Pipe Rebalancing Proposal

[Volence]

So the past few days I've spent getting together some data on the current GT pipes and possible ways to rebalance them. I believe this proposal will allow pipes to be better balanced in a way that allows multiple to be used, without random outliers being much stronger than others of similar material/tier type. I also believe that this will allow us to easily add more pipes that we would possibly want in the future making it easy to balance them within this new system, and without worry about their stats/being overpowered. This will also make it a bit easier to balance all pipes if we ever need a larger overhaul. Finally I believe this will also allow us to create a better system for the "(Fluid) Pipe Casings" and "Item Pipe Casings" used for multiblocks.

This proposal is based on the idea that the "base" material for the tier can not be exceeded by a previous tier. It also makes the base tier double that of the previous base's, and then spreads the materials from those tiers between the two (tried to base this on either difficulty of getting the material/material cost, etc... but some don't matter, especially with the alloys in EV/IV I think, a lot of them you just get at the same time and aren't that expensive).

I've created a few spreadsheets to show the current balance of pipes, as they appear in NEI (a sheet for fluid pipes and item pipes), and then a balance proposal. I'd like to use the balance proposal to also create a better tiering system for the Pipe Casings and Item Pipe Casings for multiblocks, as the way they're tiered now doesn't make the most sense for some multis due to the fact that Pipe Casings that have recipes only go up to TungstenSteel.

The spreadsheets can be found here, if you don't want to click on that I'll just share screenshots of the proposed changes below. Some pipes that don't have tiny/huge pipes have them in the proposal due to it just being in a slot in google sheets that I've set up a calculation for.

A key to the colors on the spreadsheets:

Purple = Base tier item. This just means it's the base throughput a tier will have, and max that a previous tier will stay under. For example, Steel is the first "LV" tier pipe, meaning its base throughput for a "Normal Pipe" will be 4800, and no "ULV" (term I'm just using for steam/pipes you can get without any tier really) will ever go above this. These will also be used for the Item/Fluid Pipe Casing tiered system for multiblocks.

Yellow = Plastics. I made these the same throughput as their base tier material's speed, due to the fact that they can become relatively cheap to make. They were very low throughput before this, not sure if that was for a reason.

Blue = Proposed Recipe Change. These really are just 2 items that are a little bit strange because they're really strong/later material that can be accessed much earlier than their numbers suggest. These are right now just bedrockium and nether star, and I'm currently thinking the best way to not change the base materials but make it so you can't access these so early is to make some sort of "nether star strengthened compound" or something similar that will make the pipes, which will be locked more towards the tier they should be accessed at.

Red: Not currently a pipe, but proposed addition.

Item pipes:

Fluid Pipes:

So a few questions/discussion for this before I implement these changes. Do we think the overall idea/numbers are good? Are there currently too many pipes that are accessed by similar material fighting for the same spot that we could possibly get rid of, or do we want to keep them all (looking at you EV/IV)? I'd also like to move all pipes to one file, currently there's about 3 different methods to generate them in 3 files creating them all from what I've seen.

[chochem]

the fluid pipe changes look highly questionably. In particular stuff like buffing bronze, steel, lead, potin, stainless steel and related. Some of those were specifically nerfed by dream.

[YannickMG]

All I can say regarding plastic pipes is that they're so cheap and importantly quick and easy to make that I need a really good reason (usually heat capacity) to use anything else. If their capacity is buffed, I'll have less reasons to use non-plastic pipes.

[ogdae]

Just had a quick glance at the numbers and honestly they look good. I am currently playing through Steam from Steam age to now MV (in nightly 606), and intend to push the boundaries to potentially EV. The current values on piping are already serving as a bottleneck soon, and with plans to use mb steam turbines in HV and the insane draw of steam SB turbines, pipe situation feels more than a little hopeless.

I've seen quite a few comments from people already who find issues in transporting steam in the later stages of the game also, and while AE is available and there are probably other work arounds, GT pipes can simply the process alot

That being said, I can't say if the numbers fit out to be perfectly balanced, but some pipe balance attention is certainly sorely required and I'm glad to see it being discussed.

[Volence]

the fluid pipe changes look highly questionably. In particular stuff like buffing bronze, steel, lead, potin, stainless steel and related. Some of those were specifically nerfed by dream.

If we feel things should be toned back as well, I still think we should use this base as a guide to tuning them back. For example, if the base tier of HV is too high (stainless steel), or any of the other ULV pipes, we should tone down either the base for that specifically, or the multiplier between tiers. I don't believe stainless steel, basically the start of HV materials, should be almost 4x worse than dark steel, an MV material. In fact currently dark steel is better than tungstensteel in terms of pipe material. This PR also nerfs a lot of crazy outliers (like the dark steel), especially in EV/IV. Overall the main concept is the structure built with "this pipe is made from x tier material, it should fall between X and Y"

[chochem]

the fluid pipe changes look highly questionably. In particular stuff like buffing bronze, steel, lead, potin, stainless steel and related. Some of those were specifically nerfed by dream.

If we feel things should be toned back as well, I still think we should use this base as a guide to tuning them back. For example, if the base tier of HV is too high (stainless steel), or any of the other ULV pipes, we should tone down either the base for that specifically, or the multiplier between tiers. I don't believe stainless steel, basically the start of HV materials, should be almost 4x worse than dark steel, an MV material. In fact currently dark steel is better than tungstensteel in terms of pipe material. This PR also nerfs a lot of crazy outliers (like the dark steel), especially in EV/IV. Overall the main concept is the structure built with "this pipe is made from x tier material, it should fall between X and Y"

the gt++ pipes (after potin) certainly need to be tuned. but there is no reason to buff the base line like this when even a stone age material like bronze is already enough to power an EBF or a 16 parallel steel steam washer.

[Volence]

the fluid pipe changes look highly questionably. In particular stuff like buffing bronze, steel, lead, potin, stainless steel and related. Some of those were specifically nerfed by dream.

If we feel things should be toned back as well, I still think we should use this base as a guide to tuning them back. For example, if the base tier of HV is too high (stainless steel), or any of the other ULV pipes, we should tone down either the base for that specifically, or the multiplier between tiers. I don't believe stainless steel, basically the start of HV materials, should be almost 4x worse than dark steel, an MV material. In fact currently dark steel is better than tungstensteel in terms of pipe material. This PR also nerfs a lot of crazy outliers (like the dark steel), especially in EV/IV. Overall the main concept is the structure built with "this pipe is made from x tier material, it should fall between X and Y"

the gt++ pipes (after potin) certainly need to be tuned. but there is no reason to buff the base line like this when even a stone age material like bronze is already enough to power an EBF or a 16 parallel steel steam washer.

I really think it would be useful to then rebalance the proposed numbers based on the tier starting materials. If things in ULV are a bit too high, we should lower the LV cap that's on them, and same with the rest above that. The following will be for tiny pipes, but do we think for example:

LV - 800 L/S base
MV - 1600 L/S base
etc...

These don't have to be multiples of 2 either. Sorry for so much emphasis, but the large design goal of this proposal is more "we have a structure and guidelines to follow for pipe materials within tiers" rather than just "buff and nerf everything based on whims" so things are more forced to follow than slip in super powerful and meta. The above numbers are important of course, but not the most important idea within this proposal imo

[Volence]

So I've just created a new tab with the anchor numbers cut in half, keeping all the others within those numbers as guidelines. If anyone has any other comments on this concept or wants to further go in and tweak the numbers, feel free to let me know and I'll give access to edit the sheet (or I can just go in and edit myself).

Would we want to keep all of the extra pipes in EV/IV? Would getting rid of some be fine? Besides that is this something we think would be useful/should I go ahead and start implementing something like this?

Here's a screenshot of the new tab btw