RF generation rebalance

[TheDeviantCrafter]

This will be a bit of a project, so we may want to create a separate milestone for it down the road. I don't want to start on it until the RF generation and consumption options are pretty stable.

I'd like to break RF generation into five tiers. Lower tears are simple to automate, but don't generate very much RF. Higher tiers require much more thought and effort to automate, but create far more power. This would encourage more complex and interesting options instead of simply spamming coal generators.

It would look something like this:

1. Passive power generation (water mills, geothermal generators, etc)

2. Coal/lava generation

3. Immersive Tech/Immersive Petroleum

4. Endergenic generator, Deep Resonance

5. NuclearCraft

Tools that use power should be balanced to take this into consideration. Higher end tools such as the better RFTools machine should use a lot of power. More early game machines like the ImE crusher should use less.

For power consumption, it could look something like this:

1. Forestry machines

2. Immersive Engineering crusher/arc furnace, Redstone Arsenal

3. RFTools environmental controller

4. ME System, RFTools spawner

5. RFTools builder

For now this is a brainstorming thread.

[Yarden-zamir]

I think immersive petroleum needs to be better than immersive tech, it's using oil which is not easily renewable

[TheDeviantCrafter]

I've been thinking about this, and I'd like to spitball some thoughts:

• I'd like to move a lot of things away from RF. We already removed all of the RF-powered autocrafters, and I just requested an issue to make Iron Jetpacks use fuel instead of RF. We also have mods like Factory Tech, Buildcraft, Botania and Pneumaticraft that can do things normally done with RF machines.

• I think we should avoid situations where two RF-powered contraptions can complete the same task. Choosing between two electric furnaces isn't much of a choice, and we can't do a whole lot to give them tradeoffs. Instead, choosing between an electric furnace and, say, a Thaumcraft furnace would be more of a choice.

• I'd like to avoid any form of long distance RF transportation if possible. If the player needs to generate their power on site, there's a decent chance that they'll choose different RF generators for each of their bases. You could make a nuclearcraft reactor for your main base, and a smaller deep resonance base for your outpost could be interesting.

• I wonder if we could make certain generation options only work in certain biomes. One way we could do that is to make it require a ton of water, snow, or another resource that needs to be produced in a particular biome. I would like some generators that, say, refuse to work outside of cold biomes.

• I'd like passive generators such as water wheels to exist. Sometimes you have a build somewhere that requires only a small amount of power, so hooking it up to a geothermal generator seems fine. Powering an ME system or an excavator with these should be totally impractical.

• Storing billions of RF in some giant multiblock seems really boring. That said, I wouldn't mind a more complex method of storing energy. Maybe you could turn molten metal into plasma, which could then be stored as a fluid. This could then be turned back into molten metal, converting the heat into electricity at 50% efficiency. I'd like to have a tank of plasma so I can see how much power I have stored.

[ProjectGearBot]

@Aerolfos: Be wary though, the reason RF became a thing in the first place is because of the dozens of different non interacting power systems and the extreme annoyance involved in building infrastructure because of that

[ProjectGearBot]

@Aerolfos: Last one, how impossible would making a miniature kugelblitz be? In terms of game implementation, not realism

[ProjectGearBot]

@PandaBoy444: And splitting power systems is the biggest form of gating we have so we really do need to be carful

[ProjectGearBot]

@TheDeviantCrafter: People are getting tired of RF. I guess I still want it to be the main power system, but using other systems for some things would probably be a welcome change.

Buildcraft's laser powered crafter is a good example of this done correctly. It's something you would only need once you're fairly end game.

One thing we really need to be careful about is making the different power systems feel too similar. To that end, I think we should disable any way to turn fuel into RF. Then Buildcraft would have a monopoly there.

[ProjectGearBot]

@TheDeviantCrafter: As for the kugelblitz, do you want it to work as a black hole?

[Aerolfos]

"The Kugelblitz Containment Silo An artificial Kugelblitz that can store matter in the form of radiation and generates energy."

Picture

You spend a huuge amount of energy to generate an artificial black hole in a proper containment system, and then you can inject energy and matter which becomes just energy inside the kugelblitz. It radiates that energy back in the form of Hawking Radiation, so you have a separate "port" of some kind that can extract that energy, creating a crazy but very good energy storage system. Would be a pretty good next tier after plasma storage I'd say

[TheDeviantCrafter]

RedstoneParadox had a nice idea. If it's possible, we should divide every RF value in the game by ten to remove an arbitrary 0.

I've never liked the giant numbers most RF-based packs have. I want to go back to when 10k RF/t was a major achievement.

[RedstoneParadox]

I honestly don't agree with the idea of disabling long-distance RF transport as it punishes the player for expanding away from their massive nuclear reactors that they invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into. Besides, there really is no gameplay difference between powering a new outpost at your outpost and building the outpost generator at your main base and wiring it up to your distant outpost other than the required power transfer.

The better solution would be to make long distance power a significant investment that is difficult to fulfil until later in the game. This would also further work to encourage players to invest in better power options as such an investment would be worthless if you were just going to spam coal gens and the like.

[TheDeviantCrafter]

After giving this some thought, I'm inclined to agree. Alternating Flux can probably fill that role nicely.

Teleporting power cells is also probably viable. It's not as easy as using an ender chest, but you can use a Dimensional Shifter or a Quantum Link Chamber.

I think this should always require a bit of infrastructure, even late game. Automation shouldn't get easier once you unlock some arbitrary item.