Figured I'd talk a bit about Tech Tree design here

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So I have been thinking about things i regret having done in GT6, mainly the absurd Tier System with 4-5 Tiers of each Machine. What I should have done instead is something more similar to what i did with the Burning Boxes, and abolish Tiers entirely.

Here a few examples

Kinetic/Rotation Machine Materials should’ve been layed out like this:

  • Various Bronzes:
    Basic worst Stats Machine.
  • Various Brasses:
    Power Efficiency Machine at same Speed as Bronzes.
  • Various Basic Steels:
    Speed Machine at cost of Power Efficiency.
  • Titanium:
    Both Speed and Efficiency.

Heat Machine Materials like this:

  • Clay, Ceramic and Bricks:
    Basic worst Stats Machine
  • Invar:
    Power Efficiency Machine at same Speed as Clay.
  • Various Basic Steels:
    Speed Machine at cost of Power Efficiency. Yes it is Steel too.
  • Tungsten:
    Both Speed and Efficiency.

Electric Machine Materials like this (everything uses Copper Wires):

  • Various Basic Steels:
    Basic worst Stats Machine
  • Aluminium:
    Power Efficiency Machine at same Speed as Steel.
  • Galvanized Steel:
    Speed Machine at cost of Power Efficiency.
  • Either Chrome or Chromed Steel:
    Both Speed and Efficiency.

As you might have noticed, Steel is usable for all types of Machines, since Iron is so abundant it should at the very least be usable everywhere if needed. Also the Machines dont really have Tiers for Recipes in this design, meaning even the shittiest Machine can still do the Job just fine even if much slower.

When it comes to Power Consumption and “Overclocking”, I figured making just bigger Multiblock Versions of the Machines should’ve sufficed, that way if you want to upscale, you just need to build bigger Machines instead of spamming many smaller ones.

A Side Effect of Steel being usable everywhere is that you basically only need Iron, Copper and Gold (vanilla Metals), and wouldn’t even require any specific Ores unless you wanted higher quality Stuff. And even then most can be done via Byproducts and Decomposition too.

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You feel you made the system too complex? It’s true there seems to be one major progression and many smaller offshoots around them.
One of the hardest parts of learning Gregtech was the fine balance required to make many machines function. It would appear as if you could mix and swap most blocks but in reality you have to use the perfect combination of devices, the right level burning box, the correct pressure boiler, the exact energy generation of a dynamo. Do you mean you would have preferred to make this system more adaptable?

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Yeah its kinda a bunch of bandaid fixes to inherently flawed systems. Things should just work, but one bad design choice forced me into another and suddenly its this “everything needs to be perfect” setup…

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I think the biggest problem with GT6 is the lack of something that truly divides the stages, which results in too much complexity in the early, making it easy for beginners to give up, and the lack of content in the lategame also makes it difficult for people to continue playing.

Indeed, stacking too many levels like the GT5U is foolish, and stacking with the same functionality machines for more than 8 tiers will only make people feel annoyed. But this also means that through a tier system, it is easy to set many key nodes to clarify the development direction, so that the game process is relatively fixed and not too chaotic. Taking the circuit of GT5U as an example, although players are complaining that this system is too complicated, through some key materials and components such as polyethylene, epoxy resin, and various wafers, it is possible to lock in the predetermined development direction and determine the main game flow by “using the things from the previous stage to make the next stage”. This also makes the GT5U series still the mainstream technology modpack to this day, while the GT6 only has a small number of packs.

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i prefer having less definitive “stages”, it makes it feel more sandboxy which i enjoy, i think if you were to change gt6 in such a way to remove complexity and add more definitive stages it would harm it, and i dont think that is worth it for making the game more approachable, but i also dont necessarily think that its just a lack of stages that makes gt6 difficult to understand for beginners (mainly, i think it is having a large number of unique systems that have little obvious documentation)

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I do see what you’re saying though, the prospect of running a carbon crucible on a bronze burning box is daunting, yet possible. I like that idea. the battery boxes were a step in that direction, you can charge them at lower energy levels and they discharge at the voltage you need.

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The lack of documentation guidance in the early stages makes it difficult to attract new players unless they find a community, which is also why GT6 is not as popular as GT5U. Given that the game mechanics of Minecraft itself limit the presentation of tutorials within the game, it is difficult to fundamentally solve this problem.

Another issue with GT6 is that the distribution of content at different stages is not balanced, resulting in sometimes being overwhelmed by a crucial thing, while at other times not knowing what to do. After understanding the complex crucible mechanism in the early stages of the power era, during the time from the first dynamo to the first circuit board, you had to prepare too many things: including smelting a large amount of stainless steel to manufacture the first distillation tower, cracking to obtain ethylene/propylene, and then using your first electrolyzer to electrolyze saltwater, or using hydrochloric acid and MnO2 to react to obtain chlorine gas to produce titanium tetrachloride to manufacture plastics, and using a smelter to melt monazite to obtain helium/centrifuging a large amount of endstone to obtain helium/drying biotite to obtain argon, to obtain the rare gas of the first crystalline single crystal silicon. Either method is very troublesome.

And after that, for a long time, the key material was only aluminum, and aluminum was prone to overcapacity. In the future, the key product will only be crystal processors. For a long time, the main focus has been on expanding production capacity and improving production efficiency, which can easily lead to a lack of direction and goals. Until the bedrock drilling and fusion reactor are started, there will be a serious overcapacity situation in the lategame, and there will be a lack of corresponding consumption methods. After the production of vibranium, there will be a lack of other uses besides aneutron fusion cells, which will make the lategame boring.

Given that it is no longer realistic to significantly modify the early stage techtree, I believe that adding more accessible tutorials and enriching the post game content is feasible to optimize the current GT6 gaming experience. For example, using achievement systems to let players know what they should do next, rather than being confused by millions of NEI recipes. Add some more interesting game mechanics in the lategame to avoid boredom and try not to affect the original content (I think the reactor may be considered, but currently, there are still many problems with the reactor, such as difficulty in automation in pure GT6 situations and often resulting in excessive power generation and waste). Add more unique uses to many post production materials rather than just making them do the same thing as low-level materials or just slightly better (high-level materials mean they are difficult to damage, which leads to not using a lot of tools in production). I know GT6U has tried to do these things, but due to its close relationship with TerraFirma: Rescue modpack, it is not suitable for solo play and has not been updated for a long time. Many things have not been completed, and some mechanisms are also considered unreasonable. I have put forward many good suggestions before, but unfortunately they have not been implemented. It must be said that this is a pity.

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Expensive endgame toys would be useful. Like energy weapons, which shoot positive or neutral mass (somewhat similar to Stelaris’ proton launcher and neutron launcher). As I imagine, protons would be more damaging, neutrons - more radioactive (~15 minutes half life).

GT6 already has “clothes”, so expensive-to-use endagame armor would be useful. I have no good ideas what it should be. I just have a “tiny” problem, which started when I drilled through a pigman. One mistake, and nether is much more dangerous to me :smiley:

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The GT5 had a plan for modular armor, but it was ultimately not completed. However, GT6 currently does not have such a feature. As for high-tech weapons, it doesn’t seem to be a tradition of GT, and currently GT6 already has guns. You may want to try GTweaponWorks, but I’m not sure if it’s still compatible with the current version.

Perhaps it’s time for some GT traditions to return, such as sonictron and data orb, but I don’t know how to integrate them with current gaming mechanics.

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Late-stage end goals, to go with late-stage energy production.

Like IC2’s terraformers, grand projects designed to change the face of the map, literally, or Buildcraft quarries, though they don’t take a lot of power. Something that would benefit from having that much power, Undersea bases or launching satellites. Conquering the Nether, the End, surviving there. I run many mods in tandem to provide those late-stage projects, but I have to twist the balance to make the requirement to reach that level. That’s why I wanted to include mods like Mekanism, but place it waaaay into the future realms of realization, requiring a sophisticated setup to build its devices.

Of course there is always the issue of why, why do I need these devices? If I’m already producing the best energy, why do I need to keep crafting, to make more? it seems counterproductive, or even ultimately pointless.

That’s why most of the time I enjoy just hanging out in the bronze age, steam powered contraptions, manipulating nature into little machines, taking a barren landscape and building something from nothing.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure.

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