Iron Balancing in Flywheel

[jrddunbr]

Was thinking of ways we could balance the mod, since iron is always in short supply. One of the options was staring at me blatantly when I went to craft it just now.

I think that replacing Iron Blocks in the Flywheel recipe with lead makes a lot of sense.

It's a semi-easy and sensible adjustment as well, here's where some of the changes would be made:

https://github.com/Electrical-Age/ElectricalAge/blob/b63b7912a1491fa33c3418a4875d49fcc44a6a4e/src/main/java/mods/eln/Eln.java#L5685

I think lead ingots make sense here, because we can also lower the weight of the flywheel to make it more usable, right now it's mostly useless in many designs. If someone wanted to hold that much energy as you can right now, they can just make multiple flywheels to do the same.

I also considered using lead blocks, but that would take more effort since you'd have to add a block to the mod. One could use it from the ore dictionary (blockLead) though, and make it proportionally more heavy on the shaft when crafted, if lead blocks are detected ingame... That may take extra effort, probably in the form of creating a new Heavy Flywheel or Counterweight, some internal thing to keep track of it, etc. That may also require a new model.

The other option - I know there's an issue out there (#782) for flywheels - to be able to modify the weight of the flywheel (and thus the potential energy) - that could be done instead of this, and just make that action use lead ingots or something, which doesn't require the block (but perhaps could still be allowed through the ore dictionary if desired?) - but then you need either an interactive block with some fun rendering (think Immersive Engineering) and/or a GUI.

That may take more work, but it still would make sense for it to be lead, not iron.

Just tossing out some ideas to see what people think. I can do a pull request for the basic lead ingot option (since that's pretty easy to do), but if something else is desired, I will probably need some help to get familiar with how stuff works.

[bloxgate]

That's only 4 blocks of iron though? That's a few minutes of mining at most if you're doing it properly.

[jrddunbr]

It's not that I don't have iron, it's that my ME system has 10 times as much copper, lead, and other metals than iron, and this is a balance change that makes logical sense.

[Baughn]

We could add multiple versions, each using a different metal and providing different weights. That'd make sense... and also solve a worry I've had regarding their use, without needing some sort of flywheel-making machine.

[AMIDIBOSS]

But once for all we'cd use a fabricator

[jrddunbr]

Lathe Idea

I think that flywheels (and most rotating things) would actually be made on a lathe if not in a crafting table... (or you add a flywheel object to a shaft base (or shaft holder) that holds the axle in place, which is similar to what we have with the component and iron right now for a rotating shaft) We should have that instead.

(think this but larger)

The big idea

So I'm imaging it like this - you take your specific metal that you want to make into a shaft, gearbox (currently a shaft hub) or flywheel, work it on the lathe to be a flywheel wheel or shaft. You craft a component together with iron/whatever to make a shaft holder, and then you place the flywheel wheel in the shaft holder to make what is currently the flywheel block. We could do the same for the current shafts and hubs, perhaps requiring gears of different grades (I'm thinking of Buildcraft here) and have different abilities for different qualities of material, regarding power transmission. For example, a cheap generator could have a copper shaft, which can break under immense torsional load. With the gearbox, we could make it behave like the cable hub, you place down a hub, and then place gears in each corner that you want an axle to come from. If it results in a loop, the gears pop out or break (which is currently handled by the axles not connecting from past experiments with shaft power).

In addition, if we want we could make it so that you can get the shaft and shaft holder apart - you can pop the flywheel or shaft out of the shaft holder in a crafting table (or something like that, similar to when you have a milk bucket in a Minecraft cake and you get the bucket back) and get both of the items back so that you can make it into a shaft/flywheel again. Treat shafts like cables :P

(flywheel on a lathe)

[jrddunbr]

Oh, and lathes would totally be powered by shaft power once yo can get shafts. Initial lathes could be like a simple lathe with no shaft (just a simple motor), and then the better ones require shaft power to work for harder or stronger metals.

That way we avoid the chicken and the egg problem.