Add Mana info tooltips for pools, spreaders and flowers

[Eldrinn-Elantey]

Adds always-visible tooltips so Mana values can be read without leaving the game: pools show their storage capacity, spreaders show burst payload and per-tick loss in flight, and generating flowers show their generation rate. Flower rates are kept in the language files because those values are private constants that cannot be read from the item safely off-world, so they need a manual update if a flower is rebalanced.

[LazyFlesh]

I'm strongly against assigning specific numbers to botania.

Percentage fill for blocks and flowers would be fine, since I know most people don't want to treat botania as a magic mod, but always visible numbers are against the design of botania.

In the mod, it very specifically does not mention specific numbers, except as percentage ratios of a man's pool.

Additionally, the benefit this would bring is dubious at best. You can already get a parse for fill from hovering with a living wood wand.

If this is made default off, I can agree to it's inclusion.

[tiffit]

Agree with LazyFlesh. Botania is specifically meant to not display any hard numbers.

[koolkrafter5]

I do like the inclusion of specific numbers, since it's kind of nonsense that Botania gives you a bunch of different options and no way to tell how good they are other than vibes. I think hiding this information is bad design, no matter how intentional it is.

[LazyFlesh]

There very much are options to test how good each option is. It just requires some experimentation on the person's part. It's not dissimilar to figuring out power gen, if you weren't given NEI to tell you what each fuel and generator combination produces exactly.

If you substitute in flower for generator, then suddenly the player is left to figure out if benzene is more potent than diesel, if steam is still good, and how sourceable each fuel is without NEI, and only the questbook to guide them. Meta's will pop up, but people know that even if not the optimal option, each one has ups and downs, and some people will choose not to go optimal anyway.

In this case, players can judge the generating flower by how fast it fills up a spreader, a spreader by how fast it empties a flower or pool, etc. There are also very much definable levels to flower tiers.

Convenience beats out optimality most of the time anyway. It's why people go for an army of endos instead of moving to more potent flowers, unless their fuel is convenient to source.

Yes, some are disappointing if you don't know anything, but you'd be disappointed after making the flower either way. Adding the values to NEI tooltip just lets you skip experimenting with it, which imo isn't good design. Let the player figure out if it's good or not. There's magic in that.

Like I'd said, if this must be added, I'd rather it be default off, or behind some techno-magical thing-ma-jig. If nothing else, tossing the reading in NEI is bad on counts of mod design and game design both.

[cubefury]

I sometimes feel both sides of this, having just done botania progression on a new run this week; imo the numbers should be disabled by default, but having it as a config is good for those people who love the minmaxing part. Alternatively maybe further integration with goggles to also display numbers when you plug in an upgrade (or modular armour module) could work

[tiffit]

I would be ok with an unlock of some sort (baubles, armor upgrade, etc) if its gated to late game botania for minmaxxing.

[koolkrafter5]

There very much are options to test how good each option is. It just requires some experimentation on the person's part. It's not dissimilar to figuring out power gen, if you weren't given NEI to tell you what each fuel and generator combination produces exactly.

If you substitute in flower for generator, then suddenly the player is left to figure out if benzene is more potent than diesel, if steam is still good, and how sourceable each fuel is without NEI, and only the questbook to guide them. Meta's will pop up, but people know that even if not the optimal option, each one has ups and downs, and some people will choose not to go optimal anyway.

There is a reason this information is given to players. Giving players direct numbers lets them know what is worth their time to pursue and what is not. If anything, it enhances experimentation. The way the numbers are given in this PR is about the best format possible IMO: show how much is created per action, like cake slice eaten or TNT explosion, but leave how long those actions are for the players to find or tune to their specific setup.

In this case, players can judge the generating flower by how fast it fills up a spreader, a spreader by how fast it empties a flower or pool, etc.

All of which are way too slow and tedious to make reasonable comparisons for different flowers. Do you expect every player to set up tests for 10+ different generating flowers to see how much mana they make to compare them objectively?

There are also very much definable levels to flower tiers.

And their efficacy varies wildly, even across tiers. Hydros are 6x as effective as other passive flowers for no additional cost (even with finite water, they don't consume sources if there is enough water around them), Kekimurus get dog-walked by plenty of other flowers despite being gated to Alfheim, and some addon flowers like Beegonia and Tainthistle are laughably useless.

Convenience beats out optimality most of the time anyway. It's why people go for an army of endos instead of moving to more potent flowers, unless their fuel is convenient to source.

So you'd rather they don't get more information which would incentivize them to use better, more interesting setups, and instead force them to find it on their own, which you know they won't do? There are lots of good options other than endo spam, but these players won't know about them because finding the information is too obtuse.

Yes, some are disappointing if you don't know anything, but you'd be disappointed after making the flower either way. Adding the values to NEI tooltip just lets you skip experimenting with it, which imo isn't good design. Let the player figure out if it's good or not. There's magic in that.

Maybe experimenting with different flowers is fine in normal packs, but when they are so expensive and heavily gated in GTNH, it heavily disincentivizes experimentation. Either you spend lots of time, materials, and effort to test in survival, cheat in setups in creative to test them (which is still difficult and slow), or you look up what's good to use / ask on Discord and get given the meta answer.

Like I'd said, if this must be added, I'd rather it be default off, or behind some techno-magical thing-ma-jig. If nothing else, tossing the reading in NEI is bad on counts of mod design and game design both.

So then you just cheat one in on a creative world to test your setups. This is the same exact issue of hiding TC recipes in NEI without the research.

[Nikolay-Sitnikov]

I don't like it. We already have enough min-maxing, and there's nothing in Botania which requires you to be precise with your numbers.

Practically speaking, any mana generation setup will be enough for 90% of what people want to do, and outside of a few setups, you never have to care how fast mana is produced or consumed.

Adding more numbers to Botania doesn't make the game better, it just encourages people to overplan for something they won't need.

[ham-corp]

Overplanning is fun! So many people make overoptimized setups even though they know there's no point.

Also I personally find the lack of numbers frustrating because I end up doing something really inefficient because I literally don't know better options exist, and I have no easy access to information to how much better X is than Y. Numbers +1

[brandyyn]

I would definitely not use this, I’d want it disableable

[FourIsTheNumber]

Even assuming we wanted this for GTNH, it needs to be off by default. Botania is externally supported and it breaks one of the core design constraints of the mod.