[Discussion] TNT Duping/Primed TNT Duping being allowed on EMC

Alright, let me try and understand what the primary argument is here...

Pro-TNT Machine Arguments
- It's not really a glitch- it's been a part of the game & Mojang's not going to remove it.

Anti-TNT Machine Arguments
- It's a glitch. Originally it wasn't intended and thus it isn't allowed on EMC.

This is an oversimplification, of course, but I think this is what's going on here. As a whole, this argument's really unproductive. Both sides have "locked in" and I doubt anyone's convincing anyone any time soon. I do lean towards the allowing of TNT machines, but that's only really if I owned my own server and I really do understand the devs when they say no. I'm trying to understand, not convince.
Despite that, I think it's good to look at the true output of what a bug like this adds. The outright ban of glitches & exploits is certainly clear, but might not be productive for EMC as a whole. Though, because everyone already has some kind of place in EMC, such a drastic change is going to be resisted by just about everyone, and is likely to not occur.

edit: ninja'd. The iron/gold farm point is actually surprisingly good, curious what the anti-tnt counterargument will be.

alright, further consideration, the iron/gold farm point is a bit of a reach

With that kind of argument the world "exploit" loses all meaning. Farming != Duplicate. Farming is taking an intended growth period or spawning mechanic. Exploit is taking an unintended method to replicate an item. Farming bamboo, growing trees, iron golems spawning, pigmen farms, all use legit vanilla features intended to happen. Now are large industrial farms what Mojang intended? Most likely not. But they use a game mechanic and we have mastered it into a farmable resource. Taking TNT and duplicating it to cause mass explosions isn't based on a vanilla feature. It takes an exploit and uses it for massive gain. There is no base mechanic or feature that inherently causes 1 TNT to spawn without consumption.

I literally am running out of ways to word this.

I keep saying that was should look back into reenabling TNT from dispensers. This would allow us to use our stockpiles of TNT and use it in our farms. Since dispensers can't be moved via pistons there is little risk of griefing with flying machines. There is also no duplication involved.

Notice that in the "ranty and unreadable" thread about TPS, I provided clear and concrete ideas about how to help to begin, and so did the replies. Sure, there was some argument about cactus farms, and then the discussion about TNT duping which lead to this thread, but I think many good ideas were discussed in that thread. To minimize it as just a ranty and unreadable thread seems a bit disrespectful to some of the people making an actual effort to come up with solutions in the replies.

In my previous experience I have found this to not be true after SMP2 spawn had a massive lava cast built over part of it. I was told that I just had to deal with it and mine it out ( I cannot remember by which staff member). Of course, that's a huge amount of work so I only removed the parts that were covering someone's pixel art and left the rest. However, based on what you were saying, that was either incorrect information or perhaps there was a policy change since then. If you are willing to worldedit out lava casts, then there's a giant one at -65, -200 on SMP2 frontier. Much appreciated.

I think one of the other more modern considerations is also fish farms. These were completely allowed on EMC despite them being considered an "pure exploit" that was removed (also from https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/...elf_to_the_nether_snapshot_20w12a_is/fkv2yyv/). Again, if the devs want to make the decision that they entity duping isn't okay, that's fine as long as it's applied clearly and consistently (which currently it is, so yay!). But it shouldn't be hidden behind "Well, Mojang maybe dislikes it", or "it's a bug". Just own up to the decision and I have no problem with it at this point now that we've gotten to had a nice discussion about it.

One thing that hasn't been brought up in this thread is substitutes for TNT duping. While Mojang has said that TNT duping fills an important role, and EMC has said that entity duping isn't okay, those two things aren't necessarily at odds. We have the dirt destroying clocks for residences, perhaps there could be ones for the frontier as well? Or a special block that it pushable and destroys the block in front of it, sort of like a drill. Since EMC's stance isn't that quarries, tunnel bores, etc are disallowed, but rather that TNT duping specifically is not allowed, then maybe a compromise is just to replace the mechanic of TNT duping with a custom EMC one which is lag friendly and far more difficult to use for griefing?

Ninja-d slightly by this (didn't read page 3, oops ). I brought up the idea of alternatives above. For a more concrete example,

what about if you craft a certain (movable) block with sparks, it turns into a bore (preferably a directional block so that it's easier to see which way it's pointing). Perhaps also a block with metadata such that you can give it metadata which would normally be invalid, but on EMC tells the server that it's a bore.
Any (non bmode, destructable) blocks in front of it are voided. A flying machine using arrays of these to mine or bore tunnels would be no laggier than a normal flying machine, would be far harder to build than a TNT duping machine, and would fill the role of being able to make automatic quarries. It would still be slightly weaker than TNT duping since you don't get any drops, so if you want to actually use it to mine, you would have to babysit it. The no-drops also has the advantage of not creating massive item entity lag from all the items.

There are real reasons, though, as to why there aren't any alternatives in Java edition to TNT duping. No movable dispensers, sand is an extremely limited resource. You'd be looking at tens or even hundreds of DCs of sand to make a perimeter without TNT duping. Although, on EMC, creeper farms would likely be the limiting factor despite being automatable because they would not produce nearly the rates you need to have a non-duping tnt quarry. I do agree that TNT duping does seem like a janky mechanic for something that fills such an important role, but I think that the cost-reward balance is good where it is. If only it could be replaced with some special block that "dupes" tnt, like a TNT spawner sort of thing.

Understandable take about the word vomiting. I might not have a problem creating/consuming it, but I can see why many (if not most) would not. I'll DM you with a summary of peoples ideas in that thread, as well as more detail on the griefing that I mentioned.

As for dispensers, that's completely understandable, and honestly wouldn't even matter if you did enable them. Without movable dispensers, dispensers still aren't a practical way to do use TNT for mining. It would enable using them for farms, but since EMC has perfect wither cages with bmode blocks, there's no reason to choose TNT over that.

As for sand, EMC is slightly better on that because of waste resets, but the fact that sand is non-renewable/non-automatable means that it will always be a chokepoint for crafting. Gunpowder is probably the greater chokepoint since darkroom mob farms tend to be very slow on EMC.

what about dispensing tnt from a dispencer? would that be allowed again?

Ahh sorry soo long messages and soo many them I couldn't read them all or I just didn't look at the message above me 😂