Don't have mining charges turn smoothstone into gravel

[Sarudak]

Or if you do make it a low chance of it happening.

I wanted to express my one relatively small concern before you went back to address the mining charges and gravel issue and I didn't want to clutter up the release thread so I decided to make a new thread here. My concern here is the loss of a potential opportunity for a really interesting automation project. That would be a machine that automatically sets up a 3x3x3 cube of cobble (with a hole in the top for max efficiency) and drops a mining charge into it to collect the gravel. This machine would require some interesting timing and piston/block dispenser mechanics as well as redstone counting. So a pretty cool machine. The problem is if mining charges produce gravel directly from smoothstone I (and I think most others) would never have the motivation to build such a machine. I would just use all my mining charges manually for hollowing out areas in stone because then I get double benefit from them. I really think there's nothing wrong with two separate usages for the mining charges. It even more strongly encourages automation of the resource chain (because you need more) and encourages the player to put forth effort to setup a gavel producing machine rather than just gathering it incidentally while doing regular mining (which is no different than how we get gravel now).

Now it might be interesting if it had a low chance of producing gravel from smooth stone (like ~10%). Then it would actually be a meaningful choice. Use it for automation to get a high gravel return or use it for regular mining and get a low gravel return. Rather than a no brainer of use the charges manually for max benefit (I mean there's never any shortage of places I want to mine/hollow out). Thank you for your consideration.

PS: Sorry FC if this is unwelcome spoilers for you I just wanted to express my concern.

[FlowerChild]

No, what you're saying definitely makes sense, and I appreciate it :)

How people will respond is another matter entirely though ;)

I have a number of factors to consider with this man. Not everyone automates like this, and we're talking about a highly complex machine by comparison to some others, so in terms of incentivising use of Mining Charges (again, one of my goals with this change) I think that going this route would largely fail.

What I'm thinking is that most people will probably not even realize mining charges convert cobble if I go that route. They'll build a few, try them out for mining, get no gravel, and then move on to something else. If they work on smoothstone however, the conversion is much more obvious, and they have a reason to start using them in their regular mining.

It may seem weird that I am promoting a manual task here, as opposed to the automated version thereof, but I really have the impression that Mining Charges have become the ugly bastard child that no one talks about of the BTW family. I think without promoting their manual use, most people will never even get to the stage of considering using them in automation.

And again, this is all for the sake of providing fun as Mining Charges are indeed that, they just don't have enough "oomph" to them to get people using them regularly.

Anyways, will consider it further today. I've already made the change, but will likely work on a few more things before releasing (I do want to get a small release out today though to fix the item conversion aspect), so I'll mull it over in the meantime. There are definitely pros and cons on each side.

[jorgebonafe]

It may seem weird that I am promoting a manual task here, as opposed to the automated version thereof, but I really have the impression that Mining Charges have become the ugly bastard child that no one talks about of the BTW family.

Really? Well, I guess I don't really talk about them, but I do love them.... Mining with explosives is a feature I always wanted since way before mining charges existed, and I love using them... I would think maybe there isn't much talk about them because their use is a bit straightforward... And they are expensive, so it takes a while to gather enough resources to use them effectively... I wouldn't call them the "ugly bastard child" though :P

[morvelaira]

Honestly, when I'm ready to build my Tower of Doom (tm) for real in my LP... Mining charges are going to be bread and butter to start. No way I can appreciably dig that out by hand and still put out videos on a regular basis ;)

[FlowerChild]

Really? Well, I guess I don't really talk about them, but I do love them.... Mining with explosives is a feature I always wanted since way before mining charges existed, and I love using them... I would think maybe there isn't much talk about them because their use is a bit straightforward... And they are expensive, so it takes a while to gather enough resources to use them effectively... I wouldn't call them the "ugly bastard child" though :P

Well, you're largely using them though because they're fun rather than practical right? That's kinda my point here. There may be devotees of the mod that are using them because they *are* fun, but in order to motivate others to have that fun, there has to be a practical aspect to them as well, which I guess is what I feel is lacking.

Almost everyone wants more sand though for their building projects (myself included). If you know that you can get that sand by using Mining Charges while you mine, which you are likely going to be doing periodically anyways, then suddenly they become a much more viable option. And once you are habituated to using them, you start thinking of other applications for them.

Honestly, I don't even find myself using them very often, and that's always a warning sign for me.

[Zhil]

Hmm, you can still make your machine with a smooth stone generator, which isn't that hard to make really.

I do agree that automated gravel should be possible, though not easy.

[Sarudak]

Hm... I see your point. It's true they probably don't see enough use. If I remember right when you introduced them it was with the intention of them possibly being used in automated mining. But I personally would never use them like that as you have to manually collect the drops and there's too much chance of them ending in a lava pit. That leaves them with the primary use of manually hollowing out large spaces underground whether for construction or mining. I personally have only used them for hollowing out space for construction for which I found them very enjoyable and effecient to use the only thing is how resource intensive they are to produce.

If I had enough of them I think I would use them almost exclusively for hollowing out large areas. Maybe part of the problem is the ROI for making them? If they hollowed out a 5x5x5 area (this would probably be excessive actually). Or if you got 3 instead of 2 I could definitely see myself become a lot more interested in expending the significant amount of effort in automating the entire supply chain. Proviso being I have never actually automated that supply chain so I don't really know it's production capacity.

That said what if they only provided 20-30% of the blocks as gravel when used on smoothstone so that there's some incentive to create the machine I was describing?

Hmm, you can still make your machine with a smooth stone generator, which isn't that hard to make really.

I do agree that automated gravel should be possible, though not easy.

I always *can* make my machine. The point is there's no motivation if I can get the same gravel return from my mining charges AND mine out an area I wanted cleared. 27 gravel from every mining charge on smoothstone seems to easy IMO. I mean I have half a stack of charges and I haven't even automated anything yet. That's 13 stacks of gravel! Without any automation needed.

[jorgebonafe]

Well, you're largely using them though because they're fun rather than practical right?

No, not at all... Making branch mines is way easier with mining charges... I make a tunnel and then put mining charges along both walls, then colect, repeat :) Its way faster then digging with picks.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, after further consideration: let's try it your way Sarudak.

The progression from smooth to cobble to gravel feels much more natural (which is why I did the item thing). Also, this change does provide more power to the Mining Charges, and does further incentivise their use. No reason to go whole-hog on it right out of the gate, as I can observe what kind of impact the change has on players, and then if need be make them even more powerful later by allowing them to blast smooth as well, whereas if I feel I need to Nerf them in the future, it will obviously be much more disruptive to people and their play habits.

My general rule of thumb is: when in doubt, err on the side of making something too hard rather than too easy.

So yeah, good point. Cobble only it is. I almost did something similar to what Mojang did with XP in making a number of changes at once to balance rather than doing it incrementally.

On a much smaller scale mind you ;)

[Ethinolicbob]

Well, you're largely using them though because they're fun rather than practical right?

I find Mining Charges used in tandem with Better Ore Distribution extremely practical.
While there is drawbacks to the mod (in my current world I was unable to find diamonds for an extremely long time, thus having no access to the nether and unable to progress BTW) but once a vein is located you know there is going to be concentrations of the particular material within ~50 blocks of the epicentre. Branch mine, lay charges and blow the area to hell. Super effective!
I still need to work out how to automate minecart load and unload so I can have a minecart going back and forward from the mine to base.

[Sarudak]

Woooo! :D

I almost did something similar to what Mojang did with XP in making a number of changes at once to balance rather than doing it incrementally.

Please don't say such things about yourself.

[FlowerChild]

Please don't say such things about yourself.

That's how I continue to learn ;)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Actually mining charges might need some rebalancing in general, but I'm definitely in favour of this change for some reason. I've never really used those charges yet, but a sand generator? I'll take it any time, any day.

[Urian]

Gaaaah, for the love of all that's.... NO! Please don't do that! As you yourself pointed out in the beginning of the thread (before you got swayed by populism ;) ) having it turn both smooth stone and cobble into gravel promotes its use when mining while having it only work on cobble only has the opposite effect since people will save it for their gravel making. Unless you have some future content planned which will require gravel, sand or sandstone I don't see the point of making what is essentially only a building block exactly like cobble into a resource that has a requirement on automation on the same level as SFS. I'm all for complicated machinery and systems when it comes to valuable material but gravel and its byproducts aren't any more valuable than cobble or smooth stone.

Seriously, I urge you to reconsider on this issue once again. The highest cost for a basic block? It just doesn't make any sense and it's detrimental to the use of charges when mining.

[Flesh_Engine]

While this is most likely already considered i'd like to point it out anyway;

What if the Mining Charges converted smooth stone => cobble and cobble to Gravel. If a player dropped 1 charge then he'd have cobble, drop another one and you have gravel. Since they convert cobble to gravel Sarudak can make his machine and since it converts smooth stone to gravel after using up 1 craftings worth of Mining Charges, FC can still have players notice that they get a nice bonus for using the charges.

Aside from that, i'd also join the "buff it a tad" bandwagon, nothing mayor, maybe add another "depth" level to the directional charge.

[Battosay]

but I really have the impression that Mining Charges have become the ugly bastard child that no one talks about of the BTW family.

Plain wrong here.
Digging large areas underground became so tedious and boring to me, that if they were not here, I would have stop, and started building above ground.
In the last two months I think I crafted at least 30 or 40 stacks of them, and used them all.
And every day I make sure my Breeding farm is working, for the tallow, my reed farm got expanded, for the paper, I grind a dozen of Netherrack, for the Hellfire, and I convert the Soul dust I got from my Bloodwood farm into Saw dust, again, for the Dynamite.
Most of my activities revolves around them, since they are the most expensive blocks to make, imo.
It's not that nobody uses them, just that there's not so much reason to talk about it on the forums ;)

About their power : Why should they be more powerfull ? I don't see any problem with 3x3.
And about the smooth stone thingy, agreed, it should only make gravel with cobble stone, and drop cobble stone with smooth stone.
This way we can still use the mining charges to get cobble, and we'll have to build a machine (a very cool one) to turn cobble into gravel. That's the BTW route, to me ;)

[Urian]

Exactly because they're the most expensive/complicated item to produce I say that it would be better if it turned smooth stone directly into sand since otherwise there's a risk that people will consider them too expensive to make for both mining and sand generating.

If we can only make gravel from cobble then the cost for sandstone (which I'd guess might be what most people are interested in besides glass) would be
6 3/4 sandstone blocks cost
9 reed
3 sawdust
3 hellfire dust
3 tallow
1 rope
½ glue

If the gravel is gotten as a byproduct when we mine or dig with the mining charges then it's a nice bonus, if it's something we need to choose between then it turns into the most expensive item in the mod. For a top tier item such as SFS or whatever comes next it would be perfectly fine but for what is essentially just an alternative to cobblestone this strikes me as unnecessary and something that does the opposite of promote the use of charges for digging.

[Marasambala]

I support the smoothstone to cobble as well. I hate mining manually so much, that I exclusively use mining charges; explosions make it fun (I love the sound of explosions in the morning.) That being said, I wouldn't really have a source of cobble for building if mining charges only made gravel. I think I like the percentage concept, too. Maybe like 10% does turn to gravel. You want more?...automate.

[Urian]

I support the smoothstone to cobble as well. I hate mining manually so much, that I exclusively use mining charges; explosions make it fun (I love the sound of explosions in the morning.) That being said, I wouldn't really have a source of cobble for building if mining charges only made gravel. I think I like the percentage concept, too. Maybe like 10% does turn to gravel. You want more?...automate.

There already are cobble generators that only need a block dispenser, that's the easiest way to get cobble for building :p (you can also make smooth stone generators by changing the water and lava flows)

[Marasambala]

There already are cobble generators that only need a block dispenser, that's the easiest way to get cobble for building :p (you can also make smooth stone generators by changing the water and lava flows)

For me, that's always felt like an exploit. Although, with all the recent and upcoming changes to BTW, I'm willing to contemplate this further :)

[Itamarcu]

Wow, that's quite an unusual amount of discussion.
In my opinion, Mining charges shouldn't make gravel from smooth stone at any case. Only cobblestone. I prefer to have it look and "feel" better in terms of realism than have it instantly become gravel, which seems like an artificial thing added only to show new players the abilities of Mining Charges.

I, personally, almost never create fully automated cobble generators. Why? I just have enough cobblestone from mining. An extra amount is only important for huge projects, and I think mining charges should help you with it. Mining a mountain to get materials for your castle sounds a lot more interesting than creating a cobblestone generator.

Gravel, on the other hand, is a lot more fun to create. Sure, you start with a cobble generator, but you need to make a complex piston-BD machine in order to optimize it, which is quite interesting. The only other "farm" that uses pistons that way is a Mossy Cobblestone farm, which is quite special.

[XantyZon]

I like the idea of mining charges making gravel out of cobblestone. I use a lot of gravel for aesthetics. I find with this change I'm more inclined to make Cement Buckets. As for smoothstone being turned straight into gravel I would enjoy it as well but, I wouldn't mind having an extra step. (smothstone = cobblestone = gravel)

[Calcifire3691]

When FC announced the release yesterday (or was it today? wow sleep deprivation really messes with your sense of time) the first thing I thought was "wait, so we can't get cobble from mining charges anymore?"

the way I'm understanding what sarudak suggested was that it goes SS + MC = CS, CS + MC = G, which Ipersonally LOVE the idea of, we can make our own blast chambers for making gravel, whilst keeping the old functionality of charges (becaue really, how often did you use a charge on cobble?)
and like FC says, it simulates the repeated explosions making the stone into smaller pieces :P

[Urian]

My main gripe with it is that it's IMO too expensive for producing a building block. Automating things is all well and dandy but this feels like something that is automated just for the sake of automating rather than making it a way to get gravel or sand/sandstone away from deserts. Something like having it able to only convert cobble to gravel but it's got a chance to convert cobble in item form as well (perhaps with a max limit) could work. That way you could choose to go with automation for a way that requires little input once it's been supplied with materials but a higher cost or with something that requires you to take a more active part but has a better efficiency. The automation part would be nice once you're established in your world and have an abundance of charges while the manual version works better when you're still building and might have a huge amount of cobble that you want to convert.

[Zhil]

What about Mining charges blow up cobble in a 5x5 area, turning it into gravel? Still doesn't make it more powerful for mining, but it does make it a lot more interesting for gravel automation.

Don't know, I understand Urian's concerns, I just don't think messing with turning items into other items is conductive to game-play.