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

I've got another "what's the correct way within Gregtech 5u" question.

I'm in the early stages of steam power, and I had some unexpected snags with running a Steam Alloy Smelter. A single Small Coal Boiler couldn't provide enough steam to keep it running, and when the smelter run out of steam mid-way through an operation, it halted and reset. So just running at a slower speed wasn't workable. I added a second boiler, and that wasn't quite enough either. I did hit on a solution, I disconnected the smelter, run both boilers up to a full load of steam, and then reconnected the smelter. That ran pretty much acceptably. Though I also noticed that the steam smelter consumed steam even if it didn't have any operations pending.

Breaking the steam pipe and then re-connecting it seems crude. I'd like a valve for the pipe, or a way to turn off the smelter so it doesn't eat steam. I looked into Shutter Covers and Machine Control covers, and those would do the trick handily - except that both require a very high tech device, the Assembler to make. There doesn't seem to be any way to craft one with a regular craftbench.

Is there a regular way to make them? Or to turn the smelter on and off? I can of course use pipes from another mod, such as Thermal Dynamics, but I'm wondering about the "correct" Gregtech way to solve the problem. Assuming the solution isn't "break the steam pipe regularly."

Are you sure it's the alloy smelter using steam when it has no operations going? I'd never found that to be the case. (although it's a bit hard to tell early-game, as the only way to prove it is to use a scanner, which requires either MV tech or creative mode). However, the boilers keep going as long as they have heat even if nothing is using the steam, and they vent excess steam when their buffers get too full. I think the alloy smelter has some sort of hidden internal buffer of steam, which might be what's confusing you.

The main reason I disconnected the Steam Alloy Smelter is that it would eat all the steam in the boiler, fail to finish the operation, and then throw the steam away. Secondary reason was that I believed the smelter ate steam even when it had no queued operations.

The only mod I'm currently playing that has storage is Railcraft, and that's just those multiblock iron tanks. Those cost at least 24 iron, and I've yet to find a significant source of that. I know that when I do find a real iron vein, I'll be swimming in it, but so far I've been struggling along on those Small Iron Ore blocks.

Thermal Dynamics of course has a wide range of storage solutions, but I was trying to avoid using that as being too out of sync with Gregtech's design philosophy. I don't want to make things too easy on myself.

Incidentally, I've learned the ins and outs of the charcoal burner pile. It's incredibly fast and efficient, though time consuming to set up and harvest. I started with a 3x3x1 just to learn the ropes, and I'm currently running a 5x5x5 whenever I'm feeling low on fuel.

Quote from MauveCloud

I think the alloy smelter has some sort of hidden internal buffer of steam, which might be what's confusing you.

That's a possibility. IndustrialCraft machines all have energy buffers, but it's visible so it's clear that the energy is going to charge the buffer and not being thrown away. I can see how the Gregtech Steam machines might have a internal energy buffer but it's not visible. One video I watched showed some sort of display-panel cover that showed stats for the various Gregtech machines as they were operating, but I don't know what that is, and no doubt it requires electronics.

I'm not sure what half the things in the steam GUI do, and online documentation seems to be sparse. I guess the top right box in the coal boiler is just to hold dark ashes?

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

That's a possibility. IndustrialCraft machines all have energy buffers, but it's visible so it's clear that the energy is going to charge the buffer and not being thrown away. I can see how the Gregtech Steam machines might have a internal energy buffer but it's not visible. One video I watched showed some sort of display-panel cover that showed stats for the various Gregtech machines as they were operating, but I don't know what that is, and no doubt it requires electronics.

I don't recall a purely-GregTech way to do that as a fixed display, but maybe with Nuclear Control. However, the Portable Scanner (or Debug Scanner in creative mode) can show details like internal steam/EU buffers of GregTech machines in chat.

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

I'm not sure what half the things in the steam GUI do, and online documentation seems to be sparse. I guess the top right box in the coal boiler is just to hold dark ashes?

Yes, though you get plain ashes rather than dark ashes if you fuel it with charcoal or coal coke.

Quote from MauveCloud

I don't recall a purely-GregTech way to do that as a fixed display, but maybe with Nuclear Control.

That's it exactly. I looked at the cover tutorial video again, and at 5:09 you can see the panel is a Advanced Information Panel from Nuclear Control 2. It seems like a really handy diagnostic, but I don't know anything about that mod, or what the panel costs.

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

Quoted from "MauveCloud"

I don't recall a purely-GregTech way to do that as a fixed display, but maybe with Nuclear Control.
That's it exactly. I looked at the cover tutorial video again, and at 5:09 you can see the panel is a Advanced Information Panel from Nuclear Control 2. It seems like a really handy diagnostic, but I don't know anything about that mod, or what the panel costs.

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

That's it exactly. I looked at the cover tutorial video again, and at 5:09 you can see the panel is a Advanced Information Panel from Nuclear Control 2. It seems like a really handy diagnostic, but I don't know anything about that mod, or what the panel costs.

The mod is really neat and the panels great for pretty much everything especially things that tend to go boom. Here's a link from 1 of Greg's posts to the new thread.

[IC2 Exp][1.7.10] Nuclear Control 2

[Steam] Machines, if insufficiently powered, will continue to operate and waste energy, until they are turned off by right-click with a Soft Hammer. (a Wooden Hammer works)
As for continuing to drain Steam when inactive, [Steam] Machines contain an internal energy buffer that they will fill when inactive. So it's not using energy when inactive, it's refilling its internal buffer for use when you turn it on again.

As for the steam GUIs, they use a clone of the standard machine GUI so there's a few unused slots hidden at the bottom of them (no visible slots show, but if you mouse over, they exist). As for the Steam Boilers, red bar = heat, blue bar = water, grey bar= steam; one set of inventory slots for Water input, one slot for Fuel, one slot for [Dark] Ashes output.

Steam Machines do not store "Steam" internally; when Steam is pushed into them it is cut in half and converted to stored energy. I don't know how that shows up on an energy scanner panel.

Quote from PaladinOne

Steam Machines do not store "Steam" internally; when Steam is pushed into them it is cut in half and converted to stored energy. I don't know how that shows up on an energy scanner panel.

I beg to differ. From https://github.com/Blood-Asp/G…ine_Bronze.java#L106-L109

@Override
    public long maxSteamStore() {
        return 16000;
    }

That looks to me like it's storing steam internally.

Dropping flour into a cauldron will make early bread making a little less tedious.

Speaking of which, GT6 apparently allows fluid pipes to fill cauldrons. That's a pretty rare capability - because filling the cauldron is very repetitive, I went looking for a way, and the only mod which seems to do this aside from GT6 is Tubes.

Unfortunately, Tubes is a really terrible otherwise. When I connected a tank full of water to a cauldron, it filled it, but then it continued to empty it until the tank was dry. Apparently it treats fluids as packets, and if they don't reach a destination they just bounce around inside the tube. I'm not sure if they're destroyed or just in limbo, but in either case it was behavior I didn't want to see.

I'm still struggling along in the Steam Age. I found a big vein of iron / pyrite / copper, but I'm reluctant to start on blast furnaces until I can get a macerator running, and I haven't found any diamonds. I found a few small diamond ores, but they dropped diamond dust rather than usable diamonds. In the meantime I've been hoarding lots of unprocessed copper ore.

About diamonds... try to dig about ~10z in depth. After some time (and little bit of pure luck) you will drop 2 diamonds and finally can make macerator. Consider making steel one first because it has processing time 20s instead of very long 40sec per ore.

I've been digging trenches between levels 6-9, primarily looking for Small Diamond Ore, which spawns at levels 5-10. Originally I was digging at level 12, looking for Graphite veins which spawn at 5-20, but then I learned that regular diamond ore requires a diamond pick to mine. Besides, small diamonds can spawn anywhere, so they're not restricted by other veins (of which I've found plenty).

Try to find nickel vein, it drops minable cobalt wich can mine diamond veins, then diamond vein and you have lots of diamonds. But this needs tons of luck.

Quote from SkebloW

Consider making steel one first because it has processing time 20s instead of very long 40sec per ore.

That would require making a blast furnace to make the steel, which Gus_Smedstad want to wait until after macerator for, presumably so that fewer ore blocks are required.

Here are a couple of alternatives:
1. Check loot chests (stronghold, desert/jungle temple, or village blacksmith) for diamonds.
2. Check village blacksmith chests for obsidian - with that, you can make coal chunks and compress them (even with just a steam compressor) into industrial diamonds.

I found some dungeon chests, but instead of obsidian, I found Iridium shards. I used those to make an Iridium Pick (which also required a steel handle, good job there were 2 steel ingots in the chest), and with that I mined out some obsidian. From there I made a couple of Industrial Diamonds, and I was off to the races.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's hard to credit making gem-quality diamonds, or even diamond dust, using steam-era technology. The pressures involved in actual diamond synthesis are enormous. On the other, it's ridiculous the macerator requires gem-quality diamonds - if the macerator really needs diamonds, diamond grit (diamond dust in GT 5U) ought to be sufficient, and I have a good bit of that from the 10+ small diamond ores I found. I only found one proper "diamond" among all those, the rest were all dust, diamond chips, or flawed diamonds, none of which qualify for the macerator.

Yeah, yeah, diamonds are pretty silly in Minecraft already, like you could really make an entire sword out of diamonds by glueing them together at a workbench, or diamond armor. I'm just rationalizing away how kinda cheaty industrial diamonds feel.

It gets worse: the MV-tier macerator specifically requires an industrial diamond (a diamond gem hammered from diamond ore won't work), and making a diamond or tungsten grinding head for HV, EV, or IV-tier (dunno about the extra tiers added by the latest 5.09.xx builds, since I'm playing in 5.08 ) also requires an industrial diamond in the middle, though the diamond grinding head recipe uses diamond dust in the corners.

Finding obsidian in chests only works with village blacksmith chests (unless you have other mods that add extra types of chests; e.g. I'm not that familiar with the contents of various Thaumcraft worldgen chests), and dungeon chests are one variety that doesn't include diamonds in the loot list.

So I've been testing the 1.10.2 port. For some reason in singleplayer, I can't get a new world to load with-in 20 minutes (at that point I just gave up). If I remove GT5, I can create a world no problem.

If I save that world then exit, then re-add GT5, then load the previously made world, I can play and generate GT ore as I move out of the initial start area. But this initial world start lag is a problem. Is this happening for anyone else? And is there any steps I can take to figure out if the problem is on my end? Or any performance tips in general?