this game already teaches us to avoid explosive moss creatures and swim up waterfalls, among other things. Might as well teach us the benefit of a varied diet! ...Albeit one that includes gold plated produce and potions brewed from otherworldy fungi.)
Some thoughts I came up with. (None of them are particularly great, but there might be a good idea in there somewhere.) Just to be clear, the player would only have one of these things.
-Dragon egg can permanently reset respawn point, even in other dimensions.
-Dragon egg can prevent mob spawning in a large radius. (Admittedly, this could just be accomplished with torches, but it would be a really useful feature for creative builds where you want to incorporate darkness as a mechanic.)
-Dragon egg allows the player to build their own ender portal in some way.
-Egg somehow allows easier farming of dragon's breath.
-The egg can be used to somehow obtain a special enchantment that allows an item to become 'Soulbound,' and retained even on death.
-Dragon egg offers a (non exploity) means of breaking and farming blocks automatically. (This one sounds especially weird, and I'd much rather have a devoted system for this, but It could work, and would unlock a whole new field of redstone mechanics.
-The player is granted creative flight while near the egg? (This in particular seems a little much.)
-The player is invincible while within the egg's radius.
...Yeah, I like repurposed structures, it's a really great mod- but I'm talking about enhancing existing structures rather than simply adding more variants. (Or doing both, I suppose.) I also highly recommend repurposed structures!
There are plenty of structure mods there, and plenty of mods that enhance Vanilla content- but oddly enough, I have yet to find a decent combination of the two. I think there's a lot of potential here for a (relatively) simple mod that gives existing Vanilla structures a good polish. To be clear, a mod that doesn't add any new structures, blocks, etc; but rather enhances tried and true vanilla mechanics, if the style of Terraforged or Repurposed Structures. (Both of which I would highly recommend checking out on curseforge.)
For smaller structures such as the Temples, ruined portals, dungeons, etc; this would be relatively easy- enhanced variants with fancier architecture, and possibly more variation in terms of how ruined they are, the position and types of traps that are present; would all provide a needed upgrade. More complex structures such as Mineshafts, Nether Fortresses, Illager Outposts; etc; would obviously be trickier, but would look decidedly even more impressive when complete.
Finally, some of the grandest structures of the game could be given a serious overhaul to make them even more worthwhile- think the Ocean Temple, Bastion Remnants, or even End cities- which could become literal, giant alien cities, if one really felt like it. (It'd certainly make them a lot more interesting to find.)
...I'm no programmer, but I imagine this could be a considerable endeavor, even if the point is merely to replace existing vanilla structures with new, nicer ones. If there already is a mod out there that does this, and I just happen to be missing it, I'd appreciate advice!
This is something of an adaptation of an earlier post of mine, in which I provided pros and cons for fully automatic farming of crops, animals, and other resources. In this thread, I wanted to focus on the prospect of dispensers being able to plant seeds- and, bear with me, while this might initially seem like a simple change, it would fundamentally alter how players go about farming on a large scale.
The existing method of automatic farming is fairly simple- involving a hopper mine cart collecting crops dropped by a farmer villager. It's not even that hard to make- you just need a bunch of rails, a hopper Minecart, and... a villager. Now, I want to be careful about calling something like this an exploit, primarily because one of the core mechanics of Minecraft is finding ways to bend the rules to your advantage- whether that be building a mob grinder, or coming up with clever auto farms. Just as a sort of disclaimer to begin with, I'm not necessarily saying that existing methods of farming ought to be removed entirely, however, if this idea were to come to fruition, they might have to be nerfed a bit. (I'm not entirely sure which is more difficult- getting a complicated new auto farm to work, or luring a villager into a slightly simpler sort of farm. Right now I'm going to try and focus on the idea itself rather than whether or not the existing systems of farming ought to prevent it from being implemented.)
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If dispensers can plant seeds, farming is changed fundamentally- players are now capable of creating fully automatic farms on huge scales. I spent almost a week using the Quark Mod to play around with this feature, and was impressed by how challenging it could be to make even the more rudimentary farms work. (If pretty rewarding when they finally did.) I started out with a simple model consisting of a seven by twelvish space of farmland, with a water harvesting mechanism, and dispensers to plant seeds. It actually turned out to be surprisingly complex! Activating the dispensers while also supplying them with seeds, while also sorting the seeds out of the water harvester and bringing them back up to the dispensers turned out to be really complicated. (Especially as I'm not usually into redstone.) At which point I realized I needed an observer and a counting mechanism to count the growth phases and when to harvest.
The larger farm model initially seemed harder, but turned out to be somewhat like a mob grinder. I made a central column with a sorting and storage unit at the bottom. I eventually opted to build a seperate module that would plant at the same time as the others, but would use an observer system to determine when the wheat was fully grown, and thus when to harvest. I opted for using multiple observer counters to increase the accuracy, and still designed a significant delay between when all the observer counters determined the wheat was fully grown, and when they activated the harvesting and replanting modules- which, once they were working properly, could be rebuilt upwards more or less endlessly... and actually looked really cool and industrial.
...The point being that this very simple change encourages a lot of complex design and engineering that feels a lot more rewarding than painstakingly dragging a villager into your farm.
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For creative mode, presumably? In the same vein as the recently added light block?
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...I was skeptical initially, but I think this idea has merit! With the Nether update, there's certainly a lot more reasons to go to the Nether- but especially with Nether Wart, there's really no reason to go back for more. It would be cool to see players set up brewing stations deliberately in the Nether, offering more of an incentive to build there.
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Those are both interesting ideas! Mojang has stated the swamp is due for an update, which might include a unique wood type. We have crimson and warped planks- it would be kind of cool if whatever type of wood was unique to the swamp, (Mangrove, Willow, etc), had a greenish hue. Mud could also be useful- maybe you can make it from dirt in some fashion, and it can be hardened to make sod bricks? This could also be sort of like powdered snow, where having leather boots allows you to move through it without being slowed down.
Suffice to say the Swamp is one of the more underappreciated and unloved biomes in the game. Poor Swamp.
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With most of the recent updates, outdated areas of the game have received updates, adding new content and a much needed overhaul- I here refer to the Nether, the Oceans, Villages, etc. I have loved the last few updates, and personally suspect the End will be next in line for such an upgrade. However, it's worth noting that there are some minor downfalls to this approach- namely, that big sweeping updates to underappreciated areas of the game leave smaller areas lacking. For example, the Aquatic Update made Oceans worth exploring, and the Nether update did the same to a dimension that was largely unpleasant to explore before, and is now both unpleasant and exciting to explore. But when was the last time anyone wanted to explore a swamp? Or a Birch Forest? Short of aesthetics, many biomes of the game have no practical purpose other than to contain certain structures. And this discrepancy is pretty apparent- many biomes have a great deal of potential but are aestheticly boring and/or not especially useful. Recent updates, (Esp. the Nether Update), have shown that upgraded areas can add both new mechanics/useful systems, as well as interesting aesthetics. (Anyone who says the new nether doesn't look cool certainly hasn't given it a look.)
I certainly don't propose overhauling the Overworld, that would be excessive, not especially necessary, and would probably wind up alienating a large portion of the player base. Rather, I would propose some minor tweaks to some of the game's underappreciated biomes in the interest of balancing some of the older content with newer content, without making any drastic changes. I've compiled some ideas along these lines below:
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Mining
This is something of a summary of a previous idea regarding tweaking ore distribution slightly based on biome climate, increasing some ore types in certain biomes to encourage more diverse base building. (Specifically, slightly more gold in hotter biomes, slightly more iron in colder biomes, etc.) Nothing drastic, and not something unheard of, (Though I wouldn't exactly call emerald ore in mountains equivocal.)
Forests
The Taiga biome, recently updated, is one of my favorites in the game- the Supertaiga in particular. With the towering trees, mossy boulders, and patches of coarse dirt, podzol, sweet berries, and ferns- it feels like a fully developed place, a biome worth building in. The same can be said with the Jungle- yes, it's difficult to travel through, prone to fires, and nearly impossible to build in; but it's filled with life, unique mobs, watermelons- it's a place worth going to.
Compare this to the Oak forest- which has grass, occasional flowers, and oak trees that, for the most part, resemble poles with leaves on them. I think there's some simple ideas that could make some of the more underappreciated forests a bit more interesting, or at the very least not all identical.
Firstly, parity between bedrock and Java forests. In bedrock, you can find fallen trees, tree stumps, vines on older trees, cobwebs, etc; small things that makes the forests seem so much more alive! (I wasn't even aware this was a thing until quite recently.)
Ground cover in most forests is pretty limited, usually consisting of grass and infrequent flowers. Forests should have more unique ground cover, (Which I'll go into more extensively in the following blurb.) There are several types of forests, and I wanted to go over them in just a little more detail, given that they're one of the game's most common biomes.
Flower Forests
Flower forests are already pretty cool to begin with, and are always a pleasure to find. Especially with shaders and a nice resource pack, flower forests look incredible and feel serene and peaceful. They're not exactly forests, given that the trees are pretty spaced out, but that's kind of the point. That being said, there are some slight improvements that could be made- namely, flower forests should primarily have birch trees, (Because I arbitrarily think birch trees are the prettiest), and bees nests should be more common. (The later is actually already the case, it's just not all that noticeable.) Otherwise, there really isn't that much to be said in regards to flower forests- they're both pretty, and they provide a good source of dye.
Dark Forests
In much the same vein, Dark Forests are kind of cool and unique. There's the weird (and kind of cool) mushroom trees, and the generally menacing aura is fitting given that they tend to sport a fair deal of monsters. The dense canopy makes them pretty easy to travel through, (Which I feel like wasn't intentional, but that's just my impression.) Once again, the dark forest is already a pretty interesting biome. It would be nice if there were patches of podzol for ground cover- or maybe even small patches of mycelium, given the mushroom trees? This might be a bit overpowered. And as I mentioned before, parity w/ Bedrock- dark oak trees look so much cooler with vines. It would also be interesting to have a larger dark oak tree variant that could occasionally replace normal dark oak trees, breaking up the otherwise flat canopy, and acting sort of imposing towards the player in its size.
Taiga
The Taiga is already pretty cool, and the super taiga is possibly my favorite biome in the game. For the smaller conifer forests, maybe smaller occasional bits of mossy cobblestone/podzol? It's kind of odd that there's podzol in the Super Taiga, but not other conifer forests. Also, Java leaves don't turn white in snow for some reason. (Presumably some sort of eccentricity in the code that makes it difficult to do so.)
Oak/Birch Forests
Oak and Birch forests are pretty common... and pretty dull, really. There's nothing unique to these biomes aside from their wood types, and they're otherwise really generic. At the very least, considering how common these biomes are, they could look a bit nicer. Ground cover doesn't have to be just grass, patches of podzol and coarse dirt could be mixed in. Furthermore, aside from grass, there rarely seems to be any undergrowth at all- maybe smaller shrubs from leaves and a single wood block, sort of like in the Jungle; or have ferns and other plants also occur in other forests, if only to break up the monotony. If it weren't for the wood types, there'd be no real way to distinguish the oak forest from the birch, and while it's far from the most important thing ever, it would be nice to have some smallish tweaks to make these biomes more unique. (Some resource packs accomplish this by giving the Birch Forest biome an autumn color pallete, but this seems a little drastic.)
Swamps
There is perhaps no biome more underappreciated biome than the Swamp, and with good reason. It's difficult to traverse, hard to set up a base in, the witch hut is perhaps one of the most useless structures in the game, and the thing with Slimes spawning under full moons would be nice, if it weren't so infrequent as to be almost irrelevant. (Yes, slimes can spawn in swamps under full moons.) They look kind of cool, but that's largely a matter of opinion.
One idea I had for swamps was that Coal blocks could be found in small patches beneath them, giving an incentive to mine in a biome that really isn't that suited to mining.
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2
Couple ideas off the top of my head, because yes, the utter uselessness of the poisonous potato is more than a little annoying. That being said, perhaps its use should reflect how annoying it is!
-The Poisonous potato can be shot out of a dispenser like a projectile and inflicts a minor poison effect. (Maybe normal potatoes can also be shot out of dispensers, but only do knockback and no actual damage?) This is making me hungry. Yes, potato cannons are possibly one of the most ridiculious ideas I've come up with thus far, but in all fairness, this is a game with explosive moss creatures, floating trees, and whatever the heck the bats are supposed to be.
-The Poisonous potato can be used to breed some obscure/weird creature type, or, (As it's used in the Quark Mod), to keep a baby animal in its young state forever. Though I imagine you'd feel a little awful about doing that.
-Add a new and complex modular cooking system, revolutionizing how food works in the game, and then give the poisonous potato some sort of use in that. I mean, why not? (Don't answer that.)
-Poisonous Potatoes can be used in the suspicious stew recipe? Or they have their own recipe that makes an unusual potion, to actually give this semi-rare object a reason for obtaining. Some ideas:
A Potion of Nausea that gives the nausea effect to a considerable degree.
A Potion of Hallucination that causes imaginary mobs to attack you, (Mobs that aren't really there), and other weird visual effects.
A Potion of Slime that creates a patch of incredible slickness when used as a throwing or lingering potion, and causes the user to have little or no friction and less control over their movement when drunk. This would be quite useful for transportation/pranks, and, admittedly, has very little to do with the Poisonous potato, but I digress.
-Why can't we plant poisonous potatoes to get even more poisonous potatoes? I mean, they're so useful! Better yet, what if the poisonous potatoes, when planted, had a chance of growing an even more poisonous, even more useless object! This will certainly solve the problem.
1
Yes, please! One would think given how much effort it takes to get the thing it wouldn't be as easily destructible as everything else. (Losing the Nether Star to something that mundane is, yeah, pretty anticlimactic.)
1
I like the idea, and I do think these things ought to be added, (I usually play with an ambient sound mod, and something like terraforged- which improves terrain generation as well as trees and whatnot), but I don't think they qualify as a whole update on their own. I just feel like there's other areas of the game that have more potential to be updated/upgraded.
2
Autocrafting- it's been an idea for ages, with arguments on both sides. In this thread, I wanted to try and provide arguments for and against the idea, as well as some ways it could be implemented. Obviously, this is far from a complete analysis, and I will edit the OP accordingly. Feedback is appreciated!
Simply put, the premise is as follows: Players have found means of automating brewing, smelting, agriculture, even monster hunting- why (or why not) crafting? Which brings us to our first section.
PROS & CONS OF AUTOCRAFTING
If only in my opinion, there seem to be a lot more pros than cons to this idea- the main disadvantage being how drastic and unpredictable the repercussions would be.This would be such a fundamental change to the game that it would be very difficult to balance- and, generally speaking, large drastic changes that alter long accepted parts of the game are not generally appreciated.
However, there is a pretty simple counterargument for this- frequently, small unintentional changes have had huge repercussions that couldn't have been predicted, (Such as iron golems dropping ingots leading to the discovery of iron farms), at least if something this big was added deliberately, it could be properly tested. Secondly, Autocrafting would most likely be a late game feature, and, (ideally), wouldn't alter existing gameplay, but rather enhance it and provide new options. (As any good feature should.)
Another concern is that autocrafting could be overpowered- and this could very easily be the case if the feature were not carefully implemented. In the long run, however, I think this would mostly be a helpful, time saving feature that would give a new challenge to redstone builders, and itneresting new mechanics for various aspects of the game.
...So... so much for providing a double sided opinion. I'm definitely for Autocrafting being a thing, (even if I'm doubtful it's ever going to be implemented), if only because I'm finding it difficult to think of disadvantages that wouldn't simply be the result of poor implementation. (I'm sure someone could provide some more pressing concerns about this feature.)
IMPACTS & IMPLEMENTATION
The impacts of this would obviously be pretty far reaching. I'm going to describe a relatively simple concept for how this could be implemented, and then go over some of the effects. (Obviously, this is just one of countless ways this could work- consider it a thought experiment for the idea.)
A new redstone block is implemented called the Assembler. (Or Autocrafter, or something.) It's crafted using two diamonds, three netherite ingots, a crafting table, and three stone. Its redstone details light up when powered, and it makes interesting noises when functional. The block requires a silk touch pickaxe to mine, and otherwise just drops the netherite. It functions as follows:
Hoppers can be used to insert ingredients into the Autocrafter. It can hold up to nine at a time. Items can be inserted using a hopper on the top or sides of the block. Regardless of the insertation point, they enter the crafting grid from top to bottom, left to right. In order to design crafting recipes, players can make use of another additional item, the Assembler Node, crafted using one redstone dust and four stone. (It could have other uses, but right now I'm just focusing on autocrafting.) When inserted into the Autocrafter's interface, the nodes prevent items from being placed there, allowing players to make recipes that require a specific shape.
Now, obviously, the simpler approach would be to have a template recipe that determines what the Assembler is crafting, however, I do have a couple of reasons for this system. Primarily, this allows more complex autocrafting systems to be designed that can craft multiple different recipes without having to manually change the template. Secondly, it encourages more interesting, (and possibly more frustrating) redstone mechanics that would make this feature more inclined towards slightly more experienced redstone builders. (Not that anyone wants to deliberately make a feature frustrating, rather, more complex.) I concede that it could be needlessly complicated, and, instead of a devoted item, slots in the autocrafter could also just be turned on and off, as that would probably be simpler. (However, devoted items could be moved in and out of the crafter automatically to make for a more complex system.)
When the Assembler receives a redstone signal, it automatically crafts whatever is in its crafting grid. The result can then be removed from the output slot by means of a hopper below the block. Assemblers cannot craft multiple of the same recipe at once. A simple redstone clock could be used to craft things as quickly as possible, whereas more complex systems could craft items depending on what's needed.
...All in all, this isn't particularly complicated. In fact, an even simpler implementation could be achieved by simply giving redstone functionality to the crafting table. However, while the feature itself may be simple, the effects are, (for the most part obvious), but also very far reaching. (I can already imagine the folks on Scicraft making some ridiculous machine that can craft everything simultaneously.) Iron farms could automatically compact iron, (Other farms could similarly compact blocks), redundant crafting processes could be overcome through ingenuity, etc. It's honestly hard to predict the results of such a wide reaching change, but suffice to say they would be pretty drastic.
What are your thoughts on the topic?
1
I like how copper oxidation adds a sort of sense of age to the game- and I for one think it would be cool if other blocks did something similar. (Stone bricks gradually becoming mossy, iron oxidizing, that sort of thing.) However, it is a pretty contentious topic. The main argument against is that people don't want existing builds to be ruined by these properties, and don't want such properties to be overpowered. (My idea, esp. for stone bricks, was that only some would become mossy- obviously, you wouldn't want to build a stone brick structure and have all of them become covered in moss.)
One of the troubles with iron oxidizing is that, given that iron farms are so useful, iron is a pretty common building material. I think it could still be a thing, BUT, the oxidized version ought to look as good or better than existing iron, (That is, it shouldn't look ugly), and preventing iron from oxidizing should be pretty easy. It's a fine balance between adding a sense of history to builds, and ruining them over time.
0
Elytra are one of the most powerful and desirable late game objects in the game. Which makes it a bit odd that, unlike nearly ever other aspect of the game, they can't really be customized or improved. In this thread, I won't to propose various new ideas to offer further enhancement of elytra, without modifying the difficulty to obtain them.
First of all, Elytra should be able to be dyed. (I was kind of surprised to learn that this was not the case), rather than capes being the only way to modify them. (Only sixteen colors, of course, but still better than the default purpleish grey.) This wouldn't at all change how the things work, but would offer a much wider range of personalization that would be much appreciated by the time players got this far. (This, incidentally, as the least drastic change I propose.)
Verging on the more unusual, Elytra should be capable of holding more enchantments with more unique affects. Specifically, Elytra can now be enchanted with the following:
Aqua Affinity ~ Elytra with this enchantment allow the wearer to swim underwater as if they were flying, and to switch between air and water with relative ease, maybe even obtaining a small boost when leaving water, rather than being slowed down by it.
Fire Aspect ~ The Elytra, when boosted with a firework, leaves a trail of flame that can damage nearby entities. This would look really cool, but would probably be a bit of an issue if you want to take off from, say, literally anything flammable. (Could be especially useful for, uh, airborne griefers? Who wouldn't want that?)
Thorns ~ The Elytra does a considerable amount of damage when you collide with other players or entities, depending on how fast you're going. (It basically allows you to dive bomb your enemies like you always wanted.)
Infinity ~ Does not, (as one might think), offer the rather overpowered option of endless fireworks. Rather, an elytra enchanted with infinity gains a sustained blast of speed from a firework that only cuts off when the player tells it to. This could be quite energy efficent, and offer a fair bit of speed, at the expense of being somewhat difficult to control. The boost only recharges once the player lands, and the Elytra still use durability.
Efficiency ~ Fireworks give longer, (not more powerful) blasts for each level of Efficiency, saving on fireworks over time.
Power ~ The Elytra performs a small speed boost when taking off. (Increases in power for each level- the idea is that you essentially get a free, extra powered firework immediately after taking flight.)
Finally, the last idea, (And by far the most unusual compared to the other, smaller tweaks), is that new Elytra could be added entirely. (Or rather, new, more specialized modifications of the Elytra.This could consist of the following, (Keeping in mind that these ideas aren't necessarily intended to all go together, but rather that these are mostly just different concepts I had.)
Standard Elytra ~ The basic set of insectoid wings stolen from an alien spaceship in an alternate dimension that we all know and love. By combining them with another resource on the smithing table, you could gain some unique modifications.(Maybe an entire mineral block is needed?)
Copper Elytra ~ Increases overall durability at the expense of speed- this makes the Elytra visibly smaller. The copper elytra would also allow for quicker turns, and more precise maneuvers- plus, being significantly cheaper and more durable, they make good starter Elytra. (Think a sparrow compared to a hawk, and you get the idea.)
Iron Elytra ~ While slower and more short range than standard elytra, the Iron Elytra have a special ability that allows the user to hover in midair, and move around somewhat similar to creative flight. (Doing so would very gradually degrade durability to discourage overuse.) When boosted with a firework, they launch the player straight up instead of forwards. This would make the iron Elytra somewhat useful for building, and possibly just all around useful in other circumstances as well. (Not to mention extremely cool.) The hover ability, if deployed while in flight, would act as a brake, causing the player to slow down into a hovering position, from which they could move straight in any direction. The Elytra would disable once the ability was deactivated. They're visually bulkier than normal Elytra.
Gold Elytra ~ More enchantable if more enchantments were added? I'm not entirely sure what the Gold Elytra would do either than look cool and allow you to wear the rest of your netherite set in the nether. One idea that occurred to me was that Gold could be the most intended towards PVP, and gives the user the ability to charge with a sudden burst of power on the ground or in the air in a straight line, dealing high damage and knockback to anything in their path.
Diamond ~ The Elytra intended purely for epic flight, Diamond Elytra are primarily just improved standard Elytra, gaining more powerful speed boosts from fireworks,being able to generally dive and fly faster, and having increased durability.
Netherite ~ Understandably the most powerful set of Elytra, the Netherite Elytra deal damage on impact like he Gold Elytra, can perform the hover/brake ability like gold, and have drastically increased ability, as well as being (nearly) as fast as diamond. Needless to say, the most desirable pair. (Admittedly, I tried to make these somewhat balanced, if only because you're bound to have a fair bit of resources by the time you obtain Elytra.)
All of these would have different flight patterns to make them unique. (Copper is better for reserved, efficient flight patterns, Iron is slow but very easy to aim and control, gold is prone to short bursts of speed, diamond is just all around fast, and Netherite is some combination thereof.)
Another kind of ridiculous idea- if you really did want your elytra to have an unlimited supply of speed boosts, but didn't want the difficult to control Infinity enchantment, use a smithing table to combine the Elytra with a nether star- resulting in a pair of 'God Elytra.' (There has to be a cooler name than that... 'Ascended' Elytra? 'Transcendent Elytra?' That's a bit long. 'Celestial Elytra?' I don't know, something like that.) God Elytra allow you to turn a firework boost sort of thing on and off at will- meaning you can also hold other stuff while boosting, and don't have to use fireworks again. The Elytra would be unbreakable, and capable of traveling significantly faster than other Elytra. In addition, (purely to show off to your companions), they leave a trail of glowing particles in their wake. (If other ideas were also implemented, the Star could be applied to any existing Elytra type. Not that you'd probably want to give it to, say, copper. That would be pretty cursed.)
One idea is that one obtains, instead of the regular Elytra, an 'Elytra core' from the End Ship, which could then be combined with other resources to create the desired type of Elytra. (This would be another pretty significant change, but it could be sort of interesting.)
Are any of these ideas worth considering? I've provided (rough) concept art for different Elytra types below.
0
I wouldn't mind improvements to the cooking system- but yeah, only if they serve a helpful niche or make the game more interesting in one way. (This is one issue I have with a lot of food mods- they add a ton of new stuff, but there isn't really much use for it aside from its novelty.) The Culinary construct mod is interesting in that it gives you the ability to make modular foods using bread (for sandwiches) or bowls (For soups and stuff.) The problem here though is similar- they're all just powerful food items that are more or less identical, in spite of their variety.
Another issue I have with the existing food system, (As long as I'm whining about it), is the lack of necessity for variety. Rather than being encouraged to develop multiple unique food sources, the most efficient existing food source consists of, no joke, shoving a bunch of cows in a hole and breeding them rapidly. There's no real reason to have multiple food sources when its easier and more efficient to simply have a single food source.
Changes wouldn't need to be drastic- the modular foods are a decent idea within reason, but ought to have unique ambient benefits depending on their ingredients. I'd also be open to more biome specific foods, (like sweet berries and melons), to make exploration a bit more interesting. In addition, some ambient saturation benefits for a more varied diet, (And corresponding slight disadvantages for eating the same food over and over again), would be appreciated. The main trouble here is that most advantages can be obtained from potions, which would mean more ambient, long term advantages would be necessary. (I mean, this game already teaches us to avoid explosive moss creatures and swim up waterfalls, among other things. Might as well teach us the benefit of a varied diet! ...Albeit one that includes gold plated produce and potions brewed from otherworldy fungi.)
2
Some thoughts I came up with. (None of them are particularly great, but there might be a good idea in there somewhere.) Just to be clear, the player would only have one of these things.
-Dragon egg can permanently reset respawn point, even in other dimensions.
-Dragon egg can prevent mob spawning in a large radius. (Admittedly, this could just be accomplished with torches, but it would be a really useful feature for creative builds where you want to incorporate darkness as a mechanic.)
-Dragon egg allows the player to build their own ender portal in some way.
-Egg somehow allows easier farming of dragon's breath.
-The egg can be used to somehow obtain a special enchantment that allows an item to become 'Soulbound,' and retained even on death.
-Dragon egg offers a (non exploity) means of breaking and farming blocks automatically. (This one sounds especially weird, and I'd much rather have a devoted system for this, but It could work, and would unlock a whole new field of redstone mechanics.
-The player is granted creative flight while near the egg? (This in particular seems a little much.)
-The player is invincible while within the egg's radius.
0
...Yeah, I like repurposed structures, it's a really great mod- but I'm talking about enhancing existing structures rather than simply adding more variants. (Or doing both, I suppose.) I also highly recommend repurposed structures!
0
There are plenty of structure mods there, and plenty of mods that enhance Vanilla content- but oddly enough, I have yet to find a decent combination of the two. I think there's a lot of potential here for a (relatively) simple mod that gives existing Vanilla structures a good polish. To be clear, a mod that doesn't add any new structures, blocks, etc; but rather enhances tried and true vanilla mechanics, if the style of Terraforged or Repurposed Structures. (Both of which I would highly recommend checking out on curseforge.)
For smaller structures such as the Temples, ruined portals, dungeons, etc; this would be relatively easy- enhanced variants with fancier architecture, and possibly more variation in terms of how ruined they are, the position and types of traps that are present; would all provide a needed upgrade. More complex structures such as Mineshafts, Nether Fortresses, Illager Outposts; etc; would obviously be trickier, but would look decidedly even more impressive when complete.
Finally, some of the grandest structures of the game could be given a serious overhaul to make them even more worthwhile- think the Ocean Temple, Bastion Remnants, or even End cities- which could become literal, giant alien cities, if one really felt like it. (It'd certainly make them a lot more interesting to find.)
...I'm no programmer, but I imagine this could be a considerable endeavor, even if the point is merely to replace existing vanilla structures with new, nicer ones. If there already is a mod out there that does this, and I just happen to be missing it, I'd appreciate advice!
2
This is something of an adaptation of an earlier post of mine, in which I provided pros and cons for fully automatic farming of crops, animals, and other resources. In this thread, I wanted to focus on the prospect of dispensers being able to plant seeds- and, bear with me, while this might initially seem like a simple change, it would fundamentally alter how players go about farming on a large scale.
The existing method of automatic farming is fairly simple- involving a hopper mine cart collecting crops dropped by a farmer villager. It's not even that hard to make- you just need a bunch of rails, a hopper Minecart, and... a villager. Now, I want to be careful about calling something like this an exploit, primarily because one of the core mechanics of Minecraft is finding ways to bend the rules to your advantage- whether that be building a mob grinder, or coming up with clever auto farms. Just as a sort of disclaimer to begin with, I'm not necessarily saying that existing methods of farming ought to be removed entirely, however, if this idea were to come to fruition, they might have to be nerfed a bit. (I'm not entirely sure which is more difficult- getting a complicated new auto farm to work, or luring a villager into a slightly simpler sort of farm. Right now I'm going to try and focus on the idea itself rather than whether or not the existing systems of farming ought to prevent it from being implemented.)
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If dispensers can plant seeds, farming is changed fundamentally- players are now capable of creating fully automatic farms on huge scales. I spent almost a week using the Quark Mod to play around with this feature, and was impressed by how challenging it could be to make even the more rudimentary farms work. (If pretty rewarding when they finally did.) I started out with a simple model consisting of a seven by twelvish space of farmland, with a water harvesting mechanism, and dispensers to plant seeds. It actually turned out to be surprisingly complex! Activating the dispensers while also supplying them with seeds, while also sorting the seeds out of the water harvester and bringing them back up to the dispensers turned out to be really complicated. (Especially as I'm not usually into redstone.) At which point I realized I needed an observer and a counting mechanism to count the growth phases and when to harvest.
The larger farm model initially seemed harder, but turned out to be somewhat like a mob grinder. I made a central column with a sorting and storage unit at the bottom. I eventually opted to build a seperate module that would plant at the same time as the others, but would use an observer system to determine when the wheat was fully grown, and thus when to harvest. I opted for using multiple observer counters to increase the accuracy, and still designed a significant delay between when all the observer counters determined the wheat was fully grown, and when they activated the harvesting and replanting modules- which, once they were working properly, could be rebuilt upwards more or less endlessly... and actually looked really cool and industrial.
...The point being that this very simple change encourages a lot of complex design and engineering that feels a lot more rewarding than painstakingly dragging a villager into your farm.
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Thoughts?