The Case for Sand Generators

All of those farms you have stated are natural game mechanics. You still have to interact with them by either mining, harvesting, etc. Sand generators are a flick of the switch and you've got infinite sand, thus duplicating.

AMD Quad-Core 3ghz with 10gb ram. Yes, I still lag from machines such as this. I have rather good internet as well, so this is rather invalid.

A double chest only hold 54 stacks, thus your math is quite wrong.

It is not best for EMC to allow sand generators. Down the line, everything in the economy is affected. These generators allow infinite resources that are suppose to be mined. Cobble/Obsidian were supposed to be mined, but when Jeb or Notch realized that simple game mechanics allow them to be generated and harvested, they left them in the game.

Have you heard of the survival aspect of Minecraft? Do you realize it's called Minecraft, not Dupecraft? Not only is the infinite sand that is generated bad, but also the lag that comes with it. It does not matter what plugins you use to prevent the lag, some users will still experience lag.

Actually, lot's of people buy chicken eggs. You need eggs to make eggs, don't you? Sand generators abuse a glitch, which is illegal. They are harmful to the community in the economy aspect and play experience due to lag.

The things that were not meant to be in the game, but still are, are usually bugs or things the coders of Minecraft enjoyed and have decided to leave in the game for others to enjoy.

Cobble/Stone are not cheap, actually. They cost more than dirt, yet dirt cannot be generated whilst cobble/stone can. Cheap sand affect not just sand/glass/sandstone market, but every aspect of the market somewhere down the line. The economy follows a food chain, per say. One part of the chain is disrupted, the rest of it falls based on that break.

You can afk for hours. Due to the items constantly being grouped together, they remain active rather than dropped. Because of this, they never de-spawn and cause lag to both players and the servers, also wasting the severs resources.

Sand generators are made possible due to an error in the coding and will in time be patched. Using cocoa beans for this example was rather unnecessary as your thoughts on that specific example were off. Sand generators being allowed would cause a market change due to coding error whereas cocoa beans being more easily obtained in 1.3 will change the market due to change in game mechanics.

You are right in the fact that the two are similar. They are both coding errors within Minecraft that have yet to be fixed. EMC didn't allow it at the time, Minecraft did. Is EMC suppose to fix Minecraft's coding errors? We have a few times, but it should not be our job. Minecraft is, although released, still in beta. It is always changing, addition/removal of items still occurs, thus it's still in beta. In beta coding, you will experience bugs. You will experience problems. But that does not mean you have the right to go around exploiting them for personal gain, especially when a server's staff tell you not to. They tell you this for a reason, it affects everyone, not just you.

EMC did not backport item grouping from 1.3, whoever developed the plugin wrote the coding for it. Whether that coder backported it or not is not up to us to discuss, it's up to the coder. We simply use the plugin, because it helps prevent lag on the server. SP and SMP are actually quite similar other than the ability to play with others and a few other things such as the plugins available to you.

Sorry for the wall of text, but some of your replies..... did you slide off the wrong side of the icing this morning?

You're right. I doubled what could be held in inventory by mistake. So at 54 stacks per double chest, 100000 stacks would fill 1851.851 chests, not 1388.888 as I previously said.

The amount of trouble I went through to hunt down and disable sand generators...

Do you honestly believe that the game designers wanted to allow creation of infinite sand? No.

So, play the game.

Common sense.

It takes a diamond shovel and 10 minutes to get an inventory of sand. So there is really no need for a sand generator anyway.
Edit: Also, It is rude to refer to your superior as a "child" I'd heed my warning when I say you shouldn't say something like that to ICC (or ANY emc staff) again.

My reasons for starting this topic were never about how easy it is to get sand outside of a sand generator. It's about a cool piece of machinery being banned for reasons I don't find valid.

As I alluded to previously, I don't care if I get banned for indignation. Do so many people feel they need brownie points with the administration that they have to publicly say how bad it is that I dare besmirch anything one of them would say when what it is obviously makes no sense to anyone who gives it an ounce of rational thought? That's not to say that I am against EMC or the administrators or moderators in any way, but I am absolutely against using an argument that is wholly invalid. I know it's their server and they can do what they want, and I don't pay to play so I actually have no say in what happens. But through the time I've been reading these forums and talking to people, I've come to realize that the supporters, who pay to keep these servers running and the staff maintaining them, don't mind blindly heeding the oligarchy; and that's just sad.

The way I imagine Op:

Also nobody feels the need to "get brownie pointz lulzorz" free players have just as much say as supporters. I don't get where everyone suddenly thinks Supporters have "uber leet powerz and immunity" and should have such things. Everyone should be respected. period.


3. Thou Shalt Not Cheat

Don’t use any mods or game exploits that give an advantage over other players. This includes see-through texture packs, modifications that allow you to move, jump or fly in a way not intended by the default game settings, and any game glitch or exploit that gives you an unfair advantage of any kind over other players. If you are caught cheating you will be permanently banned. If you are unsure whether a certain mod or other activity is allowed ask a moderator.

4. Thou Shalt Not Be Rude

Be polite and respectful to others in the game and in the chat, and don’t harass or insult anybody, for any reason. If someone asks you to leave thier lot or to stop doing something that is affecting them in some way, respect them and do as they ask.

My point exactly Ramen.

Welll, I'm sorry Manglex for the brownie points comment, I had falsely assumed your reasons. But where I come from, respect is not something automatically granted to authority, it is earned and a matter of reciprocity. When someone lies, they disrespect me, and in turn do not deserve my respect back.

Well technically the rules do say 'unfair advantage' so that would mean that only specific players could do it. Considering it can generate sand (cobble gens can too) it is sorta against but it is not an advantage over other players because they can easily make one too. I do agree that it shouldn't be allowed due to it absolutely ruining a lag free server (mostly) and the economy!

Where I come from respect is automatically given to your authority figures. Also ICC did not lie to you, or do anything to make you lose respect for him. You should apologize to him. It would be the right thing to do.

he did say that sand generators create hundreds of thousands of sand stacks per minute.

The fastest sand generator I've seen:
38 blocks/6ticks = 6.333 blocks/tick = 59.38stacks/minute

that's not even close to thousands of stacks per minute.

EDIT:
Hmm I should stop replying here

FalloutBe, you just got pwned. xD

I don't really get the joke
but I like being a cat

I will probably die if that happens!
all my redstone creations going broke after a certain amount of time

You try and be respectful to a guy and he comes out and lashes at ya. Haha.

I'd like to thank everyone for their opinions here and even though you disagree with the creator, it somehow means you're "wrong" and "sucking up to the power". (Don't worry nobody but the OP really thinks that.)

Shutting this down now. Sand generators are not allowed, considered cheating, and if you use one, you will be punished.

How's that for authoritah?