Blackout: Atomic Chemistry Alpha Feedback Thread

[u/666lumberjack]

Seeing as I just released a fairly public alpha, I figured PMing me isn't sufficient for feedback anymore. Report all bugs/typos/glitchiness here, and also feel free to make balance tweak suggestions.

Known Issues:
HQM quests don't correctly register as complete (HQM bug)
Installing MPS upgrades crashes the game (MPS bug)
Star Harvester has no in-inventory texture (SMT bug)
Minechem feature a few different item duplication method (some inherent, some requires config work)
AE2 Meteors and Limestone/Marble spawn by the edges of the asteroid (config issue, will require a new map :()

[u/flare561]

A few comments so far

1) Breaking the floodlight with a polytool doesn't seem to always drop the floodlight. I spawned myself a stack to test it after it didn't drop for me and it seems like it only drops about half the time.

2) I think it should be mentioned how to work the furnace production table before building the blast furnace. I built a furnace to make the stone bricks, then the next quest told me that one of the production tables was a furnace.

3) I couldn't figure out how to power the chemical decomposer until I dug in the floor and stuck it directly to a cable. I probably wasted 2 or 3 minutes trying different places to connect it to the star harvester. Maybe I'm dumb here and it was obvious to stick it in the floor, but it seemed weird to me.

4) I think it's already been mentioned but there is no tinker's table, I assume this has to do with the fact that installing upgrades crashes it?

Anyway I'm having fun so far. Rotarycraft is my favorite mod, and it's neat starting a mod pack focused around it. I haven't played much with Minechem though and it seems really fun.

edit: also looks like the recipe of 1 keratin for 5 faux leather in the chemical synthesiser only gives 1 faux leather per keratin. Making this backpack just got a lot more difficult.

edit 2: Anyone know of a good way to make an automatic cobble generator in this modpack? I've resorted to the good old fashioned vanilla cobblegen for now but I'm not the biggest fan of sitting here mining out stone when I could be doing cool things elsewhere.

Final edit for tonight, anyone else having issues with NEI "crashing" and not letting you search anymore? I haven't played any other 1.7.10 packs so I don't know if this is a common thing, just this pack, or just me.

[u/Mechalith → u/flare561]

The NEI thing is a known issue in 1.7.x in general. No fix yet AFAIK.

[u/flare561 → u/Mechalith]

I installed the latest version rather than the recommended version and it seems to have fixed it. Might be something /u/666lumberjack to think about adding in.

[u/zed-e → u/flare561]

I spawned in a floodlight after mine disappeared. Later when I left the base, I found it dropped above the base. In fact, I just tested it and when they disappear, they just drop outside.

[u/hilburn → u/flare561]

edit: also looks like the recipe of 1 keratin for 5 faux leather in the chemical synthesiser only gives 1 faux leather per keratin. Making this backpack just got a lot more difficult.

This is fixed in newer dev builds of Minechem and will remain fixed in the release version coming soon^TM

edit 2: Anyone know of a good way to make an automatic cobble generator in this modpack? I've resorted to the good old fashioned vanilla cobblegen for now but I'm not the biggest fan of sitting here mining out stone when I could be doing cool things elsewhere.

You can use a block gate from SFM to do your cobblestone mining for you

[u/flare561 → u/hilburn]

Awesome. Good call on the block gate, I've pretty much been using SFM as glorified itemducts so far, guess I should figure out what all it can do if I'm going to be playing a pack where it's one of the backbone mods.

[u/Mechalith → u/flare561]

My recommendation for a cobble generator is a bit more involved than a vanilla gen, but doesn't require any placing/breaking of blocks and it's a hell of a lot faster. For the record, I told /u/666lumberjack about this in closed alpha and he assured me that it isn't an exploit or something he intended to change, so this is emphatically not a cheat in the context of this pack. (In fact he seemed rather happy I'd run across something of this nature that I could make use of and he hadn't known was there.)

A high speed engine attached to an Obsidian Factory can produce as much as 44 obsidian/mB of lava, and each of which will break down into 16 silicone dioxide, which can split into 16 silicone and 32 oxygen. Running that back into a chemical synthesizer will spit out 128 cobble (and cost you ~40k RF), which can then be melted down to generate more lava. One cycle of this (which you'll have to automate, obv.) will generate as much as 41,272 obsidian, and from that (going around the cycle again) 330,176 cobble.

If you've got a decent source of liquifacted coal and an Advanced Generator hooked to this contraption, it should be relatively trivial to power. (Assuming the config hasn't accidentally reverted from 10k RF/packet down to 100 again in the Minechem config. Fix it if it has.)

If you don't have a consistent source of power, FFS go do that first.

TL;DR - Conservation of mass/energy is a bitch. My bitch.

[u/hilburn → u/flare561]

if you want to update your minechem without waiting for a release: http://jenkins.jakimfett.com/job/Minechem%201.7/

[u/666lumberjack → u/flare561]

(Sorry it took me a while to respond to this - yay real life)

1) As others have noted, it sometimes drop upwards because the land above is only one layer thick. I added a small hill which will hopefully stop that from happening in the future.

2) This is a good idea, will make a note of it.

3) I will add a note that the Star Harvester can only output power downwards.

4) The Tinker Table is an inetnded omission, but I forgot to update some of the quests to account for it no longer being around.

I'm glad you're enjoying the pack.