FTB Ultimate: LAN fail, bees & Mystcraft

3/23/2022 FTB Ultimate

I have tried a few times to open a LAN game and let Anne log in from her laptop, but we always hit some kind of security blockage.  I have no idea what to do at that point.  Do I have to configure specific ports and then tell every layer of protection to allow some kind of access?  Probably.  I did it years ago, but it feels like systems have gotten more complex, with more ways to be blocked.  So, I am looking at putting one or more of my worlds up on a hosting company, probably ScalaCube, but only for a very limited batch of friends.  I don't expect that Chris would come back, now that Justin has died and there are some of his old builds here and there.  Maybe Andy and my brother Jim will come visit.  Anne would certainly do a visit together on weekends, which will be fun.  Doug says he lost his password years ago, and that's the end of that.  A shame.  From 1.1 to 1.4.7 to 1.5.2 days we had a few worlds where there was usually someone online each day.  I'm not expecting some insane system like Hermitcraft or 2B2T, or anything hosting dozens of active YouTubers, just a way for other people to see these things.

In episode 25 of that old Hermitcraft series (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArvrMhHuW3A ), Hypno did a mythbusting setup for the alvearies.  He showed that while you can make every block except the top center 5 blocks into frame housings -- that's 22 housings -- you can get the optimum output of a bee's specialty product with just SIX proven frames.

It's funny when I think of projects in my head.  Part of me wants to do the high-tech stuff, part of me wants to at least try every mod a little -- I still haven't found one single bit of Thaumcraft work in this world -- part of me wants to decorate and fix up all the dirt floors and crude tunnels, part of me wants to do more bee stuff and tree stuff, part of me wants to keep going on IC2 crops to see if there are any GregTech crops in this version, and part of me just wants to fly off and build a peaceful new place in some weird dimension.

So what did I start off with?  Building a new Railcraft tank farm on the big flat grassy lot beyond the lightning rod.  There is room for a 3x4 grid of 5x5x5 tanks, separated by three blocks.  Each will hold 2,000 buckets of liquids.  I want these to be basic elements, not fuels or weird waste products.  I listed all liquids back around March 3, and the top candidates are:

berylium, calcium, hydrogen, lithium,
mercury, methane, nitrogen, potassium,
silicon, sodium.  Add molten redstone, molten ender, I guess, since they are "elements" ot the Minecraft world.

Not needed: chlorite (no use for it), [NO2] (no use in game).  [N] can be made from saltpeter, can be used to make saltpeter and turns coalfuel into nitrocarbon cells.

On the other side, by the coalfuel plant, maybe three more for diesel, nitro-diesel and nitro=coalfuel someday.

Well, just the top and bottom of each tank is 48 tank walls & 2 valves.  The sides involve 2 valves, 18 windows, 34 more tank walls.  Yikes.  Good thing I setup that little xy fabricator line under the plate bending machine.

(2115) Four iron tanks done, many stacks of iron ore sent to industrial grinder, many stacks of ingots turned to plates.  It's a big operation.  I also cleaned up the main tunnels while I was down there, with one line of road blocks down the middle and stone on either side.  The walls have a row of stone at bottom then two rows of dirt (I like the more natural color).  Some areas are lit with those cool inverted cage lamps, but I just put down some inverted road lights.  I should probably add an invar workshop somewhere, since I had forgotten that those various lamps were even a thing.  There are lamps, fixtures & cage lamps in all colors, but I really only like the white ones, and the actual lighting is white anyway.

It's fun doing things on an industrial scale sometimes.  Just now, I pulled 8 stacks of stone from the ME network, turned it to stone bricks and added it to the xy fabricator in the rubber workshop to make 8 stacks of road blocks.  Then, over at the bee lab, 4 stacks of oak logs -> impregnated sticks; take those out to the bee hexes, drop them in the xy fab with the stack of string and get enough impregnated frames to fill all the hives again.  It's not all 100% automated; there are 2 stacks of seed oil capsules in that carpenter and sometimes I have to get more, but full automation would take all the human agency out of it.  And I'm the human agent.

I ended up building a new project table to change the alveary blocks into frame housings and rain shields.  I cleared those two rows of old apiaries out front and setup one new alveary for oily bees, with 5 frame housings.  Then I got 20 blocks plus 4 housings to almost make another full alveary, but I ran out of pollen again, even though I have 4 hives of industrious bees with full impregnated frames.  I ran some proven bees over there.  Hypno showed an odd quirk of the apiarist villagers: if they have the proven frames as the last trade, you can buy them without ever running out, but if it is one of the first 3 trades you get about 4 trades then have to do other trades to reactivate that trade.  Odd.

I brought 53 capsules of oil out to the big oil tank.  I made 10 liquid transposers for those new iron tanks.  Hooked up the first four to an energy tesseract, so those first four tanks are ready for action.   Well, actually, they're the last row of four, so: silicon, sodium, molten redstone, molten ender.

I'm going to close the night with a nether run, mostly for sphalerite to get those tiny piles of titanium dust.  First, the bees were overflowing again.  I guess I have to set the apiarist pipes to "Anything" instead of "Items" to pass the overflow along.  The barrels have 5x64+22 simmering comb, 69 ash, 28 glowstone dust.  I brought 5 empty soul shards with me, to try another hack Hypno showed.  Sure enough, kill one pigman on each shard, and at an anvil: tier 0 + tier 0 + 1 level = tier 1 (124 souls).  + tier 0 + 3 levels = tier 2 (247 souls).  Again + 5 levels = tier 3 (370 souls).  Again plus 7 levels would be tier 3 (497 souls) except I don't have the levels.  He managed to get a tier 5 soul shard from 7 or 8 tier 0 shards.

That was a good combination of industry, tinkering and exploration.  

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3/24/2022 FTB Ultimate

Back to the iron tanks ... 4 stacks of iron ore in the industrial grinder (gives 2 Fe: + tp Sn + tp Ni), 4 stacks of iron dust into furnaces, 4 stacks of iron ingots into plate bender.  And again, to get 3 stacks of iron tank walls and parts.  Each tank is essentially a 5x5x5 box (125 blocks) minus the interior 3x3x3 (27), for 98 blocks each.  Made two more tanks.

Then two stacks of hardened glass, use one stack to make two stacks of redstone energy conduits.  Move the magma crucible over to the side of the tank.

For bees, valiant + water = 5% prussian.  Oops, I already had that one, saw it when I warped to Autumn base to setup two centrifuges.  So, industrious + copper = 12% chance of lead.  I have leaden, but not lead.  Then industrious + forest = 12% tin.  Just trying to complete the family.

prussian + maroon = indigo.
prussian + natural = turquoise
minium + lead = 5% gold, run it with 2 U, an ender pearl and a soul frame (impreg frame + soul sand).  I had forgotten that the soul frames were craftable; they are supposed to add 50% to the mutation chance (so 12% becomes 18%, not 62%) while reducing lifespan to 1/4 its original value.

Got the lead bee and serum, tin bee.

From the last few episodes of Hypno, a few things I knew that he did not.  He said you can't pick up villagers in a safari net, yes you can but you need to use the safari net launcher to get them from a distance.  And he had no idea how to recycle a bee serum if it was a dud -- just smelt it back to a clear serum vial.

Got indigo p + 2d.  Try for serum, drone died after first attempt ... success.

Yes, you can copy a page from a notebook using the writing desk, just r-click it and it puts it in the slot on the desk, and when you take it out there's a chance it will use an ink, and always use a paper.

Okay, a new shot at a MYstcraft world.  I still have no sun or moon pages.  So, end stone, standard terrain, tiny biomes, twilight forest biome, enchanted forest biome, ravines, strongholds, no weather, clear modifiers.

That turned out wacky.  No forests of any kind, but I did get a world of end stone.  Weird fragments of islands of end stone in an ocean of sorts, full of twilight forest animals, and a few twilight forest structures. It was pretty bizarre seeing the ruined houses and witch huts on a bleak end stone world.  The idea of these worlds (says Hypno) is that once every 8 to 20 chunks, one piece of iridium ore spawns, and it is supposed to be easy to spot from the air.  Well, I saw none of those, but there were outcrops of bauxite ore for some reason, and I figured the libraries would sure be easy to find.  Yup.  Super obvious on the map.  With the mining laser I got a few stacks of end stone, 3 stacks fo bauxite ore, some odds & ends, and had fun looking around.  The age has lightning and weakness, but no serious ill effects.  Not so bad.  The onyl bit of "enchanted forest" that appears is an occasional multi-colored piece of vine sadly clinging to the stone.