ShneekeyTheLost

At some point along the thread, it was stated that they're not going to be implementing the chisel microblock system because Chisels n Bits already does this mechanic, in a far superior manner. Then I started thinking... hey, there's a few other mechanics that are already done by mods out there, so these are things to maybe not focus on, as an adequate solution already exists. Hydration can already be implemented through the use of Tough As Nails, which has the capability of being configured so that fresh water will grant hydration and salt water will not, because the block ID's will be different. How saturated your various food types are can be easily handled by the mod Nutrition. Fully customizable with JSON. The mod Wild Crops permits crops to grow out in the wild. Combine with something like Pams (disable gardens and maybe their fruit trees if you want to use your own) to have random crops spread out during worldgen. Has a fairly good JSON pattern for generating crops. While probably not a 'final cut' solution, it can push crops back on the TODO list to the back, so they can focus on more important aspects. The mod Heat and Climate does exactly what it says on the tin, although it has some modules that will need to be disabled as it has unwanted additional functionality. Pair with Serene Seasonals to complete the changing seasons and complete the weather of TFC. By simply using these mods, it permits the team to focus their efforts on other aspects of TFC.

Tamahagane is actually not a particularly good steel, nor is it a single steel type. Once Tamahagane is formed, using almost exactly the same process that every other people have done by melting ore, draining the slag, and beating the resulting metal into submission, it is sorted into Shingane (soul-steel, a mild low-carbon steel with high ductility), and Hagane (blade-steel, which is the high-carbon steel). Hagane is forged in almost exactly the same manner as wootz steel. The trick that Katana makers use, and the reason they have the slight curve, is that they will fold the Shingane around the back of the Hagane (much like folding a taco, actually) to reinforce it. You see, the high carbon steel can hold a very fine edge, but it can be brittle. The low carbon steel is able to absorb the impacts without fracturing. tl;dr: Just use Wootz to represent Tamahagane, it's almost exactly the same methodology to produce. They both use a blend of high and low carbon steel to offset each other's weaknesses. To effect this mechanically in TFC, instead of welding two identical types of steel to form the billet to make the blade, weld one high carbon steel to one low carbon steel.

One of the images in the OP has Sphalerite listed at the northeast corner of the continent at coordinates -106, 173, -12,407 Gabbro is found in the same area.

What else are you going to fill barrels with, if not buckets?

Where, precisely, do you think the water in the irrigation channel came from? Water comes up from a well. These days, you use an electric pump. Back in the frontier era, it was hand-pumped, or perhaps windmill-pumped. If you ever find yourself in central Texas, I'll show you the system my family has been using for over a century, back when Texas was still part of Mexico, before it became an independent nation, much less before it joined the US. Original system was a hand-pump. That was probably rather tiring for the crops area, the one out by the horse stables is a pain to pump, but perfectly functional for refilling water troughs. Then someone got the bright idea to stick a windmill and something that looks rather like a pumpjack you'd find on an oil well to get water moving along at a steady clip. Best guess is that one was installed back in the days of Spindletop. But both of those require a lot more technical knowledge than Steve, in vanilla TFC, has. What we are doing here is called a 'deliberate anachronism', one that probably hasn't been used since the 1600's or so. The sort of thing that Timmy keeps falling down. Basically, we're talking about being a one-man bucket brigade, either manually filling the cistern that feeds the irrigation system manually or just hauling up one bucket at a time from the well to fill barrels. Again, we are talking verisimilitude, not realism. The mod's intent is NOT to replace something like the Aqueous Accumulator, or the BC Pump over a water source. If that is what you are looking for, there are many other mods that fill that niche. It is intended to be able to provide a water source in areas far away from natural fresh water sources (islands and mountains being two good areas) that produces a slow but consistent supply of water.

Have you actually ever used a well in real life? It takes time to haul the bucket down, haul it back up. The delay is simply representing physically hauling the water up and down the actual well itself. Plus as a matter of game balance.

Why not base it on average rainfall? It's already a variable used in determining which animals can spawn, and it would make sense. The less average rainfall in the area, the smaller and less productive the aquifer. Granted, it's not precisely accurate from a geological perspective, there are areas with low annual rainfall totals that get most of it in one season, then the entire flora and fauna biome literally depend on the aquifer for the rest of the year to live on, but it at least makes sense from a verisimilitude perspective. Perhaps also have a modifier based on y-level of the multiblock structure? So if water level is x, then at x+50 there's a .75 multiplier on refresh time, at x+100 it drops down to .5 or something like that. After all, it's going to take longer, and require more muscle power, to haul a water bucket a hundred meters up than it would only a couple dozen. Therefore, if your base is high in the mountains in a region with very low rainfall, your well isn't going to be nearly as productive as if it were closer to water level in a more humid climate. This not only lends verisimilitude, but also game balance. The more humid and lower the region is, the more likely you're going to have natural spawning of fresh water sources. So, the further away you get from that, the more scarce naturally occurring fresh water is, so the longer it will take the well to produce water for you. It balances itself, the more you absolutely need a well, the less productive it is going to be. Maybe also give it a minimum distance, say 25 squares, between wells for them to be effective? Or how about any wells within 25 blocks of each other share the same cooldown timer? Again, not entirely realistic, but lends itself to verisimilitude and game balance by preventing the player from spamming wells in a tight area to make up the volume. And if the player wants to try to cheese it by digging down, THEN putting their multi-block structure for their well, they are welcome to do so. Because now the player has to haul that water up and down whatever pit they dug, which is going to impose its own 'refresh rate' as it will take time for the player to get up and down. With these two modifiers, there's no need to put in a geome-based modifier

Here's another idea... Are you familiar with Agricraft? It's got a water cistern and wooden piping and sprinkler system that can be used for irrigation. More importantly, it accepts rainwater. Now, in Agricraft, the sprinkler speeds up growth ticks. Obviously, that's not going to be relevant in TFC, but it also hydrates the area, which IS of importance here. Basically, as long as the sprinkler is sprinkling, you don't need a water source block. This sort of system could be used for a TFC compatible irrigation system. It would be rain-dependent, but possible. Now then, back on topic, a well. I think a couple of folks here have it right in that you only need to drill down to sea level for a well to work, assuming you don't hit an artesian spring on the way down. However, instead of needing to craft a block, I would take a slightly different tack. I would have the well be a multiblock structure, a 3 x 3 x 3 to be precise. To create the base, you need stone bricks of any type with the center hollow. The second level are wooden vertical supports on two sides. The top layer are horizontal supports connecting them. Then you right, click the middle horizontal support with your bucket, which consumes the bucket in the process, to make your Well. As long as the hole in the middle of the well goes down to sea level, it will enable you to withdraw one bucket's worth of water (simple GUI, put bucket in, get water out) every x time frame. Slow, but it works. Combining these two does give you a chance to keep a hydrated field going, but it is going to require an awful lot of being a one-Steve bucket brigade. Having some water barrels lying around would not be a bad idea. How often it will need to be refilled will depend on how frequently it rains, and how big it is.

First off, an image with the seed so I don't screw it up: So that's: -3066559145316214044 You want a newbie-friendly area which has everything you need to skip copper tools and go straight to Bronze, with exposed Kaolinite, cliff faces with Copper, Bismuth, and Gold veins exposed to the surface, and with virtually every surface ore represented? Oh, how about some food while we're at it, like Bell Peppers, Green Beans, Tomatoes, a couple of Fruit Trees, and even a few berry bushes. Grains are also represented with Wheat, Barley and Rice. Then let's talk native animals. Granted, YMMV whenever we talk about animals, but I personally found Cows, Sheep, Pigs, and Horses in the explored areas. There's also several fresh water lakes, and there's also plenty of coastline as well. I also ran across Jute in my travels, although some of it was inaccessible on a cliff face. As far as Geome, a large part of it is Dacite, although in the central part of the continent along the northern coast there's an area where Gneiss extrudes to the surface in some truly exquisite formations, and also some Gabbro as well, which gives you the Sphalerite needed to start your Bismuth Bronze production up and running. As you go to the south and west, you'll encounter Conglomerate as it smooths out into plains, then south of that it will (eventually) become Marble! I didn't see any surface Graphite, however there's Marble and Gneiss both present, so hopefully there will be some below ground in that region. And of course, Marble is a flux stone. There's also several places where you can find surface Hematite, which means it's probably underground somewhere under there. Which means you've got everything showing, except Nickel and Graphite, necessary to boost you all the way to Steel. And since there is Gabbro present in a couple of places, odds are pretty good that you could find some Nickel somewhere. Since I've hit my data limit here with that one image, I'm gonna go ahead and link the album that has various points of interest A Finely Crafted Link This area seems to be too cold to house chickens, unfortunately, and you'll likely have to travel some distance to the north to find them. However, all the other husbandry animals are present, at least I found them in my experience, and there's plenty of Pheasants in the woods to get feathers from in the short-term. In short, you've got everything you need to kick-start yourself in surprisingly short order to at least the Iron age, if not pushing all the way to steel. This would be an excellent starting map for the newbie who is still trying to get used to all the many and varied changes that TFC has to offer. It doesn't hurt you for food or fresh water, it's got plentiful ores, it should have sufficient animals to tame... it really has it all.

Some ideas for this awesome concept: * Instead of a 'magic block' for your electric furnace and improvement, perhaps you could just make an 'electric heating element' that attaches to the existing Forge or Blast Furnace. Then the GUI for the electric heating element lets you regulate your temperature more precisely, and runs on RF. This takes advantage of, rather than replaces, current mechanics, and increases verisimilitude. The advanced electric heating element can let you set your 'work' or 'melt' temperatures as hotkeys in the GUI instead of just manually setting the temperature for ease of use, and runs faster. Immersive Engineering has such a block which will heat Furnaces adjacent to it. * For the Fridge, seeing the troubles the Cellar Mod had with this mechanic, your probably only way of doing this is as you have done it, which I suppose has a fair bit of verisimilitude built in. An ice box has been used for quite some time to keep stuff cold, long before electricity, and most electrical cooling devices that people interact with are going to be 1x1 or 1x2 or 2x1 meters, roughly. I do like the idea. How about a one-block that stores as much as a chest, and a two-block (horizontal or vertical) to store as much as a double chest? Or maybe even a full-on multiblock that takes the number of 'fridge' or 'freezer' blocks, and uses that to calculate RF requirements and capacity. * Electric Quern. Honestly? 'Electric Motor', put adjacent (or under) the Quern to automate it. Again, this brings verisimilitude, using an electrical motor rather than hand-power to turn your quern. But if you prefer, you can also take an existing quern, and craft it with the electrical components to come up with the electric quern. Since the Quern is a single block, in effect, it won't break verisimilitude to keep it that way. * Baking of clay goods. The mod Automated Bellows mod also has a Kiln which is used to bake clay goods. You can do something like that, then use the Electric Heating Element to regulate it and make it run off of RF. So again, the Electric Heating Element is doing a lot of these things itself, meaning fewer blocks for you to add and code, and an easier time overall. This also gives the player an intermediate clay hardening system between 'dig a pit and fill it with straw' and 'full electric automation' that I feel is missing in the core TFC experience (which is probably the sole reason I use the Automated Bellows mod). I strongly support this idea, and I hope you are able to flesh it out.

You know, I've been doing quite a bit in MC 1.10.2, and I must say, the boat mechanics have been VASTLY improved. They no longer have all the buggy glitchiness that the boats used to have, even on multiplayer servers. Since Mojang finally fixed their boats, it may well be that this topic might need to get revisited. Now, if you still want to do the island-hopping thing with conquering an island before going on to the next, and some sort of tiered progression of loot involved, that's absolutely great. However, needing a teleport mechanic just because boat mechanics suck is definitely going to need to be revisited, because the boat mechanics don't suck anymore. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the new boats are quite a lot of fun to play around with, as a means of personal conveyance across water. And I will also go so far as to include another reason to revisit the topic of teleports versus boats, and it's the same reason WoW uses flight paths for the new players to go from location to location instead of a teleport system. First, it gives players scope. If it takes time to get from area to area, it gives the player a sense of just how big the world is. Second, it gives the player a break from having to worry if they're going to get spontaneously jumped by something. You just get to sit sit back and relax for a bit. Third, you don't have to code in teleport from position to position code, which is just going to feel tacked on and immersion-breaking. Remember that TFC is largely about Verisimilitude. How are you going to keep that while having 'click to teleport' world-interaction items? It makes much more sense from an in-world position to have to make a boat and float your way to the next island. Of course, then we get to the old problem of trying to keep them on the right path. You may need buoys or something to mark paths to keep the player from getting lost, or have other identifiable terrain features that the player can go 'aha! that's x, so if I keep going to the left of that, I'll get to where I'm going'. Actually, identifiable terrain features work for several reasons, including something pretty to look at. Of course, then you get into the problem of Minecraft being an openly procedurally generated world versus being a scripted and pre-defined world. I think I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll cut myself off before the torch-and-pitchfork crowd catch up to me. tl;dr version: We may wish to revisit the idea of boats being non-viable with the vanilla boats actually having been fixed to not suck.

Ahh,. I thought Tetrahedrite was Zinc. Hmmm.. much better seed than I thought, then. The area is too hot and wet for cows. Rainfall is over 1000 and temp is up around 35. Temp needs to be down around 30 and the rainfall needs to be under 500 for Cows to spawn

Seed: 1798798586 And the seed screenshot A more complete map with Bismuthite shown You start off close enough to the equator that you've got a plethora of food. I passed by tons of chickens and pigs in the plains as I explored. Unfortunately, the geome is Quartzite so while I found a couple of Tetrahedrite and even a Sphalerite deposit, there was no surface copper to be found. Also marked on the map is a Hot Springs which is also conveniently located near a fresh water pond. The mountain to the south had some caves and it turned into Slate, so that might be more promising to prospect in. However, I suspect your first copper is going to come from (pun intended) pan-handling. Plenty of fruit trees which blossom in different seasons, some berry bushes, tons of Jute, several different types of cereal grains to select from, soybeans near spawn just inside the plains area, lots of clay deposits, several vegetables to pick from... in all, you aren't going hungry here, even if it will be challenging to break out of the stone age. Once you get do, however, chickens and nest boxes are going to provide a renewable supply of protein so the soybeans are going to be less important, and you have enough pigs in the area for pigsplosion and starting up a tannery. The only biological resources you may have to journey for are sheep and cows, which are going to be several thousand blocks away since you are so close to the equator. EDIT: There's Tetrahedrite (copper), Sphalerite (Zinc) and now I found a source of Bismuthite to make Bismuth Bronze with. Also, on the peninsula to the far east (2747,-6976) the eastern coast all the way half way down the continent on the shoreline is all Chalk, so you have abundant flux as well. In other words, an excellent starting seed that will take you into the Bronze Age before needing to expand your horizons.

I got it! The perfect suggestion! It's obviously the best suggestion ever and I don't even need to read anything to know that it is easily implemented and should be done immediately! You ready for this? Everyone knows rotten flesh currently has no use. Well, you can just set up a drying system to turn it into leather. Only you don't need to go through all the hassle with the barrels and stuff, that's too complex, no one wants to do that, so you just craft it with a knife to cut off all the rotten parts and hang it on a drying rack and wait. To balance it, you might need to wait a while, oh I dunno, maybe 8 in game hours or so. You see? I demand that this be implemented in the next patch or else I won't donate! (let's see... did I miss any buttons?)

I find the standard bow to be quite useful, even if you need a chicken farm to keep yourself supplied with arrows. The only thing you really shouldn't be shooting at are skeletons because they are immune to piercing. Since there are no Crushing ranged weapons in the game, you simply cannot engage in a ranged duel with a skeleton, you have to close with it. Other than that, a bow is one of my early targets once I have sheep (or get lucky enough for a few spider kills). Gunpowder weapons break verisimilitude for TFC. Don't expect that suggestion to be very popular. There is a mod around here that adds sinew and longbows you may wish to look into.