Exponential scaling of alveary frame blocks allows a single bee to produce 1.67 billion rf/t

[TheDeviantCrafter]

There's a post on /r/feedthebeast that goes into more detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/8l18y1/we_hiveunlimited_power_167billion_rft_plenty_of/

The way the math works means that for alveary frame block you add, the effectiveness of the energy queen doubles. It doesn't take very many to reach 1.67 billion RF/t.

This seems pretty unbalanced. Rather than doubling each time, I would prevent each upgrade from stacking with themselves. It would be multiplied by the number of frames.

[scotty9090]

Trying this now and I'd say it takes quite a bit to breed up all the bees you need to do what he did in the video. Also, it's fun.

EDIT: I feel like this is correctly balanced by https://github.com/rwtema/Careerbees/issues/20. :)

[scotty9090]

Okay having now actually tested this, I think the "issue" (see below) here is not the energy bees but the Magic Frames used in the video.

When I tried this in an alveary, using regular Forestry Untreated Frames (200% production boost) I maxed out at 640K rf/t. I had room for more frames but adding any additional doesn't push it past that number. This matches what the FTB (unofficial) wiki says about production capping out at a certain point.

Switching to Magic Frames, which are also listed as 200% production speed (as stated on the wikis and the in-game tool-tip), then the energy production sky rockets. So my conclusion here is that Career Bees is working correctly and respecting the production cap, whereas the Magic Frames do not respect the cap and allow the exponential scaling to occur.

I also debate whether this is really an issue that needs to get fixed. What does 1.67 billion rf/t allow me to do that I can't already do with 25M rf/t (Rainbow Gen) or 100M+ rf/t (Mekanism Turbine) or whatever the Draconic Reactor maxes out at? Nothing - all represent silly power that is created only for the sake of having fun and creating silly amounts of power.

[tlitookilakin]

there's several factors to consider here: 1) It's not a bug, just a result of unintended cross-mod interaction 2) Without modifiers, energy bee production is quite reasonable 3) There are lots of other ways to generate stupid amounts of power 4) the main bottleneck with boosted energy bees is not production speed but the i/o / capacity limitations of your energy storage, since the bees can't output to cables directly.

[LezChap]

Hi...that was my video/build! So a bit more back-info...The forestry frames are topped out at 1000% production modifier (so 4 frames with the way CareerBees does the calculation and it looks like you're topped out). Magical frames don't have this upper cap built into them. This is USUALLY balanced, I believe, by turning queens ignoble and/or killing them off if production (or mutation) rates are too high.

In comes the Eternal Frame...which doesn't let the queen die and process that balancing mechanic.

Getting the power from the bees CAN be a hassle, regardless of how much they're producing...not everything will accept energy from them because of #17 ...but there are ways around that if you tinker around. Some mod's cables will work, others won't. Some energy storage blocks work, others don't. Ends up just being Trial and Error.

[tyler489]

https://github.com/brandon3055/Draconic-Evolution/issues/1142

[TheDeviantCrafter]

This is actually a major issue in the pack I'm working on. Project Gear will have very carefully balanced RF generation, and it won't include anything even close to the rainbow generator or Extreme Reactors. A bee that can create 640k RF/t is an enormous balance problem as a result.

I'd like to request a config option to nerf the bee. It may be balanced in a pack with Draconic Evolution, but in a carefully controlled environment it will be a bit of a problem.

[LezChap]

@TheDeviantCrafter I've thought of a few solutions to this is to...probably the easiest to reduce the massive ability to exploit this is to remove the blocks that allow using frames in the alveary. Career Bees and Magic Bees both have a block that allows such functionality. You still can get roughly 40k RF/t from bees in the Industrial Apiary when it's maxed out...but that's nothing like the 600k to billions in an Alveary with frames. Forestry's Apiary's production modifier and limited frame space makes them practically a non-issue.

[tlitookilakin]

The way I see it you have two options: remove the ability to obtain the power bee, or limit its exploitation by removing alveary frames. Unfortunately, it seems as though crafttweaker doesn't have script support for removing bee breeding recipes, and careerbees doesn't seem to have a config file, so it'll have to be the second one. (You could also remove the production-boosting frames involved in the exploit instead.)

Again, this is an exploit, not a bug, and if it breaks a pack it's the pack-makers' responsibility to rebalance it, or not include it, and not the mod author's, however I will open a new issue to include a config file for careerbees.

EDIT: #32