Salt Nerf Options

This page is to capture options for the salt nerf. Keep Discussions and comments in the Github thread

= Background = Salt is used for several things in-pack. Early game, it is needed for cooking Pam's foods. Later on, it is electrolyzed for the Chlorine or Sodium, which are used for many different recipes. Pam's has a simple recipe to turn water+bucket into a salt pile. This was felt to be un-greg-like, and so the recipe was removed. This left the only source for salt to be salt veins. The concern is that for high tier players, their high rates of chlorine consumption required access to large sources of chlorine.

= Options =
 * 1) L2P - Examine the recipes, discover the formulations that allow using less Chlorine.
 * 2) Pro: Requires little to no changes.
 * 3) Con: Alternate recipes will push the pressure to other resources.  Also, it restricts gameplay to force only one option (ie, why play when there is only one "best" setup)  Even alternate recipes may still not provide enough Chlorine.
 * 4) Ghast tears - Use Ghast tears to make salt water. Already planned for next release.
 * 5) Pro: "Magical" way to create more salt. Additional use for ghast tears.  Already implemented.
 * 6) Con: Will require large mob farms, or bee farms, or IC2 farms to generate tears. Needs electrolyzers or distillation towers. Feels more "magical" than "greggy".
 * 7) Mining - Increase the output from the salt and rock salt ores.  Salt is one of the largest mined ore by volume. Currently they are 4x. This can be easily changed to 12x or more.
 * 8) Pro: Fairly simple change.  Keeps salt ore relevant.
 * 9) Con: More pressure on post-macerator machines to process the ores. Oreveins will need to be found and exploited by hand or using automated mining.
 * 10) Underground liquids - Add salt water as an underground liquid to various planets/dimensions. Brine is often exploited for salt on Earth. Easy change to worldgen, does not effect chunk times.
 * 11) Pro: Large quantities can be pumped from underground with tiered oil drills. Can be added to chunks already generated if they have not been prospected. Can be added to planets/moons to keep them relevant.
 * 12) Con: Requires a good distillation tower recipe to make it worthwhile. Oil drills will need chunkloaders and remote power generation or delivery. Servers with limited per-player chunk loading allocation.
 * 13) Fusion - Fusion recipe that allows creating Chlorine
 * 14) Pro: Single machine, no chain required. Can all be done within an existing base.
 * 15) Con: Feels more "black box" than really gregtech type solution. If Chlorine plasma recipe is power-positive, the large amounts of Chlorine needed for recipes means lots of "free" EU. Does not provide any Sodium.
 * 16) Lava/water mixing - Lava + earth Salt water makes highly acidic clouds. This would emulate that with gregtech to solve this issue. Lava + water => HCl + NaOh + obsidian dust
 * 17) Pro: Can be put in an LCR recipe. Sink for lava and water.  Recipe could be tuned for lava input and certain amount of HCl output.
 * 18) Con: Everburn urn currently doesn't have a super high output for Lava. Would also have side effects on H production due to large quantity of Chlorine needed. Tuning for UV+ will make it less attractive for lower tiers.