As many of you know, I am in the process of overhauling and adding new content to Mekanism for the v6 release.  I am really happy to say that the content is coming together very smoothly, and a release is looking pretty imminent.

One major question I’ve been asked is my plan for it’s release in 1.6.4 or in 1.7.4.  I’ll go ahead and say that I originally planned on a 1.6 debut, but a few things are making me reconsider.  Believe it or not, it really comes up to you all whether or not you want a release.  I’ll go ahead and list the drawbacks I’ve been considering.

1. New Content
Mekanism v6 already features a ton of new features, including new Digital Miner additions, overhauled transmitter mechanics, tiered Universal Cables, 4x ore processing, scuba gear and general stability improvements and enhancements.  Believe it or not, however, we still have some content in planning.  We could certainly release now and add the new content later, but I have to say that the stuff we’re working on would work very well with the content already added in the new update.

2. World Transitioning
With the new content we’ve added, we’ve had to make several necessary core changes that will make some content inaccessible in the next version.  As there will be a necessary world reboot when transitioning Minecraft version 1.7, it makes me want to wait until the port until I release the content.  Below is a list of the content that will be changed in the next release.

• Electrolytic Separators have been merged into the Core module, and this means that all Electrolytic Separators previously existent in your world will no longer exist.  We’ve added in a bunch of checks so that there will be no chunk corruption or any world damage as a result, but the fact is that all your separators will be gone :(
• Transmitters have been completely, COMPLETELY overhauled by this update.  I mean it – everything has been rewritten from scratch to both be extremely efficient and work seamlessly with FMP.  The FMP transition, however, means that all old transmitters that you have in your world will no longer exist.  This means that Universal Cables, Mechanical Pipes, Logistical Transporters and Pressurized Tubes will disappear once you update.  Once again, there won’t be any corruption, but you’re gonna lose a lot of stuff if you grew fond of Mekanism’s transmitters.

I’m sure this news won’t be too pleasant to those of you who were previously eager to update.  Let me know what you think, though, if enough of you are willing to sacrifice a few resources to remake the changed content, I may begin finalizing for a 1.6.4 release.  Leave a comment here or let me know on IRC (#mekanism, irc.esper.net)!