The best part of Better Than Wolves

[Torisen13]

What do you think is the best feature of better than wolves? What is the feature that best displays the "spirit" of BTW?

As I have mentioned before I have been a silent watcher for quite a while. The last time I wanted to post something was during a major patch update and registration was closed (Major patch update and the shutdown of Better Then Buildcraft). The funny part is that the timing was purely coincidental, it was the point in time when I felt I could answer the above questions. To be honest I have not yet accomplished full automation of the tech tree and have done little exploration of the nether features, but I have reached semi-automation of most if not all elements of BTW.

The answer to both of these questions, for me, is the same. The creation of the soul urn. This is the point in the mod where automation becomes less of a convenience and more of a necessity. There is no slapping something on a crafting table or tossing some stuff into a pot. Each soul urn has a very much non-trivial amount of time invested, making everything created with soul urns very expensive relative to time and effort. This forces you to consider at the very least a semi-automatic solutions.

I built the first automated processes that I felt I needed to progress further into the mod. A pottery maker, very primitive the way to select what you made was to add or remove an item in a BD. An auto kiln, Simply took what you put into the BD, baked it and tossed it into a collection point. Then my bottler which was not finished when I abandoned that world (Had BTBC). I had finished the bottle collector and empty bottle replacement, you still had to manually throw the dust onto the hopper though. I had already worked out a way of automatically adding the dust onto the hopper but I was still in the process of physically implementing it. Each system individually was fully automatic all that was needed was to transport the inputs into the next system and hit the start button. Once you reach this point though its almost trivial to link the systems into a larger unit and would you look at that a fully automatic soul urn bottler.

The tying in of so many element, I do believe every aspect of the tech tree is utilized in some way to the creation of the soul urn, is a masterwork and really gives the feel of accomplishment to the project. It is also the first time that automation becomes a real part of the game and almost serves as a road map of making even larger automated machines or even single unit/machine/factory that does everything!

I am sorry for the long post but this was the first time everything kinda came together for me and I really wanted to share it, and was a little disappointed that I could not when it was a little fresher in my mind.

[Foxy Boxes]

For me, quite simply, none of it. Having a best part implies that there's a worse part and I just don't get that feel with any of the features. Sure there are some that seem to be outliers (soul cement), but even then they're useful but not overpowered.

I guess if I had to choose an arbitary best part, it would be the way everything fits together. I could name a few mods where features only seem linked in function rather than operation, but with BTW I don't get that feel. Mechanical power ties everything together nicely, and requiring that universal power source means that for well thought out concepts (which all of them appear to be) they link together nicely. I don't know if I'm expressing myself clearly so I'll give an example: A millstone and the saw fit together nicely, they both do different things but appear to be at the same tech level and utilize a common input. Compared with furnaces and vertical windmills that produce 'redpower', where there is an apparant gap in tech level yet are functionally the same, producing the same output.

[wizardglick]

Ham Night. Ham Night is the best part of Better Than Wolves.

[Nexus Trimean]

It is probably the Hopper, or maybe the detector block. Both completely change the way you interact with the world of minecraft.