Sevtech-ages: Suggestion: Thermal Foundation Mod Suite

[SphynxLoL]

Before I get started, I want to give my appreciation for all the time and hard work put into this pack. The staging and advancements are great. I would just like to throw this out there and maybe get some opinions on adding the Thermal Foundation suite (mainly Thermal Expansion) to the pack.

Key Reasons:

• Bitumen Dump - I would assume most people usually have at least one distillery running even though ages 5-6. The accumulation of Bitumen is pretty insane. With TE we could recycle it back to Oil and help lengthen the amount of Oil/per IE Chunk/Node.
• Slag Dump - Tons and tons of Slag. Feels very... odd to just automatically throw a Trash Can next to every slag producing machine. With TE we could use it towards ore processing or plant fertilizing (phytogenic insolator).
• Sawmill - At Ages 5-6, the Better With Mods Saw doesn't cut it (no pun intented) when it comes to speedy automation. I've gone to Eris and back and I'm still using a water/wind powered saw to cut wood? The Sawmill from TE would allow easier, faster, and more compact options when it comes to Auto-crafting all wood related products.
• Compactor - While the IE Metal Press is a great multi block, it is really REALLY slow (and quite large). Also it is really cluncky when it comes to mass auto-crafting. If you queue a large craft and the items sit on the belt for too long, they will despawn and you lose materials. This is mostly for plates, compression, and decompression of items. I would love to have those 3 items available to craft from the Compactor. I'm cool with using the Metal press for everything else (wires, gears, rods, etc.).
• Better transport (Thermal Dynamics) - There isn't many options for high tier transfer "pipes". It's either Mekanism or Xnet. I've always been a huge fan of the Thermal Dynamics pipe system and I haven't played a pack without it in many many years.

These are just a handful of great reasons to add/expand onto this wonderful pack. I know a lot would have to be gated and pretty much all the recipies would have to be tweaked to not use Thermal Foundation ores/ingots, but I really think it would add a lot of QOL features to the "end game" of SevTech.

Again, I am incredibly appretiative of all the time and hard work put into this pack. Definitely one of my favorite packs of all time and I look foward to seeing how it progresses.

[DaedalusGame]

Bitumen - Concrete (but maybe could have some kind of chemical mixer recipe added for... something?)
Slag - Concrete (listen, upgrade all your dirt roads)
Sawmill - Mekanism Sawmill will be available in the next update from what I hear
Compactor - Build more metal presses or add a hopper buffer to the metal press to prevent items from despawning?

[SphynxLoL]

My entire base is paved with concrete and I still have a fully upgraded drawer almost filled with Bitumen. Slag is getting trashed. Mekanism sawmill would be a great implement. More metal presses = more room. 1 setup is 1x6 and produces about 1 plate per second. Dedicating a 4x6 area for 4 plates a second doesn't seem like a very practical option.

As I said, Thermal Expansion would be more of a QOL addon that would put a lot of waste material to good use. Turning it all into concrete doesn't fix the problem.. you'd just end up with drawers of concrete instead of bitumen and slag.

[RandomLibrarian]

After played by this pack I was going early surprised it isn’t in here. Would have been a really great piece of progression all throughout the pack to make more incremental upgrades. Auto sorting by storage is very low tech but would have been fun as heck prior to storage drawers/ obsidian chests.

[Phantum]

Could just have a machine in modular machinery that does those items as well, without increasing the burden of yet another mod.

Could turn it into a fun process design if enough effort was put into it, and as someone who works in the city right next to the largest bitumen deposit in the world, I highly agree! ^.^

http://www.oilsandsmagazine.com/technical/bitumen-upgrading

[artdude543]

From the get-go on the development of the modpack. All the CoFH mods were discussed as not going to be in the modpack. For various reasons, I'll mention a few here but Dark could add onto if he feels the need too.

1. Most modpacks have the mod included as they feel it's needed when inadvertently it's not needed at all.
2. We wanted to show of the mods which are not "out there" or used a lot. To support all kinds of developers and/or mods which add small to large about of methods to gaining access to resources.
3. TE is cool don't get us wrong but it does not match the feel this pack is going for. Compact is nice but we want people to create large factories and learn new ways to automate things from X to Y not using a single block to do it, all the time. You have access to Compact Machines if you want to off load some things to them and use a "single" block for In/Out access so that's a soultion for the "compact" people in the world.

We are not hating or rejecting the mods at all. They are all well designed (and I'm a TE lover anyway) but it did not meet our spec for the pack, even changing the recipes won't help with that.

_There are more reaons but these are the main one on my head at the moment._

But in regards to the outputs; I do belive we need to make a modular machine and/or recipes to help create a usage for the "waste" per say. But it may not land in the next update depending on timing and what not.

But to help if you want to come up with ideas on what we could do, we will look into it. (If we could have real-world conversion that would be awesome too!)

But thank you for taking the time to list your reasonings for your feel for the mods, it was a nice read and sparked some ideas I have!

[Phantum]

The link I shared artdude has a fairly simplistic description on how the refinement of bitumen operates, if you guys are interested.

[Rhythm-Boss]

Not to mention, Mekanism cables are buggy as hell and create MASSIVE frustration on the multiple servers I play on. With only Mekanism and Cyclic cables being an option, dozens of players have stopped playing. Hell, just make all of Thermal [etc] Age 5 or age creative, just for the QoL, no real need to add staging for each part of it, no need to add quests, or even make it much more harder to get the machines and cables, because HONESTLY, none of the dozens of players we have are happy with the poor choice of cable/pipe options.
Edit: At LEAST you guys should add Thermal Dynamics, even if you don't add the Thermal Expansion machines.

[artdude543]

None of CoFH mods are being added to the pack ever. That as we don't have any space Id's for the mods as they are reserved for other mods.

Mekanism are working on the issue but it's going to take time to do so.