There is a lot of additional Functionality in GregTech that allows you to improve your Modpacks and Servers. Since they are less "visible" to the public, I decided to make this Page about some of them.
At this point I want to point out again that the Default Config Pack exists.
And if Recipes need changing then just use MineTweaker with MTUtils. ;)
For getting a small Starter Inventory, if you wanna give Players a Jumpstart, use this Mod: Starting Inventory.
Enabled by Default, the Area around the Spawnpoint is protected against Mobspawns, making nightly spawning onto the Server less of a Death Sentence for new Players, and giving you a safe Area to build your own Spawn-Town.
Quite a few other Convenience Features for Worldgeneration at and around the Spawnpoint exist in GregTech too, but are disabled by Default.
If any of them (see Picture above and List below) is enabled inside the Config, the World Spawn will be set to the coordinates (x=0;z=0) once the Center of the World has been generated.
This will make the Area around the Center 12x12 of Chunks permanently loaded
(they are normally permaloaded too, even in Vanilla Singleplayer, it’s just that their Position is more persistent)
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The Quad Beacon
A simple 4x Beacon with all Effects except the nasty Jump Boost on it. It has an Iron Base but is directly at the Spawnpoint, meaning that the default protected "No Harvesting" Zone covers it entirely on Servers. -
The Center Biomes
As you may know, it can sometimes be stupidly hard to find certain Biome specific Resources, so I added an option to fill the 12x12 of permaloaded Chunks with relevant Biomes and their Resources. Also plenty of Sticks and Rocks for earlygame Tools on the Plains Area. Below the Biomes are Mossy Cobblestones of different Rock Types too. I ofcourse did not forget to add Rivers to the Biomes, they are directly below the Roads on the Picture, and can be used as good infinite Water Sources for the Drain Cover (what is much faster even if you keep infinite Water enabled in CodeChickenCore). -
The Roads
Getting around can be difficult on Servers and large Worlds, so why not have Roads be part of World Generation, and use Materials such as Asphalt to increase the Walking Speed on said Roads! They go along the X and Z Axis and cross at the Spawnpoint on the Center of the Map. They also have Street Signs on the Sides indicating which Region File the bordering Chunks are inside. -
The Nexus Building
The Nexus is a Building that contains inactive Portals (so just their Frames) for the End, the Nether, the Twilight Forest, Atum and enough space to add three other Portals.
Other potentially useful things are:
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There is the OreProcessing.cfg Config File that lets you multiply the Output of Ores when crushing them. This also applies to the Small Ores and can be really useful if you want mining to be less of a grind.
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The Ender Garbage Dump is a Block that lets you access all the Items and Fluids that have been voided using GT6 means (for example Ender Garbage Bin) or vanilla Item Despawn. It can only be created by letting a Server Admin cheat it in. This is especially nice if you want a Serverwide Garbage Dump, where everything that everyone just throws away will end up and could be processed for the Community. If a Player harvests the Garbage Dump, it will NOT drop, so it cannot be stolen.
There is some Mod Interactions that can save you the hassle of doing certain things.
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Atum
If you decide to make a Mining Dimension of some sort, then using Atum might be the easiest way to do so. Not only do Miniature Atum Portals exist in GT6 to make Transport easier, while having a 1:1 Distance Factor that is good for spacing. But it also generates old GT6 Ore Veins inside of it, while being a Desert, meaning you can see some of the Veins on the Surface.
And don’t forget the hassle that setting up a Mystcraft Mining Age would give you in comparision to just installing Atum and being done. -
Enviromine
Did you know Enviromine had a Cave Dimension? I didn’t for a long time, but now that I know about it, I added proper Support for it and my Stone Layer Generator. The Dimension itself is just a large Nether alike Cave with Water instead of Lava and Stone instead of Netherrack. Not really much to adventure in, more of yet another Mining Dimension.
Just don’t forget that you have to adjust a lot of its Configs to your liking, because my Default Config Pack only disables its Physics.
Lag is bad, so how about preventing it or reducing it with these easy Steps. ;)
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Pregenerating a World
Once you have all Worldgeneration Settings finalized, pregenerating a World can save you a LOT of Lag when people go exploring. So it is ofcourse important that you use a Pregeneration Tool that doesn’t leak memory or crash constantly, and can potentially even run in the background, while people are actually playing, without lagging them to death in the process.
The only Pregenerator Tool that has those qualities and more, is the one from Speiger, all others that I have seen are not even remotely as good, especially the Forge one is terrible (but that is a later MC Version, we are still in the one-point-seven-ten-ties here).
You should also install this Patch for Vanilla Minecraft to prevent it from crashing due to vanilla MC Issues.
It might require this Patcher for ForgeMultipart, if that happens to be installed. -
Underground Biomes
If you decide to install Underground Biomes, you should definitely turn off its actual Worldgen (The Default Config Pack does that too).
GregTech itself handles the Stone based Worldgen since a while, and having both generate at once is not a good Idea (GregTech would win that fight by the way, but it would lag more).
Don’t worry, GregTech will generate the Underground Biomes Stone Types just fine, so you get the benefit of both, Underground Biomes and GregTech Stone Types for Decoration. -
Ore Generation
GregTech, since the Stone Layer Update, will just flat out kill most other Mods regular Overworld Ore Generation by overwriting it with its own Stone and Ore Blocks, unless it is very close to Bedrock. It is advised to just disable the Ores of those Mods, to save the time the Mods spend generating the about-to-be-removed Ores.
The Default Config Pack handles that very well, as it only removes the Ores that GregTech generates itself too. -
GregTech Coins
The Coins that you can find in GregTech have a lot of Detail as you might have noticed. This amount of Detail is capable of sometimes causing the placement of other Blocks inside the same Chunk to spike the FPS. The Detail can be turned off in the Clientside GregTech.cfg, that is outside your Config Folder (because Modpacks are not allowed to share that one for rather obvious reasons). -
Extra Utilities
Extra Utilities will simply lag NEI Search to death when installed, so if you don’t like that, there, I told you the culprit. -
ChromatiCraft
I was not able to get this to run smoothly with GregTech at all, it just lags way too much on ChromatiCraft Side when you combine them, and NEI is absolutely not usable. -
RotaryCraft, ElectriCraft, ReactorCraft, DragonAPI and other Reika Mods
These Mods will approximately double the Loading Time of your Modpack when installed alongside GregTech, but apart from that they are working as "fine" as Reika Mods usually do. -
Mystcraft
There is a Config that you MUST change if you want to run Mystcraft with GregTech, and now that I think of it, I added that Part to the Default Config Pack too just now.
Be careful with installing it and set "useconfigs" in the "core.cfg" at the "baselining" category to true. I had to hard-restart my Computer (holding the ON/OFF pressed until it dies), because of the insane Lag it caused when it was set to false, and I have 8 GB of RAM assigned!