I'm REALLY not sure where to put this type of question, but because I'm writing a mod, and the question pertains to the writing of that mod, and you all are modders, I figured this would be roughly appropriate to place here. I also saw only one other similar question, which appeared more focused on how the vanilla materials were balanced against each other, so I guess no one's posted something like this before.

 

Actual question(s):

 

1. What defines "Overpowered" in relation to other mods? Almost every mod's weapons and armor are severely underpowered when held up against Draconic Evolution, for example, but mod-players get to diamonds in just a few hours without notably trying, so vanilla weapons and armor are really cheap for what they do.

 

2. What do YOU, dear reader, do in attempts to balance your tools and armor, if anything at all? Do you prefer crafting costs or unusual crafting mechanics, energy costs, durability costs, or making use of arbitrarily expensive materials that require arbitrarily complex manufacturing methods to create?

 

3. How much does this really matter? Should I just throw these in a config file and let the player/admins determine what's a fair tool for each pack?

 

overpowered is the combination of low cost, low efford, high durability I guess.

There is a LOT of stuff that fks with overpoweredness in the actual modding scenee.. So. you should do it the way you are feeling good. and if its "omg way to overpowered" people will tell you make sure to prevent hardcoding so you need to fix some variables to nerf stuff

Don't ever assume what "common" (or rare or whatever) is when working with materials that are either vanilla (ender pearls, nether stars,  etc) or common mod things (tin, copper). The rarity of materials is entirely dependant on mod composition. A tech mod, for instance, we'll use a TON of iron, making that resource more rare (because there are more things wanting it).

 

Which is why nether stars tend to be the "go to" uber rare resource got a number of mods. And is like "hold on, I haven't even found a nether skeleton yet, much less gotten three skulls."

I guess the only thing that is more rare then nether stars is dragon eggs :b