IC2 Experimental Reactor Planner

    I define the efficiency as million eu produced per fuel rod. This works well since you then can compare the different types of reactor designs.


    If the reactor produces 120 million eu over one cycle using 20 fuel rods that would be an efficiency of 6 million eu/fuel rod. This way you can easily compare the efficiency per fuel rod between regular, mox and fluid reactors.


    There is also a nice trick for calculating the efficiency of fluid reactors using this method as well. with stirling 1 hu/s=1eu/t and with superheated steam it is 1 hu/s=1,5eu/t. So lets say a 5 efficiency reactor(by my definition) produces 200 eu/t and produces 600 heat. In fluid mode that would equal 600 eu/t with stirling and 900eu/t with superheated steam. that means with stirling the reactor would be 600/200= 3 times more effective with stirling and 900/200=4,5 times more efficient with superheated steam. If we multiply this by the non fluid mode efficiency of 5 we get an efficiency of 15-22,5 million eu per fuel rod. For reactors that are not in even 100 the maximum we can do is 1,5 times even hundreds of heat then we add the remaining as stirling power. so 620 hu/s would be 900+20 eu/tick maximum

    A question that sometimes drives me hazy; am i or are the other crazy

    Not quite what I meant. I was asking how you justify calculating efficiency based on the total output per cycle, when the IC2 wiki indicates the efficiency is calculated based on the uranium pulses per tick (presumably reactor tick is meant). I suppose I could show a "tick efficiency" and a "cycle efficiency".


    Secondly, I have to disagree with your baseline - efficiency 1 should be what you get from the simplest useful reactor design, which is 1 uranium fuel rod and 1 heat vent adjacent to it. This gives 5 EU per Minecraft tick, 100 EU per reactor tick, or 2 million EU total in EU mode; 8 HU/s or 160 thousand HU in fluid mode.


    Thirdly, I strongly dislike the idea of trying to calculate EU efficiency for a fluid reactor, because my planner only simulates the internals of the reactor; EU output for a fluid reactor depends on the additional blocks outside the reactor containment, which can vary significantly, e.g. by using a GT5u Large Heat Exchanger, by buffering the hot coolant in a tank, or by making biogas with the heat instead of steam. And then there's mementh's "tutorial" video, where it looked like he set up a loop to feed some of the hot coolant back into the reactor, which I've never understood.

    Just because it is in the wiki does not mean its the best way to go about it. Something tells me that their version of efficiency comes from when there was only one type of fuel rod. The reason we use efficiency or output to begin with is to be able to compare what you gain and at what cost (and when the rods where 10000s previously their definition actually was the same as mine). And for comparison purposes knowing how much energy you will get from your fuel rods is a lot easier to wrap your head around rather than how efficient the tics are. It also makes it easy to estimate how much power you can generate from a certain amount of fuel which has a lot of use on its own.


    By your definition the efficiency is just an arbitary scale which just gives a general indication for how efficient something is. This works well enough when you have just one reactor type and fuel rod but it does not work at all when this is not the case. Because it does nothing to help you compare a regular reactor with a fluid reactor. In short why should we use a definition of efficiency that is not actually based on how efficient the fuel gets used and that cannot be used to compare different reactor types?


    The reason why it's good to indicate the power output for the fluid reactor is for the same reason as above. You need it to be able to compare the reactors at glance. Most people won't be able to estimate the power output or how efficiently the fuel is used in a fluid reactor. There really isn't that many ways of producing power with hot coolant as you believe. There is stirling which gives you the 0,5 ratio. Then there is the superheated steam which gives a 0,75 ratio(this is the one mementh used, he feeds back coolant, not hot coolant). the third way of producing biogas is actually not as good as it sounds. Using all the heat from a reactor to produce biogas and then use the gas to produce power will only increase the efficiency of the overall system by a few percent compared to a superheated setup (yes ive tried this in detail) and then it also consumes large amounts of biomass and cost A LOT more to make. So while you can do it this way it really isn't the best way to go about it.


    However this is beside the point. When you choose a reactor you will want to know how much power it produces and how efficent the cost of running it will be fuel wise. And using stirling and superheated steam makes sense as it is the default way of processing it. As long as you state what method you have used to calculate the efficency and power out (stirling/superheated steam) you are really just giving people a great tool for choosing which reactor design suits them the most. Because in the end that is what both the output and efficiency stats are all about, giving people the information to make a intelligent decision about what reactor design they wanna use.

    A question that sometimes drives me hazy; am i or are the other crazy

    • Official Post

    Defining efficiency was done years ago, it was originally just for Uranium but GT Thorium and Plutonium both respected it. The issues rise when MOX can change it's output based off heat, and fluid reactors too change their output, so getting accurate values for comparison gets harder and harder the more factors you bring in.

    145 Mods isn't too many. 9 types of copper and 8 types of tin aren't too many. 3 types of coffee though?

    I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you read was not what I meant.


    ---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
    // I just don't know what went wrong :(


    I see this too much.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Chocohead

    Defining efficiency was done years ago, it was originally just for Uranium but GT Thorium and Plutonium both respected it. The issues rise when MOX can change it's output based off heat, and fluid reactors too change their output, so getting accurate values for comparison gets harder and harder the more factors you bring in.

    and said efficiency was based on the EU/t output.
    Thorium would be 0.2 efficient and plutonium 2-5 (I dont remember how much it produced compared to IC)


    So...
    efficiency could be calculated for both reactors based on both EU and HU output (over the time of a single reactor tick) of a single uranium cell.

    I'm not 100% sure the simulator should try to anticipate what gets done with the reactor output. At the very least, I agree with the logic behind not trying to anticipate any activity beyond that of the reactor.


    The fluid reactor outputs hot coolant, period. There's several things you can do with that hot coolant, and they're all subject to change at any given time.


    If it was added, it would need to be explicitly labeled as some sort of "IC2 Superheated Steam Turbine Output: 400 eu/t", etc.

    I guess just stating the hot coolant output is okay with the simulator. However i will be bringing all the things above to the thread im working on. I will also do a short description of how all the numbers are calculated and add a transformation quote for the different processing steps. So 0,5 for stirling and steam, 0,75 for superheated steam and so on for every different way you can use the hot coolant.

    A question that sometimes drives me hazy; am i or are the other crazy

    Okay, v2.1.1 is up. I think I implemented most of the features that were requested, except for that one about pre-calcuating the optimal on/off cycle timings for a reactor (which seems impractical).

    I'm not so sure about that. How long did you actually run the reactor before deciding it was stable? It's hard to tell from the damage bars on the fuel rods (your claim would be more believable if you took a screenshot with the fuel rods almost depleted), but the vent just left of the top fuel rod shows more damage than any of the other components, and could continue to degrade.

    Okay, BoggyDG's issue seems to be related to the use of the Java Preferences class and the "userRoot" (which in Windows means the values are stored in a registry key under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER"), which allows the planner to remember a selected resource pack (for alternate reactor component textures). Does anybody else actually use that feature, and if so, would it upset you if that feature was removed?


    Edit: since nobody responded in several days, I went ahead and removed the resource pack support as of v2.1.3.

    • Official Post

    I decided to give this simulator another chance, and I'm much impressed. I think I did not understand it well enough to use it properly.


    I've found 2 issues.


    1. I can run a specific EU reactor to 100% no issues, but changing to fluid version will explode. I expect both to work equally.
    DETAIL -
    Reactor: 2306230C0A140D0C0A06230C0D0C0D0C0D14230C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D140D140D140D140D14
    Initial heat at 5,001 reactor heat
    Pulse Configuration is set to 5,000,000 seconds as suggested for no timing


    It seems like anything over 4000 initial heat will simulate an explosion in a fluid reactor, something like that. This makes fluid MOX difficult to test.


    2. I get an error on cooldown second 20 for the following setup.
    DETAILS - Reactor: 0003030C0A140D0C0A03000C0D0C0D0C0D14030C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D140D140D140D140D14
    Initial reactor heat at 0, but does not seem to matter
    Pulse configuration is set to 5,000,000 as suggested for no timing.


    ERROR: Error at cooldown tick 20
    java.util.MissingFormatArgumentException: Format specifier '%.2f' [java.util.Formatter.format(Unknown Source), java.util.Formatter.format(Unknown Source), java.lang.String.format(Unknown Source), Ic2ExpReactorPlanner.SimpleSimulator.doInBackground(SimpleSimulator.java:255), Ic2ExpReactorPlanner.SimpleSimulator.doInBackground(SimpleSimulator.java:14), javax.swing.SwingWorker$1.call(Unknown Source), java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source), javax.swing.SwingWorker.run(Unknown Source), java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source), java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source), java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)]Simulation took 0.23 seconds.


    This seems like unrealistic expectations. MOX does not behave identically in a fluid reactor as in an EU reactor: in an EU reactor, MOX increases EU output linearly with reactor temperature, while its heat output remains the same. In a fluid reactor, MOX increases heat output by double as soon as the reactor temperature goes above 50%, so it's not surprising that a design that works at lower temperates explodes at higher temperatures.



    Quote from albijoe

    2. I get an error on cooldown second 20 for the following setup.
    DETAILS - Reactor: 0003030C0A140D0C0A03000C0D0C0D0C0D14030C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D0C0D140D140D140D140D14
    Initial reactor heat at 0, but does not seem to matter
    Pulse configuration is set to 5,000,000 as suggested for no timing.


    ERROR: Error at cooldown tick 20
    java.util.MissingFormatArgumentException: Format specifier '%.2f' [java.util.Formatter.format(Unknown Source), java.util.Formatter.format(Unknown Source), java.lang.String.format(Unknown Source), Ic2ExpReactorPlanner.SimpleSimulator.doInBackground(SimpleSimulator.java:255), Ic2ExpReactorPlanner.SimpleSimulator.doInBackground(SimpleSimulator.java:14), javax.swing.SwingWorker$1.call(Unknown Source), java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source), javax.swing.SwingWorker.run(Unknown Source), java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source), java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source), java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)]Simulation took 0.23 seconds.


    Okay, this is an actual bug, which I will try to fix when I'm feeling a little better (migraine right now, sorry :( )

    • Official Post

    MOX acts very differently in fluid reactors than normal ones, so a design not working in one shouldn't immediately means a bug. But if it works in game but not in the simulator that suggests it's not simulating properly, which as they work differently is not surprising.

    145 Mods isn't too many. 9 types of copper and 8 types of tin aren't too many. 3 types of coffee though?

    I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you read was not what I meant.


    ---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
    // I just don't know what went wrong :(


    I see this too much.

    Hi all,


    Whilst trying to run the jar (double clicking it), my DOS appeared briefly, then nothing happened afterwards. What am I doing wrong? (maybe something extremely derpish)


    Thanks!