Monifactory Part 1 - First Impressions

I've started another Minecraft modpack playthrough - this time it's Monifactory by Pansmith (who also has modern ports of some other packs). I've decided to pick up a GregTech pack since I'm interested in the greater depth of systems GregTech offers compared to Modern Industrialization (which I previously played in my StaTech Industry run) - in particular, I'm interested in amperage, research, and computation, as well as the increased number of tiers of machines. I am concerned that I might not make it through the pack since I've still not quite figured out how best to automate crafting in GregTech - Modern Industrialization was pretty clear that everything should be passively automated (i.e. there's a complete pipeline of machines from resource production to final crafting component) starting from the end of the LV tier, but in my playthroughs of the GregTech Community Pack Modern, I've found that the lack of early-game automated resource production and difficult logistics made passive automation troublesome. I did also decide to play in expert mode, since I'm looking for a pure GregTech experience without involving EnderIO or Thermal - this is probably hubris, but I'm doing it anyways.

A brief aside on the history of this pack. In the beginning, there was Omnifactory, a Minecraft 1.12.2 GregTech pack focusing on factory building and grind reduction. Then there was Nomifactory, a fork of Omnifactory that was made after Omnifactory's development slowed down in 2020 or so, but that stayed on Minecraft 1.12.2. Finally, there's Monifactory, for Minecraft 1.20.1 using GregTech CEu Modern.

As before, I took a look through the questbook and recipes. Here's a few observations:

  • I'm somewhat comforted - it looks like renewable infinite resources are possible around HV from crafting and using tier 1 microminers
  • The pack is in beta, which I should expect since I was looking for a GTCEuM pack - hopefully there's no bad bugs
  • Iron furnaces greatly speed up early-game resource processing - I'm glad they're in the pack
  • There's a lot more AE2 stuff than I expected - perhaps I should heed this warning, but I think I'll play on regardless
  • Snicker snicker - Dilithium has the chemical structure Li2
  • Progression seems like pretty standard GT progression - just with a few side branches and more content after UHV

Next up, actually playing.