Pack Version:
dev@ 144c273

Description:
Some plates, such as Blue Steel, Naquadah, and Ruby, do not have GT Compressor recipes.

Expected Behavior:
They should have.

Additional Info:
Most of the GT Compressor recipes are described in Earlygame.zs, except Rose Gold in Midgame.zs and HSS in zzzFixStuff.zs.
I think this is not a good way to handle recipes, as most of the plates take 100 ticks in 10 EU/t, except for some of the late-game plates. (It is also strange that late-game materials like Neutronium are described in Earlygame.zs.)
There is already a PR for refactoring Earlygame.zs (#475), but it would be smarter to make exceptions and scan all of <ore:plate*>, I think. I realized there is no way to identify input material from plate as output. I withdraw this idea.

Much of this is intentional default behavior from GTCE. We don't really deviate much from their system, primarily just registering custom materials for EnderIO and Thermal Foundation alloys.

The Compressor is specialized for making heavy plating and happens to be able to make plates. The machine actually specialized for making plates is the Cutting Machine, which becomes available from MV. In passive setups, it's not too inefficient to solidify fluids into plates (e.g. plastics), but solidifying into a block and cutting it is optimal for on-demand.

Gems as a category are not possible to make into plates via a Compressor, notably excepting Diamond and Emerald plates which you need before MV. Gems are also largely not possible to solidify back from fluids. Cutting gem plates from blocks is the intended solution, or you can use the Compactor to do them one at a time, but far more slowly.

It's perhaps the case that players are getting the wrong idea about the Compressor specifically because so many materials were given custom plate recipes through it.

You might also note that all of those Compressor recipes in that linked block in Earlygame.zs have not been touched since the initial commit. Damien added all of the compressor recipes, except Rose Gold Plate which was added in response to #164 in arguably the wrong file, and the HSS plate in zzzFixStuff.zs which was originally part of my fix zip I was distributing unofficially as a patch for 1.2.1.

Here is a list of the materials:

Darmstadium
Uranium 235
Lazurite
Niobium-Titanium
Pig Iron
Polyethylene
Polycaprolactam
Polytetrafluoroethylene
Rubber (from ingot)
Ruby
Sapphire
Sodalite
Tanzanite
Topaz
Ultimet
Vanadium-Gallium
Nether Quartz (from gem)
Certus Quartz (from gem)
Graphene
Jasper
Glass (from gem)
Olivine
Opal
Amethyst
Redstone (from gem) (TE Compactor recipe is using Resonating Redstone Crystal instead of Redstone, as the former has Ore Dictionary Name gemRedstone.)
Lapis
Enderpearl
Endereye
Sterling Silver
Black Bronze
Bismuth Bronze
Red Steel
Blue Steel
Damascus Steel
Red Garnet
Yellow Garnet
Vinteum
Magnetic Iron
Magnetic Steel
Magnetic Neodymium
Vanadiumsteel
Naquadah
Naquadah Alloy
Enriched Naquadah
Naquadria
Tritanium
Duranium
Glowstone (TE Compactor recipe is also missing, as no item matches <ore:gemGlowstone>.)
Nether Star
Ytterbium
Silicone Rubber
Polystyrene
Styrene-Butadiene Rubber
Gallium Arsenide
Polyphenylene Sulfide
Indium Gallium Phosphide
Nickel Zinc Ferrite
Polyvinyl Chloride
Microversium
Mana Infused (related issue: #559)

As for gems, Almandine, Blue Topaz, Green Sapphire, and Rutile have GT Compressor recipe. I don't know why Damien introduced compression recipe only for those gems though.

These ones were most likely introduced for auto-crafting lenses, not sure why these specifically but that's the only reason that comes to mind.

As for the issue itself, there's not really much point in adding recipes to plates that are literally useless (see: microversium) or come from unobtainable materials (see: darmstadium.) There's only a handful of these that would be actually useful, like U-235 for example or some of the gems, although I don't think the latter would happen due to what Exa mentioned.

The proper way to go about this would be to submit a PR to GTCE to modify the materials and flag them to have compressor recipes, I believe that's something you can do. I'm not a programmer although I can generally understand what's going on with stuff like this. A cursory look at the materials section of the mod suggests that's the case.

That said, there's actually a relevant comment on the DustMaterial.java.

     * Generate a plate for this material
     * If it's dust material, dust compressor recipe into plate will be generated
     * If it's metal material, bending machine recipes will be generated
     * If block is found, cutting machine recipe will be also generated

I assume why a lot of metal recipes are missing is because the bending machine is not present in this pack.

Also regarding the gems, what SynXt said about the lenses is correct, and also that Sapphire and Almandine are used in Empowering recipes.

The proper way to go about this would be to submit a PR to GTCE to modify the materials and flag them to have compressor recipes, I believe that's something you can do. I'm not a programmer although I can generally understand what's going on with stuff like this. A cursory look at the materials section of the mod suggests that's the case.

That said, there's actually a relevant comment on the DustMaterial.java.

     * Generate a plate for this material
     * If it's dust material, dust compressor recipe into plate will be generated
     * If it's metal material, bending machine recipes will be generated
     * If block is found, cutting machine recipe will be also generated

I assume why a lot of metal recipes are missing is because the bending machine is not present in this pack.

Also regarding the gems, what SynXt said about the lenses is correct, and also that Sapphire and Almandine are used in Empowering recipes.

Another possible option is to have a config option for GTCE like how GA does the Cluster Mill.

However, I don't think either of these options will get approved into GTCE, as they are not really necessary changes to the mod.

Modifying GTCE itself sounds good, but Compressor is used for compressing material into block in pure GTCE, and this will be a bit hard work for handling around this.

Green Sapphire Lens is not used in this pack. Blue Topaz does not have Lathe recipe. Sapphire and Almandine Plates are not used in Empowering.

Modifying GTCE itself sounds good, but Compressor is used for compressing material into block in pure GTCE, and this will be a bit hard work for handling around this.

Actually modifying GTCE to do what we are describing would not be a challenge to implement, but instead a challenge to convince the maintainers that it is useful. The Bending Machine already serves this purpose, and changing it to instead be the Compressor is a modpack maker decision, and not really something that makes sense from the mod's perspective.

However, I also want to note that many of the plates you listed in your full list are only ever created in a Cutting Machine anyway, so adding them to a Compressor would get around this intended differing production method. Additionally, many of these plates appear to be intentionally gated to require the Thermal Expansion machine instead, so changing this fully could also introduce sequencing problems with the intended progression of the pack.

Personally, I have never had any issue with which plates can and cannot be created in a Compressor, as 99% (or more) of the time, it makes sense to me which machine to use to create the plates.

Okay, now I know what you mean and I was stupid. I said "just describing", but it's time consuming to be checked by multiple people. I'm closing this issue. Thanks for your kind reply.

The point is bringing compatibility for making plates. Players may get confused between plates with and without GT Compressor recipe.
It's not a good idea to think, "We're introducing this recipe because someone needs it." Blue Steel is used for Turbine Casing, Naquadah Alloy is used for Universal Navigator, Duranium is good material for tools, etc. If all the recipes were covered from the beginning, there would be no need to deal with each issue.

I know it's a bit of pain to describe all of recipes, but I can help you by submitting a PR after #475 has been merged.

As for gems, Almandine, Blue Topaz, Green Sapphire, and Rutile have GT Compressor recipe. I don't know why Damien introduced compression recipe only for those gems though.

You can disable notifications of replies if they are bothersome. It is also not necessary to reply immediately if someone else comments on an issue. Closing an issue signifies that it has been conclusively addressed, and I'm not sure this one has been.

To summarize:

• The Compressor making plates at all was a conscious deviation from the original purpose of the Compressor by Damien to provide a way for players to upgrade from inefficient manual plate-making in the early game while simultaneously eliminating the Bending Machine.
• The GTCE machine specialized for plates is the Cutting Machine.
• Sufficiently many Compressor recipes for plates were implemented that players are regularly confused by the lack of Compressor recipes for plates where they don't exist.

Thermal Foundation alloys are currently locked behind the Compactor but we had been considering changing this as it is annoying to mass-produce these plates with Compactors (see #559 / #686). We were not going to add them to Compressors but rather to the Cutting Machine.

I would propose that the actual solution to this problem is to reduce the number of Compressor plate recipes to just those materials required before the Cutting Machine is available (early MV). This would help solidify the notion that the Compressor is not the intended machine for making plates for the rest of the game. This should also be made more evident in the description for the MV Cutting Machine quest.

I would propose that the actual solution to this problem is to reduce the number of Compressor plate recipes to just those materials required before the Cutting Machine is available (early MV). This would help solidify the notion that the Compressor is not the intended machine for making plates for the rest of the game. This should also be made more evident in the description for the MV Cutting Machine quest.

I would disagree with removing recipes from the compressor, as it could break existing setups, and even in base GTCE, there is a machine to make plates one at a time, instead of 9 at a time through the Cutting machine. That machine is the metal bender.

So in GTCE there is an option between the cutting machine for slightly more efficiency, and the metal bender, therefore I think we should keep the similar behavior in Omnifactory, with the slightly more efficient Cutting machine and the Compressor.

However, we should talk about the efficiency of the Cutting Machine more in its quest, offering it as a valid alternative/upgrade from the Compressor, but not remove any functionality from the compressor.

I agree that it is preferable not to break existing setups but we keep getting issue reports for "missing" compactor recipes because people regularly don't figure out that they're not supposed to still be using the Compressor for plates after MV. The Cutting Machine is a massive upgrade that obviates the Compressor for everything except Heavy Plating.

We also have the Compactor as a midgame single-plate-making machine that supports creating individual plates and even works for gems. However, at current this is only required for Thermal alloy plates (which we are in the process of changing to not be the case) and the abundance of resources means that making 9 plates faster than a single plate in a Cutting Machine is always preferable.