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

    Okay, I found something that actually works better in 5.10 than 5.09 or older: the JEI '+' button to populate the crafting table with a recipe actually works with GT meta-tools (although it only pulls enough to craft one item, even if I've got enough for more and shift+click the button). NEI couldn't do that, except for special variants like the AE2 crafting terminal. IDK yet whether it works with more advanced components like electric motors, pistons, etc. that gave even the AE2 crafting terminal trouble in 5.09.

    Edit: finally found some tin so I could build a charcoal pile igniter (I have small ores disabled in WorldGeneration.cfg). I usually jump straight to the max size for the charcoal pile, but it's a bit annoying to place all the logs manually - I used to use a BuildCraft filler to handle that part, but that mod is only up to 1.8.9 and they're planning to jump to 1.11.2 next. Anybody know of something from another mod I could consider?

    You had an automatic way of placing logs in the charcoal pit? I envy you. That's so tedious and error-prone by hand.

    As for populating the crafting table - after using the Project Bench from Forestry, I can't go back to any crafting table variant that forces me to actually place the correct number of components in the crafting grid. It's so much better when the crafting grid is a blueprint, and the table will continue to craft items that match that blueprint as long as you have the materials in your inventory. Particularly since I can right-click and get either a full stack or the maximum my materials will allow.

    That the project bench has a memory of 9 recipes and its own inventory is gravy. The main thing is not having to move things from inventory to the grid.

    I love suggesting opencomputers. I removed all tree farms from my mod pack. As balancing I made computer stuff slightly cheaper with the idea that the time investment to obtain powerful solutions is there but it's spent designing rather than obtaining materials and crafting.

    OpenComputers? Meaning I'd have to program a robot to navigate the inside of the charcoal pile and place the logs? That seems like it would be more of a hassle (and potentially error-prone) than placing the logs by hand, at least until I got it working (and for all I know, that might take me more time than getting to where I'm less reliant on charcoal and/or can build a pyrolyse oven and don't need the charcoal pile anymore). Sorry, but that doesn't seem very attractive to me right now.

    Yeah, that was my reaction as well. I looked into OpenComputers as a response to Willis's post, and my immediate thought was that the potential number of errors was absolutely huge, particularly since the OpenComputer Robots don't seem to have much in the way of sensors.

    Really, doing almost anything automated with them looks like it's bound to fail.

    Well on my last server my partner made a fully functional tree farm, vanilla crop farm, and rubber farm using them. A charcoal pit matron wouldn't be hard since the only blocks you'd see are wood, dirt, brick, and the igniter. You can have it compare adjacent placed blocks with blocks in the inventory to identify surroundings. Figuring out a pathing algorithm is where most of the fun is.

    Quote from willis936

    Well on my last server my partner made a fully functional tree farm, vanilla crop farm, and rubber farm using them. A charcoal pit matron wouldn't be hard since the only blocks you'd see are wood, dirt, brick, and the igniter. You can have it compare adjacent placed blocks with blocks in the inventory to identify surroundings. Figuring out a pathing algorithm is where most of the fun is.

    couldnt you just set it to break all the blocks in a set pattern in the pit every so often? that wouldnt be hard at all with computercraft turtles.

    Quote from tebruuls

    couldnt you just set it to break all the blocks in a set pattern in the pit every so often? that wouldnt be hard at all with computercraft turtles.

    1. We're talking about placing the wood blocks, which is more of a hassle to do manually than breaking the brittle charcoal afterwards.
    2. This is OpenComputers, not ComputerCraft - the API for OpenComputers robots is different from that of ComputerCraft turtles. (ComputerCraft only has an alpha up for 1.9.4, not sure whether it would work on 1.10.2)

    Edit: my main concern about the navigation was the dirt roof. However, I later realized I didn't need to leave that in place - I could program the robot to place that as well, simplifying getting the robot out. Also, if I make sure the robot starts at the same place each time, I can use variables to keep track of its relative position, and not even need to compare surroundings. However, an OpenComputers still requires some form of power to charge it (at least initially, I did see the generator upgrade), so I'll wait on installing the mod until I've got electricity, in case somebody comes up with an alternative.

    Tree farm I can believe, especially if it was using trees that don't grow branches (spruce or birch). Acacia, jungle, dark oak or large oak trees would be trickier.

    However, I'm finding it hard to believe that automating a vanilla crop farm or rubber farm (presuming you mean using IC2 rubber trees) is possible with OpenComputers - seems like both would require comparing to blocks that are not obtainable in inventory afaik (a fully grown crop and a rubber log with a full resin hole)

    Quote from MauveCloud

    Here's another problem I'd like to figure out:

    Railcraft for 1.10.2 doesn't currently have water tanks (to supply boilers, ore washers, autoclaves, biomass production, etc.) or iron/steel tanks (for buffering steam, biogas, or whatever).

    I did some searching myself, and this is the best I've come up with so far:
    https://bdew.net/pressure/infinite-water-source/
    https://bdew.net/pressure/multiblock-tanks/

    However, I'd disable the recipe for the eponymous block from the mod (which is crazy overpowered), and any blocks that specifically require it as input/output. Looking on GitHub, it has a recipes.cfg, so I probably wouldn't even need CraftTweaker.

    So, this happened:

    That's a boiler explosion. It shouldn't have been possible, I had huge water reserves, including tanks dedicated to supplying water to the boiler. I assume it's some sort of chunk-loading bug, or other wonky issue with liquid flow in pipes.

    I think I'm done with Gregtech.

    Large boiler with a steady supply of charcoal or whatever to keep it running? Instead of giving up on GregTech, that seems to me more like a reason to switch early to a biogas setup (small boilers are sufficient to run a canning machine to make and charge some batteries to get the necessary machines going).

    I always play with forgeessentials running that keeps hourly backups for a day, daily backups for a week, and weekly backups for 2 months.

    I also prefer keeping bases chunkloaded to avoid issues like that. It's also fun to design systems that survive unattended steady state operation. Multiblocks should never cross chunk boundaries regardless of how clever the dev is.

    Yep, steady supply of charcoal. And water, of course.

    I'm just not motivated to rebuild all the stuff I lost in the explosion. Most of my power generation, which was ethanol / steam / nitro diesel / methane, all of my power distribution, my blast furnace, and probably some other stuff. With so much destruction it's hard to take inventory of everything I lost.

    "Should have avoided steam in the first place" isn't really helpful now.

    I've never liked the "you take serious losses if there's a problem" design philosophy of Gregtech. I think it's toxic. The Crucible is why I won't play Gregtech 6. I could have lived with losing the boiler itself due to a glitch, but I can't quite get my head around how much stuff I'd have to replace.

    Quote from willis936

    Multiblocks should never cross chunk boundaries regardless of how clever the dev is.


    The corollary is that if you're designing a mod, even a mod where bad things happen if there's a problem, no multiblock should have a catastrophic failure mode.

    That said, I'm pretty sure the boiler did not cross chunk boundaries. When talking about chunk-loading problems, I'm making a wild guess at something that might prevent water from flowing to the boiler properly, since the water source wasn't in the same chunk. I'll never really know what happened.

    Quote from Gus_Smedstad

    The corollary is that if you're designing a mod, even a mod where bad things happen if there's a problem, no multiblock should have a catastrophic failure mode.

    You realize that even IC2 has a multiblock with a "catastrophic failure mode", right? The nuclear reactor can produce an explosion 2-3 times bigger than the boiler explosion you showed, depending on what other blocks you have around it.