[GregTech-5][1.7.10-FORGE-1355+][Unofficial but approved Port][Stable] Even GT5 Experimental is slowly getting stable.

Quote from Drawfox

I'm away from my PC right now, is it possible to make ethanol using GT machines?

Not with just Gregtech, no. While the distillery will make Forestry Biomass into Ethanol, the only way to get Forestry Biomass is a Forestry fermenter. I'm not sure I would bother with Ethanol if I didn't have a Forestry tree farm collecting saplings on a regular basis. Collecting saplings by hand is much too labor intensive for what you get.

It's worth noting that Forestry will ferment plantballs as well, and you can make those from carrots or wheat. I'm doing it with my excess carrots, but the output is trivial.

It seems to me that if you're talking really renewable, solar and plant-based energy are you only choices, and if you're going to go with a plant source, you want some auto-harvesting option. Forestry mulifarms are one choice for the auto-harvesting. Thaumcraft is obviously another, though I don't know anything about it. Gregtech / Industrialcraft has no provision for it; the crop-matron only maintains, it doesn't harvest. A vanilla piston setup can auto-harvest pumpkins or melons, but you'd need some sort of collection mechanism.

The extractor won't remove fluids from filled cells. The Fluid Canner will move fluid in to or out of a cell, but won't destroy fluid.

Aha! I found a different way to eliminate fluids with pure GT: put them into universal fluid cells, then put the universal fluid cells in an arc furnace or macerator to get back the tin. A universal macerator will also give back some of the glass as dust.

I was thinking about how reactors in IC2 work (I dont know how gregtech changes fission reactors) but I was thinking that the explosion mechanic isnt that realistic. I think it would be a lot cooler and realistic that instead of them just exploding, that it would actually make the area it was in very dangerous to be in and clean up, because even if a reactor does melt down, its usually pretty easy to clean up if you had blast protection. So what would happen here is that in a meltdown, the reactor would create molten corium as a liquid which emits tons of radiation even through a few layers of blast brick, and through the hazmat suit. It also can melt through almost anything. to clean it up, you need to wait for it to solidify and create an upgraded hazmat suit(maybe a lead reinforced rubber suit)to pick it up and dispose of it far away from your base. I think this would make reactors even more of a challenge and more realistic. What do you guys think?

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

It seems to me that if you're talking really renewable, solar and plant-based energy are you only choices, and if you're going to go with a plant source, you want some auto-harvesting option. Forestry mulifarms are one choice for the auto-harvesting. Thaumcraft is obviously another, though I don't know anything about it. Gregtech / Industrialcraft has no provision for it; the crop-matron only maintains, it doesn't harvest. A vanilla piston setup can auto-harvest pumpkins or melons, but you'd need some sort of collection mechanism.

Yeah, I want a truly renovable source; It's a pity that GT only Ethanol ins't viable, I used to work on a Sugar/Alcohol factory, and ethanol had my attention. There was a huge sugar cane plantation near my city.
And while I do have forestry, making ethanol from saplings it's... weird (also, I don't like it's machines);

The IC2 Crop Harvester, well, harvests crops automatically. I think I will try the oil berries, Crop breeding seems fun =). Thanks for the help.

Quote from tebruuls

I was thinking about how reactors in IC2 work (I dont know how gregtech changes fission reactors) but I was thinking that the explosion mechanic isnt that realistic. I think it would be a lot cooler and realistic that instead of them just exploding, that it would actually make the area it was in very dangerous to be in and clean up, because even if a reactor does melt down, its usually pretty easy to clean up if you had blast protection. So what would happen here is that in a meltdown, the reactor would create molten corium as a liquid which emits tons of radiation even through a few layers of blast brick, and through the hazmat suit. It also can melt through almost anything. to clean it up, you need to wait for it to solidify and create an upgraded hazmat suit(maybe a lead reinforced rubber suit)to pick it up and dispose of it far away from your base. I think this would make reactors even more of a challenge and more realistic. What do you guys think?

Interesting thought. I've long been confused how the hazmat suit is supposed to protect from radiation in the first place, when it uses no lead at all in the default recipe. On the other hand, several of the isotopes that normally require it have such long half-lives IRL that it's confusing that they would cause radiation effects (numbers from Wikipedia):
Uranium-238: 4.468×10**9 y
Uranium-235: 7.04×10**8 y
Plutonium-244: 8.08×10**7 y
Plutonium-239 (which according to the IC2 wiki is what centrifuging depleted uranium cells gives, why does GT5 seem to treat it as Pu-244?): 2.41×10**4 y
Plutonium-241: 14 y - okay, that's short enough to believe that it's dangerous.

I just noticed I made an error earlier. Glycerol trinitrate only requires nitrogen and carbon, no sodium needed. So it's even less resource intensive than I said earlier, since carbon dust is easy to obtain. Boosting light fuel to nitro diesel is such a big boost in energy I don't know why you'd ever burn light fuel, particularly since the resource cost is low.

I do use a lot of of sodium, but mostly for ore-washing and large batteries. Yeah, lithium's a lot better, but 512 volt batteries require so much material (32 each!) that I can't really afford anything but sodium. I'm not really making the large batteries for raw energy storage anyway, I'm usually doing it to put a clamp on how much current a given power line can supply. I can be sure that a 4-battery buffer is never going to supply more than 4 amps, so I can safely use 4 amp cable downstream of the buffer.

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

I do use a lot of of sodium, but mostly for ore-washing and large batteries. Yeah, lithium's a lot better, but 512 volt batteries require so much material (32 each!) that I can't really afford anything but sodium. I'm not really making the large batteries for raw energy storage anyway, I'm usually doing it to put a clamp on how much current a given power line can supply. I can be sure that a 4-battery buffer is never going to supply more than 4 amps, so I can safely use 4 amp cable downstream of the buffer.

FWIW, lithium batteries are not the highest capacity batteries you can make at MV and HV: an advanced batpack (from IC2) stores 600k EU (compared to 400k for a medium lithium battery), an energypack stores 2M EU (compared to 1.6M for a large lithium battery), and a charging energy crystal stores 4M EU. I don't remember if I've tried putting a charging energy crystal in a battery buffer, but I have used energypacks that way.

For a 4 amp cable at HV or lower, you've also got the option of using the next-higher tier IC2 energy storage block with a GT transformer to step it down.

Quote from MauveCloud

FWIW, lithium batteries are not the highest capacity batteries you can make at MV and HV: an advanced batpack (from IC2) stores 600k EU (compared to 400k for a medium lithium battery), an energypack stores 2M EU (compared to 1.6M for a large lithium battery), and a charging energy crystal stores 4M EU.

I was using the Feed the Beast page on the Battery Buffer as a reference, which is why I thought lithium was the highest-storage option available for HV and below.

The advanced batpack isn't supposed to be a battery. Using it that way feels like cheating. The material costs are considerable, I guess, at 18 bronze, 6 x sulfur, 6 x lead, 6.5 x copper, and a basic electronic circuit, versus 4 x battery alloy, 1 x copper, 8 x lithium, and some plastic. Though it's easier to come by 18 bronze than 8 lithium, and sulfur's so plentiful I'd be grateful for a real use for it.

I wasn't aware of the IC2 "charging" items at all. If they work with Gregtech power tools, that could be pretty handy. I've graduated to a MV drill now that I'm making Titanium, but it would be nice to have extra power along instead of lugging around a set of pickaxe heads.

While I'm never sure how much IC2 stuff it supposed to be there in Gregtech, the Energy Crystal is clearly part of mainstream Gregtech 5U, since it's part of the construction path for the Distillation Tower.

Charging batteries were added in IC2 build 680 (2015 Feb 19), originally from a separate addon, more recent than the creation of the Battery Buffer wiki page (2014 Sep 17), so it's not too surprising those didn't get included. I'm a little surprised the batpacks didn't get covered by that page, though.

I don't remember having problem with lithium once I reach MV.
But usually I have a Mesa biome near, lots of hardened clay to macerate and electrolyze.

I've been getting it from the lithium ores in the salt deposits. I do have a mesa nearby, I should really see how things go if I start electrolyzing clay dust.

Hardened clay is kinda soft, you get a few stacks very quick.
I think I even used mortars to make dust, because I didn't wanted to wait the macerator. I did a LOT of batteries...

hello,
very sorry if this post is inapropriate or so, but could someone please tell me in which state is this port to mc 1.10.2? Is it worth it to switch server version from 1.7.10 or is there some reason to prefer the stable version? And I guess this port doesn't exist for the mc 1.8.9? Thanks for answers in advance and again, sorry for the newfagism (it just took me really long time to find this thread and I can't read through all the pages until this one)

Quote from UrsaMauris

hello,
very sorry if this post is inapropriate or so, but could someone please tell me in which state is this port to mc 1.10.2? Is it worth it to switch server version from 1.7.10 or is there some reason to prefer the stable version? And I guess this port doesn't exist for the mc 1.8.9? Thanks for answers in advance and again, sorry for the newfagism (it just took me really long time to find this thread and I can't read through all the pages until this one)

The 1.10.2 hasn't come up much in this thread recently, and I haven't tried it in a while, but I've been following on GitHub, and I have my doubts about it really being ready to play (as opposed to just testing it). Also, the planned config option to make things more like 5.08 hasn't been implemented in 5.09 yet, let alone 5.10, and GTTweaker hasn't released a build to work with 5.10.

Also, you are correct that GT5 hasn't been ported to 1.8.9. TechReborn (based on older versions of GregTech) exists for 1.8.9, but only a beta version before the devs moved on to 1.9, and now they seem to be focusing on 1.11.2.

The 1.10.2 version definitely wasn't ready for prime time when I tried it, but that was 3-4 months ago. I haven't been watching the discussion on Github.

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Going back to the subject of power supplies that Drawfox brought up, I tend to fiddle with mine even when I don't have a real need. I added an underground peat farm today.

This is more Forestry than Gregtech, but it turns out peat farms suck. The Large Boilers (steel in my case) can burn peat, which is good, but the difference in fuel output between the tree farm and the peat farm is dramatic. My Very Large (27 x 27 diamond) tree farm produces far more than a single Large Steel Boiler can burn, and the Very Large peat farm doesn't produce enough to keep one running. If both are fully supplied, I think it's like a 3:1 difference in fuel output between the two, if I include the ethanol output as well as the wood.

It has a benefit though - the tree farm turns dirt into sand in a 1:1 ratio as it exhausts the soil, and the peat farm turns sand into dirt in a 1:1 ratio when it harvests peat (which isn't how peat works if you do it by hand). So a pair is a closed loop, no need to clean out sand or add dirt. I now see the peat as a valuable side effect rather than the primary benefit of the peat farm.

I'd read here and there that you needed several peat farms to service one tree farm. That's not what I'm seeing. My impression is it's more 1:4, one peat farm can service a tree farm 4x as large, because the tree farm doesn't burn out soil that quickly. I need more time with the setup to see how it works under heavy load.

If it does stay the way I'm seeing, I need to figure out what to do with the rest of the peat farm. If it's worth the hassle of trying to run a mixed farm, I've had poor results in the past because if one function hits a storage limit, it halts the other one as well. I.e. a mixed carrot / tree farm stops if it's not using up all the carrots.

My future plans for headache-inducing power plant revisions include distillation towers for heavy oil, cracked heavy fuel, and cracked light fuel (I've got the oil cracking operating already). "Headache inducing" because of the product-balancing problem, since the distillation tower produces everything at once, and because it's large and I'm not sure I left enough space.

Heh, Very nice, thanks for the info Gus!
I'm still messing with my machines, my goal for now, Is to stabilize my aluminium production.
I just need a fluid canning and the diesel generator to start using nitro diesel.
After that, I'll upgrade the blast furnace and Diesel Generator to MV, and build a scanner to start messing with crops.

36 sites prospected in the Nether with the Seismic Prospector. Not one Nether Quartz. Or any other Nether-specific vein, it's all stuff like tetrahedrite and nickel. Man, I hate searching for ore in Gregtech, even though I appreciate the way it forces me to venture far afield compared to conventional ore generation.

I found several high (500+ L/cycle) petroleum sources, but don't really know how I'd automated getting it through a Nether Gate. From what I understand, Nether Gates are not train-friendly, but they'll take one cart at a time - provided it's been recently placed by a mine cart dispenser. It would have to be some sort of Rube Goldberg setup where trains load oil on to singleton carts which travel through the gate and then immediate unload, where the oil can be transferred to a regular train.

Not that I need more oil right now.

At least prospecting the Nether by tunneling around at level 120 has been safe. No open spaces, and trenches are protection against the occasional lava pocket.

Do you really need so much Nether Quartz? Why?

Also, I was testing so things, and early steam power with lava boiler are waaaay better than coal. I traded my coal boilers for 3 lava boilers. I use a single ULV output hatch as a tank, full with lava cells, and they automatically feed the boilers through Pipes.
Of course, I used a stack of Tin to make cells, but I find way less boring go to the Nether fill them with lava, than plant tree -> cut -> charcoal pit -> harvest charcoal. I don't need to spend more material on axes.

Mainly I need the Nether Quartz for routing switches. Those things are 32 Nether Quartz each. Putting together one automated railroad to haul nitro diesel to the oil rig and oil back took all the Nether Quartz I had on hand.

Going anywhere through the Nether of course I find Small Ore deposits, but a single proper Nether Quartz vein should supply 100x what I've found from small ores.

I wasn't expecting finding one to be so hard. They have a weight of 80, which is the same as Coal in the Overworld, and I've found plenty of that. If anything, the odds should be better, because the table says there are only 8 ores in the Nether - Magnetite, Limonite, Tetrahedrite, Nether Quartz, Sulfur, Chalcopyrite, Redstone, and Nickel. 10% of the 3x3 chunks should be Nether Quartz, and I've covered about 180 so far (I'm hitting 4 chunk centers with each test), so I should have seen 18 of them by now.

I've found all the other ores. I'm wondering if Nether Quartz is not generating or not being detected by the Seismic Prospector.

Looking at the code for the Seismic Prospector, I see no reason for Nether Quartz not to be detected (unless the prospector was below the ore vein, but you've detected Tetrahedrite veins with it, which means you're placing it plenty high to detect Nether Quartz veins).

Looking at your WorldGeneration.cfg (especially the "dimensions" section) might answer whether it's actually being generated.