Minecraft Tekkit Modpacks

After playing out my interest in "vanilla" Minecraft I discovered that there were a number of fan created modifications (mods) of the original game. These exist with some kind of blessing from the company that makes Minecraft (Mojang), in that you still need an account on the original game and then add in the extra code for these mods. There are a whole range of mods out there, some add new blocks that look interesting, some complex machinery, some more magic items and mobs. On the recommendation of my son, I tried out the Tekkit modpack, which is a collection of compatible mods designed by different people. Some of the mods I tried out in this pack were Equivalent Exchange 2 (EE2), Buildcraft and IndustrialCraft. EE2 was a magic mod, in which you could transform and create matter into any form. It had some fantastic end game equipment that let you fly, grow things instantly, and mine huge areas in one stroke. It takes the name from an anime series, in which there is alchemy that will let you transform matter into new forms, but not let you change one kind of matter into another. EE violated this in that you could change anything into anything else (and later on, from nothing using matter condensers). I appreciated the mod but in the end didn't like the fact that you could make anything out of any old junk lying around (if you had enough of it). It kind of ruins the joy of finding the blocks you were looking for after a long search. Below is my first settlement. Pumpkins had a high EE matter value, which is why I formed them (you could turn a stack of pumpkins into a diamond).

Next I explored the Buildcraft mod, which had engines (and oil which could be refined into fuel), pipes and automatic crafting. This is a fun mod. There are no special tools, but the mechanical items are cool. One of the most fun things is the quarry machine, which will automatically mine a square area down to bedrock when powered by engines. Buildcraft also has some automatic building machines which I used to make the factory buildings below. IndustrialCraft is a sister mod to Buildcraft, very compatible, with electric type machines and tools. The tools are quite interesting - there are electric replacements for axes and pickaxes but also things like electric jetpacks which let you fly (not far and not quickly - but still, flying is pretty useful). There are solar panels and other kinds of generators for electricity and the ultimate machine is the matter fabricator that makes UU-matter, a kind of pink blob that you can transform into most other materials. It comes close to the problems of EE but it is harder to make in quantities and you can only use it once to make other things.

I didn't try out Tekkit long before a new version came out. The old version became "Tekkit Classic" and the new one was "Tekkit Lite" (light in the sense of computational resources). New versions of Minecraft come out, the mods which fans write are not always updated and the community wants to see new things. So, these modpacks are constantly in flux. In the new version, there were quite a few new things to play around with. Thermal Expansion is a very well put together mod of machines for Buildcraft (energy storage, powered furnaces, etc.). This is not a flashy mod, but a real pleasure to work with. ComputerCraft has these cute little robots (turtles) that you can program in Lua. I have one farming in the picture below. These are a bit of a pain because the program stops when you quit the game and you have to restart your system when you start up again. Further below is one of Steve's Carts doing automated mining. Steve's Carts is another well thought out and balanced mod. 

Playing around this time, I also built a nuclear reactor in IC2. This is my totally safe and efficient Mk1 breeder reactor. It only went critical and exploded once :) I think I must have put the components in the wrong way that time, because it should be foolproof. 

All the stuff above was in a single player environment. I also joined a Tekkit Lite server, run by Tmek. This was a very fun group and I built up a tech base there similar to the things above. I built a power suit using the Modular Powersuits mod, which allows for very fast movement and flight. The thing I was happiest with was the set of towers I built just for show. Each tower is supposed to represent a season.