Rebalancing fluids to encourage setting up rail systems

[richardhendricks]

Limit large fluid cell stacks to 16. When carrying full large fluid cells, experience slowness/fatigue like a dolly carrying a tank.

Adjust Railcraft fluid tank size to at least 256 or 512B, maybe more. Currently 32B, maximum allowed in Railcraft config is 64. Need to request change from Railcraft team.

Make rails much much cheaper to make. Like 4-8x current output. Allow for earlier builder's wands so that long raillines can be made sooner.

Tune recipes for railcraft loaders/unloaders/etc so they are LV-tier

Lower output speed from pumps and oil drills - players can't just stand around waiting, smarter to setup a rail line to fetch.

Add water and salt water as underground fluids as alternative to infinite water sources

Edit: Increase volume of possible oil fields by about 2x. Decent oil fields of 300 L/operation/chunk would yield 30,000 barrels of oil - a single 512B cart would take ~60 trips to empty it.

Pump speed /4 and oil drills /2. Encourage players to move to oil drills earlier. (Remove stacking option for pumps?)

Move copterpack to HV.

Change item/fluid loader/unloader recipes. Manual recipes (available steam) give one, but assembler recipes are cheaper and give two for same amount of resources, if possible.

Remove some of the underground oil options - we really don't need so many different types. Normal and natural gas is enough IMO. Heavy oil can be sourced from oilsands - maybe buff output as a tradeoff? Maybe not since it would mean people would just mine for it and not even bother with oil drill.

Increase speed of the fluid loader to 1280L/t. Check with railcraft team to see if they will allow a higher maximum limit.

Edit2: Decrease the size of the oil spouts by a factor of ~8. They are currently way too large. Shrinking them by 8 leaves them available for players starting out LV to get to MV, but having to move their pump setup all over the map will push players to using seismics and finding good oilfields to use long-term.

Action items

• [ ] Check with Railcraft team on adjusting maximum values for tank cart and fluid loader.
• [ ] Test "allowLiquids=true" to see if allows for stacking fluid cells in cargo carts.

[richardhendricks]

chunkloader carts also will need tuning.

[WarlordWossman]

Like the idea of the slowness effect on large cells (I would just remove them but we know some people would cry). Problem is the okay ones unlock at MV, and the copter pack dodges any slowness effect. If you make the pump slower people will stack 2 since they are cheap.

My idea: do what you said and move copter pack to HV (perfect hover was meant to be HV anyways)

[richardhendricks]

Yeah forgot about your recommendation to move copter pack to HV.

This would encourage people to use horses too. :D

[WarlordWossman]

I mean the electric jetpack costs way more, I just think the copterpack is too cheap in general. It even allows you to wear armor while you have it on.

[Scottishprog]

If you move the copterpack to HV, how will one fight the Lich?

From what I understand, the Copterpack is crucial. The steam jetpack is not as substitute.

If there is an alternative strat, then move then move the copterpack.

[Bluebine]

What are you talking about the steam/coal jetpack isn't a substitute? I've used it to kill the Lich, Enderdragon, Wither, explore the Nether, everything you can want. And you don't NEED a jetpack at all to kill the Lich. Just makes it easier. And you don't need to kill a Lich until HV anyways. The greatwood wand needs stainless steel in addition to lich bones.

[Scottishprog]

I have always found the coal jetpack wanting, in convenience especially. Also the ability to control vertical flight is.... wanting. As in effectively non-existent. OK with a glider, but not as a standalone device. I find it useful only for boosting me. The duration is also a bit short for stand-alone use.

All the advice I have seen strongly recommended the copterpack, for the climb up, if not for the final fight. If there is a short blurb/strategy on what is needed sans copterpack, I think that will be an acceptable substitute. (If the copterpack behavior could be modified so you had adequate control...)

As for the stainless, you can do that in limited amounts in MV, once you have an MV powered EBF. I was under the impression that Thaumcraft really started in MV, not HV.

[richardhendricks]

I think the coal jetpack provides enough dodge capability and fleeing options that it is sufficient to fight him. If you're blasting through the side, it's trivial to get up with the coal jetpack (actually faster than the copterpack). Plus the coal jetpack won't scatter his loot everywhere, potentially down the stairs.

MV is the start of TC, doesn't mean you have to be able to do all of it. I think if a wary/careful player wants to wait for HV for a copterpack to fight the lich, that's not too onerous to ask for.

[WarlordWossman]

I just now noticed that you wrote large fluid cells, those should def be removed entirely. The normal cells should be stacksize 16 imo.

[Dream-Master]

some changes can be made for 2.0 too

[0lafe]

I just now noticed that you wrote large fluid cells, those should def be removed entirely. The normal cells should be stacksize 16 imo.

As someone who uses carts to get all my oil, refine it, then distribute it to all my generators, I think that's a dumb change. It's not enough of a change to encourage carts, people will still shuffle cells. It's just annoying because now you might need 4x the trips. Also, large cells should in no way be removed, they're a great way to increase L/t moved by carts as they have almost no upgrades to them. Just make them not able to go in people's inventories if you want carts to do more. Limiting cells to 16 also reduces L/t moved by golems, as well as how many cells carts can hold. The fluid carts are a joke for anything fast, the L/t moved by the fluid loader is pathetic but if it moves cells it's a lot better.

[0lafe]

Allow for earlier builder's wands so that long raillines can be made sooner

It's already pretty much in steam with the quest. Not sure if you want it in stone age, but that seems like a little much.

Tune recipes for railcraft loaders/unloaders/etc so they are LV-tier Make rails much much cheaper to make. Like 4-8x current output.

Rails never really were the expensive part for me, it was making all the loaders. Those things are kinda pricey early on, and just take a lot of materials. They are LV, but it's almost like making an LV machine each time that doesn't use circuits.

Lower output from pumps and oil drills - players can't just stand around waiting, smarter to setup a rail line to fetch

Under bedrock oil is a little high on the L/t, but if that's lowered and BC oil removed, I'd like to see normal pumps stay the same. They're nice for lava/water and not really OP. BC oil is dumb anyway, if you wanna use oil starting in MV you can make the drilling rig then (think it was my first MV machine).

All the advice I have seen strongly recommended the copterpack, for the climb up, if not for the final fight. If there is a short blurb/strategy on what is needed sans copterpack, I think that will be an acceptable substitute. (If the copterpack behavior could be modified so you had adequate control...)

Build up with blocks then use a fire res pot for like no damage taken.

Add water and salt water as underground fluids as alternative to infinite water sources

This, this I like

[richardhendricks]

The size of the tank cart is configurable. Per my suggestion above in case you tl;dr, I recommend 256 or 512B for the tank cart. People could use 4 of them to equal a stack of 64 aluminium large cells now.

Maybe this config option is what is causing cells to single-stack in chest carts? chest {

        # change to 'allowLiquids=true' to allow you put cans/capsules in Chest Carts
        # 
        B:allowLiquids=false
    }

I think we should keep it on, and increase the size of the fluid carts.

Ahha, there is a fill rate for the fluid loader! Currently set to 640 mB/s. This definitely needs to be increased. I'm thinking at least 1000mB/s (equal to a GT machine output) or the max 1280mb/s, .

    tank {
        # 
        # change the value to your desired Tank Cart capacity in buckets, min=4, default=32, max=64, ignored if 'tweaks.minecarts.tank.useCustomValues=false'
        # 
        I:capacity=32

        # 
        # change the value to your desired Tank Cart fill rate in milli-buckets per tick, min=4, default=32, max=64
        # there are 1000 milli-buckets in a bucket, ignored if 'tweaks.minecarts.tank.useCustomValues=false'
        # 
        I:fillrate=32

        # 
        # change to 'useCustomValues=true' to adjust the Tank Cart's capacity and fill rate
        # 
        B:useCustomValues=false
    }

[0lafe]

Id rather the cells because they're an upgrade for carts in a world with no cart upgrades :(. 256/512B per cart is sort of a lot considering it's 32 now. Also items are better in carts because we got adv item loaders/unloaders but none for fluid. I'd rather see fluids moved in carts improved because of how RC works. Or let is put supertanks in carts, that would also totally work and be cool

[richardhendricks]

Allow for earlier builder's wands so that long raillines can be made sooner

It's already pretty much in steam with the quest. Not sure if you want it in stone age, but that seems like a little much.

The stone wands need the LV assembler I think. Or do you mean the infinite builder wand quest? I'm thinking of the craftable stone/iron/diamond ones. Maybe we can make them last longer? How long is a reasonable rail line? I'm thinking ~500 blocks.

Tune recipes for railcraft loaders/unloaders/etc so they are LV-tier Make rails much much cheaper to make. Like 4-8x current output.

Rails never really were the expensive part for me, it was making all the loaders. Those things are kinda pricey early on, and just take a lot of materials. They are LV, but it's almost like making an LV machine each time that doesn't use circuits.

I am OK with upping the outputs. Maybe 2 or 4 per current recipe?

Lower output from pumps and oil drills - players can't just stand around waiting, smarter to setup a rail line to fetch

Under bedrock oil is a little high on the L/t, but if that's lowered and BC oil removed, I'd like to see normal pumps stay the same. They're nice for lava/water and not really OP. BC oil is dumb anyway, if you wanna use oil starting in MV you can make the drilling rig then (think it was my first MV machine).

Yeah the seismic and oil drilling rig really are in a nice spot now. After some thought, I think the rate from the oil rig is fine - players can store it in a super tank and not keep it loaded, and only run it while the train is there filling up with oil. I have field with per chunk ~185L/operation, which is 18,000 buckets. So even with a supertank II I will need to setup auto on/off for the oildrill with fluid detector covers and machine controller covers. This is good IMO.

This actually works well with the larger tank carts and relatively slow fluid loaders. 512B tank cart, 1B/s loader, cart stays at loader for ~9 minutes. A clever/ambitious player could put 4 oil drills on 4 corner chunks and fill up a tank almost as fast the train drains it.

All the advice I have seen strongly recommended the copterpack, for the climb up, if not for the final fight. If there is a short blurb/strategy on what is needed sans copterpack, I think that will be an acceptable substitute. (If the copterpack behavior could be modified so you had adequate control...)

Build up with blocks then use a fire res pot for like no damage taken.

Off-topic for now, but good point. I'm a lazy bastard and haven't bothered with an enchantment table or brewing stand in SMP yet, so my viewpoint on the lich is skewed.

Add water and salt water as underground fluids as alternative to infinite water sources

This, this I like

[richardhendricks]

Id rather the cells because they're an upgrade for carts in a world with no cart upgrades :(. 256/512B per cart is sort of a lot considering it's 32 now. Also items are better in carts because we got adv item loaders/unloaders but none for fluid. I'd rather see fluids moved in carts improved because of how RC works. Or let is put supertanks in carts, that would also totally work and be cool

I like the visual aesthetics of the fluid loaders above and unloaders below. I guess I can see that being harder to deal with in a build.

Don't compare the change to the current size fluid cart - compare it to a stack of large steel or aluminium cells. And also, don't think of the cart as not being upgradeable, think of the train as being upgradeable with more carts. I think 256 or 512B per cart would be a nice sweet spot between making it worth it to do a cart vs walking/riding/flying/teleporting with an inventory full of cells.

[0lafe]

Except trains are buggy as fuck and you don't even really unlock anything new. There's more cells you get each tier, increasing storage of the carts. Adding more carts can be done whenever but again, it's just bad. Can't really stop trains to fill them without some issues. If you want your setup to work, best bet is single carts on a track.

[richardhendricks]

So you just use carts without locomotives?

[richardhendricks]

Updated original post Increase volume of possible oil fields by about 2x. Decent oil fields of 300 L/operation/chunk would yield 30,000 barrels of oil - a single 512B cart would take ~60 trips to empty it.

Pump speed /4 and oil drills /2. Encourage players to move to oil drills earlier. (Remove stacking option for pumps?)

Move copterpack to HV.

Change item/fluid loader/unloader recipes. Manual recipes (available steam) give one, but assembler recipes are cheaper and give two for same amount of resources, if possible.

Remove some of the underground oil options - we really don't need so many different types. Normal and natural gas is enough IMO. Heavy oil can be sourced from oilsands - maybe buff output as a tradeoff? Maybe not since it would mean people would just mine for it and not even bother with oil drill.

Increase speed of the fluid loader to 1280L/t. Check with railcraft team to see if they will allow a higher maximum limit.

Action items

• [ ] Check with Railcraft team on adjusting maximum values for tank cart and fluid loader.
• [ ] Test "allowLiquids=true" to see if allows for stacking fluid cells in cargo carts.

[0lafe]

Yea. Tried steam and powered ones, both shitty so I just use single carts on powered rails. Not even RC carts, the vanilla chest ones better than the cargo one for everything I do. There's gotta be a way to make them work, but it takes so much unintuitive stuff that I don't even wanna bother

[0lafe]

Remove some of the underground oil options - we really don't need so many different types. Normal and natural gas is enough IMO. Heavy oil can be sourced from oilsands - maybe buff output as a tradeoff? Maybe not since it would mean people would just mine for it and not even bother with oil drill.

Oil sands is an ore and not really viable to run power from. Heavy oil in the ground does that. I don't see why it needs to be removed considering how useful it is. Maybe we don't need medium but heavy is pretty damn useful.

Pump speed /4 and oil drills /2. Encourage players to move to oil drills earlier. (Remove stacking option for pumps?)

Much rather just see pumps not able to get oil and left alone. BC oil shouldn't be in the pack, and they really aren't that good for pumping other stuff.

[richardhendricks]

I use oilsands for my diesel setup all the time, it's way more efficient on oil. I guess we can keep heavy oil. So OK on removing light oil and medium oil?

Removing BC oil means no more oil for LV power production while tiering up. That's a bigger change outside the scope of this request IMO.

[WarlordWossman]

@0lafe well large fluid cells are just OP, you said don't make them go into the player inventory which is interesting. It means you have to unload the machine that makes it with a hopper or minecart or item pipe (pls nerf).

But IF the player can hold the large fluid cells there is no reason to set anything up, because you can get ridicolous amounts of fluid in one go. Also the stacksize of 16 for normal cells would further encourage infrastructure, if you can carry 36 * 64 buckets of oil (2 304 000 mB) I can't see anybody not doing that. Again I really like the idea of all fluid cells being blacklisted from the player inventory, that is a good concept and since GTCE has buckets of everything which are non stackable it should work out. For close distance fluid transport you can either use buckets or fluid pipes.

[richardhendricks]

The Railcraft people suggested adding our own carts using their API. Maybe this will allow us to have upgradeable fluid carts.

[0lafe]

also please add an advanced fluid loader/unloader. Needing the carts to go up 2-3 blocks to drop stuff off is unnecessary imo and just annoying to set up.

[richardhendricks]

Feel free to file a ticket on their github. :) Railcraft just brought up the idea in response on my ticket so maybe they will implement it. Be sure to upvote.

[WarlordWossman]

Needing the carts to go up 2-3 blocks to drop stuff off is unnecessary imo and just annoying to set up.

Should be really easy to make unloading stations that manage themselves and all with a little bit of thought, not like everything has to happen on a straight rail line.

[DoomSquirter]

we have a single block drum that can hold 65k buckets. if realism is the target for this: fail if pushing ppl towards rail solutions is the target for this: alot of ppl just do not like or trust rail based solutions. with that in mind, all this does is push those ppl down a path that really doesn't innovate it just annoys.

say you change aluminum large fluid cells from stacking from 64 to say 16. well la dee da. so I have 4 stacks of 16 fluid cells. unless you also put them on the blacklist for the bag, I can just as easily throw them into a bag or what not. hell, even if you do blacklist them. throw them in a chest and dolly chest and put that in your second hotbar. what was accomplished? nothing. just an annoyance really.

the stack sizes as they stand are good enough as they are. I've made tungstensteel large fluid cells I think but nothing bigger. there is literally nothing gained from this.

what it does affect tho? me. I use large fluid cells predominantly in my oil / chemistry lab. I throw a stack of large fluid cells of various things into LCR's and figure out ratios and put appropriate amt of other types in other hatches to make other things. now all you're going to do is make me add hoppers or what not and screw up my ratios from what I call easy to process.

if change is just an annoyance and nothing more, how is this a good thing to implement?

[richardhendricks]

This isnt about short term distances but long term distances and transport. The meta right now is broken and needs adjustment. You will still be able to do as you outline as above but for players starting from the ground up, the tweaks will encourage them to tech themselves a solution vs flying back and forth.

[DoomSquirter]

I don't think you read what I wrote. it doesn't really change anything tho.

so your stack of large fluid cells is 16 vs 64. how does that force a player to say "hey I need a tech solution to this cause it's now 4x the size in my inventory."

it really doesn't. making them non stackable might but honestly we are then getting into the territory of "if you're proposed changes only annoy and adds no value either to balancing or gameplay, then why bother doing it" for me.

I'll say it again, I'm totally in favor of just leaving the stack sizes of large fluid cells the way they are.

[richardhendricks]

But moving giant stacks of cells from machine to machine kinda defeats the idea of this being a technology pack, doesn't it? Why aren't you using dedicated systems instead of using massive stacks of cells? Automation should be the end goal for most commonly used materials and fluids.

[richardhendricks]

Added suggestion: Decrease the size of the oil spouts by a factor of ~8. They are currently way too large. Shrinking them by 8 leaves them available for players starting out LV to get to MV, but having to move their pump setup all over the map will push players to using seismics and finding good oilfields to use long-term.

[DoomSquirter]

again, that wasn't my point. I explained how I would be affected, but seriously, it's not affected, in so much as just annoyed. that's all this does (changing the size of the stacks of the cells).

It's not really a big secret that I'm not a huge fan of the post 5.09 changes cept the wiring ones. So this was my middleground. I'm not about to clutter my base with a bunch of static installs of things to make stuff that I need batches of, when the lcr's work so great at doing said batches.

I do have alot of automation, just not as much in the oil proc / chemistry side as everyone else, but hey, you're talking about innovation and all. this was my innovation!

anyways, that's all not the point. my original point still stands. changing the stack size does nothing to really change ppl's minds on how they transport fluids really. making them non stackable would but damned if that wouldn't be a really stupid nerf. I'm afraid you're trying to do something that you don't have the physical tools to accomplish. You might as well at this point start bringing in mods to change inventory size and weights into the mix.

[WarlordWossman]

@DoomSquirter do you know this is the discussion for 3.0? Imo we shouldn't include dollies, large fluid cells and all that jazz. If you think infrastructure is annoying you should play other packs like Direwolf 20 or something. Sure if there is a loophole it's just annoying but the goal would be to not have any loopholes.

Currently you only automate things that are worth it and the idea is to encourage automation more. People just get used to the stronger parts of modpacks and cry when a design change is about to take some of those things away. Since I was pretty much there from day 1 in current GTNH I can tell you that the pack would have been pretty much your standard modpack if Dream didn't ignore the hordes of people who constantly said that it gets more annoying. I wonder why the player number increased even if tons of people kept saying "XY will make it so annoying that nobody has fun playing anymore"

It's not really a big secret that I'm not a huge fan of the post 5.09 changes cept the wiring ones.

If you don't like the main direction the pack is going it makes sense that you don't like changes that build on some of those design choices.

[WarlordWossman]

And yeah we are talking about concepts how to fix "problems" (subjective ofc), most of your work arounds would be purged over time as GTNH 3.0 should do some things differnently. No point in making a new version when it ends up almost the same.

[DoomSquirter]

lol 😆 nope. I didn't even notice we were talking about 3.0 hahahhahaa

but still my points still stand. I guess haha 🤣

anyways, (still laughing at myself atm) it doesn't really change my viewpoint tho. the idea is to gain perspective from all sides of the spectrum and find a middleground that either appeals to all or is fair to all. so yeah, considering this is a version that won't see light of day for a long ass while, I'll drop out of this convo lol

[richardhendricks]

just annoyed

System working as intended then. The point is that a player starting from scratch would start to feel annoyed by certain aspects and so look at potential automation solutions.

(noob voice) Steam sure is annnoying, I should give oil a try! Everyone says it is easier to route oil and EU than steam...

Wow this oil is great!

Ugh it is annoying having to move my pumping station every few days. I guess I should look into this "Oil Drill"

I have done seismic testing around my base, and found an "oil field" with 350L/operation! That's 35,000 buckets of oil, more than I will ever need! Time to start working on an oil drill!

Wow this oil drill is making massive amounts of oil, but it is a pain in the ass to have to come back out here every 4 hours to drain the tanks. I guess I should look at piping it back.

Well piping it back is too expensive, but it looks like I can setup a train system to bring it all home! Tracks are cheap and the carts can stay there until they are filled. That will look really cool going deep underground through/next to all these rifts I found along the way!

(/noob voice)

Of course, this is just one experience branch. We want to keep the option open for the player who got lucky and found a nearby coal seam and is mining the hell out of it and sifting the coal for lots of coal/coke to burn. Or the player who went all-in on trees-charcoal.

[WarlordWossman]

It's fairly easy to see how a few values (like the amount of fluid you can bring manually) can totally negate the need for infrastructure which is already possible but not worth it. Since GT is basically industrial craft on speed we should maybe focus on the industrial part aka encouraging automation and setups instead of making the player overpowered (FTB approach)