TheRealWormbo
commented
10 hours ago So, to summarize the intended changes in this PR:
- Thermalilies and Hydroangeas are both allowed to drink directly from cauldrons
- a streak-like mechanic ("heat") was implemented for the Thermalily, which provides bonus speed and efficiency for setting up automation:
- heat increases by 1 (up to 25) if the next lava is consumed within 10 ticks of the cooldown ending, but immediately resets to 0 if lava is consumed outside that specific time window
- cooldown duration is no longer chosen from a static weighted list, but calculated from a normal distribution, which gets more narrow and shifts towards lower average values at higher heat levels (increases average output rate)
- active mana output per tick is increased at higher heat levels (increases output per lava bucket and average rate)
Static automation that always assumes the worst-case of 5 minutes cooldown is unaffected by this change, producing just under 1/3rd of a pool per hour. Manually feeding the flower may be slightly less efficient, since the average cooldown time at heat 0 is somewhat higher than before the change. Dynamic automation that tracks the actual cooldown time can be much more efficient at a bit over 2.5 pools per hour. That's in the general area of a Gourmaryllis alternating between cooked cod and salmon every 3 seconds (where the difficulty is obtaining that much fish for extended run times), or a single-flower 100-cycle 6-block Dandelifeon setup.
Currently, the Thermalily breaks a fundamental design principle of Botania, as automating it even partially is quite complex while only giving fairly paltry amounts of mana. This PR aims to fix that by decreasing the average cooldown of the Thermalily if lava is provided promptly after the cooldown ends. This stacks up to 10 times, eventually reducing the average cooldown down to 27 seconds. This means if the player is able to supply a large amount of lava consistently, the Thermalily will produce almost thrice its current mana/second.
Potential additional changes: Allow the Thermalily to consume lava from caldrons, allowing for player-less automation Increase the mana per tick rather than or in addition to the cooldown reduction to improve the mana per lava bucket Implement a stronger penalty for "mistiming" a heated Thermalily (explodes, catches on fire, decays, etc.)