The Case for Sand Generators

Getting egg from chickens is apart of the game and growing cactus aswell. The sand generator is not ment to be in game therefor you can't compare sandgenerator with eggs or cactus'

Yeah, but you''re SUPPOSED to get eggs from chickens, and be able to grow cacti. Mojang didn't intend for people to try and use sand generators for infinite amounts of sand, glass, sandstone, etc. It's not the same thing, so they technically cannot be compared.

So coble gens are not allowed?

ok, true.
I agree on that scratchminus.

But here another example:
- A light sensor that works with a BUD switch:
This is abuse of a bug. a BUD switch was never intended to work.
so what is this? -> Creating a machine that is based on a glitch

- A sand generator, also abusing a bug.
what is this? -> Also creating a machine that is based on a glitch

Both are the same. The only difference between them is that the sand generator gives you something better than the light sensor.
so why would you disallow the sand generator, and allow the light sensor? just because it's just a better creation?

And I'm not talking about the lag or whatever, I'm just trying to show the moral differences between both. Not the practical.

Cobble generator is different than a duplicator same as obsidian as it is naturally made using water and lava mixture, sand is not.

JustinGuy: Thou should have fun !

Oh i see, like cobble and obsidian gens are natural, instead it is just duplicating automagically sand :/

yep.
go out into the wild , all the time I see water and lava near each other making obsidian or cobble stone(hint) carrier water bucket to make a field of obsidian across any lava field and scoop the water back up.

Well, there is the redstone glitch that makes obsidian... Just sayin, as a lot of people use it to make obsidian and it s a glitch that is allowed. Of course, that is kind of costly to do. And it isnt something from nothing. (Im not arguing with any Mod, im just stating something i noticed)

Ok.
Sorry for all the hassle.

EDIT: Lol, someone settled this, I guess. I'm not trying to start fights, I'm just trying to show that duplicating items isn't the same as using helpful glitches, like BUD switches, etc. Sorry bout that.

No, it's because the sand generator is used to, basically, SPAWN-IN items. It gives free things, whereas the bud switch is used to create HELPFUL contraptions that allow you to experience the game differently/in different ways.

Abusing a glitch that gives free items is NOT the same as using a glitch that does something helpful like detecting light. There's a difference, and the two cannot be compared to each other. :3

Cobble Generators - allowed. They mix lava and water to create a new block which you must use other resources to mine (like a pick).
Obsidian Generators - allowed. You substitute one thing to get another (red stone, water and lava to get obsidian) which you must use other resources to mine.
Cactus Farms and Chicken Farms - allowed. They are a part of the game, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to stick a heap of chickens in a pen and walk around to collect their eggs, or instead of chopping down cactus by hand have it so that it will break itself when it grows and you just collect it.

Sand generators - not allowed. They take advantage of a glitch in a way that you don't have to substitute any goods to get them, and you also do not need anymore resources to collect after as they break themselves. I have little understanding of them but that's how I have taken it.

How about Oak Tree generators- cost to run them is Oak Saplings and Bonemeal

Allowed. Bonemeal is a part of the game and it's purpose is for growing trees and dying wool white. You have to give a sapling and bonemeal each time to receive a tree in return.

alright thanks, everyone was naming Gens, but don't that one lol

Wow, a lot of responses, more than I expected. It's obvious that many of you see sand generators differently than I do, so I will stick to responding to valid arguments by players, and respond to everything in administrators' and moderators' posts.

Nice to know thoughtcrime is part of EMC. I'll be more careful with what I think in the future. Also, given that players duplicating items is against what EMC is, I implore you to ban cactus farms, reed farms, regular and spawn egg farms, wheat farms (seeds), and infinite water sources, all of which take the same materials as input that players duplicate as output.

My computer is a dual-core Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz (pentium 4 class with less processor cache) circa 2006.

A double chest holds 72 stacks, so one-hundred thousand stacks (the lowest possible amount of what you have stated) of an item would fill 1388 and 8/9 double chests. Given that it takes time to fill chests with drops, most of the drops would disappear in the time it would take to fill those chests. I have never seen a sand generator on single player or various multiplayer servers get anywhere near that rate in "minutes". The highest rate I've seen was about 60 stacks per minute.

Since you make coherent arguments and don't seem to fall prey to exaggeration and authoritarianism like Icecreamcow, I'll reply to you like an adult. I understand that what this boils down to is "flick switch, get tons of sand", and how nothing else in minecraft is that easy for acquiring such a relatively large rate of items. Sand and gravel generators are unprecedented in minecraft, but I'm trying to say that is no reason for them to be banned. I obviously don't care what happens to me after what I previously said, but I strongly believe it is best for the EMC community to allow sand generators. Banning any mechanics of the vanilla game, including unintentional ones, flies in the face of EMC's "vanilla minecraft" stance.

There's no question that a flood of sand in the market would impact the economy, but I don't see it as negative impact. There are items that are easy to acquire, items that are hard, and many items in-between. Most shops sell a mixture of various acquirable difficulties of blocks/items, so all that legal sand generators would do is make 6 (7 when 1.3 comes out and sandstone stairs are in play) types of blocks easier to acquire than they already are. I'm not dellusional enough to believe that people still wouldn't mine sand in the wild and make all EMC servers look like nuclear test sites near spawn, but as far as the economy goes, legal sand generators would make sand cheaper and more plentiful, while still leaving a large amount of blocks as expensive and hard to acquire. And as far as morality goes, it would be no more immoral if everyone can do it than everyone impacting the stone/cobble market with their cobble generators.

No one buys chicken eggs because chicken egg farms are easy to make with renewable materials. Sand generators aren't easy to make, and require non-renewables (slime balls, redstone, iron unless iron farms are possible in wild). They use a glitch, but abuse implies that it is harmful for the community to do such a thing. It is harmful, but only because not everyone can do it. If everyone could, sand generators would be no more harmful for EMC at large than all the other generators, farms, and converters that exist.

Now, to respond to players... (well, one player for now)

Xandrow:

Many things are not meant to be in the game, yet they are. That fact in itself doesn't imply whether they should be in the game or not.

They are cheap because of stone/cobble generators. If sand generators are allowed, sand and their products would also be cheap. I can't think of a reason why cheap sand/sandstone/glass is a bad thing.

No, you can't. Well, you can, but it wouldn't be useful. Drops disappear after 5 or 10 minutes; it would be a waste of time and server resources.

A sand generator has a startup cost only. An obsidian gen has continuous running costs and game mechanics that still allow them to be profittable. Having continuous running costs or not doesn't make something profittable; whether people will buy something for a certain price makes it profittable. The profit margin of sand, if sand generators were legal, would be effectively 100%. That means that even if sand sold for 1r per stack, it would still be profittable, and the market would stabilize its price based on demand and how often shopkeepers filled their shop chests. What Jeb believes the game should be doesn't make the game what it is. The game is what it is based on its underlying code. The code allows sand generators, and while the market would fluctuate initially, it would eventually stabilize and there would be a thriving market for sand. Right now cocoa beans are hard to acquire, yet in 1.3 they will be incredibly easy to farm. The cocoa bean market will change, but is that any different than the sand market changing if sand generators were legal?

In real life, many things don't require hard work to achieve success. The "straight and narrow" path only exists because people fear change. Pissing off staff only happens because sand generators are currently banned, which isn't an argument for or against their unbanning. Also, what would happen if someone made a sand generator now is equally irrelevant. What others do with their servers has no bearing on what EMC does. I've seen servers where PVP was allowed, servers that had tons of plugins, and vanilla servers, all with different rules and requiring different gameplay styles.

Ahh, diamond duping, I was waiting for someone to mention it. A lot of parallels could be made between a sand generator and diamond duping. Honestly, I can't see a difference between the two if vanilla minecraft allows it (which afaik it doesn't). But the end portal bug that was fixed weeks ago closed the code-based hole that let it happen without mods, and anyone who did it using the end portal should not have had any negative consequences brought upon them because EMC's minecraft server allowed it at the time. EMC's response, excluding the bannings, should have been exactly what it was: fix the bug. If sand generators are so bad, then someone should fix the bug instead of imposing rules on how you can piece together blocks in the minecraft world.

You can't compare 1.2.5 single-player with EMC, 1.3 single-player, or 1.3 vanilla multi-player because EMC backported the drop grouping feature of 1.3. And I agree, people should think about those around them more, instead of, for example, making massive mob farms that make walking around towns annoying for those with slower computers. The sand generator I've been around caused no more lag to my computer than my stone generator has.

I didn't respond to everyone's post because either they had no argument and it was equivalent to a "me too" post, they had their own arguments that weren't contrary to mine, they posted after I started writing this post and I was too lazy to add more to it, or they stated so many rhetorical fallacies that any response by me could be considered scathing hence breaking the "don't be rude" rule. I figured Icecreamcow could take it since he's an admin, but if you'd like me to respond to your post and I didn't, then just say so.

Implying that one of the top staff of EMC is a child is not going to help your case or ensure the longevity of your time on the Empire. Just a word of warning. Also, can I ask if you red my latest post?

I'm well aware of that fact, but if someone states obviously false claims, especially an administrator, it would be in everyone's best interest if someone pointed it out, if only to save others wasting time on EMC.

And you want to know if I read your statement about bonemeal being allowed? I read the first post about my points making you think, and the other of you stating facts about what is and is not allowed (right before the bonemeal one), but that's all I see (well, besides the one I'm responding to).