I have been in contact with Flan and he simply doesn't want to update for whatever reason. BUT he knows a guy who is trying to update it so I am trying to get in contact with that guy as we speak I may even start a thread about this for two reasons: A) Gonna crowdfund a little B) Raise awareness and get people interested But thanks for your response non-the-less. I hope I haven't derailed your topic too much!
(I should try and write shorter posts ) So yeah... Work is getting as big hectic at the moment (somewhat working 2 jobs; one out of the house during the day and in the evening a few hours phone support) which often leaves me a little tired and not really in the mood for multiplay. But I also wasn't really looking forward to having to punch trees again, so I decided to give technical Minecraft a try. Had 2 major problems: First is that I wanted to play on 1.11.2 because I like the new blocks and features, and most 'tech mods' focus on older versions (1.7, 1.8, 1.10). Second issue is that my computer isn't really strong enough to use most pre-made modpacks (at least not the FTB stuff), so I decided to try and roll my own. It is tricky because some mods fully rely on the functionality of another (think EnderIO) and if that isn't available you may need to find workarounds. But right now I collected a few mods which, in my opinion, provide a really cool (single) game play. So figured I'd rant Please note: I've only started recently so most of my stuff is pretty much tier 1 so far (apart from some storage applications). Also: I'm using 30+ mods approx. in total and obviously I'm not going to describe them all, only those which sit at my core gameplay (JEI, Voxelmap, and required libraries / coremods are pretty much implied). Tech Reborn White machines: TechReborn, black: Actually Additions This mod sits at the center of my game, I love it. It strives to be a fully stand-alone technical mod and provides all sorts of machinery which veterans might be familiar with from other mods. It's a relatively new project and pretty active (there are some "WIP recipes" present, in other words: Work In Progress stuff which can be crafted but doesn't work yet). What I like so much about T.R. is that it really tries to 'elevate' your gameplay from standard Minecraft to technical Minecraft, one step at a time. You can really advance into the technical era at your own pace, so start using what you're used to and then slowly discover & experiment with some new features. Example: If you start without any knowledge of tech stuff you'll soon have a basic setup with a chest, crafting table and one or more furnaces to establish/sustain yourself. Then you start going over recipes (JEI for the win) and you'll soon discover an "iron furnace". Made using iron ingots instead of cobblestone. Once you make that you'll notice that it doesn't give you any XP but in return it provides longer smelting times. So it's more efficient. Then you'll probably soon learn about power (T.R. uses EF (Ender Flux) energy units) and even better: discover that you can actually upgrade your iron furnace to an electric furnace. All it needs is the iron furnace, 2 redstone dust and an electronic circuit (made from 1 refined iron ingot, 2 redstone dust and 6 insulated copper cables. That's right: these mods add tons of new ores, metals and items to the game). How to insulate copper? Simple: using rubber. How to get rubber? Well, duh: from a rubber tree And in case you wonder why you'd even want to bother with powered items in the first place: efficiency. When you light a regular furnace you'll only be able to smelt items for as long as the furnace is active. That time depends on the fuel you're using to light it. An electric furnace on the other hand will only become active once you turn it on (=put items in it to smelt (and providing it with power of course!)). As soon as it's done it'll stop, which also stops power consumption. No more situations of seeing a furnace burn while you have no items to smelt (thus wasting energy). Actually additions No, you're not seeing things: there's an actual worm in that chest This mod also sits at the heart of my gameplay, right besides Tech Reborn. I think it's highly underrated, this mod adds to pretty much everything in the game. And does so in a very awesome way. You'll get new nature items (flowers, plants, seeds, etc.), new storage options, new tools, new food items and... tons of cool machines to play with. And very important: it tries to keep the game balanced. Some OP items do exist, but they'll cost you plenty to make and maintain. My girlfriend really loves this mod because it also adds rice to Minecraft Ever had the situation where you were mining, suddenly a silverfish pops out and you have to quickly grab your sword to fight them off? No longer needed Introducing the AIOT; the All In One Tool. Simply throw a sword, pickaxe, shovel, axe and hoe onto the crafting grid and you'll get a tool which combines all their functions into one. Now you can dig dirt, remove stone, chop wood and hoe without ever having to switch tools. A.A. adds tons of cool items into the game, but it still fully centers around technology and it's own specific ingredients. But just like with Tech Reborn you'll sooner or later discover about this mod no matter what you do. Defeated a mob? Cool, sometimes you'll end up with a green glowing 'box' (also see above screenshot). That's solidified experience. So basically comparable to an XP bottle ("Bottle o' enchanting") but a bit easier to find (randomly). Better yet: later on in the game you'll be able to make a machine which can extract and store your own experience. So you can literally save it for later. At the heart of A.A. sit the crystals. Almost every vanilla item (iron, redstone, lapis, coal, etc.) can be transformed into a crystallized form using the atomic reconstructor. And that can enhance their capabilities tremendously. For example: once processed you can even use materials like coal, redstone, lapis and emeralds to make tools and armor. All it takes is building a machine, and provide it with energy Here I transformed some redstone dust into redstonia crystals. Actually additions uses Crystal Flux as energy standard. That's different from TechReborn but they can easily co-exist. Although care needs to be taken: sometimes combining these items can generate unfair advantages (when using one mods power source to fuel the machines of another mod). Still, it provides tons of cool ways generate energy. One I'm working with right now is canola, a new plant type. After I harvest it I can use a canola press to create canola oil. This can be used in an oil generator (using oil to generate power). Better yet: I can also process the oil using a fermenting barrel. This will slowly transform canola oil into regular oil, which can provide more energy. Still not enough? I can also scoop up this regular oil using a bucket, put it into a hole and then throw a crystallized canola seed into it. This gets me crystallized oil which is even more powerful. I can also utilize heat (lava), wind and I can even build a lightning rod and then hope for lightning to strike And in case you're wondering why you'd need all that energy? Well... How about building a vertical digger? A machine which can automatically dig out a nice hole for you and collect everything it finds? Or, if you prefer, disposes of everything except all the ores it finds? Maybe you prefer a planter: just place it, provide power and it'll hoe down a field for you and automatically place seeds and harvests everything when it's fully grown. There is tons of stuff to discover here....
Part II RFTools, RFTools Control and RFTools Dimensions Network cards, circuit boards and cpu's, what's there not to like here? RFTools is a well known standard within the world of technical Minecraft, but if you're new to this (like me) then yeah: you'll just have to accept that for what it is. RFTools provides a large collection of tools and items which can be used to enhance on your technical gameplay. Better yet: it mostly uses vanilla items as ingredient, so you really cannot simply ignore regular gameplay. In my opinion it's best used besides existing mods, which is exactly what I'm doing. And it can truly extend on those mods in very cool ways. For example: once you start generating more power you may run into a situation where you'll gain overhead. So, a logical idea would be to store it. Both previous mods provide machines for that, batteries and charging stations are no problem. However, it still pays off to take the more difficult route and try to build yourself an RFTools powercell. The only difficulty is that it requires a diamond, an emerald, four redstone blocks and two prismarine shards to craft it. So... it's time to set sail and head out into the ocean The simple reason is that these powercells are better than the other ones: they allow you to link them up wirelessly using id cards, which could be a very nice way to both store and transport power across. RFTools and the other two mods provide tons of cool ways to use all your power. You can build wireless storage networks, so using a tablet (which you can carrry with you) you can gain access to your storage while you're out in the middle of no where. You can build teleporters which can teleport you to existing locations and (using RFTools dimensions) you can even create new (mining) dimensions. I'm really enjoying this combination because some RFTools items can be difficult to craft because of their ingredients. But that's where the other mods come into play; these can help you expand your capabilities so that you can then concentrate on building more complex RFTools machinery. Deep resonance New crystals and fossilized crystals. Deep under the surface you can find crystals, like the one shown above, and these crystals contain a lot of power. The only problem: extracting this power does not come without risks. You can make an energy collector which can make the crystal resonate and extract its power, but doing so will create a ton of radiation. And that radiation isn't exactly healthy for you nor your environment. And as if this was all... Most crystals which you find in the wild aren't very strong and even a bit contaminated. Fortunately there is a way to smelt the crystals into a liquid which you can then process in a purifier. You can even create an infusing laser which can modify some aspects of the liquidized crystal and enhance its properties even further. Once your liquid crystal bath is to your satisfaction you can then use a generator which can form a new crystal. Only this time one which is tons more powerful than any you might find in the wild. Of course, using it will also create tons more radiation But even that is covered. This mod allows you to enhance glass and obsidian to make it more radiation proof (dense glass and dense obsidian), you can create a radiation suit and it even provides control blocks which can measure the radiation and take action when things get out of hand. Now... this mod is really meant to be used much deeper into the game because it requires tons of resources (mostly power) to actually construct and use all the machinery you need. But it even allows you to enhance on your starting game. Remember when I mentioned canola oil and how I could process that further? Well... Deep resonance provides a really easy to craft tank which you can then use to store all your oil in Notable mentions Other noteworthy mods are: The One probe which can help you diagnose your energy flows, Substratum which introduces tons of new ores and metals and also new ways to use them (metal stairs for example); Even better: the other mods (like TechReborn) also support the items from Substratum, Iron Chest allows you to create much needed storage early in the game and finally I also took a liking to Easy Nullifiers because I became really used to EMC's /dispose command And there you have it
Sorry I haven't posted much on this after I said I would. Got busy, and stopped playing resonant rise as I had completed everything literally. I moved to a different pack which is much harder and has a greg tech like feel to it. As for this new server, It is not owned by me so do not ask me to join it. Revolution 3 from ATL. You'll be angry 90% of the time playing this pack. It is for advanced modders. There is physics as well. Don't be stupid and make big tunnels/box houses. There will be dire consequences for doing so.
RFtools is a great mod when its power cost are altered to a higher state. Its considerably easy when its default. I have played around this mod for over a year now. You can get some pretty funky worlds made. IT DOES matter the order in which you place your dimlets in your inscriber. There is entire videos on what should come before what and what after the base modifiers are in place *such as power reduction cost and effect bonuses* One bad thing about RFtools to note: If you're on a server, it does take a toll on the amount of worlds it has to account for and can cause major lag upon generating new worlds often causing corruption if certain world types are met. Heres a tip: Never build a coal block world and set it ablaze. The server/instance will likely crash after a short while.
If at first you don't succeed... So yeah, I completely revised my setup; removed and replaced several mods which somewhat forced me to start playing from scratch again. Maybe I could have continued, but I'd rather not mess up world generation (if you remove a mod all its blocks get removed as well, and that could result in generating a swiss cheese world ). This is also why I decided to create my TechCreative world. With vanilla Minecraft I use a creative world for my redstone builds, so why not for technical (modded) Minecraft as well? It turned out I had a ton of ores in my world (lead, copper, zinc, etc.). The only problem was that only 1 mod was actually using those resources. And to add insult to injury I hardly used that mod because of its stand alone design. It's an awesome mod, very impressive, but it doesn't cooperate too well with others. And interoperability is a very important thing to me because I love building complex stuff using the tools which best do their job instead of having to use a tool because that's all I have. So then I decided that I should reset my game. But I still wanted something more to fill up the void of all those missing blocks and gameplay. And that's when it hit me... Instead of trying to add more 'tech' I should also try to look for something different as well. I ended up finding some new awesome mods, where one of them can very well revolutionize tech gaming! What did I find? How about... Minecraft nature? Botania adds a whole new gameplay to Minecraft by using natural resources to create all sorts of things which can seriously enhance your capabilities. This mod is brilliant and a perfect addition to a tech environment because it's almost literally the opposite in gameplay. Instead of relying on energy and mechanics you're now putting your faith into mana and natural forces. When you travel through the world you'll soon notice several glowing flowers. These are mystical flowers which you can pluck and use to get petals. Petals can be used to plant (the ground will then emit mystical particles), but you can also crush them using a mortar to get floral powder. This can be used with bonemeal to create floral fertilizer which will make mystical plants grow. So what can you do with all this? Tons! For example... Ever placed a chest but then decided that it looks much better with its front in another direction? If only you could rotate it... Well, with Botania's Wand of the Forest you can! It's useful to bring a crafting table with you, for example to combine all the coal you find. But it can get tedious: place your table, use it, then remove it again. 'Actually Additions' (another mod) provides a nice (cheap) solution with their "Crafting table on a stick" but even that only goes so far... Well, with the Assembly Halo you don't have to worry anymore; it's basically a portable crafting table which can also store up to 11 recipes, so if you have the required materials in your inventory all you have to do is click! Using the Assembly Halo You get to use herbs to make potions, get new resources for new mystical items like special weapons, armor and tools (I love the thorn chakram!), and did you know that elves were once a part of Minecraft? People familiar with tech mods will obviously recognize some parallels here... the wand of the forest is basically a wrench which you use to interact with machines (most tech mods have one), the crafting halo is simply another crafting mechanic and so on. For example: RFTools provides 3 tiers of crafting machines which can automatically craft items for you. But the thing is: even though it has parallels it uses a completely different approach. Instead of relying on mechanical themed items you get to enjoy the forces of nature. And I seriously like that difference in gameplay. Also: the in-game documentation is very impressive and also very easy to use and follow. We need to go even deeper: The Void! On the left a Nether portal, on the right a Void portal... The Endermen use it to teleport, rumour has it that the dangerous end crystals have been formed through the very same essence and that ender pearls and chorus fruit are also related. If you or anything else for some reason end up falling into it then the sheer energy will totally destroy you. What I'm talking about? The Void and Void energy of course! Welcome, to the end of reality... Voidcraft is a mod which, as its name implies, explores the depths of the void and introduces you to a new and dangerous dimension to travel to. It is a mod which is basically meant to extend your Minecraft gameplay because some of its essential components can only be found in the End. And as you probably know the only way to exit the End is to defeat the Enderdragon. Or is it? This is why I enjoy combining mods: because mods can extend on each other. Normally your only way out of the End is the end portal. Yeah... That was until RFTools introduced us to the charged porter: a handheld device which can be used to teleport you to a matter receiver, which is part of the RFTools teleportation system. Difficult to make (you'll need a lot of ender pearls and redstone, as well as provide enough power) but also very rewarding. But back to the void... Voidcraft is unique in tons of ways. For starters; its manual, the Void Vade Mecum, can't be crafted. Instead you'll need to use the power of the void to get it by releasing some pure void energy and throwing a book into it. How? Create an obsidian flask by combining obsidian and glass, then head down to bedrock level and use the flask on the ground to tap into the void energy. Go back up, throw it on the ground (right click) and you'll create a void fire. Throw a book into it and wham, the Void Vade Mecum is yours. What makes this manual so unique, apart from its creation, is its interactive interface. It explains how to get started by introducing a few tasks. And when you perform those tasks new contents will unlock which allows you to progress even further. What tasks? Well, how about rituals. You can perform certain void rituals by placing a Voidic Ritual block and surround it with other blocks in a specified pattern. Right click the ritual block with the Vade Mecum and you'll learn a new word of power. These words allow you to cast spells and those can be lethal! The Void Vade Mecum explains how to use the Words of Power For example... Casting the Flame spell only requires 1 flint. But that one piece of flint, combined with the void energy, will create an explosion of the likes which will make a wither proud! There is so much to discover here... The Voidcraft mod even adds new mobs and bosses to your game: from void Wraith and Liches right down to mysterious and dangerous beings such as the Avatar of Herobrine and the Voidic Dragon. Trust me: there's plenty here to keep you occupied for a long time I think I'll split my post into 2 parts again, as usual
Part II (see above) Got a little delayed and distracted, another problem is that after I wrote all of the above I needed a break from modded gameplay because of some technical issues. But yeah, let's finish the post. What is the one thing, the main problem, which you're going to experience when you start playing a modded minecraft session? I'll give you a hint: The answer is logistics. As you can see above there's a list of items displayed on the right side of the screen, this is courtesy of Just Enough Items (a mod, obviously). When I use this with vanilla Minecraft I'd get around 11 pages of items, but here you can see it reaches 42. So that's an easy 40 pages of new items! So where are you going to store all those? It's for that reason why, next to 'Actually Additions', I'm also using the 'Iron chests' mod; an extension which provides an easy way to make a very flexible chest storage. But that begs for the next question: if you store your items in one place and you're going to need them in another, how are you going to solve that? For older versions of Minecraft there's a well established mod to handle all of this: EnderIO. Unfortunately they don't provide 1.11.2 compatibility just yet. So now what? Integrated Dynamics & Integrated Tunnels Behold: The Meneglin biome! So yeah: how do you get items from point A to point B? Or how about interacting with them? Integrated Dynamics has you covered. I love this mod because it doesn't only add something new, it also adds fun gameplay. First you'll have to find yourself a Meneglin biome where you'll find a Menril tree. They drop logs, saplings, fruits and even crystalized shards. Once you collected enough make yourself a press and drying basin, place them together, insert a log into the press and then start jumping on it. Seriously: you'll need to jump, and as you do you'll see the press lower until eventually it'll push some liquid menril into the drying basin. It'll quickly dry and you'll get yourself a block of menril, which you can then break down to 9 crystal shards (comparable to coal, iron ingots and redstone). This will form the basis of your new transportation network. Building something like this is quite easy, also because the main component (menril shards) are easily renewable: just make yourself a menril tree farm and you'll be all set. Integrated Dynamics works with so called readers and writers. You'll need Interface cards which can be associated ("programmed") to read certain values from readers, and then you can use those with other blocks (writers, or in this example display panels) so that they can 'do' something with that information. In the above picture you'll notice that the top screen displays the sum of items which are in the input chest (the single chest on the left). When you right click on a reader block (see right side of the single chest in the previous picture) you'll open up an interface. You can then insert interface cards so that they'll get associated with a certain value. In this example above I placed 2 cards to show you how this works. So here you can see that I programmed a card to represent the inventory count of a specific chest. Now all that's left to do is insert this inventory card into another device which is connected to the same network and then it can process this information. You can see an example above where the top display showed the contents of the chest at the bottom. There's more... See those small square blocks? Those are part of the second plugin called Integrated Tunnels. This mod introduces several "interfacing" blocks: importers, exporters and interfaces. And these are available for all known "logistic types": items, energy and fluids. This allows you to move all sorts of things around. All you have to do is simply connect them to your network, use interface cards to program the blocks (for example: telling an exporter that it should only push coal into the chest it's attached to) and then let the system sort things out for you. Of course there are some caveats.... As you can see above I needed to attach 2 things before I could both read the contents of a chest and interact with those contents. And that interaction is somewhat limited depending on the block you're using: Importers only extract contents from blocks (chests, tanks, batteries) and insert it into the network. Exporters insert contents into blocks (they basically 'export' them from the network). And finally Interfaces are used to interact with the previous two blocks. Importers will push items onto Interfaces while exporters will pull items from interfaces. So... What are you going to do when you need to both insert and extract items from a chest? Or if you also want to keep track of its contents? Then you'll have a bit of a problem on your hand, especially when you're short of available space. Integrated Dynamics & Tunnels are easily accessible thanks to their reliance on wood (menril), but their functionality is somewhat limited. XNet XNet is a mod made by the same author who got us RFTools, RFDimensions and RFControl and it can pretty much solve all your logistic problems. This is the mod I was talking about in my previous post. As with most of mcjty's mods you're only going to be needed vanilla Minecraft items to make these kind of machineries. That's the good news. The bad news is that you may easily need some more exotic items. For example: in order to make a battery block (the block in the middle with the orange square on it) you're going to need prismarine crystals. And those can only be found in.... Happy ocean diving! What makes this so special you wonder? Well, let's look at the backside of the previous picture: Notice anything specific? As you may notice all blocks are connected using the same kind of connector. The battery, the control block itself and all the chests. And they're all connected to the same network. XNet allows you to pretty much connect anything and then interact with all the blocks using the same network of cables. And you can control all interaction using the main controller block: Now, this may look a little complicated at first, but it's actually quite easy. XNet can process everything. It can move items, energy and fluids around. Therefor it allows you to set up 8 different channels where each channel can do something different. Green means that items get transported, yellow indicates energy, blue shows fluids and red is a so called "logic" channel. This allows you to check for a specific condition and then act on that. In the previous picture you can see that channel extracts items from a chest (that's what the 'E' means). And in the chest I highlighted I set up an insert action: it should insert items. I also placed a piece of coal in the control list, so now this node has been instructed to only insert coal into this chest. I did the same for the other chests: those insert redstone and diamonds. So basically I made an item sorter using this one channel. It will extract items from my source chest and then put coal into the bottom chest, redstone in the middle and diamonds in the top chest. The second (yellow) channel is about energy. Here I extract energy from the powercell and insert it into the controller (this block) and another block I attached: an auto-crafter. An auto crafter is a block which you can use to program recipes, when you then insert the required source materials it'll automatically make those recipes and output the results again (this is all programmable). In my example above I told the controller to extract the coal, redstone and diamonds and put those into the auto crafter. But only if there are still 32 items left in the chest. This ensures that I'll always have half a stack of single items and the rest will be crafted into blocks: In the previous picture (the controller interface) you can see this interaction in channels 4 and 5. This network allows you to pretty much set up anything you want. And the best part is that you can control everything from 1 single block. XNet is still in it's early development stages and you may easily come across many issues with some versions (last time I tried an upgrade all the cables lost their colors ) but I honestly think that XNet has the potential to become the new EnderIO someday.
So it has been a while since I posted here and there's a reason for it... After I finished my previous modded gaming sessions I tried to pick up the pace a few weeks later and ended up plain out bored. No excitement, no pleasure, the whole thing felt like a chore. I knew I was going to mine items, then mine more and more until I had enough to craft some tech items. But always the same stuff And even worse: this also created the "open world dilemma" as I like to call it: you have options to create cool stuff. Obviously you'd like to have some 'cool stuff' before setting out on an adventure. But unfortunately you need to head out first in order to get loot which might get you 'cool stuff'. However, you'd like some 'cool stuff' first to help you get out to get more. Now what? Skyrim solved this dilemma superbly by allowing you to craft your own gear. What gear was up to you, just get the resources. So instead of going on a main quest I simply set out to raid a mine, which wasn't an official mission at all. I killed some bandits which got me XP and extra loot, then I mined the materials and then later on could use those at a forge to upgrade my gear. If only Minecraft had something like that... Guess what? Tinkers Construct This mod is amazing. Once you have a vanilla crafting table you should make another one and place it in your personal crafting grid, this gets you the so called crafting station shown above; next to the crafting table. It is basically the same thing with different looks and... Although you can't use the recipe book all your items you place on the table will be shown so that others can see what you're doing. The items also remain on the table if you close the crafting grid. This allows you to start a recipe, and finish it at a later time (for example when you discover that you need more ingredients). Next stop are blank patterns. Made by combining 2 planks and 2 sticks. These will eventually be used to create stencils which allow you to create items. But... I'm getting ahead of myself. If you combine these patterns with a crafting table, a log and some planks you'll be able to craft the tools shown above: the crafting station, a tool station, a part builder and a stencil table together with the stencil chest. Why bother to make all this stuff you ask? Because this takes crafting into the next century! Here I'm going to make a pickaxe. Instead of merely placing 3 sticks and 3 planks on a grid I now need to start by making the individual parts which make up the pickaxe: a pickaxe head, the tool rod (the handle) and finally the binding which 'links' the two other parts together. The interesting part is that because I'm carefully crafting my tools I also get better tools. A wooden pickaxe made using Tinkers is a lot better than the default wooden pickaxe, but not too excessive. And it gets better: you can also easily repair your tools and even upgrade them. It won't cost you any XP but it will be more complex than merely dumping your items into a crafting grid. And the best part? You can use tons of items. How about making the handle from bones which you got from skeletons, or making an axe head from flint for extra robustness? You can go wild here. Better yet: you can also use items to enhance your tools. If you have a pickaxe and you add a diamond to it (using the tool station) then you'll add a so called modifier. A diamond for example will increase the tools robustness, comparable to the Unbreaking enchantment. Tinkers really gives you something to play with right from the getgo, and that makes starting a new game all the more enjoyable. Unfortunately there's also a downside... The mod itself doesn't add any new ores into the game, and you're going to need some basic ores in order to make specific tools. Think about copper, lead and tin. Fortunately there's a solution to that which brings me to my second newly discovered mod: Industrial Craft Industrial Craft (or IC2) is all about making machines (the white blocks) which can then 'do' stuff for you. And the reason I like this so much is because most recipes really make sense and they allow you to start small and eventually build up your world into something much bigger. For example... Everyone starts with a regular furnace, right? After all: eventually you'll need to smelt things such as iron. But once you have a good amount of iron you may want to upgrade your furnace and change it into an iron furnace. Just grab your current furnace and add 5 metal plates to it. The advantage is that the metal will keep the furnace hotter for longer periods of time which allows you to smelt more stuff with the same fuel. But it gets better: you can also grab your iron furnace, add a few extra metal plates and a battery and suddenly you got yourself a generator: instead of burning coal to smelt items you're now burning coal to generate electricity: Energy Units (EU) to be exact. What good this will do you? Well, if you create yourself a batter box to store your energy and an electric furnace which can smelt items then you'll suddenly use your resources a lot more efficiently. After all: your vanilla furnace will burn for as long as it has fuel, during this time you can then smelt stuff. But what if you try to use a coal block to smelt 16 cobblestone? Then you'll end up wasting your coal because most of the time your furnace will be burning without doing anything. If only you could turn the thing on and off... And that's where the electric furnace comes into play: when you insert an item it'll smelt it, but once it's done it'll turn off and stop consuming power. Pretty nifty right? IC2 adds tons of new mechanics and machinery to the game. You'll get machines which can crush items (for example crushing ores so you get dust), machines which can recycle your tools (by turning them into scrap metal which you can then use to craft new stuff) and eventually you'll even be able to create your own special powered weapons or drills for mining. Most importantly: it allows you to 'do' "cool things" right from the start of your game (as soon as you got enough iron) and you can slowly expand on your gameplay. Soon you'll be tinkering with upgraded tools and then continue to tinker with your new machines. And then the aliens came Applied Energetics During your game sessions you may run into these meteorites which have landed in your world. As you can see it left quite the impact. These things provide you with some new building materials and better yet: inside the meteorite you'll find a box which contains a mysterious print. Besides these meteorites you'll also find new ore blocks which can give you crystals: both regular and charged. Although you can use these crystals to craft some regular tools (sword, pickaxe, etc.) it's actually more interesting to do some experimenting with them. Because if you combine these crystals with regular Minecraft items (such as redstone for example) you'll be able to create a whole new brand of machinery. From special chests which can store plenty of items (as long as you add a storage component) to special screens which allow you to access your network and 'do' stuff. For example using your gathered resources to craft things. Of course all of this uses power, which can become a problem over time because the main source of power is a coal generator. It works, but eventually you're going to need a lot more. Fortunately there's a way to get more: using a so called energy accepter block. This allows you to gain energy from other popular mods and it's fully compatible with IC2. This will even ensure that the energy difference will be dealt with in a fair way (IC2 uses EU, while Applied Energetics uses AE as energy unit). Less = More And that's basically it. Only 3 main mods now make up for my tech gameplay and so far I'm having a really good time. However, I strongly suggest to get a few support mods as well. Things such as a mini map (I prefer voxelmap myself) and an inventory mod like Just Enough Items can be really game changing. Next I also prefer using Iron Chests and Integrated Dynamics (and tunnels) as support "tech" mods. But seriously: less = more. There were many things I never played with because other mods roughly did the same thing. Why go all the way out to find an ocean monument so that you can get crystals which you need to craft a module storage (RFtools) while you can make yourself a "storage crate" (Actually Additions) using only wood and which can store a whole lot more? Another thing which has always seriously bugged me is that you had to do quite a bit of grinding before you could lay your hands on some "cool" tech. Well, thanks to Tinkers you can do that almost right from the start of the game. And that's what I've been playing with for a while now.... My current TechCreative world. Figured I'd share
Its been hard to find a decent pack now a days. I have played some solo sessions with various mods and updated versions such as Immersive Engineering 1.12.2 and its fan expansions (Immersive Petroleum, Immersive Tech, Industrial Wires).
Yeah, these days I don't rely on packs at all anymore but I roll my own. And good choice with Immersive Engineering! I haven't done much with that myself yet, but from what I've seen so far it's pretty awesome! I love the hanging cables for example (vs. the kind of cables you see in my post above).
