REQUEST FOR HELP: Who wants to try out 'Asteroids Survival' (like SkyBlock)?

radfast

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Hi guys, as you know I haven't been active on the forum recently, but Galacticraft development is continuing. As well as a mass of recent stability improvements and bugfixes, the latest version (currently 3.0.12.429) has some new recipes designed to allow for a new game mode, Asteroids Survival.

The concept is that you have been stranded in the Asteroids with only the items you have salvaged from your ship (these are found in your Landing Pod), and you have to survive long enough either to:
(A) build a base with oxygen creation and all the machinery you need to live permanently in the Asteroids, or
(B) return to the Overworld.

If you pick route (A), it should be possible given enough time to build an advanced base where you can survive permanently and have a lot of resources. But to do everything you would still need to travel to other planets, for example you would need to go to Mars to find Desh and schematics.

Route (B) is actually easier, because you don't need to build everything - this could make for a very challenging, but quick, 2-3 hour game, and it's a very nice introduction to Galacticraft because you have to focus on what you need, not vanilla stuff.


The new recipes

* Cobblestone can be crafted by combining blocks of Asteroid Rock of two different types
* Coal can be made from Charcoal + Asteroid Rock, using the Compressor
* a Block of Ice can be made by compressing Dense Ice (need to change that name into Splintered Ice or similar)
* Tin Canisters can be smelted back into the ingots they were made out of

Also, Evolved Creepers now drop redstone instead of gunpowder. And Evolved Zombies have a rare drop of copper ingots.


How to play-test

(From future Galacticraft version 430 these steps will be done automatically by the game if a config is enabled.)

a. Install Galacticraft 3.0.12.429 or later with NEI
b. Create a new world with cheats enabled and start the game
c. Use /dimensiontp command to travel immediately to the Asteroids and land in the Lander
d. Spawn in 1 wooden chest and the contents listed. Note: stay in the lander to spawn items in, you will not die from lack of oxygen or cold while you stay in the lander

1 x Oxygen Mask
1 x Oxygen Gear
2 x Large Oxygen Tank (full)
2 x Medium Oxygen Tank (full)
2 x Canister of Liquid Oxygen (full)
24 x Thermal Cloth

32 x Wooden Plank
16 x Glass Pane
32 x Aluminum Wire
8 x Basic Wafer
1 x Full Solar Panel

16 x Canned Food: melons, apples, carrots, potato - pick whatever you like :)
16 x Egg
2 x Sheep Egg
2 x Cow Egg

Optional
24 x Desh Ingot
1 x Copper Ingot

Optional potions and enchanting kit
8 x Soul Sand
4 x Obsidian
1 x Blaze Rod
1 x Night Vision Potion (you can re-use the glass bottle until you are able to manufacture more glass)
1 x Carrot
1 x Nether Wart
1 x Sugar Cane

If you want to play hardcore, you can leave out all of these optional items, but that will make it very tough to survive the first hour unless you have a lucky start. You could also offer less, for example 10 Desh Ingots would still allow boots + helm to be crafted.

If you feel there should be different starting items (or more, or less), please make suggestions.


Rules

Try to play this in Easy mode (not Peaceful) and without using Creative mode or cheats at any time except when spawning items in at the start.

If it is essential for you to spawn something in, please make a note of it, maybe we should include it in the starting kit.

If you fall out of the world, you are allowed to spawn in a replacement Oxygen Mask + Oxygen Gear. Once this game mode goes live, Galacticraft will do that automatically in this game mode.


Tips

1. Obviously you are going to need to find a Hollow Asteroid to base yourself in, as you will need a tree farm to make charcoal. If you plan to stay in the Asteroids after your 16 cans of food run out, you will also need to start farming wheat.

2. Early on, you need a lot of Iron Ore, also Aluminum Ore

3. The mobs are extremely dangerous before you have armor - more dangerous than vanilla mobs - but mob drops are crucial to progress, the Evolved Creeper's drop is the only way to get redstone (and sand, its rare drop), and the Evolved Zombie's rare drop is the only way to increase your stocks of copper. You will also probably need string from spiders and bone meal from skeletons.

4. Knockback from the mobs can make you fall (Desh armor reduces the knockback). Do not fight mobs on 1-block wide walkways. It's safest to explore + base yourself high up (above y=120) so that if you fall off your asteroid, you have more chance to find another to land on before you fall out of the world.

5. Do not wear both oxygen tanks: that way if you die, you only lose 1 tank. Leave a spare tank in a chest at the spawn point.


For less grind, you can also give yourself this kit - the challenge will be to figure out how to power it.

Optional technology kit (stranded miner story)
4 x Arc Lamp
1 x Astro Miner
8 x Astro Miner Base
 
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radfast

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I have play tested this, without the potions and enchanting kit. It's possible to play, and a lot of fun.

The main thing I am thinking about is whether we need a recipe or a special machine to make Sand, Gravel, Clay and Soul Sand out of things found in the Asteroids dimension. Evolved Creepers drop sand but it's a rare drop.

Also, I'm wondering whether the Galacticraft mobs should add carrots, sugar cane, melon, pumpkin, nether wart as rare drops. That way the enchanting + brewing kit would be mostly unnecessary. You only need 1 of these items to start a farm, so a rare drop is OK. Maybe even some recipe to create obsidian and blaze rods, at least when this game mode is enabled?
 
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radfast

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Possible Compressor recipes we could add in this game mode:

8 x cobblestone + 1 x blaze rod -> 1 x Obsidian Block
3 x diamond + 3 x titanium shard + 3 x redstone -> 1 x Blaze Rod
9 x cobblestone -> 9 x gravel
9 x gravel -> 9 x sand
8 x sand + 1 x water bucket -> 8 x clay
4 x sand + 4 x rotten flesh + 1 x fermented spider eye -> 4 x soul sand


Or instead of making blaze rods craftable - which is OP - blaze rods could be dropped by an Evolved Mob if it is burning when it dies. A burning Evolved Mob is not easy to achieve, because they do not burn in airless environments. I quite like this approach. It's not OP because you cannot have Evolved Mobs on the Overworld.
 
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Demonoid321

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Jul 30, 2014
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I love the idea! Definitely going to give it a try. Would these new recipes be enabled in the base game as well or only if the config option is enabled?
 

radfast

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The compressor recipes will be enabled only if the config option is enabled.

The Asteroid Rock -> Cobblestone recipe is enabled in the base game.

The cobble->gravel, gravel->sand and sand->clay recipes are bothering me, because those are the opposite of compression. All the other Compressor recipes have a logic, they compress something into something ... more compressed. I have thought about adding a new machine but then do we really need another new machine in Galacticraft - I think not! Especially when other mods like Mekanism (crusher), IC2 (macerator), Thermal Expansion (ore basher, I don't remember its name), EnderIO (SAG Mill) already have machines to do this.
 

radfast

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Further playtesting shows only around 1 in 3 of the Hollow Asteroids have trees. If you're testing this, I think it's OK to spawn in +1 sapling. :)
I will make the Asteroids worldgen increase tree spawning before this goes live.
Also looking at lighting, because the Asteroids is tough to spend a long time in, hurts my eyes. Again I think it's OK to spawn in Night Vision Potions, or to include let's say 3 in the starting kit.
 

HAL

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Jan 8, 2016
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I think that another machine would be fine. Since its for the Asteroids especially, it might be easy to craft in the belt but impossible on earth. And it might be part of the starter kit when the mode is fully implemented. just an idea!
 

radfast

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Yes, there is supposed to be a Tier 1 rocket. That is enough to take you back to the Overworld (slowly...)

It won't take you to Mars, if you want to go to Mars you would need to craft a Tier 2 rocket. I think you can gather materials for a Tier 2 rocket within the Asteroids dimension if you are a skilled player, though it might be easier to pack up your base and fly to the Overworld and gather resources there, it's an interesting choice once you reach that stage in the game.
 

babybasher

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This looks like great fun. However I'll await release 430 as doing all that other stuff to get it going looks too annoying :p
 

KingOres

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Yes, there is supposed to be a Tier 1 rocket. That is enough to take you back to the Overworld (slowly...)

It won't take you to Mars, if you want to go to Mars you would need to craft a Tier 2 rocket. I think you can gather materials for a Tier 2 rocket within the Asteroids dimension if you are a skilled player, though it might be easier to pack up your base and fly to the Overworld and gather resources there, it's an interesting choice once you reach that stage in the game.
Shouldn't a tier 1 rocket not be able to reach the overworld from the asteroid and mars dimension
 

babybasher

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Shouldn't a tier 1 rocket not be able to reach the overworld from the asteroid and mars dimension

good point.

Knowing nothing about space flight, maybe the reasoning is that a lot of fuel is used leaving earths atmosphere. Thus the long time to get to earth, can't burn all the way. Big initial thrust to get speed, last of the fuel is spent slowing down aproaching earth.
 

HAL

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Jan 8, 2016
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How are you supposed to get all the things for oxygen,much less a fuel and launch system. its takes 30(!) iron to make launch pads and where does the fuel come from? You only have 20 or so % at the start in the pod
 

HAL

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Also some more nitpicking: how are you supposed to get the 31 plus iron to make an anvil, 6 aluminium, 1 copper to make a compressor then get 3 or so steel, compress it, and some other expensive things to make and oxygen collector to survive the asteroids? Sorry if i sound rude or anything, i just can't find that much iron ore or even mine the ore blocks.
 

radfast

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@babybasher Build 430 is now available. It automates this game mode, no spawning in of items required.

To activate this:

1. In the core config, set

B:"Adventure Game Mode"=true
also check that B:"Force Overworld Spawn"=false
Recommended: set B: "Quick Game Mode" = true
Optionally: you could set B:"Disable rockets from returning to Overworld"=true

2. Create a new world and play

Note: if playing multiplayer on a server, all players will land at the same spot (for now) so it would probably only really work if people want to play as a team. Later I will add something which forces players to be spaced out at a fair distance (like Skyblock maps).


My own testing

I have played through to reaching this stage, without spawning any items in.
  • stable food supply
  • stable oxygen production to refill my oxygen tanks faster than I use them up
  • fueled Tier 1 rocket on launchpad ready to return to the Overworld (or the Moon if preferred ...)
  • heavy duty armor and tools
Took around 4-5 hours to reach that point in Survival, would have been less if I'd used Quick Mode. I will confess I did switch to Creative a few times when I was going to fall out of the world, but I played too impatiently and took risks when jumping.

I didn't yet find diamond ore, silicon or meteoric iron - so no titanium or Tier 2 machines yet. But the game mode is designed so that if you play on, you can build almost every item in Galacticraft, without returning to the Overworld. For vanilla items, I think the main things missing are gold, ender pearls and ghast tears; some of the dye, plant and wood varieties, also most of the passive mobs of course. Galacticraft doesn't need any of those things to progress.

If role-playing this so that you can never return to the Overworld - see also the 'optional' config setting above - then at some point you're going to need to take a decision to leave the Asteroids and set up in a different dimension, which will almost certainly be the Moon. The reason is that the Moon has the metals which are in short supply on the Asteroids - but the Moon is lacking other things, so you will need to think carefully what to bring with you, it's a one-way trip until you can gather enough resources to build a Tier 3 rocket and return.



@HAL
  • The fuel is enough for one rocket launch. A Tier 1 rocket from the Asteroids can reach the Overworld, or the Moon. You don't need much fuel to return home from a low gravity destination - think about the Apollo missions to the Moon, they launched in an 18-storey high rocket, and returned home in a tiny little capsule.
  • Did you even read the Wiki before nitpicking? http://wiki.micdoodle8.com/wiki/Asteroids There is a huge amount of iron and aluminium in the Asteroids dimension. If you find a good spot, you can easily mine 3 or 4 stacks in only a few minutes. It is also possible to find diamond, meteoric iron, and silicon ore, but those are rare, you would probably need to mine a lot of asteroids to find them.
  • The intended challenge is the lack of tin and copper. But there are ways to get enough of both to build what is needed.
 
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HAL

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Jan 8, 2016
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Ok, just, I even installed an Xray mod and there was silicon but not much iron ore. Sorry about the rant, I guess I spawned in a bad area. unfortunately, i only really play on creative mode so i don't really know all the survival aspects of it. And after looking at the core config, whats the adventure gamemode? Is it the "harder game mode" option?
 
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radfast

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This is the Adventure game mode. You would need to update to Galacticraft build 430 and run the game once, to see it in your config.
 

HAL

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Jan 8, 2016
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OK, i did it and i have a oxygen setup and some wheat growing but no rocket setup or anything like that. I decided not to try and get all that today. Its possible, but you ought to make copper a bit easier to find, as well as tin. It's still a good idea for a game mode though.( my ox setup has no distributor and sealer. Also i did this with the whole spawn it in a chest thing)
 

radfast

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You seem not to be familiar with Skyblock maps. On Skyblock maps there are no ores at all, you have to make everything you need using rare drops from mobs.

The neat thing about this game mode is Galacticraft needs hardly any copper (until you start to build rockets). 3 or 4 ingots are all that is necessary for a basic base setup.
 

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