Climbable Ropes for Create Aeronautics in FTB Skies 2: Aero

Climbable Ropes for Create Aeronautics adds the missing "go up" button to ropes. In Aeronautics you can already grab a rope strand with a wrench and ride it like a zipline, but vertical strands are nearly useless: gravity pulls you straight down and there's no input for climbing. This mod fixes that with an empty-hand climb mode.^[1]

The pack includes version 2.1.3 of the mod, and it has been in the pack since 1.0.3 or earlier.^[2]

How climbing works

Right-click any near-vertical rope strand, or any Plunger Launcher rope, with an empty main hand to grab on. The hitbox of a vertical rope highlights when you look at it bare-handed, so you can see where the grab point is.^[1]

• W and S climb up and down, or along the rope on plunger ropes.^[1]
• Sprint (CTRL) plus S slides you down with smooth acceleration, and you coast to a stop when you let go of the keys.^[1]
• Moving the mouse swings you around the rope.^[1]
• Sneak (SHIFT) lets go and drops you wherever you are.^[1]
• Space jumps you off with an upward impulse. If you've reached the top of the rope and a block sits above, it mantles you up onto that block instead.^[1]

Stepping onto solid ground without holding forward dismounts you automatically.^[1]

Plunger ropes and ziplining

On plunger ropes the forward direction is locked when you grab on. Near-vertical ropes lock to the upper end, otherwise it locks to whichever end you were facing, so a horizontal rope doesn't depend on which plunger was fired first. Slide acceleration scales with the rope's angle: steep ropes are fastest, and shallow ropes don't accelerate beyond normal descend speed. Plunger ropes attached to ships or contraptions work too.^[1]

Plunger ropes also support ziplining. Hold a chain-rideable item such as Create's wrench and right-click the rope to latch on. There's no steepness limit, so a horizontal rope between two pinned plungers becomes a walkable rope bridge that you cross with WASD. Steep ropes give you a normal gravity-fed slide.^[1]

Good news: there's nothing to craft to get started. Climbable Ropes adds an empty-hand climb mode for the rope strands that come with Create Aeronautics, so the whole mod is about what your bare hand can do with a rope.^[1]

Unverified The sources don't show how to craft or find the rope strands or the Plunger Launcher in this pack, so check their recipes in-game. This site does hold FTB Skies 2: Aero's own recipes, read from the pack itself: look the item up in the item browser.

Your first climb

1. Hang a rope so it runs close to vertical. Vertical strands are the ones the mod was made for, since in plain Aeronautics gravity just pulls you straight down them.^[1]
2. With an empty main hand, right-click the rope to grab on. The rope's hitbox highlights when you look at it bare-handed, so you can see where the grab point is.^[1]
3. Hold W to climb up and S to climb down.^[1]
4. Hold Sprint (CTRL) and S to slide down. You speed up smoothly and coast to a stop when you let go.^[1]
5. Press Space to jump off with an upward impulse. If you've reached the top of the rope and there's a block above, you mantle up onto it instead.^[1]
6. Press Sneak (SHIFT) to let go wherever you are. Stepping onto solid ground without holding forward also dismounts you.^[1]

Plunger ropes

The rope between two stuck plungers from the Plunger Launcher can be climbed too. Right-click it with an empty hand, and W / S move you along the rope. For plunger ropes the forward direction is locked when you grab on. Near-vertical ropes lock to the upper end, otherwise to the end you were facing.^[1]

You can also zipline on a plunger rope. Hold a chain-rideable item, such as Create's wrench, and right-click the rope to latch on. A horizontal plunger rope becomes a walkable bridge, and Sneak drops you off. Both plunger options are enabled in this pack through features.allowPlungerClimbing and features.allowPlungerZipline.^[1][3]

Pack values worth knowing

• Climbing up uses climbing.climbSpeed at 0.18, and climbing down uses climbing.descendSpeed at 0.22. Both match the mod defaults.^[3]
• Sliding tops out at 1.2 through sliding.slideSpeed, also the mod default.^[3]
• Jumping off applies an upward impulse of 0.42 from climbing.jumpOffVelocity, the mod default as well.^[3]
• Vertical rope climbing and the block mantle at the top are both on, via features.allowVerticalRopeClimbing and features.allowBlockMantle.^[3]

There's also a keybind called Lock Rope Camera in the Climbable Ropes category of your controls screen. The sources don't say what it does or what its default key is, so look at it in the controls menu.^[4]

Climbable Ropes adds an empty-hand climb mode to the rope strands in Create Aeronautics. Normally a vertical strand is nearly useless, because gravity pulls you straight down and there is no input that means "go up". This mod fills that gap with its own parallel system, and the same goes for the rope between two stuck plungers from the Plunger Launcher.^[1]

Grabbing on and the controls

Right-click a near-vertical rope strand, or any plunger rope, with an empty main hand to grab on. Once you are hanging, these controls apply:^[1]

• W and S climb up and down, or along the rope on plunger ropes.^[1]
• Sprint (CTRL) plus S slides you down with smooth acceleration, and you coast to a stop when you release instead of snapping.^[1]
• Turning the mouse swings you around the rope.^[1]
• Sneak (SHIFT) lets go, and you drop wherever you are.^[1]
• Space jumps off with an upward impulse. If you have climbed to the top of the rope and a block sits above, it mantles you up onto that block instead.^[1]
• Stepping onto solid ground without holding forward auto-dismounts you.^[1]

The rope hitbox highlights when you look at it bare-handed, the same way it does for the wrench, so you can see where the grab point is. The hanging animation is synced to all clients in multiplayer, so other players see you riding too. The controls menu also has a Climbable Ropes category with a "Lock Rope Camera" keybind.^[1][4]

How steep a rope can be in this pack

This is the main change the pack makes. climbing.maxClimbAngleFromVertical is set to 31.79 degrees here, while the mod default is 90. The value is the maximum angle from vertical at which a hanging rope segment can be grabbed. 0 means only perfectly vertical ropes, and 90 means any angle including horizontal. So in this pack you can only grab ropes that are fairly close to vertical, and diagonal lines need a larger value.^[3]

Speeds and feature toggles

The climbing and sliding values below are all the mod defaults in this pack. Only the angle limit above was changed.^[3]

• climbing.climbSpeed is the vertical speed when holding forward, set to 0.18.^[3]
• climbing.descendSpeed is the vertical speed when holding back, set to 0.22.^[3]
• climbing.jumpOffVelocity is the upward impulse when you jump off, set to 0.42.^[3]
• sliding.slideSpeed is the maximum slide speed, set to 1.2.^[3]
• sliding.slideAcceleration controls how quickly the slide ramps up, set to 0.05. sliding.slideDeceleration controls how quickly it eases out after you release back, set to 0.04.^[3]

Slide acceleration scales with the rope's angle. Steep ropes are the fastest, and shallow ropes don't accelerate beyond normal descend speed.^[1]

A handful of switches turn whole features on or off, and all of them are enabled in this pack: features.allowVerticalRopeClimbing for climbing vertical hanging ropes, features.allowPlungerClimbing for climbing rope lines between two plungers, features.allowPlungerZipline for plunger ziplines, and features.allowBlockMantle for mantling. With mantling disabled, jumping off at the top would give a normal upward impulse instead.^[3]

Plunger ropes and ziplining

On plunger ropes the forward direction is locked when you grab on. Vertical-ish ropes lock to the upper end, otherwise forward points to whichever end you were facing, so a horizontal rope doesn't depend on which plunger was fired first. Plunger ropes attached to assembled physics objects such as ships and contraptions work too.^[1]

Plunger ropes also support ziplining. Hold a chain-rideable item (Create's wrench, the same trigger Simulated uses for its strand zipline) and right-click a plunger rope to latch on. There is no steepness gate, so a horizontal rope between two pinned plungers becomes a walkable rope bridge. Walk into it, move with WASD, and Sneak to drop off. Steep ropes give you a regular gravity-fed slide, and pushing past either end with momentum dismounts you off that side.^[1][3]

Advanced tuning

These server config values shape how the rope holds you and when it lets you go. They are all at the mod defaults in this pack.^[3]

• advanced.snapPull (0.55) is how aggressively the spring drags you toward the rope each tick, and advanced.snapVelocityCap (0.35) caps the per-tick velocity that spring can add.^[3]
• advanced.maxLeashDistance (3) is the distance in blocks from the rope at which external forces dismount you.^[3]
• advanced.ropeHoverRadius (0.25) is the raycast hitbox radius in blocks for rope hover detection. Larger values make ropes easier to aim at.^[3]
• advanced.bottomDismountOffset (0.6) is how close in blocks to the lower endpoint counts as "at the bottom" for the grounded auto-dismount. advanced.bottomGroundedDismountTicks (5) is how many ticks of ground contact there you need before you are dismounted.^[3]

Good news: this pack changes just a single Climbable Ropes value from the mod default. Everything else with a listed default sits right at it. The settings live in a server file and a client file, so they are easy to find.^[3][5]

The one value the pack changed

climbing.maxClimbAngleFromVertical is set to 31.79 degrees in this pack. The mod default is 90, which lets you grab a rope at any angle, even horizontal. At 0 only perfectly vertical ropes can be grabbed, and the allowed range is 0 to 90.^[3]

In practice, a hanging rope segment has to be within 31.79 degrees of vertical for you to grab it. Steeper diagonal lines are out of reach with the pack's setting.^[3]

Climbing and sliding speeds

These are all at the mod default in this pack:^[3]

• climbing.climbSpeed is 0.18, the vertical speed when you hold forward to climb up.^[3]
• climbing.descendSpeed is 0.22, the vertical speed when you hold back to climb down.^[3]
• climbing.jumpOffVelocity is 0.42, the upward impulse when you jump off the rope.^[3]
• sliding.slideSpeed is 1.2, the maximum slide speed.^[3]
• sliding.slideAcceleration is 0.05, how quickly the slide ramps up to full speed.^[3]
• sliding.slideDeceleration is 0.04, how quickly the slide eases out after you release back.^[3]

Feature toggles

Every feature switch is turned on in this pack:^[3]

• features.allowVerticalRopeClimbing lets you climb vertical hanging ropes.^[3]
• features.allowPlungerClimbing lets you climb rope lines between two plungers.^[3]
• features.allowPlungerZipline lets you zipline along plunger rope lines while holding an item with the CHAIN_RIDEABLE tag, such as Create's wrench.^[3]
• features.allowBlockMantle lets you mantle onto the block above the rope when you jump off at the top end. With it disabled, you get a normal upward impulse instead.^[3]

Advanced and client settings

The advanced options are also at their defaults: advanced.maxLeashDistance is 3 blocks, advanced.bottomGroundedDismountTicks is 5 ticks, advanced.bottomDismountOffset is 0.6 blocks and advanced.ropeHoverRadius is 0.25 blocks. The snap spring uses advanced.snapPull at 0.55 and advanced.snapVelocityCap at 0.35.^[3]

On the client side, animation.enableClimbAnimation is on, so your local player plays the rope-climb animations. animation.animationSpeedMultiplier is 1, which is the authored speed.^[5]

FTB Skies 2: Aero 1.10.0 ships Climbable Ropes for Create Aeronautics 2.1.3. The mod was first included in pack version 1.0.3 or earlier, so it has been part of the pack for a long time.^[2]

Here are the notable changes from the mod's own changelogs, newest first.^[6][7][8]

Mod changelog highlights

• 2.1.3 (the version in this pack): players no longer drift away from moving Create contraptions such as ships and elevators while climbing ropes or riding ziplines, and they now inherit the contraption's velocity when they dismount.^[2][6]
• 2.1.3: the FA-PE flying animation no longer overrides the player's hanging pose on flat ropes, ziplines, and Create's chain conveyors.^[6]
• 2.1.1: the climbing animation no longer stops after you respawn or change dimension.^[7]
• 2.1.1: a stale climbing pose no longer leaks into the next world if you disconnect mid-climb.^[7]
• 2.1.1: fixed a rendering glitch that appeared when another mod cancels player rendering during a climb.^[7]
• 2.1.0: compatibility was updated to Create: Aeronautics 1.3.0 (NeoForge 21.1.228).^[8]