Binders Full of Mods

You know, I never paid any attention to what that whole binders full of women thing was during the presidential campaign. I heard it mentioned, but never actually learned what it was about. I just assumed it was crazy, Mormon, misogynistic, and involved Kolob.

There are so many fucking mods in Minecraft on our server. One problem I have is overlap between them. Each big mod has a system for ore processing, most mods have different systems for ore processing, automating mining, and farming, and a few have different systems of enchantment, or for managing livestock, etc etc etc. 

I tend to like the aesthetics of the Buildcraft based mods like Buildcraft, Forestry, and Thermal Expansion and would likely go with those without complaint. I dunno, I just really like the tube transport system and the moving engines. But, you can't competently ignore the Industrial Craft stuff, which doesn't use the same power as the Buildcraft mods, because it has fantastic stuff like electric rechargeable tools and highly advanced gear like jet packs and armor that uses energy instead of durability. However, all the Industrial Craft blocks are ugly gray metal squares. The engines and blocks of BC based mods tend to have more colorful textures and effects. Which are neat.

There is a mod that creates power converters to convert stuff from one energy source to another, but I haven't enabled it on our server because it feels like cheating to me.

Personally, I prefer power generation based on green resources, rather than burning coal or charcoal or solar power. I use fermenters and stills and tree farms to produce biomass, biofuel, and ethanol to power my shit. I also use a little bit of lava for my quarry engines. If I wanted to be creepy, I could use the MineFactory Reloaded mod and harvest meat products from livestock and create meat. Which is a liquid. Which can be pumped into some Buildcraft engines as a power source. Or I could compress it into meat blocks and cook them for food. 

Ick.

I haven't touched Thaumcraft at all this time around, simply because I haven't felt like investing the time. I have started experimenting with the ME (matter energy) storage system. Basically you build some special blocks and storage media and store all your shit as data and create a bunch of interfaces to craft and store items. It's super neat. One of the big issues with Minecraft is all the crap you end up collecting and having to store or find a convenient way to get rid of. So you end up with rooms and rooms full of chests. The ME system is super expensive and uses primarily gold and diamonds, which are hard to find in large amounts, but I have several thousand items stored in one block that took up an entire 9x9x3 room in my base full of barrels. Barrels are an item from another mod that can store up to 4,096 of a single item. Not even half of my barrels were full, but most were at half full. I have lots of crap. Having a storage device that not only stores a shit ton of stuff, but condenses the space, is really glorious.

I haven't really figured out what I want to do now that we've rebooted the server. I've experimented with a few of the new mods, which has been interesting and fun. There's one called Dartcraft that seems to be inspired by the Zelda games. The ore it installs looks much like the triforce, and the armor you can create with it strongly resembles Link's outfit from the games. 

I've basically just been getting my base situated and automating resource collecting, but I don't know what I want to do with all the shit I have. Once again, I find myself groping for a sort of creative project to engage. I still have some work to do on power generation and getting that completely squared away. I think I just came up with a decent solution though. We'll see. 

I've kind of been toying once again with building something iconic from DnD. But once again, I come to the realization that most people aren't really aware of what all the iconic legendary dungeons are or what they look like. Still, it might be kinda cool to say that "Yeah, that's Castle Ravenloft." over there. I dunno. I'll figure something out, or I'll get bored. I might end up slipping into creative mode, which I can do as an admin, and create dungeons all over the place for people to stumble upon and sneak through. That might be cool.