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

In going over the various stages of production, I made a point of noting how much each step limited the eventual power production, in EU/tick. Last time around I didn't pay enough attention to that, and overestimated the value of some fuel production lines.

Light Fuel's limiting factor is the Oilsand -> Crude Oil step. That's 10 liters / second. 1 L of Light Fuel costs 29 EU to process from Oilsand, so it's (256 - 29) * 10 / 20 = 113 EU / tick. Since the next limit is Crude Oil -> Sulfuric Light Fuel at 25 L /sec, adding another centrifuge without adding to the rest of the line doubles the production.

Cetane Diesel's steps limited by both fermentation and ammonia production time. Both limit production to 5.2 L Cetane Diesel / second. The Fermented Biomass -> Ammonia step is also very energy intensive, adding 30 EU per liter of Cetane Diesel produced. Total cost is 66 EU / L, so net is 446 EU / L, or 446 * 5.2 / 20 = 115 EU / tick. It's about the same production rate as Light Fuel, only you have to double 2 stages to double production, not just 1. Still, it's a net of 223,000 EU / oilsand block instead of 113,500 EU / oilsand.

I seem to remember Nitro Diesel production in 0.28 was much faster, working out to around 500 EU / tick or something. Once you have HV and can produce ammonia efficiently, you're only limited to oilsand centrifuge speed, and 2 centrifuges can give you 900+ EU / sec of Cetane Diesel.

Of course mining oilsand for fuel is a big PITA, so the real low-maintenance solution is an oil rig - same as it was in 0.28.

oil drilling rigs (or at least the fields they drill) were nerfed somewhere along the line. They require MV power at least now (even for the lowest tier oil rig - the higher tiers drill several chunks at once, but with the same effective speed), and last I checked, there was only about a 26% of getting an oil or raw oil field that could even produce enough to break even (presuming you process the oil into light fuel and use it to power the oil rig). 22% with light oil. If you want to get double the energy you used for drilling, that's 14% with oil (maybe called "crude oil" now, not sure) or raw oil, and 10% with light oil.

There is a still-open bug about it here: https://github.com/Blood-Asp/GT5-Unofficial/issues/1238

That’s... good to know. I do believe I’ll quit again. I assumed that 0.32 was at least as functional as 0.28, so I never imagined oil would be broken. That pretty much ruins the game for me, for a variety of reasons.

I hate manually mining for fuel. The early game is only really tolerable for me once I have some sort of automatic tree farm set up.

My experience last time was that a couple of large tree farms and a large steam boiler can provide maybe 400 EU/tick reliably, which is not nearly enough for ore processing once 512 V pulverizers become part of the process, let alone blast furnaces. Of course it’s always possible to scale, but I cringe thinking about trying to advance much beyond MV with steam. Oil freed me from a great many energy headaches last time.

Oil and its complicated processing was one of the more interesting parts of the game. Multiple stages plus efficiency things like cracking at multiple stages.

I have zero interest in nuclear, given that “explodes and ruins months of hard work” is part of the design goal of nuclear. That the steam boilers have a lesser version of that pisses me off, but I do know how to build a simple automatic shutoff circuit now, and I’ve got an automatic backup mod if the truly stupid happens anyway.

I’m experimenting in a Creative world. It appears that in .32pre4, the production cycle for an oil rig is 4 seconds, not 8. Production is still 1/2 the stated amount per cycle, but you get the full amount in 8 seconds. For example, in my test world I had a source rated “441-700 L of light oil” that actually produces 245 L per cycle, or 490 L every 8 seconds.

For crude oil, this means the break-even point is a source rated at 90 L (45 L / cycle) if you’re making light fuel, and 44 L if you’re making Cetane Diesel. I haven’t attempted to graph the probabilities of petroleum, but that looks easily doable.

For a light oil source like the one I’m currently testing, it looks like Gasoline is actually the correct usage, because Light Oil converts much more efficiently to Naphtha than Light Fuel. I haven’t run the calculations yet, since my foray yesterday assumed a Crude Oil source like Oilsand.

EDIT: It also appears that the actual draw of the Drilling Rig is 50 EU/ tick, not 128. A single 400,000 EU battery lasted for 100 cycles, generating 24,500 L of light oil. That’s 4,000 EU/cycle, or 50 EU/tick.

The actual break even points are thus 17 L/cycle (34 L claimed capacity) for light fuel and 9 L/cycle (18 L claimed capacity) for Cetane diesel.

I haven't gone through the effort of fully figuring out how the oil production code works but I did notice something strange in 0.31:

The oil production rate doesn't really decrease the way the wiki says it should. In fact I noticed a very slow decline in oil production but then at some point saw the production increase again. Is this a bug or is there something about oil production I don't know about?

anyone know of a changelog for 5.09.32pre4?

I completed my MV electrolyzer, and I needed only 1 tiny pile of gallium to do it. The way I organized my base, I had a long run between my LV steam turbine bank and my starting electric blast furnace, so I used transformers to up the voltage to 128v for the run to reduce cable losses. As a side effect, this meant I already had a 2amp 128v cable power source available for my MV electrolyzer, and didn’t need to make a MV turbine before I could start using it.

This means that the gallium bootstrapping problem isn’t severe, providing that electrolyzing bauxite provides gallium (which it definitely should, it’s not something you get from centrifuging, thermal or otherwise, which is the current method). From a design perspective, it’s stil a potential trap for the newcomer who might not prioritize bauxite electrolysis as job #1 once he obtained aluminum, though there are good reasons to do that anyway.

If you’re wondering about why I needed that MV cable run - my current base design is to put all my actively used machinery on the first level of my base, near my workshop. I put the blast furnace there. The level below is reserved for wiring and pipes. My steam storage tank is on level 3, along with the large bronze boiler and charcoal production. The steam turbines are immediately below the steam tank, because running high-capacity steam lines for any distance is ridiculously resource intensive.

I could have put the blast furnace on level 3 next to the steam tank, but that would have meant running up and down stairs all the time to feed it materials and collect ingots.

I used silver cable for the MV cable run, since I couldn’t make annealed copper until I had the blast furnace operational and a source of oxygen (currently the bauxite electrolysis). I had barely enough silver on hand to do it.

It’s just as well, because fairly soon I intend to upgrade that line to HV using MV transformers, to cut down even further on cable losses, and make it more practical to switch over to central power generation.

Man, I wish there were some way to remove paint applied via roller or spray can from a machine.

I color code my pipes and cables. This both makes clear at a glance what they are, and prevents cables of different voltages from connecting. Now and then I’ll right-click on something, thinking I have a wrench or other tool selected, and I’ve actually got a paint roller selected, and I’ll paint something accidentally.

This is sometimes minor, but sometimes it’s a disaster, effectively destroying the machine. For example, I just painted a MV transformer with the HV color (yellow). This means it cannot connect to MV wires unless I leave them unpainted. If, alternatively, I paint it the MV color (orange), the same problem applies to HV wiring. There’s no way to return the machine to its original, unpainted state.

I wish there were a tool to remove paint, or just that machines would forget their color when picked up, like cables do.

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

I wish there were a tool to remove paint, or just that machines would forget their color when picked up, like cables do.

There is such a tool. It's called a water bucket. I don't usually paint my machines, so there might be things that could interfere that I don't know about, but I found the place in the code where it checks for it:

https://github.com/Blood-Asp/G…MetaTileEntity.java#L1261

I never paint my machines either, except unintentionally.

It would never, ever occur to me to right click on a Gregtech machine with a water bucket. Usually that’s a good way to make things explode. I’ll have to check it out.

Speaking of water, I’ve got a bit of a water crisis. I’m not using any of the various infinite water sources, since those seem like cheating to me, so I collect water for my boiler, ore washer, cutting machines, electrolysis, etc from Railcraft Water Sidings. I’ve got 8 of them, and they’re not keeping up with demand.

I could of course just plop down one of those infinite water producers (Thermal Expansion and Magneticraft both have them), but I’d rather a finite source that was a bit more efficient at producing water than the Railcraft water sidings.

I did experiment with the Rain Tank from Forestry. A 3x3 grid of them produces about 2.5x as much water as a Railcraft water collector... if it’s raining. Nothing if it’s not. I suspect that on average, they probably produce less overall, given how clear weather is more common than rain.

Quote from MauveCloud

https://github.com/Blood-Asp/G…MetaTileEntity.java#L1261

Incidentally, that code makes me wince. Creating a new, temporary object just to check whether an existing object is a water bucket? That seems terribly slow and wasteful compared to how I’d imagine it can be done. I guess Java does memory management for you, unlike C++, so creating an object and then just letting the pointer go won’t create a memory leak, but it still looks like terrible practice to me.

I would agree that infinite water feels like cheating except that no boiler irl actually just lets the water escape into the atmosphere. The small turbines should output every liter of water they consume. Since they don't I don't think infinite water is that broken.

Lots of actual steam engines let the steam escape. Steam locomotives, for example, were a large scale industrial use of steam power, and they had to refill regularly with water because they didn’t recover the cooled steam.

The IC2 kinetic steam generator and Gregtech’s large turbines both return the water, allowing for closed loops - but both have a mechanic of destroying turbines over time, which kills any interest I have in them. I don’t mind the material cost so much, I mind having to effectively “hand stoke” them with new turbines. I left that behind when I moved from the small coal-fired boilers to the large bronze boiler, and I’m not going back to that.

It doesn’t help that Gregtech’s turbines are finicky about flow rate, and hostile toward on/off operation where you only run them when you need power. Energy storage and some red stone logic can help with the latter, of course, the same way I currently run my large boiler in bursts between near-zero and near-full steam reserves.

Tested removing paint from a machine with a water bucket. It works. It’s unintuitive, and as far as I know undocumented, but it works.

I installed Agricraft, since it has a water collector, and compared it in a test against Railcraft water sidings and Forestry rain tanks. The Agricraft and Forestry tanks only work while it’s raining, while the Railcraft works at 1/3rd speed when it’s not. During rain, in the time that a Railcraft tank accumulated 10,000 L, 3x3 Forestry tanks collected 26,000 L (2,888 L each) and a 3x3 Agricraft tank collected 59,000 L (!).

I’m debating whether I consider this “fair” or not.

You might also check how much water you get from some GT5 drain covers collecting rain for comparison (unless the pipe changes broke that functionality...)

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

Lots of actual steam engines let the steam escape. Steam locomotives, for example, were a large scale industrial use of steam power, and they had to refill regularly with water because they didn’t recover the cooled steam.

The IC2 kinetic steam generator and Gregtech’s large turbines both return the water, allowing for closed loops - but both have a mechanic of destroying turbines over time, which kills any interest I have in them. I don’t mind the material cost so much, I mind having to effectively “hand stoke” them with new turbines. I left that behind when I moved from the small coal-fired boilers to the large bronze boiler, and I’m not going back to that.

It doesn’t help that Gregtech’s turbines are finicky about flow rate, and hostile toward on/off operation where you only run them when you need power. Energy storage and some red stone logic can help with the latter, of course, the same way I currently run my large boiler in bursts between near-zero and near-full steam reserves.

Instead you need to hand stoke your water supply.

I usually do what you say in your last paragraph. EU storage is ridiculously cheap compared to irl electric energy storage and the large turbines are so efficient and put out so fast that I usually don't pass them up. I'm not up to speed on GT5U materials but it used to be that steel blades would last an acceptable amount of time until tungstensteel blades were available (and those lasted a Long time).

I didn't know GT drain covers collected rain. I never really saw the point of GT drain covers. Sucking up a single source block didn't seem worthwhile. I've committed now to the Agricraft wooden tanks, which I rather like. They're visibly hollow, and you can see the contained water, unlike the Railcraft tanks, and I'm hard pressed to argue which of the 3 collection rates is more "realistic" since none of them are GT and the baseline solution in other mods is usually infinite water.

I'll still test out the Gregtech drains, just in the name of SCIENCE.

"Hand stoking your water supply" - no. That's not the alternative. The alternatives are either infinite water sources (for steam setups) or power sources that don't involve steam (i.e. petroleum fuels).

I took a hard look at all sorts of steam turbines from other mods. Some of them return water condensed from steam. The Big Reactor turbines, for example, have an optional upgrade that does that, and they're large, interesting looking multiblocks. I'm reluctant to go that route, though, since they generally return RF, and it's unclear how the balance compares to GT steam turbines. It may be significantly less or more efficient. I wanted to use Magneticraft's steam boiler instead of GT's large boiler, just because it can be automated (unlike the small boilers) and doesn't explode (unlike the large boilers), but it turns out that Magneticraft returns about 1/6th the steam per charcoal that GT's boilers do.

I will say I'm rather enjoying the conveyor belts / inserter setups from Magneticraft. They're considerably bulkier and less efficient than item pipes, but they look great and are far less magical than item pipes. I haven't done much complex with them, but I do like that when there's a backlog or timing issue, it's highly visible.

On an unrelated note: the transistors introduced a few versions back - 0.30? - are in a weird place, progression wise. You'd think they'd be drop-in replacements for vacuum tubes, since individual transistors are much, much simpler devices than IC's. Instead, they're used as a tier-3 ("advanced") circuit requirement, and you cannot make any circuits with transistors until you have IC technology.

Speaking of IC's, the actual chip and the packaged basic circuit are both called "Integrated logic circuits." They really need distinct name, like "Integrated Logic Chip" and "Integrated Logic Circuit," though thankfully they're visually distinctive, unlike the Biomass / IC2 Biomass liquids.

I put together a tiny resource pack for the early stages of the new circuits. At present, it includes new icons for transistors, IC chips, RAM chips, and CPU chips. I haven't touched anything else, such as the completed circuits. I just wanted to differentiate the chips, instead of using gray rectangles for all of them.

Circuits.zip

I feel like I'm the only one still playing this, these days. 3 weeks and no activity?

I finally managed to get polyethylene production going. Willis mentioned doing that but quitting before MV; I'm not sure how that works, since the formulas I see for ethane production require MV.

This required a trip to the Nether to go Blaze hunting, since it requires two distilleries. I put together a Blaze farm while I was at it, but I suspect that the 20 Blaze Rods I collected while defending myself during construction are all I'll need for a long time. I went through a couple of Hazmat Suits doing it, but it was worth it, not having to worry about the Blazes setting me on fire.

As a bonus, I managed to luck into a large vein of Nether Quartz on the way there. I remember really hurting for that stuff last time I played.

Polyethylene is required for transistors, which in turn are required for Advanced Circuits, which was my goal. I've forgotten, now, how we used to make Advanced Circuits, but they're now fantastically expensive and time consuming to make. Mostly because they require 2 Good Circuits, which in turn require 3 Basic Circuits to make, for a total cost of 6.

I'm just lucky I managed to find an Exquisite Green Sapphire somewhere, or I'd have to make an Implosion Compressor and some sort of explosives production line as well. I know I'll have to do that eventually, but just getting polyethylene going was quite the headache, now that it requires 5 steps (oilsand -> crude oil -> sulfuric naphtha -> naphtha -> ethylene -> polyethylene ), plus 2 fluid canners to put oxygen and hydrogen into cells. And I haven't even started on the production line for processing the H2S cells you get as a waste product from desulfinating the naphtha.

One thing I noticed was that the alternate ICs, which require plastic for the circuit boards, require CPUs, which can be made with a glass lens. Except that the glass lens requires an Exquisite Glass Crystal, which appears to be impossible to make. Alternately, you can make them from glass plates in a HV lathe. Used to be that the plate -> lens recipe was LV.