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

    Quote from Gus_Smedstad

    I think farming sheep is nearly unavoidable in Minecraft. I have a corrals with cows, chickens and sheep, though these days mostly I only pay attention to the cows for leather. They're all gray though, I'd have to dye the wool. Though why the wool color matters...?

    I didn't realize there was a macerator recipe for wool -> string. Because I've always found the shortage of string in Minecraft to be artificial, I installed a Flax mod before I even started GT5U. So mostly for me it would be the wool.

    The wool color matters because the wool-based cable-insulation recipes specifically require black carpet. Also, remember that you can dye the sheep, and get the appropriate color of wool every time you shear them.

    BTW, GT already adds a flax crop, as well as spidernip (which has string as the primary drop, and spider eyes and cobwebs as the special drops).

    I think it's fairly important to use .28pre or later. My recent experience applies, since the Seismic Prospector reported 0L of oil for all sources prior to 0.27. In 0.27 chlorine is missing from important recipes like titanium refining, that's only fixed in 0.28pre at present.

    I think 0.26 is probably safe enough to use for a short time - but sooner or later you're going to want to update because of them.

    I suspect Blood Asp views paper-wrapped tin cables as a bug, and the change is fixing the bug, not a design change.

    --
    I understand the mechanical reasons why you have to die the wool, I just think it's a little odd that gray carpets can't insulate wire. I guess electrons are afraid of the color black.

    --

    The Gregtech flax isn't available at the start of the game, when string is actually a problem for basic things like a bow. Hell, I still haven't gotten Gregtech crops to work yet. From what little I understand, it'd take some time and a bit of luck to get Gregtech flax early enough to matter.

    My experience with IC2 crops in general is lots of time and luck applies (it took me a full day just to breed some medium fast sugar for a bioreactor), and since you need leveled seeds to produce mutations (or at least, I've only seen them with high level seeds) its impossible to do without a seed analyzer, so you need to already be in the electric age.

    Though, reconsidering paper as insulation makes a minetweaker script much easier, no need to un nerf rubber production first and its only actually 3 diferent wires that use carpet:

    Quote from Requia

    Though, reconsidering paper as insulation makes a minetweaker script much easier, no need to un nerf rubber production first and its only actually 3 diferent wires that use carpet:


    Seems reasonable.

    On a completely different topic, I'm thinking about Railcraft automated transport, and one choice is electric locomotives. However, I have been unable to get this to work easily, mainly because Railcraft wants Industrialcraft EU, doesn't recognize Gregtech battery buffers as a power source, and I've been unable to convert Gregtech EU to IndustrialCraft EU via any of the accepted methods.

    For example, an Industrialcraft BatBox next to a Railcraft Electrical Feeder is supposed to work. Gregtech cables connect to the Industrialcraft Batbox, but don't supply it with any power. Its charge sits stubbornly at zero, and the 32 volt Battery Buffer I'm using as a source shows no drain on the Mercury Battery.

    Not that I'm sure I want to do it that way, since my Creative experiments seem to indicate that locomotives (steam or electric) are strictly inferior to a near-vanilla booster track system. They're slower, and require energy and some logistics machinery. If I did, it would be purely as a self-imposed "no booster track" rule, on the theory that locomotives make sense and magic track that requires no energy doesn't.

    I've I did go that way, I'm looking at electric because it's less of a headache that steam locomotives. I'd just connect the electric track to my power grid, rather than trying to figure out some sort of system for auto-loading charcoal into the steam locomotives.

    Quote from Gus_Smedstad


    Back to oil - it appears that there's no actual use in Gregtech for Heavy Fuel except as an intermediate product for things like toluene. Is that correct? It doesn't appear to burn either in diesel generators or boilers. It has an entry for the semifluid generator, but that's an IC2 machine and not useful for a Gregtech power network.

    I ask because I'm working on drilling that Heavy Oil source, and Heavy Fuel is the obvious product. Or I could just convert it to regular oil cheaply and feed it into my existing nitro diesel line. Which I'd do anyway to start, but I was sort of expecting that Heavy Fuel was supposed to be a better use for Heavy Oil.

    What you can do with Heavy Fuel is to crack it, ideally with Hydrogen. This will give you 249L of Cracked Heavy Fuel for 128L of Heavy Fuel. Following that, run it through another distillation tower; 100L Cracked Heavy Fuel will give you 80L Refinery Gas, 10L Naphtha, 40L Light Fuel, 30L Toluene and 5L Lubricant. With the amount of Heavy Fuel that you get from Heavy Oil, plus the increase through cracking and hydrogen, you get insane amounts of nitro diesel, such that it way more than pays for the 320EU/t cracking recipe as well as having another distillation tower.

    Some math for each drum of Heavy Oil:
    256,000L Heavy Oil => 115,200L Light Fuel + 640,000L Heavy Fuel (Distillation Tower)
    640,000L Heavy Fuel => 1,245,000L Cracked Heavy Fuel (Oil Cracking Unit + Hydrogen)
    1,245,000 Cracked Heavy Fuel => 996,000L Refinery Gas + 124,500L Naphtha + 498,000L Light Fuel + 373,500L Toluene + 62,250L Lubricant (Distillation Tower)
    Assuming Toluene is distilled into Light Fuel and all Light Fuel is converted into Nitro Diesel,
    373,500L Toluene => 373,500L Light Fuel (Distillery)
    115,200L Light Fuel + 498,000L Light Fuel + 373,500L Light Fuel => 1,233,375L Nitro Diesel (Chemical Reactor)

    Each drum of Heavy Oil produces 631,488,000EU worth of energy from Nitro Diesel alone. Boosted by a Diesel Engine with Oxygen this is goes up to 947,232,000EU.

    Quote from Requia

    A transformer will (or at least did back in GT5 official) output IC2-EU from a GT-EU input, might need IC2 cables to make it switch output but there's an easy config for that.


    I tried a transformer. It didn't work. Unless maybe you mean an IC2 transformer? I was trying with a GT LV transformer.

    Quote from sprAngles

    What you can do with Heavy Fuel is to crack it, ideally with Hydrogen.


    Right, it's an intermediate product. Since it had a name like "heavy fuel," I though it could be used somewhere as fuel.

    I don't understand what you mean by a "diesel engine boosted by oxygen." Diesel generators only have a single fuel slot. The wiki says nothing about this. Are you saying you can pipe fuel and oxygen into a diesel generator?

    I worked out the math for the Heavy Oil -> Cracked Heavy Fuel -> LPG transformation a while back. It's about 50% better than Heavy Oil -> Oil -> Nitro Diesel. I don't have an oil cracking unit yet, since my only source of oil up until now has been oilsand.

    I don't have a distillation tower because it requires an EV pump, which requires titanium, and I don't have the vacuum freezer, kanthal blast furnace, or titanium chemical processing I need to produce titanium.

    Hmm, IC2 transformer, GT transformer, and straight to batbox all charge for me in creative.

    But, when I put down the electric feeder the batbox then drains faster than it charges, turns out each bit of track has a very high storage capacity, try using the 'electric meter' on the track in your setup and see if it has charge. If it doesn't then it might be a .28pre issue.

    Quote from Gus_Smedstad

    I don't understand what you mean by a "diesel engine boosted by oxygen." Diesel generators only have a single fuel slot. The wiki says nothing about this. Are you saying you can pipe fuel and oxygen into a diesel generator?

    What I'm referring to is the Large Diesel Engine, the titanium multiblock that requires a diesel fuel (usually nitro diesel) and a tiny amount of lubricant to run. It produces a consistent 2048EU/t (from 4L/t of nitro diesel or 8L/t of light fuel etc.) which puts you fully into EV power, but if you feed it oxygen as well (which you should always do) it has an efficiency of 150% and consumes fuel twice as fast, and as a result generates a whopping 6144EU/t, which catapults you straight into Insane Voltage.

    Quote from sprAngles

    What I'm referring to is the Large Diesel Engine, the titanium multiblock


    I had no idea that existed. It's not documented anywhere that I could find on the web. The in-game tooltip seems fairly comprehensive, though I see it lists 2 input hatches, and clearly you need 3 if you're going to supply fuel, lubricant, and oxygen. I'm guessing the 3rd input hatch is legal and has the same restrictions as the other 2.

    It's clearly beyond my current tech, but it's worth remembering.

    Quote from MauveCloud

    Glass dust. Centrifuge, then electrolyze.


    Woah. That's a lot better than what I'm currently doing if oxygen runs low, which is to electrolyze water. I'm always running a significant surplus of sand, so getting glass for that is no big deal. Right this moment I've got a significant surplus of oxygen just from electrolysis of ores, but if I can see that changing in the future.

    Is there a similar, cheap way to get hydrogen? When I originally built the water electrolysis setup, I did so because I needed hydrogen to de-sulfinate oil products (light fuel, naptha), and I wasn't prepared to sacrifice limonite to get it.

    Quote from Gus_Smedstad

    I had no idea that existed. It's not documented anywhere that I could find on the web. The in-game tooltip seems fairly comprehensive, though I see it lists 2 input hatches, and clearly you need 3 if you're going to supply fuel, lubricant, and oxygen. I'm guessing the 3rd input hatch is legal and has the same restrictions as the other 2.

    Yes, you'll need 3 hatches, for diesel fuel, lubricant and oxygen. Also, it's worth noting that it is legal to put additional useless input hatches or buses (or output) on a multiblock, as long as you have the minimum required structure block (e.g. minimum 24 stable titanium casing). This is a fantastic way to save on resources when building multiblocks made of very valuable or hard-to-obtain materials, like the processing array.

    Quote from Gus_Smedstad

    Is there a similar, cheap way to get hydrogen? When I originally built the water electrolysis setup, I did so because I needed hydrogen to de-sulfinate oil products (light fuel, naptha), and I wasn't prepared to sacrifice limonite to get it.

    Personally I got hydrogen earlier on by electrolysing all my methane (I had a natural gas oil rig, which has the bonus of not requiring as much hydrogen to desulfurise) and also by processing bauxite to get titanium. By the time I was able to build my diesel engine I had tungstensteel production ongoing, so I built a processing array of electrolysers to get 32 buckets of hydrogen every 75 seconds.

    Hey Blood, I noticed that in your setup here (http://imgur.com/a/h8n8t) your 4 quad MOX rods are generating 3840 HU/s. However, when I tried it in my world at >50% heat in the image attached, they only generate half at 1920 HU/s (I measure heat by seeing how much heat is absorbed by a coolant cell in a second and then multiplying by 8.) Am I doing something wrong here?

    Quote from sprAngles

    Personally I got hydrogen earlier on by electrolysing all my methane (I had a natural gas oil rig, which has the bonus of not requiring as much hydrogen to desulfurise)


    That sounded promising, but when I crunched the numbers methane -> hydrogen is actually more expensive than water -> hydrogen + oxygen, mainly because methane's a moderate source of energy.

    5000L of methane + 4800 EU = 4000L hydrogen + 1 carbon. 5000L of methane = 202,500 EU if burned in a 128v gas turbine. 202,500 EU + water -> 9000L hydrogen + 4500L oxygen.

    The oxygen byproduct is probably more use than the carbon, but I don't know what the balance is like late game. Right now I've got far more carbon than I need from ashes. Currently I'm using it for nitro-diesel and carbon mesh. I know it's also used for things like smelting tungsten, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

    What's the best strategy for finding sub surface ores? (I'm most hard up on redstone right now but there's a few other things I'd like to hit, all below ground). I've tried sinking shafts every chunk and every 3 chunks, but came up empty on all but two shafts. I've had a touch more luck caving (if nothing actually useful). But actually finding caves is pretty sporadic.

    Quote from Requia

    What's the best strategy for finding sub surface ores? (I'm most hard up on redstone right now but there's a few other things I'd like to hit, all below ground). I've tried sinking shafts every chunk and every 3 chunks, but came up empty on all but two shafts. I've had a touch more luck caving (if nothing actually useful). But actually finding caves is pretty sporadic.


    I usually go with shafts at "predicted vein centers", which is x and z coordinates both in the list +/- 24, 72, 120, 168, ... (though the builds Blood Asp has posted include a weird issue where the veins in negative coordinates are one chunk closer to the axis than they should be; I made a PR to fix that, but for the "experimental" branch instead of the "unstable" branch, so it hasn't been picked up for a release :/ )

    Speaking as someone who used to have a lot of trouble finding ore, vertical exploration is the way to go. Veins are wide, thin squares. Vertical shafts are likely to hit a vein because horizontally, even the smallest veins are very wide. Horizontal shafts almost always miss because many veins are only 5 blocks high.

    Caves don't help at all, if they're horizontal and the ceiling is low. Some of those vast chasms can be really helpful because they expose a lot vertically, but you can still miss stuff because it's out of torch range if you're going along the bottom. For example, I found a big chasm, explored it and didn't find much, and later on I found a vein that connected to it about 40 levels up from the bottom.

    Every 3 chunks offset by +24 / +24 seems to work. A lot of holes are going to turn up dry because there's genuinely no vein there. I've been using Xaero's Minimap / World Map, and marking everything I find with a waypoint. If I don't find anything, I mark that too, so I don't look there again. It's a long, busy list of waypoints, but I keep most of them disabled except when I'm planning new shafts.

    So far, I've found:

    36 dry holes
    21 Magnetite
    11 Oilsands
    10 Coal
    8 Limonite (iron)
    6 Bauxite
    6 Salt (contains lithium-bearing ores as well)
    5 Redstone
    5 Apatite (Gregtech, not Forestry)
    4 Nickel
    4 Chalcopyrite (copper / iron)
    3 Cassiterite (tin)
    3 Beryllium
    2 Soapstone
    2 Graphite (supposed to have diamonds, I haven't seen any)
    2 Lapis
    1 Galena (Lead / Silver)
    1 Quartzite
    1 Tetrahedrite (Copper / Antimony)
    1 Uranium (Gregtech, not IndustrialCraft)
    1 Sapphire
    1 Monazite
    1 Manganese

    ... notably missing is Tungstate for tungsten.

    The point to listing all that is to give you an idea how tough it is to find some things, and how often it's a complete miss. It's very disappointing when I hit bedrock without finding anything, but it's still a much better hit rate than I had before I went with spiral staircase prospecting.

    Quote from Requia

    What's the best strategy for finding sub surface ores? (I'm most hard up on redstone right now but there's a few other things I'd like to hit, all below ground). I've tried sinking shafts every chunk and every 3 chunks, but came up empty on all but two shafts. I've had a touch more luck caving (if nothing actually useful). But actually finding caves is pretty sporadic.


    If you're short on redstone, just head to the nether.

    Quote from Gus_Smedstad

    ... notably missing is Tungstate for tungsten.


    That vein is really rare. I'm not surprised you haven't found it yet.