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Oleker

[79.17] Getting too punishing?

25 posts in this topic

First the support blocks no longer support dirt and gravel. Annoying, but something that we could live with. But now, this dirts and gravels, no longer supported by blocks, also completely destroy all the ore on the falling... I would agree with cobblestone doing that but... gravel and dirt also? We can't defend against them and they really screw up the surface veins.

Edited by Oleker
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Dirt and gravel are supported by support beams. However all gravity blocks if they fall into an area covered by support beams they will not be stopped.

From the ChangeLog

Support beams will now properly hold up dirt, gravel and cobblestone blocks. Sand is still not, and will never be supported by support beams. Note: Support beams will not catch blocks that are already falling, they are still for prevention, NOT protection. Fixed weird behavior when placing these blocks around support beams that caused them to occasionally shift sideways. Fixed supported dirt blocks disappearing when turning into grass.

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It's funny; I only started playing TFC a month ago, but soon discovered my ability to cause cave-ins to better uncover the ore blocks above me. So I would dig out a couple stone blocks until a dozen cobblestone dropped, and then mine out the remaining ore. It was sweet, but it felt like an exploit. And then what do they go and do? Fix it. Ha! I say, no problem, because I came to TFC for a challenge. Vanilla was too easy. So I'm glad for all the changes that make the game harder.

 

Honestly, I don't understand why support beams should work with dirt and gravel. Given the support beam's function, I don't see the application with these blocks. I can't put support beams under dirt and gravel before they start falling. They only work under stone after I've carved out a little area. For surface veins, you can put support beams directly under the first stone below the dirt/gravel. Or what I do, is just chisel all the stone directly under the dirt and gravel.

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I'm inclined to disagree with this statement. I believe a large proportion of the TFC community (including several prominent members) think that TFC is not punishing enough; this is shown through the numerous topics regarding TFC's in-game mechanics e.g. 'not dying from starvation/dehydration'.

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With the latest update, all too often I'd dig up some immediate-surface ore, only to see much of it destroyed by silly dirt block toppling into holes. You can't even mine an ore block with dirt directly on top of it without destroying all the ore immediately below it. It makes no sense that falling dirt or gravel or sand destroys ore.

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This was a change aimed at making players think differently and providing a very real threat to players underground. I honestly don't understand why some people have trouble with this. If what you're doing doesn't work, then change what you're doing. Digging straight to an ore vein and mining it directly is a very poor idea. Instead, once you've found the vein, go back the way you came a ways and carefully mine upward (or if you have a stairwell go up a ways) so that you can come to the vein from the top and then mine downward. This sharply reduces the risk of ore loss.

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If you have a surface mine suitable for open pit minig, just remove all dirt and gravel in a wider field. I have found a very promising surface gold mine and had to clear up about 15 x 15 blocks of dirt. Luckily just one layer. Then I dug a big hole in the ground, maybe 25 blocks deep. A nice pit it was! And a lot of gold in the cellar. Useless except the look. I love it.

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There's a config option to turn the ore destroying off if you dislike it so much. The option has been there since the release where we added it in the first place. Please make sure you are actually going through the config files before you complain about a mechanic you dislike, because chances are we've already given you the option to turn it off.

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This was a change aimed at making players think differently and providing a very real threat to players underground. I honestly don't understand why some people have trouble with this. If what you're doing doesn't work, then change what you're doing. Digging straight to an ore vein and mining it directly is a very poor idea. Instead, once you've found the vein, go back the way you came a ways and carefully mine upward (or if you have a stairwell go up a ways) so that you can come to the vein from the top and then mine downward. This sharply reduces the risk of ore loss.

 

 

 

I understand that the changes are aimed to make the player think about his mining technique, but to be honest, I hate the idea that the ore will just vanish (see note). Other than that, I do have a problem with the fact that a cave in can happen in a natural cave, where ore you don't see get destroyed, I think it's unfortunate.

 

It would be appreciated to have more detail about the area of protection granted by the support beams. From the wiki, I understand that the "protection" zone is based on the horizontal beams only in a 9x9x3 zone around it...

So if I understand properly, mining the floor can trigger cave-in as the floor is 3 blocks bellow the beam. Mining the bloc at your feet level can also trigger a cave-in as it's 2 bloc away. So if I start from the top of my ore vein and dig down... then there is risk of cave in because I do mine blocks that are not protected... and they can propagate the cave-in to protected blocks... that will fall and destroy ore... It's me who do not understand the support beams or here is something a bit unfair to me.

 

I would rather see something like ore fall as "cobblestone ore" blocks, that look the same as cobblestone blocks, so to mine the "lost" ore, you would have to clear all the fallen stone.

 

 

 

 

Note : There is also an important rule in physics "nothing is created nothing is destroyed" and I would say that I do not like when things do not respect this rule. Of course, I am able to make some compromises if it make sense. So for example, in agrarian skies, I think that it make sense to turn leaves in dirt, it's not exactly realistic, but it' believable.

The thing I do not like in other modpacks is creating stuff from nothing (not a fan of the forestry bees) and I do not like to void things (like in void pipe and trash can). 

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It would be appreciated to have more detail about the area of protection granted by the support beams. From the wiki, I understand that the "protection" zone is based on the horizontal beams only in a 9x9x3 zone around it...

So if I understand properly, mining the floor can trigger cave-in as the floor is 3 blocks bellow the beam. Mining the bloc at your feet level can also trigger a cave-in as it's 2 bloc away. So if I start from the top of my ore vein and dig down... then there is risk of cave in because I do mine blocks that are not protected... and they can propagate the cave-in to protected blocks... that will fall and destroy ore... It's me who do not understand the support beams or here is something a bit unfair to me.

 

You don't understand the mechanic. First and foremost, only mining raw stone triggers a cave in. It is perfectly safe to mine any ore block and you will not cause a cave in. The only time you will ever have issues is if you are mining raw stone.

 

Let's start with an image:

 

post-3005-0-86793200-1429140679_thumb.pn

 

The black blocks represents a cross-section of the area that is protected by the support beams. The white blocks represent a cross section of the top half of the area that is scanned if the chert block was broken (it also goes 2 blocks down). They grey blocks represent overlap.

 

Here's a chronological list of everything that must happen in order for a cave in to start:

  • A player mines a raw stone block.
  • The game reads what you have set as initialCollapseRatio in the config file
  • If the raw stone block is sedimentary stone, initialCollapseRatio is increased by 10%
  • The game randomly picks a number between 0 (inclusive) and the initialCollapseRatio (exclusive)
  • The above random selection picked the number 0.
  • The game at random selects 100 blocks in the scanned area of the mined block (which has a volume of 405 blocks), the same block in this area may be selected multiple times.
  • The game then checks individually for each of these blocks that they are a block that can be part of a cave in (raw stone or ore blocks), that it has a gap in the block directly underneath it, that it isn't within the range of a support beam's support, and that it has enough blocks above it to meet the minimumRockLoad config option.
  • Only if one of those blocks meets all of the listed conditions will it become the center of a cave in, that will then propagate out and spread to other blocks that also meet all of the above conditions

 

It is entirely your fault for mining blocks when there is something in the scan range that is not protected by a support beam, and has space underneath it. In the vast majority of cases, you are able to easily support every block before you start mining, and you are expected to do so. The scan range for mining a raw stone block is not that large, so it's not like mining the floor will trigger the ceiling, so you can always dig small holes in the floor to place your vertical beams in if your ceiling is lower than 3 blocks.

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You don't understand the mechanic. First and foremost, only mining raw stone triggers a cave in. It is perfectly safe to mine any ore block and you will not cause a cave in. The only time you will ever have issues is if you are mining raw stone.

 

Let's start with an image:

 

The black blocks represents a cross-section of the area that is protected by the support beams. The white blocks represent a cross section of the top half of the area that is scanned if the chert block was broken (it also goes 2 blocks down). They grey blocks represent overlap.

 

Here's a chronological list of everything that must happen in order for a cave in to start:

  • A player mines a raw stone block.
  • The game reads what you have set as initialCollapseRatio in the config file
  • If the raw stone block is sedimentary stone, initialCollapseRatio is increased by 10%
  • The game randomly picks a number between 0 (inclusive) and the initialCollapseRatio (exclusive)
  • The above random selection picked the number 0.
  • The game at random selects 100 blocks in the scanned area of the mined block (which has a volume of 405 blocks), the same block in this area may be selected multiple times.
  • The game then checks individually for each of these blocks that they are a block that can be part of a cave in (raw stone or ore blocks), that it has a gap in the block directly underneath it, that it isn't within the range of a support beam's support, and that it has enough blocks above it to meet the minimumRockLoad config option.
  • Only if one of those blocks meets all of the listed conditions will it become the center of a cave in, that will then propagate out and spread to other blocks that also meet all of the above conditions

 

It is entirely your fault for mining blocks when there is something in the scan range that is not protected by a support beam, and has space underneath it. In the vast majority of cases, you are able to easily support every block before you start mining, and you are expected to do so. The scan range for mining a raw stone block is not that large, so it's not like mining the floor will trigger the ceiling, so you can always dig small holes in the floor to place your vertical beams in if your ceiling is lower than 3 blocks.

 

Ok, so to trigger a cave-in, there must be a block in the scan area of 9x9x5 that have nothing under it AND is not in the support beam range, then the collapse chance is calculated from the collapse ratio.

 

In ravines, cliff and natural caves, it's harder to support everything before digging, that's why I think it's not always fair to the player, especially when you do not know that there is a natural cave across the wall or under your feet.

 

Will try to put in practice what you said! Thanks for the explanations. I think you should put it in the wiki.

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You've got it backwards, but yeah the end result is the same. The collapse ratio in the config determines if the block you mine is going to bother scanning around to look for something to collapse in the first place.

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It also only destroys ore blocks that the block falls on. There really is not a huge amount of ores found on the floors of caves/ravines. Sure there are some, but not a huge amount. And mining in natural caves is challenging, but remember that the scan area does not go up that far, besides you should clear the floor of ores first if you are afraid of them being destroyed.

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Maybe instead of just deleting the ore in general it has a small chance to give you a small version of that ore

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We're not going to change it. If you don't like it, turn it off in the config.

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I was mining some coal just a moment ago and had some dirt and gravel fall because I mined the block supporting it. Not a cave in, just regular ol' physics fall and it carved a 5 deep hole as it destroyed a line of coal under it. I'm not giving criticism or support to any game mechanic, I'm just saying it looked peculiar.

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That is how it works. Ore blocks that have a block fall on it, no matter how it happens, will be destroyed.

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Well I kind of like the idea of cave-ins, It adds a lot of realism and believability to the game. Not a big fan of destroying the ores, so I just turn that feature off in the config and everyone in my server thanked me for that.

In any case I am thankful for the Dev's that not only created this whole system of cave-ins and support beans, but even were generous enough to make a config file that give us the oportunity to choose only that features that we want to use in that specific case. I for myself have totally different play styles, depending if is single or multiplayer.

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Well I kind of like the idea of cave-ins, It adds a lot of realism and believability to the game. Not a big fan of destroying the ores, so I just turn that feature off in the config and everyone in my server thanked me for that.

In any case I am thankful for the Dev's that not only created this whole system of cave-ins and support beans, but even were generous enough to make a config file that give us the oportunity to choose only that features that we want to use in that specific case. I for myself have totally different play styles, depending if is single or multiplayer.

They added support beans? I want some of them; all I got are these crummy soybeans, and green beans, and...LOL

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Yeah is funny, the orthographic corrector only knows that the word exist, it has no idea if it is the right one in the context. It happens all the time with me. 

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I think this ore lost not is a big issue, look at the huge amount veins every where, one normal copper vein, and you have copper for a long time, and have more and more veins,  around 2k block area.If you us safe mine tecnics, you have no issues and gather most of ores of vein, IMO maybe most of people mine with random less work method diging all the directions the ore appears.

 

Example this mine is recent (79.17) mined and have no use of Support Beam, and no Ore is lost.

https://i.imgur.com/2haLxaj.jpg

 

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From my experiences, when I hit an ore vein there's so much of the stuff that even with a cave-in I'll still be swimming in ore. Ore being destroyed by cave-ins, at the most, is just a nuisance: at worst a "Goddammit!" especially if you've been searching far and wide for that ore.

 

With the extended generation of the sorts, chances are you're probably going to find all of the metals you need underground unless you somehow spawned in an island biome as if the mod was pulling a classic vanilla trick on you.

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To get around natural caves collapsing, couldn't stalactites be added to the scan, and if within x range, the block won't cave in? Caves tend to have at least a few in them, so this could stop/limit the destruction of natural caves when mining.  

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I only just started playing TFC, so I can't speak on relative differences from older versions, but the support system seems very simple to use to me, and very effective.  I've developed a strategy of mining a 4-high 'level' with 2 block thick layers of floor between.  That way I can spot-mine the floor and ceiling of each level, while getting the maximum convenient volume and saves maybe 30% of my pickaxe vs mining the entire volume  4-high levels also allow me to get a good number of natural stone blocks.   If I'm lucky enough the initial shaft comes down through the vein, I always mine down to the bottom of the vein, and work my way up. This is mainly so that I can mine out the floor ore while I'm on a given level, which I then replace with a block of cobble.  If you go top-down doing that, those floor cobbles from upper levels will be unsupported (being 2 above the beams below) when you mine out the ceiling ore in the next level down, and if you happen to mine an ore right below a cobble you put in the floor above, that cobble will fall.  Going bottom-up means that there's no cobble above you yet, and also even if a cave-in somehow happens, I've already mined all the ore below anyway so as long as I survive, no big deal.

 

I honestly think the support system is fairly forgiving as there have been a couple times where I accidentally destroyed a support column, and all adjacent beams (pit kiln too close) and the entire area did nothing, which surprised me greatly.  Nowadays my caveins are usually just on the initial hollowing out of the first 3 rock columns to place the first two support columns and single beam between.  After that, smooth sailing.

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Only mining raw stone can trigger cave in. As long as support beams aren't holding up gravity affected blocks nothing will fall when support beams are removed. My method is place initial support, mine 3 blocks place an upright and connect that to initial support. Mine 3 blocks place upright, remove centre upright and connect to initial support. Repeat. This gives the max 5 block span and keeps all mined blocks supported.

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