[RFC] Botania based IC2 crop replication

[Glease]

Your GTNH Discord Username

No response

Your Pack Version

2.6.1

Your Proposal

Add some way to replicate ic2 crop replication

Your Goal

1. This method should use botania, as it's thematically fitting, and will finally give some real reason to work with botania at all
2. This method should produce 64 seed per 10 minute with a good botania infra.
3. This method should be gated at mid EV to late EV. At the very extreme It should not be after IV, where crop becomes exponentially less useful.

Your Vision

• Reduce tedium in mid game (EV~LuV) in crop management
• give real reason to do botania

POC

see https://github.com/GTNewHorizons/NewHorizonsCoreMod/commit/0257f2417b0abb487f2f855b6f7c94b879a3ebb4

The POC uses mana conjuration recipes. This kind of recipe require one to craft Conjuration Catalyst (locked behind terrasteel, which itself is locked behind EV laser engraver) and have lots of mana in a pool. It does not require elven content, but everything else is needed. It's also worth mentioning terrasteel reqiure at least some degree of thaumcraft development and lots of mana to be made. The POC recipe makes 64 seeds per 10 minutes assuming player had no mana to begin with and can make 2048 mana per second. It is however instantaneous if player have stockpiled enough mana. Both are proof that player have either did botania early enough to build a stockpile or have good enough botania infra or have reached engame. For a simple comparison, each crop seed is a mana diamond if using flawless diamond, or 2 mana diamond if using exquisite diamond. Unlike tech crop sythesis or replication, POC recipe's cost does not vary according to crop stat or seed tier

As a disclaimer, the mana consumption might not be right. My only experience with botania in GTNH is when I speedrun the whole mod at very high tier to duplicate soulsand (to make eternal singularities). with all the extra power and near infinite resource at that time, I can't really tell if 2048 mana per second is too high or too low

Final Checklist

• [X] I have searched this issue tracker and there is nothing similar already. Posting on a closed issue saying I like this change please reconsider adding it will prompt us to investigate and reopen it once we confirm your report.
• [X] I understand this change request may not attract enough attention and thus not be implemented.
• [X] I understand this change request may be rejected due to other community members think it's inappropriate.
• [X] I believe this feature would make the pack better.

[duckedddd]

I think this would help alleviate a significant portion of the tedium induced by ic2 crops and could be a great opportunity for a new botania / ‘magic’ based use case. It would be nice to have this as a solution for early seed replication as an alternative to the oc robot (which can be intimidating to new players) and wouldn’t even mind if this was down-tiered to make it possible in hv promoting earlier magic.

[chochem]

I would think the crop tier should still be relevant in some form.

[Alastors]

I don’t personally see how this would “give a real reason to use Botania” since it’s still a hyper niche thing, but I’d personally like to hear @combusterf ‘s opinion on this

[combusterf]

A lot of crop duplication can be automated in late LV, though you won't get identical stats. All you need is a block placer with a trowel in it, and a redstone timer source. Put that in front of a double crop stick and it'll make sure you don't get weeds from RNG. If you put two identical crops next to this, you get mostly the same result. This makes any breeding walk-away proof, and this parallelises easily if you have enough diamonds.

For actual duplication we have the UU matter route, which is tiered by level, so giving crops a flat rate sounds wrong, much like what @chochem mentioned. Making things level-dependent would be better, but the mana pool is probably too stupid for that.

I personally think a functional flower would work better. It can slowly accumulate mana, scan an area for full-grown crops and then "harvest" them for a seedbag. You can scale the mana requirement per crop tier and set maximums where needed (e.g. the primordial pearl case, though it would be interesting to get them as seed bags this way).

[Glease]

scaling based on crop tier

Surely. This is just a POC.

functional flower

that means players don't need to harvest for a seedbag, which is its own problem. personally, I don't feel like having a crop replicator that can replicate seedbags before crop leaving the fields.