Minecraft Wiki:Issues/Booster glitch discussion

I've created a place to debate the merits of the booster bug without cluttering the issues page. If there's enough support for keeping this as a feature, I hope Mojang will listen to the community. Let the discussion begin! —Immute [talk]

This page welcomes all viewpoints. Just because Immute created the page doesn't mean that you have to agree with him to post here.

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Immute defends the booster glitch as a good mechanic in and of itself
I'll begin by reposting a comment I made on reddit that I think sums up my position well:

I missed this mechanic so much. It felt so right, so simple and clean, once you suspended your disbelief and stopped trying to draw ties with the real world. I was shocked to learn that such an orthogonal, powerful, and elegant system was the result of a bug. It seemed far to clever and too right. The days of the booster glitch were golden, for an engineer could feel great satisfaction for having designed beautiful, easy to use launchers that could propel carts for kilometers. But only those who knew what they were doing could achieve such feats. Gone now is that sense of accomplishment, replaced with the monotony of mining more gold to make ugly-looking powered rails that require the placement of a redstone torch nearby, which always looks extremely gawky unless you go through the effort of placing the torch under the track, and if you do, the rail line will take at least twice as long to build.

However, the technical knowledge required for designing effective minecart systems using the booster glitch is extensive, and some people would rather use powered rail rather than go through all the trouble of learning and debugging. These people have nothing to fear. They can continue to use powered rail in virtually the same way. I'd wager that the return of the old booster glitch won't affect them at all. So we satisfy both the engineer/hacker types and the "I just want a simple rail line, and I'm willing to put a tad bit more grinding in to get it without having to overcomplicate things" type. Both are important, both can be satisfied, and now, with the triumphant return of the adjacency-boost feature, both player-types finally are satisfied.

Tl;dr: summary below.

Playing with old-style minecart boosters was what got hooked on Minecraft. They defined much of my Minecraft experience. And I want to see them in the official release! Who's with me?

As I said earlier, if you don't like old-school boosters, their comeback won't affect you in any way. Just continue to use powered rail as before. —Immute [talk]

Comments on Immute's argument

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Arguments against keeping the glitch
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A bug shouldn't be the solution to another bug
The reason the booster glitch was taken out is we have two perfectly viable options for transport: The cheap minecart with furnace, or the expensive but fast powered rails. The booster glitch makes the former completely obsolete - it is rarely used because of its clumsyness in comparison to the overpowered booster glitch. Travelling quickly in minecraft isn't meant to be easy. Even sprinting has considerable drawbacks. The real problem here is the bugged minecart collisions. Only people who build their long tracks legimitely know about this, and it is a mighty headache, the largest bug of all mechanical systems. This bug even beats the irritating update quirks of redstone! --HexZyle 10:13, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments

 * Hey, thanks for your argument. I understand your concerns about balance, and I share them.  The first thing that I'll note is that the booster glitch in 1.9pre6 is much less powerful than it used to be, particularly for unoccupied carts (try it).  Also, I think that powered rails are unbalanced.  They're too weak; it's ridiculous that we have to place a powered rail every 10 m.  It would be much better if the crafting recipe for powered rail yielded 1 rail instead of 6, and powered rails were needed only every 60 m (to achieve max speed).  (Also, I think that minecarts with furnaces are borderline unusable and serve little purpose.)  However, my main problem with dropping the booster glitch is that it breaks an important aspect of minecraft: the choice between grinding and engineering.  There are some players who hate to engineer, preferring to instead grind, (and that's perfectly fine; I have no problem with these players) and some who love to engineer and who will invest a crazy amount of time and ingenuity into creating mechanisms that automate some amount of grinding away.  What's great about Minecraft is that, for the most part, it can be played either way.  However, powered rails are better suited to non-engineers.  No amount of cleverness will allow a would-be engineer to launch a cart for 100 m, or avoid the maddeningly tedious task of hiding redstone torches under the track every 10 m.  The booster glitch is important because it allows engineers to play the game as they would want to.  The booster glitch does require quite a bit of know-how to use properly.  —Immute [talk]


 * What are the minecart collision bugs you're talking about? Are you referring to how east-west (under old directions) collisions are different from north-south collisions, or how minecart collisions do not conserve momentum?  —Immute [talk]


 * Both. They are both part of the same bugfix. Do you not remember the 1.6 update that pretty much rendered the powered minecart and all other multi-minecart systems useless?
 * On a side note, I did not realise the booster glitch had been brought back in 1.9pre6. Perhaps it is more balanced now? Do minecart work again? The last version of the game I played was 1.9pre5. --HexZyle 20:42, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * He could mean the way you have to leave a space between parallel rails to avoid them interfering (because of the booster glitch). This is annoying, but only slightly, and I wish there was a way to fix that while retaining boosters. Immibis 07:29, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Here's a comparison in table form:


 * *"distance limit" means: Is there a limit to how far one of these will push a cart?
 * They are all viable alternatives with their pros and cons. If boosters existed, I'd use both them and powered rails in minecart station designs. Travelling quickly is still difficult - you need large amounts of iron to build a minecart system.
 * It's also worth noting that bugged collisions seemed to be a side effect of booster removal. Re-adding boosters might fix the collisions. Immibis 07:29, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Other remarks
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