Resolved Block Tick Incongruity

This is a problem with the block tick rate either being insensibly reduced, or of a bug that causes a lowering of the block tick rate. Before I begin with my explanation as to why I must conclude this, I have to define some terms:

• Vanilla: Relating to things that are in non-modded MC. Mods should not need to overhaul basic MC mechanics like ticks unless replaced by a functionally similar yet "better" form, or required for performance.
• Game Tick: A tick in game that should be running at a rate of 20 per second that handles the functional processing of game elements in an orderly manner.
• Redstone Tick: A tick that updates redstone elements that occurs every 2 game ticks.
• Block Tick: A tick that is called individually for 3 blocks in every 16 x 16 x 16 "chunk" area within a 15 chunk radius (if loaded) around a person or chunkloader in this case.
• Scheduled Tick: A tick that is scheduled by a block that calls code in the future.

PLEASE do not confuse these different types of ticks. Most mods currently on Alice use scheduled ticks to be able to run things in a predictable way. Vanilla block ticksmanage things like leaf decay, ice decay, snow decay, plant growth, farmland updating, and many other "random" elements.
On with the problem:

A week or so ago, at night (PST), SK updated something on the server which broke block ticks, causing the my energy system, which relies on the vanilla growth speed of sugarcane. The sugarcane farm, which is visible from my workarea, seemed to be growing at a snail's pace. I did not think this to be an issue until, whilst checking on the generator, I found that the farms which previously supported the generator with plenty extra, were draining at a unacceptable rate. At the moment, I can only support 19 engines with 2,046 sugarcane, while previously I was able to support 71 engines with only half that number.

To test this, I recorded my upper sugarcane farm for 23 minutes, which scales to about 12 minutes at a generous rate of 10 TPS. This tested 341 sugarcane, which should net a sugarcane every 3.203 seconds. Over the period of 23 minutes, only 92 sugarcane grew. This results in a rate of 7.826 seconds per sugarcane. This either means that the sugarcane block is implemented incorrectly or that block ticks are occurring at less than half the rate that they should have been running at.

I am not able to investigate the source of these issues as I do not have access to the server. I also observed that sugarcane grows at the expected speed whilst testing within an integrated client server, telling us that this is a SKCraft server issue as opposed to a modpack issue.

This problems is not a significantly game-breaking issue, however it is a major annoyance. This forum post is to remind and notify of this issue. I will only request that it be fixed when SK has both the time, initiative, and method to fix this. Thank you.

TL;DR: Block ticks are going at less than half the rate that they should be going at making certain vanilla things disproportionately slow when compared to the game tick rate.

EDIT: This measurement was taken when the server was at ~17 TPS, so the assumption of 10 TPS means that block ticks may be occurring even slower than at half speed.

 

Yea, leaf decay calls the sapling drop chance. So a slow block tick would cause saplings to be dropped at a unreasonably slow rate as compared to the block tick. I mean, I'm using 6 sugarcane farms to feed 19 engines while I would be feeding 71 with just 3 farms. It's hilariously pathetic, and then you realize you are out of power.

 

This thing is, this isn't (from my perspective) a problem with a mod and their scheduled ticks. It's a problem with the ratio of block ticks to game ticks. Leaf decay, and growth rates are the major things impacted by this and they use block ticks which are rarely, if ever used in mods.

 

That's exactly what's affected by this! Thanks for the confirmation.