After the Technic Pack recently updated the recommended build to version 7.2, a lot of people have been asking about what happened to mods like Forestry, Millenaire, Crafting Table II, the Zeppelin mod or to items belonging to those mods (especially electric engines, which were reintroduced in another form by the recently added Transformers mod).
I would like to answer those questions in this blog post. Please direct all and any questions related to this issue to this post and make the other users aware of it. Thank you.
Millenaire[]
Millenaire was most probably taken out because of performance issues. Several users saw their framerate drop to less than stellar levels when being near Millenaire villages, and features like raids and wars between villages, which require constant background checks, did not improve the performance, either. The focus of the Technic Pack has always been and most probably will always be the "technical" mods like Buildcraft, Industrial Craft and Redpower, and if "secondary" mods like Millenaire impair the overall performance and quality of the game, they will be removed in favour of a stable installation - think of it this way: the more stable the game is, the less users need support for performance issues.
The closest to an official statement we have about Millenaire is a question answered by Kakermix in the "Technic Questions" section of the official homepage.
In his answer, Kakermix stated that "It was taken out because it was seriously compromising the quality of the pack", adding that "[...] you can always edit it back in if you'd like".
If you cannot live without Millenaire, check out this thread on the Technic forums. The poster describes how to add Better Dungeons and Millenaire back to the game - at your own risk.
Crafting Table II[]
This mod was removed because the original mod was abandoned by its creator after Minecraft 1.1 and because there is currently no sufficiently stable version for inclusion in a Technic build based on Minecraft 1.2.5.
There is a somewhat less functional version called "Crafting Table III" that you can download from the official forums. This version is slightly bugged, however: It is partly incompatible to the recipe and item manager "Not Enough Items (NEI)"; whenever you have the GUI of the Crafting Table III open and scroll with the mousewheel, your game crashes.
The thread linked above does provide a fix for that problem, but the fix is not compatible with the latest version of NEI. So if you want to add the Crafting Table III back in, you theoretically need to find all NEI-related files and replace them with an older version - this is not recommended, since you can seriously mess up your installation while doing so.
Zeppelin mod[]
The Zeppelin mod was removed because it was prone to game crashes and probably because it was incompatible with a number of custom blocks from other Minecraft mods.
This is what the creator said about his own game:
- Note
- "This mod is BETA - There is a good chance it will crash, but is stable enough for people to use now. If you get a crash dump, please post what you were doing, and the crash log in this thread."
Again, one of the main goals of the Technic Pack is to provide a stable, balanced Minecraft mod experience for people who might not be accustomed to modding and troubleshooting the game themselves. The more stable the pack runs, the better for all of its users - and the team that provides support.
Forestry[]
Forestry is not included in the Technic Pack anymore because its creator, SirSengir, suddenly decided that he did not want his mod to be in the pack anymore. He added code to the mod that not only blocked parts of its functionality, but that also caused some destruction when the mod detected that it was installed in a Technic directory (a subdirectory created by the Technic launcher), and even went as far as distributing and hiding this code in several different places. A nasty mud-fight followed, with lots of people calling lots of other people really unpolite names, and eventually, the ruckus settled down.
The Technic team and SirSengir reached the understanding that Forestry would not be included in future releases of Technic pack. Sir Sengir in turn removed the malicious code from the mod, enabling users to add the mod back in on their own. To compensate for the removal of the Electrial Engine, which was a part of the Forestry mod, the Transformers mod that includes a selection of four Electric Engines was added instead.
You can add Forestry manually by downloading the forestry JAR from this page and moving it to the "mods" subfolder of your technicssp directory. If you are into beekeeping, you should add the "Extra Bees" and "Vis Bees" plugins from this page, too!
Once you start up the game, the ID handler will detect any possible ID conflicts. Just choose "automatically assign a new ID", and the handler will take care of the rest.
A parting word[]
You can add most other mods the same way the Forestry mod can be added back in - make sure that it's compatible with Forge, read the installation instructions, download the necessary files and add them like described in the installation instructions.