IMPORTANT!

Blue Systems 2 is effectively a new modpack and it will not be compatible with old worlds. You will need to start a new world in order to play Blue Systems 2! You have been warned.

Low Tech, Magic, Dangerous, Different, Fair.

Description;

Blue Systems is a tech light magic heavy pack with an exploration tilt. The pack offers NO quests or objectives, but seeks to push players out of their comfort zone with difficulty tweaks and by rejecting traditional modded methods of automation. Enhancement to the vanilla dimensions along with the dark realm of The Betweenlands provide plenty of opportunity for exploration and many weird and wonderful tool to play with.

What does the pack include?

Difficulty; Is intended to be hard, but not “hardcore”.
Danger; Additional mobs and mob AI to eat you in the night.
Exploration; Customised world generation with extra murder dungeons to loot.
New worlds; The overworld has been changed dramatically, NetherEX improves the nether and even the end has additional tweaks for you to explore and exploit.
Automation; Old school systemic automation rather than magic block farms.
Explosions; Mining with explosives is now viable and sensible.
Magic; Several magic system are included to liven up the world and give you that feeling of power you get from high tier kit.
Cosmetics; Just because you aren’t a builder, doesn’t mean you can’t flail about helplessly.
Cuteness; Passive mobs that waddle about and make the world feel slightly more lived in.
Plants; Want to build a garden that does more than just feed you? Well you can!
Foods; Different food mods so you don’t have to eat your friends.

What does this pack NOT include?

Redundancy; I’ve tried to prevent feature replication while keeping the pack diverse.
Overshadowing; Some mods are just better than others, I’ve tried to pick mods that wont allow that.
Energy; No techno-magical electrically conductive fluids.
Mapping; No map mods. Hopefully people will use in world system like landmarks, way-points, and the bibliocraft enhancements to the vanilla mapping system. Playing with out a mini-map changes play style for most modded players.
Tinkers construct; Its a great mod but it is in 95% of packs.
Invincibility; No such thing as armour that makes you unkillable.
Flight; Unlimited creative flight. All forms of flight have disadvantages that must be taken in to account.

What’s with the name?

Blue systems is reference to every video game that pits two teams against each other and to Roosters Teeth Red vs Blue series. Originally called Red System, I had planned that the pack would include many tech mods and require complex redstone systems for automation. However during play testing I realised I had created another bland kitchen sink pack. I forked the pack, switched the name to blue systems temporarily, and began cutting away mods. The longer I worked on the pack, the more I liked the name. I decided to stick with the name and I announced the pack as Blue Systems.

Known issues;

Changing texture packs may cause the connected texture mod to break temporarily. Reloading the pack should fix this.
Texture packs that change the default stone texture may break the stratification colouring of stone. The hardness effect will remain, but there may not be any visual indication of this effect.
Several different types of filtered hoppers. These all work slightly differently and have therefor been left in.
A bug in the wizardry mod may prevent you returning to the overworld by the mods intended means, please take a return scroll or other form of teleportation to get home. This is a known issue with the current version of the mod and sadly is not something that I can fix. I will update the mod as soon as a fix is available.

Server Owners;

Pre 2.0 worlds will need to be restarted as the transition between 1.2 and 2.0 is effectively a new pack. Everything will break.
The single player pack will function properly on a server. The client side mods will automatically disable themselves when loaded in a server environment.
Under ideal conditions, you should turn the fire tick game rule ON. Setting this to off can somewhat break progression by allows infinite fire sources.
Under ideal conditions, you should not reset worlds and instead create relatively large worlds. This should encourage construction of farms in the nether, end and between lands. Most if not all resources can be farmed with enough effort and imagination.

Things new players should know;

Buckets; You can no longer make water source blocks with buckets. To use water in your build you must either exploit natural water or mechanically pump water. Botanias ‘Rod of the Sea’ has been nerfed to prevent players bypassing this change until very later in the tech tree.
Darkness; Light levels outside will follow the moon cycle and be virtually non existent in in caves. Take plenty of torches lest your mind start playing tricks on you.
Dungeons; Spawn frequently and can be very dangerous, but also provide large quantities of dropped loot and experience.
Flight; In addition to vanilla elytra, botania and astral sorcery will also allow you to fly. Acquiring any of these item will require significant effort.
Logging; Punching wood will not yield logs, you need an axe for that. Cutting logs in to planks requires you to craft logs with an axe. Eventually you will be able to build a saw mill to automate cutting logs in to planks.
Mapping; With no map mod included, orienteering will become important. Vanilla maps and bibliocraft additions to that system will be very important for navigation. Vanilla compasses are now much cheaper to compensate. Way-points both spawn in the world and can be built by players to allow long range teleportation.
Mobs; A variety of new mobs spawn and vanilla mobs are now smarter. Zombies can now spawn in groups rather than randomly; they can search for players at a longer range, and move as a hoard towards players and light sources. Vanilla zombies now ALWAYS drop tools and armour they are wearing if you kill them. Creepers can run, but they can be ‘defused’ by right clicking them with any shears before they detonate.
Movement; Speed now depends on the surface you are walking on. Sand, snow and tall grass will slow you down significantly while exploring. Building road with stone or vanilla path blocks will allow you to move much more quickly across the world.
Ores and Processing; Furnaces are not very hot and yield only three nuggets per ore smelted. Grinding your ores will produce dust. Each dust will yield six nuggets. Cooking ore in a kiln will yield an ingots per ore. Smelting ore in a stoked crucible will yield 15 nuggets. Starlight Infusion will yield three ingots per ore.
Scaffolding; You can no longer place blocks while jumping. Scaffolding will be necessary until you can acquire, and fuel, some sort of flight.
Stratification; Rock gets harder the deeper down you dig. The overworld now has three distinct layers of rock, the colour of the stone and time to dig through the rock will increase as you near the bedrock. While you can break the bottom layer with a flint pick axe, the amount of time taken to break the lower layer with primitive tools should discourage you from doing so.
Terrain; Is larger and more difficult to traverse along with more more diverse due to structure generation. Ores spawn more frequently and with wider ranges. Coal and iron spawn at higher levels on hills. It is possible to find gold lower on hill sides. Redstone and diamonds spawn in the higher reaches of caves and ravines.
Tools; Some of the early tools have been disabled. Wood and stone tools have terrible durability. These early tiers have been replace with Flint, which can now be crafted with a gravel and a stick in your inventory crafting grid.
Transport; With all flight being conditional, horses, mules and donkeys should be a more viable method or transport; in addition to being cute. Complex rail systems can also be constructed for quick transport.
Water straining; Alluvial ore deposits are more common than you might think. However making a strainer strong enough to collect the precious stones and gold nuggets is not as easy as you might hope.

Keybindings;

-I have not shipped keybindings with this pack. However a number of tools have been included to allow you to quickly and easily customise them. Controlling allows you to text search in the control screen and Keyboard Wizard (Default F8) gives you a visual overview of all the used and available keys, along with the functions already bound to them and a text search feature.

Goals;

The pack does not have a goal as such. Much like most other pack, the end game is up to you. But if you really need one. A few have been included in the ‘Tips & Goals’ section of the manual.

Server!

The Official Blue Systems Server is kindly hosted as part of the Lolnet network.

Lolnet hosts vanilla and various modded servers, this is a public access, family friendly network.

Rules and banned item list can be found at the official wiki.

This server is located in New Zealand in the Oceania/Australasia region.

Direct connect via bs.lolnet.co.nz

Or connect to the lobby via play.lolnet.co.nz

Blue Systems 1

information for 1.2.0 and older

Description;

Blue Systems is a tech light magic heavy pack with an exploration tilt. The pack offers NO quests or objectives, but seeks to push players out of their comfort zone with difficulty tweaks and by rejecting traditional modded methods of automation. Twilight forest, The Betweenlands, and The Erbus along with Nether Ex provide plenty of opportunity for exploration and many weird and wonderful tool to play with. The pack does not have a goal as such. Much like many other packs, the end game is up to you. But if you really need an objective, I have provided a handy list for you.

Kill every boss in every dimension.
Build an automated cake factory, then build an automatic pie factory to determine which is better.
Build an automatic concrete factory.
Build a base entirely from materials not found in the overworld.
Build an automated tree farm with out using botania.
Complete the challenges in the Botania Lexicon

What does the pack include?

Difficulty; Is intended to be hard, but not “hardcore”.
Danger; Additional mobs and mob AI to eat you in the night.
Exploration; Customised world generation with extra murder dungeons to loot.
New worlds; 3 additional dimensions and a nether overhaul for you to explore and exploit.
Automation; Old school systemic automation rather than magic block farms.
Explosions; Mining with explosives is now viable and sensible.
Magic; Several magic system are included to liven up the world and give you that feeling of power you get from high tier kit.
Cosmetics; Just because you aren’t a builder, doesn’t mean you can’t flail about helplessly.
Cuteness; Passive mobs that waddle about and make the world feel slightly more lived in.
Plants; Want to build a garden that does more than just feed you? Well you can!
Foods; Different food mods so you don’t have to eat your friends.

What does this pack NOT include?

Redundancy; I’ve tried to prevent feature replication while keeping the pack diverse.
Overshadowing; Some mods are just better than others, I’ve tried to pick mods that wont allow that.
Energy; No techno-magical electrically conductive fluids.
Mapping; No map mods. Hopefully people will use in world system like landmarks, way-points, and the bibliocraft enhancements to the vanilla mapping system. Playing with out a mini-map changes play style for most modded players.
Tinkers construct; Its a great mod but it is in 95% of packs.
Invincibility; No such thing as armour that makes you unkillable.
Flight; Unlimited creative flight. All forms of flight have disadvantages that must be taken in to account.

What’s with the name?

Server!

The Official Blue Systems Server is kindly hosted as part of the Lolnet network.

Lolnet hosts vanilla and various modded servers, this is a public access, family friendly network.

Rules and banned item list can be found at the official wiki.

This server is located in New Zealand in the Oceania/Australasia region.

Direct connect via bs.lolnet.co.nz

Or connect to the lobby via play.lolnet.co.nz

Things new players should know;

Buckets; You can no longer make water source blocks with buckets. To use water in your build you must either exploit natural water or mechanically pump water. Botanias ‘Rod of the Sea’ has been nerfed to prevent players bypassing this change.
Darkness; Light levels outside will follow the moon cycle and be virtually non existent in in caves. Take plenty of torches lest your mind start playing tricks on you.
Dungeons; Spawn frequently and can be very dangerous, but also provide large quantities of dropped loot and experience.
Flight; In addition to vanilla elytra, broom sticks from evil craft will also allow you to fly. To make base building easier, Magical feathers will allow creative flight while held in range of a vanilla beacon. Crafting this item will require items from 4 different dimensions.
Logging; Punching wood will not yield logs, you need an axe for that. Cutting down logs requires you to craft them with an axe. Eventually you will be able to build a saw mill to automate cutting logs in to planks.
Mapping; With no map mod included, orienteering will become important. Vanilla maps and bibliocraft additions to that system will be very important for navigation. Vanilla compasses are now much cheaper to compensate. Way-points both spawn in the world and can be built by players to allow long range teleportation.
Mobs; A variety of new mobs spawn and vanilla mobs are now smarter. Zombies can now spawn in groups rather than randomly; they can search for players at a longer range, and move as a hoard towards players and light sources. Vanilla zombies now ALWAYS drop tools and armour they are wearing if you kill them.
Movement; Speed now depends on the surface you are walking on. Sand, snow and tall grass will slow you down significantly while exploring. Building road with stone or vanilla path blocks will allow you to move much more quickly across the world.
Ores and Processing; Furnaces are not very hot and yield only three nuggets per ore smelted. Grinding your ores will produce two dust. Each dust will yield six nuggets. Cooking ore in a kiln will yield two ingots per ore. Starlight Infusion will yield three ingots per ore.
Scaffolding; You can no longer place blocks while jumping. Scaffolding will be necessary until you can acquire, and fuel, some sort of flight.
Stratification; Rock gets harder the deeper down you dig. The overworld now has three distinct layers of rock, the colour of the stone and time to dig through the rock will increase as you near the bedrock. While you can break the bottom layer with a flint pick axe, the amount of time taken to break the lower layer with primitive tools should discourage you from doing so.
Terrain; Is larger and more difficult to traverse along with more more diverse due to structure generation. Ores spawn more frequently and with wider ranges. Coal and iron spawn at higher levels on hills. It is possible to find gold lower on hill sides. Redstone and diamonds spawn in the higher reaches of caves and ravines.
Tools; Many of the early tools have been disabled. Replaced with a handful of selected wood and flint tools. To compensate for this, Flint can now be crafted with a gravel and a stick in your inventory crafting grid. Check the images tab for a quick overview image.
Transport; With all flight being conditional, horses, mules and donkeys should be a more viable method or transport; in addition to being cute.
Water straining; Alluvial ore deposits are more common than you might think. However making a strainer strong enough to collect the precious stones and gold nuggets is not as easy as you might hope.

World generation information;

Sea level is 63
Build limit is 255
Stratum layer hardness;
Easy; Between 54 and 255
Medium; Between 34 and 53
Hard; Between 0 and 33

Ore spawns;

Coal and Iron spawns between 0 and 255
Gold spawns between 0 and 100
Redstone spawns between 0 and 68
Diamonds spawns between 0 and 25
Lapis Lazuli spawns in clouds centred around 16 with a spread of 120

Keybindings;

I have not shipped keybindings with this pack. However a number of tools have been included to allow you to quickly and easily customise them. Controlling allows you to text search in the control screen and Keyboard Wizard gives you a visual overview of all the used and available keys, along with the functions already bound to them and a text search feature.

Known issues;

First load will be unusually long due to the blockdrops mod analysing all of the blocks in the pack. This will only happen on the first load or when mods are changed in pack updates. Deleting or disabling this mod will reduce load times.
Changing texture packs may cause the connected texture mod to break temporarily. Reloading the pack should fix this.
Texture packs that change the default stone texture may break the stratification colouring of stone. The hardness effect will remain, but there may not be any visual indication of this effect.
charcoal pit ceramics do not play nice with the BTW kiln. Items should not crash, but will not function in each others kilns. For some reason my scripts to fix this are not working.
Several different types of filtered hoppers. These all work slightly differently and have therefor been left in.
Server owners should turn the fire tick game rule OFF. Some mods generate structures in the overworld that can cause fires, these structures can and do generate in forests. This will cause your world to burn down or lag your server to the point of crashing.