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

Quote from willis936

Factorio is fun. I'm just left wanting to have to consider things that you don't. There is no electricity cost over distance. You can power a mine 2 km away and there is no loss. In minecraft you'd have to step up to IV or higher to even be able to accomplish it.

That part, as I said, is abstracted out in Factorio. You can think of long-distance towers as including step-up transformers, and power substations as including step-down transformers. It's true there's no energy cost over distance, and energy loss over distance is a thing in the real world, but Gregtech exaggerates it to a ridiculous degree, so I'm fine with Factorio not bothering to model it.

"Powering a mine over 2km away" is actually pretty small change compared to the distances we actually transmit power in real life, and we don't have to make use of exotic materials to do it. In the real world, it's actually easy to ramp up voltages to 10k volts or more - flyback transformers in CRT-era TV sets routinely went up to 50kv. At the simplest level, going to high voltage is just a matter of wrapping more wire around one side of the transformer core, and a 1000:1 ratio is no more challenging technically than a 10:1 ratio. Actual long-distance power lines like the ones depicted in Factorio run 500kv+, and have a loss rate of 0.02% over 2km.

In game terms, both games use a system where you're encourage to build long-distance power lines and convert to short-range power distribution. Gregtech's extreme power losses are there to make this worthwhile over Gregtech's relatively short distances. They're not really that important in themselves. The different tiers of power line towers in Factorio accomplish much the same thing.

It'd actually be really bad if Factorio had heavy power losses, because power plants in Factorio are relatively bulky. A sources of power require a lot of real estate to enough energy to run your base - this would become a nightmare if power losses were high enough that you needed local power generation.

Quote from TraceOn37

We hate/love the improvements made to the circuit tiers

I've advanced quite a bit since I posted last, and I can empathize with this.

I find dealing with the various tiny dust / nugget byproducts of ore processing tedious if I have to do it by hand. The byproducts aren't much of a production boost, but they're often vital because they're the only way to get a number of materials. They're also just there one way or another, since automated washing / hammering / centrifuging are in turn much, much better than washing impure dusts in a cauldron.

The enormous cost and slow production speed of the basic "Advanced Circuit" had me tearing my hair out, because an automated sorting facility needs a ton of regulators, costing 4 Advanced circuits each. So there's the hate part.

On the other hand, I finally got my first cleanroom set up for CPU production, which in turn enables Processor Assemblies that are about 1/4 the cost of the earlier Advanced Circuits, and maybe 10x as fast to produce (I haven't run the exact numbers). Making the cleanroom was fun, and one of the few genuinely new things I've done with this Gregtech run. I even set up some Project Red automation to disable the Laser Engraver until the room reaches 100% efficiency.

It was a Factorio-like experience, because the cleanroom forces a hands-off approach where you can't touch the machines directly. CPU production is easy, and only the engraver needs to be in there, though I put a cutter in as well so the result is a "put wafers in here, finished CPUs get dumped on to a conveyor belt there." I'm kinda-sorta looking forward to circuits that require assembly in a cleanroom, because that means getting 6 (!) items into a machine without touching it or being able to see the current state.

Thank the gods for the Internet, since I'd never have understood how the cleanroom worked without forum posts, or understood that the control block emits a redstone signal indicating progress if I hadn't watched Bear's video. Beats the heck out of scanning the control block repeatedly to see if it's ready.

I've got a similar hate / love thing going on looking at Data Sticks. You need those for oil prospecting, and I consider that vital for any sort of significant foray into HV. Data Sticks now require an electronic part that in turn needs wafers made in a 500+ EU blast furnace. Which means I've got to find room for a second EBF set up to accept nitrogen. The process required looks interesting, but it's still a major delay before I can get into oil beyond oil sand.

In regard to our earlier conversation about power:

I also, at long last, put up an oilsand -> cetane diesel production line.

I'm not really at HV since I've yet to find a manganese vein (grrr!), but I found a few dusts in treasure chests. I think it was in one of those forest temples, I'm not sure, since I found it long before I was ready to use it, and I'd forgotten just how critical manganese is.

Even so, I elected to build a Nitrogen + Hydrogen -> Ammonia HV reactor, rather than go with the ridiculously slow LV biomass route. A big part of this was realizing that I also needed ammonia for platinum sludge extraction, and the slow LV method is completely inadequate for that.

Cetane diesel production with twin centrifuges for oilsand is quite fast and produces a lot of energy. Unfortunately it didn't take long to burn through a full mining run's worth of oilsand, which was a forceful reminder of why it's important to advance to an oil rig and stop relying on mining oilsand.

My day-to-day power production is still Ancient Warfare tree farms (chosen for "realism" compared to Forestry tree farms) and a single Large Steel Boiler. I've got enough 128v stuff running (mostly electrolyzers and the circuit assemblers) that the 400 EU/t it produces (after conversion) is often just a bit short of my needs. Water consumption is severe enough that I'm reluctant to set up a second one.

It's cool that you can make plastics from Ethanol now. I'm pretty sure that wasn't possible a year ago. Ethanol is now more valuable to me as polyethylene / polyvinyl chloride production than as fuel.

Something else I meant to mention, that I’ve been thinking about while playing.

I think the main reason Gregtech pushes my buttons the way Factorio does is there’s an endless stream of small and large tasks I find myself wanting to do. I’ll start in on one thing, and then realize I’d best to finish an unrelated project to make that easier. This sometimes gets to be such a convoluted cascade that I forget what I was doing in the first place.

For example, I wanted to make a tiny-dust consolidation facility (which I mentioned before). I required so many advanced circuits (24+ at last count) that I felt it was worth completing a clean room for cheaper, faster advanced circuits first. Partway through that I realized I was seriously short of copper, and that I really ought to invest in the alternate ore washing lines (mecury and sodium persulfate) first. For some ores that’s about a 60% boost in copper production.

This made me realize a big chunk of my copper ore was chalcopyrite, and that’s one of the two ores that you can process to make platinum sludge. It felt wasteful to just hammer it and centrifuge it.

That meant nitric acid, which meant a HV chem reactor. I had enough stainless steel to make one, but was that the smart thing to do with what little I had? Was there some way to leverage a HV machine into more manganese, using the ore veins I had discovered?

Well, yeah, there is, though it’s awfully low yield and desperate. Ruby Ore -> macerator -> washing -> Thermal Centrifuge -> HV Macerator gives Red Garnet dust as a 3rd byproduct. Red Garnet dust can by electrolyzed to get spessartine, which can be electrolyzed to get manganese. It’s about a 2% yield, but I had a couple of big veins of Redstone nearby, and I could get a couple of stacks of Ruby Ore from each. That leverages to about 20 stainless steel per stack of Ruby Ore processed.

So I did that, and it worked. But it also precipitated an energy crisis, because suddenly my ore processing was eating 600-700 EU/tick at peak. This is what prompted me to upgrade my boiler from bronze to steel and set up the Oilsand -> cetane diesel production.

Lost yet? Because I know I often forgot why I’d ended up so far into the weeds. I haven’t even touched on the little side projects I did along the way, like setting up conveyor belts to feed carrots to my pigs, bring my farm produce in general directly to my refrigerator for ease of cooking, and send any extras to the ethanol plant.

Anyone know what is the config option to enable IC2 machines like the Macerator, Electric Furnace and Induction Furnace in GT5U? I looked through the config files, could not find anything. I set AddGTRecipesToIC2Machines=true but still no recipe for Macerators etc. in NEI.

I'm pretty sure "AddGTRecipesToIC2Machines" allows you to make Gregtech items in IC2 machines, not IC2 machines in Gregtech machines.

The IC2 machines are disabled in Recipes.cfg. The block is called "disabledRecipes," and it lists each individual IC2 machine disabled. Set the ones you want back to "=false." Ignore the fact that the variable includes "true" in the name, that's just a terrible programming idiom that Greg picked up somewhere. The name of the variable has no bearing on its actual value, despite what it implies.

I always go in there and turn "wood2charcoalsmelting_true" off, thus re-enabling vanilla charcoal creation in furnaces. [insert rant here about why that screws up mining of ores massively].

I experimented with the modular armor today. It looks like it’s mostly not implemented, even to the degree laid out in the GTExtras thread.

Oh, plates work, but nothing else does. Motors don’t reduce weight, batteries (at least Large Lithium batteries) aren’t recognized, and only the IC2 circuits work. You can’t, for example, insert a Processing Assembly into a Modular Exoskeleton at all. I didn’t really look too closely at how a full suit of the stuff at max weight w/o motors compares to, say, regular steel armor.

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

I'm pretty sure "AddGTRecipesToIC2Machines" allows you to make Gregtech items in IC2 machines, not IC2 machines in Gregtech machines.

The IC2 machines are disabled in Recipes.cfg. The block is called "disabledRecipes," and it lists each individual IC2 machine disabled. Set the ones you want back to "=false." Ignore the fact that the variable includes "true" in the name, that's just a terrible programming idiom that Greg picked up somewhere. The name of the variable has no bearing on its actual value, despite what it implies.

I always go in there and turn "wood2charcoalsmelting_true" off, thus re-enabling vanilla charcoal creation in furnaces. [insert rant here about why that screws up mining of ores massively].

Sweet!

Thank you for a detailed response

Help!

Normally I love books - but now I need help to avoid them. When I try to scan/print/assemble an item to get a recipe book for the Assembly Line, the net result is a totally useless Written Book. No recipe at all, just one blank page.

The scanner returns a data stick and according to the description it contains the correct recipe. I take it to a printer, which produces written pages, again seemingly containing the correct recipe. But those written pages, when put in an assembling machine together with glue and leather, does not produce anything useful at all... just an empty Written Book.

EDIT: I opened up a test World with no mods except Gregtech 5.09.31, IC and Buildcraft. Same result: an empty Written Book.


I would dearly appreciate any help here, since now I have no idea on how to proceed on the tech tree. Without recipes the assembly line is just a very expensive pile of junk.

I’ve never gotten as far as the assembly line in the tech tree.

I’ve watched a couple of videos on the subject. The only obvious things are (1) you need to scan an item a voltage tier below the target item, and (2) there’s a minimum voltage requirement for the assembler that makes the book.

If it’s neither of those things, there’s a possibility that it’s a bug with the specific item you’re trying to scan. You might try creating a test setup in a creative world and scan various items to see if they work.

Also, it might be that the assembly line doesn’t have recipes for items below Ludicrous voltage. You don’t give any specifics on the thing you’re scanning.

Finally I've finished my oil refinery fully dedicated to the production of high-octane gasoline. It was a pain to gather all the materials, but at least I don't have to build everything attached to a large boiler anymore. It was fun to figure out where to get the ingredients from and how to lay out the machines (even though I build everything too close). I found a bit annoying that I could get everything I needed from oil except from ethanol, so I had to build another distillation tower for fermented biomass, but looking at the bright side I also get other useful byproducts.

I’ve had ethanol production from early LV. Mainly because I was doing tree farm -> charcoal -> large boiler for electricity, and I built and ethanol processing line just to get rid of all the saplings and apples that would otherwise clog the conveyor bringing wood to the boiler.

Ethanol’s proved to be surprisingly useful this time around. Among other things, you can make ethylene from it, which is the base for all 3 plastics I’m making (polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, PTFE (aka Teflon)). I also burn it to supplement energy production, though it’s mediocre as a direct fuel.

I don’t have an oil rig yet. I’m slowly working my way toward seismic prospecting to tell me where the oil is. I just finished a pyrolyse oven for wood tar -> toluene -> TNT. Next I need to set up a blast furnace for glowstone-doped wafers, which are a precursor for data sticks.

Really, the support stuff for the prospector is much, much higher tech than the prospector itself.

The intent is to get back to where I was last year when I rage quit, with an oil rig providing me with all the energy I need.

High-octane gasoline is the goal, though it has a ton of intermediate steps. I don’t really need it right now, because I’m barely touching my reserves of cetane diesel as it is. The steam boiler is still provided most of the power most of the time.

I expect that will change if I ever make much more progress into HV. I’ve got a couple of Nuclear Control Advanced Information Panels monitoring vital stats, and fairly often I’m down around 200 EU/tick even though I’m set up for 1024.

A big problem is oxygen. I’ve got a HV blast furnace, but is sits idle a lot because so many things require oxygen to smelt, and my cobble -> sand -> glass -> silicon dioxide -> silicon + oxygen setup doesn’t remotely keep pace. Electrolyzing water (which I’m also doing) is even slower.

The issue is that back in 0.29, it used to be that a lot of compounds could only be electrolyzed, and oxygen was a frequent byproduct. Now all of those things can be smelted in the blast furnace with oxygen for a much higher yield. So instead of electrolyzing tetrahedrite for copper, antimony, and oxygen, I’m smelting it with oxygen to get 1.5 copper + some antimony per dust.

Quote from Gus_Smedstad

I’ve never gotten as far as the assembly line in the tech tree.

I’ve watched a couple of videos on the subject. The only obvious things are (1) you need to scan an item a voltage tier below the target item, and (2) there’s a minimum voltage requirement for the assembler that makes the book.

If it’s neither of those things, there’s a possibility that it’s a bug with the specific item you’re trying to scan. You might try creating a test setup in a creative world and scan various items to see if they work.

Also, it might be that the assembly line doesn’t have recipes for items below Ludicrous voltage. You don’t give any specifics on the thing you’re scanning.

Thank you for your input. Unfortunately, it is neither of those things. I did indeed fire up a test setup and scanned a total of five items (the four quantum suit parts, plus the Fusion Reactor Mk I) and got negative results on all of them.

It turned out, however, that whatever the problem is it may be limited to the latest version. When I tried the same setup with 5.09.30 everything scanned as it should. This solves the problem as far as I am concerned, since I no longer use oil as basis for my energy production, but it may be bad news for many other players: 5.09.31 did include several changes in the refinery process, after all.

If I were you I would test the prospector in creative. If the latest version have problems generating recipe books, it may also have problems generating prospecting data books.

Also a warning. During testing I found another problem: Advanced Rocketry does not play well with Gregtech once you approach endgame. With AR installed, your Deuterium production will not work. The Hydrogen -> Deuterium recipe is visible in the centrifuge, but it will not execute.

Probably best to report those things on Github. While it’s not clear whether Blood Asp is really active anymore, there are other people occasionally making corrections. I know the issue with oil production got addressed by a 3rd party so that the increase of the oil rig to MV no longer hoses oil-based energy.

I just read a bunch of my old posts from 18 months ago. Mainly because I could not, for the life of me, remember how Forestry multifarms work with IC2 crops. I know I experimented with it in Creative the last time, and discovered that the multifarms have decent support for IC2 crops.

I did eventually find the relevant post. I mentioned that you use the Manual Orchard setting for IC2 crops. Thanks, earlier me! Good to know.

I've ventured a short distance into IC2 crops, which I didn't last time. I've bred a few non-vanilla crops. Nothing too interesting, mostly I got into it because I desperately needed blue dye for crowbars, and hadn't found a lapis vein. It's minor stuff, but kind of convenient for dyes and ink. I just want it automated now.

It's funny, looking back on my old stuff, how much I didn't know, and the things I found difficult. I should really post a screenshot of my all-inclusive automated ore processing line, which takes ore in and one end and does everything but smelt it. All 3 washing methods, sifting, magnetic separator, acid wash for platinum sludge, thermal centrifuge, regular centrifuge, re-grinding centrifuged ore, electrolysis of anything that should always be electrolyzed. It's far, far cleaner and more compact than the thing Blood Asp posted back then. This despite using Magneticraft's conveyor belts, which are intentionally bulky compared to item pipes.

Handling tiny dust -> dust and nugget -> ingot conversions is still pretty bulky, since each possible item requires an entry in an item regulator. Feeding stuff willy-nilly into a packager will just get a jam as an unusual dust sits in the input, waiting for 8 more that will never come. So it's 1 regulator per 9 types. I'm up to 8 of them feeding a pair of packagers (one for dusts and one for nuggets). Any newly created dusts get fed back into the system for possible centrifuging or electrolysis.

A side benefit I've mentioned before of the conveyor belts - when something goes wrong, it's far, far clearer than Gregtech's item pipes what's wrong and how it happened. The belts are slow, but I can actually see a dust go by an inserter because the inserter was too busy to catch it, and when there's a jam, I can see where it's happening.

What lives in a cavern under the sea?
Manganese cube pants!

I decided to take a stab at an alternate prospecting technique. Generally, vertical shafts are the things to dig, since Gregtech veins are thin horizontal disks. However, Manganese only spawns from 20-30, if you’re digging at around 25, a horizontal shaft will encounter the vein.

Since I’d dug vertical shafts in my nearby land and I had a lot of ocean nearby, I dug to 25 and explored under the ocean. I found Manganese in about the 15th 3x3 chunk I explored.

Manganese is a huge bottleneck at HV. I’ve been limping along with some I found in chests and a few paltry dusts I’d extracted from ruby ore byproducts. Once I’ve mined it out I can afford things like HV combustion generators, HV battery buffers, and electric drills.

While I've tried to stick with Magneticraft's conveyors and inserters whenever possible, forgoing item pipes, I ran into a situation where I wanted automated limited stocking. I.e. only 1 stack of an item in a chest (or other inventory, specifically Thermal Expansion's cyclic assembler). That's not something Magneticraft can do.

I ended up adding Project Red's Mechanics module for its item transport, which is a lot like Logistics Pipes. Among other things, it supports limited stocking and "pull" type item movement, rather than "push" which is the standard for almost all Minecraft item transport.

I didn't much care for the cheesy recipes, though. Circuits made smarter because you use diamonds, distinguishing circuit boards by the color of dyed glowstone used, that sort of thing. So I put together a minetweaker script to revamp the recipes to fit with GT5U.

val blank_board = <ProjRed|Core:projectred.core.part:44>;
val gold_nugget = <ore:nuggetGold>;
val iron_rod = <ore:stickIron>;
val glass_pane = <ore:paneGlassColorless>;

val primitive_board = <gregtech:gt.metaitem.01:32710>;
val wood_board = <gregtech:gt.metaitem.01:32719>;
val plastic_board = <gregtech:gt.metaitem.03:32007>;
val conveyor_belt = <gregtech:gt.metaitem.01:32630>;
val basic_circuit = <ore:circuitBasic>;
val good_circuit = <ore:circuitGood>;
val advanced_circuit = <ore:circuitAdvanced>;

val basic_pipe = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.pipe>;
val routed_pipe = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.pipe:1>;
val interface_pipe = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.pipe:2>;
val requestor_pipe = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.pipe:4>;
val firewall_pipe = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.pipe:6>;

val responder_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip>;
val dynamic_responder_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:1>;
val overflow_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:2>;
val terminator_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:3>;
val extractor_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:4>;
val broadcaster_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:5>;
val stock_keeper_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:6>;
val crafting_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:7>;
val extension_chip = <ProjRed|Transportation:projectred.transportation.routingchip:8>;

recipes.remove( blank_board );

recipes.addShaped(blank_board, [[gold_nugget, null], [gold_nugget, wood_board], [gold_nugget, null]]);
recipes.addShaped(blank_board * 2, [[gold_nugget, null], [gold_nugget, plastic_board], [gold_nugget, null]]);
recipes.addShaped(blank_board, [[gold_nugget, null], [gold_nugget, primitive_board], [gold_nugget, null]]);

recipes.remove( basic_pipe );
recipes.addShaped(basic_pipe * 5, [[iron_rod, glass_pane, iron_rod], [null, conveyor_belt, null]]);

recipes.remove( routed_pipe );
recipes.addShaped(routed_pipe * 5, [[null, basic_circuit, null], [iron_rod, glass_pane, iron_rod], [null, conveyor_belt, null]]);

recipes.remove( interface_pipe );
recipes.addShaped(interface_pipe, [[routed_pipe, good_circuit]]);

recipes.remove( requestor_pipe );
recipes.addShaped(requestor_pipe, [[routed_pipe], [good_circuit]]);

recipes.remove( firewall_pipe );
recipes.addShaped(firewall_pipe, [[good_circuit, routed_pipe]]);

recipes.remove( responder_chip );
recipes.addShaped(responder_chip, [[blank_board, basic_circuit]]);

recipes.remove( dynamic_responder_chip );
recipes.addShaped(dynamic_responder_chip, [[blank_board], [basic_circuit]]);

recipes.remove( overflow_chip );
recipes.addShaped(overflow_chip, [[basic_circuit, blank_board]]);

recipes.remove( terminator_chip );
recipes.addShaped(terminator_chip, [[basic_circuit], [blank_board]]); 

recipes.remove( extractor_chip );
recipes.addShaped(extractor_chip, [[null, <ore:circuitBasic>], [blank_board, null]]);
 
recipes.remove( broadcaster_chip );
recipes.addShaped(broadcaster_chip, [[blank_board, good_circuit]]);

recipes.remove( stock_keeper_chip );
recipes.addShaped(stock_keeper_chip, [[blank_board, advanced_circuit]]);

recipes.remove( crafting_chip );
recipes.addShaped(crafting_chip, [[advanced_circuit], [blank_board]]);

recipes.remove( extension_chip );
recipes.addShaped( extension_chip, [[good_circuit], [blank_board]]);

The base item pipes are arguably cheaper than Gregtech's, as I've written them. However, some of the costs are higher in other ways - specifically, I've required LV Conveyor Belts to build them, which are either cheap (once you have the tech to build LV motors cheaply, and infinite rubber), or expensive (early on), compared to regular item pipes. I've always felt that item pipes were a bit magical since they didn't require any moving parts.

Similarly, I dumped almost all of the configuration chip requirements in favor of GT5U circuits. Project Red "null circuits" are clearly empty expansion boards, so those require GT5U Circuit Boards to build. I've replaced iron / diamond / glowstone requirements from the original recipes with corresponding tiers of chips, from Basic to Advanced. Which means that some items are effectively gated behind MV technology and expensive until you have your first cleanroom.

I do wish this thread were a little more active. I’ve got various stories to share, and sometimes I wonder if, given some of the problems I encounter, I’m “doing it wrong.”

I’ve got a 5 level underground base. Surface is all agriculture or water collection (which is extensive, and an ongoing issue.) Level B1 is the workshop level, where I put anything I actively use. Stuff that’s completely automated goes on B2-B4. B5 is currently just plumbing and wiring.

Speaking of that, I feel like B2-B4 are all tangled messes of plumbing and wiring. B2 is primarily for wires servicing the workshop level, though I do have some machinery there. B3 is largely large tanks for fluids (steam, oxygen, hydrogen, etc.), my two titanium boilers, and most of my automated production. B4 is service for B3 plus a few significant things like the pyrolyse oven (which is huge) and the oil railroad station.

I suspect part of what drives my plumbing nightmare is placing things on B1, where I can access them easily, rather than adjacent to the source of the fluid. So the pyrolyse oven on B4 stores creosote in a minimal Railcraft tank, which then gets pumped up to B1 and and 2 chunks away to a chemical bath for making railroad ties. Excess creosote gets pumped up to B3 and 2 chunks in a different direction as a secondary fuel source for titanium boiler #2 - mainly so the pyrolyse oven doesn’t stall and stop producing charcoal for the boilers. A lot of things use oxygen or water, and there’s a central system providing each.

It’s gotten to the point where I’ve made the ceilings on levels B4 and B5 five meters high, just so I’ve got 3 different levels for pipes above my head. Plus of course there’s always the floor, but I usually reserve that for power cables directly connected to machinery.

I’ve long since run out of colors to identify pipes, and I’ve resorted to banding. That is, fluorine is alternating cyan and white, creosote is brown-and-white, and lubricant is green-and-white. Because solid cyan is chlorine, solid brown is nitric acid or dilute sulfuric acid, and green is oxygen.

On a different topic, though also related to logistics -

I decided to set up a Ore Drilling Rig (the multi block formerly known as the “Advanced Miner II”) to mine rarer resources, since it produces 3x as much as mining by hand. My first target was a Molybdenum vein. I’d love to use it for Tungsten, but I’ve yet to find any.

I started by supplying it by hand, and gave up that quickly. Now it’s run by a train that mostly ships drilling fluid out to the site. It also brings a little bit of fuel out and brings back a half-chest of ore each run, but mostly it’s about the drilling fluid. 100 L/sec of drilling fluid doesn’t sound like much, but when it’s constant it adds up fast. I could make it on site, but that would mean setting up water collection to reliably supply 100 L/sec of water, which is a fair bit if you’re not using infinite sources.

What I didn’t anticipate was how large an area it covers, how many veins it would hit unrelated to the target, and the sheer volume of material it would produce. It mined about 18,000 Crushed Sodalite, 10,000 Crushed Lazurite, and 10,000 crushed Lapsis Lazuli before it reached the molybdenum. That’s about 20 chests worth of materials I didn’t really want immediately. It’ll be useful eventually, and processing some of that solved my sodium shortage, but I’m not sure where to put all the ore it’s producing.

It’s just going to get worse, because I want to move it to several other sites when it’s done. I don’t have a tungsten deposit yet, but I do have that manganese deposit, and a beryllium / emerald deposit, etc. etc.

I finished off the molybdenum site, and moved the ore drilling rig to an emerald / beryllium site some 25 chunks from my base. I think that’s cool, that I have a real reason to run trains (absent some mod that does outright teleportation).

It’s had a few problems. The site was far enough away that the train couldn’t supply drilling fluid fast enough. I added a second tanker car for drilling fluid, and that barely kept up. I also had some problems with trains detaching / reversing. Longer (4+ car) Railcraft trains have severe problems if they go around a turn that reverses direction quickly.

Solutions are either making wider turns (a stretch between turns so the rear half of the train is around the first when the locomotive hits the second turn) or slowing down. Railcraft trains s-t-r-e-t-c-h out at full speed, but the carts stay together at half speed or less. At one station I just made the turn around longer; at the other I added speed-change tracks to slow the train as it enters the station, and return it to full speed when it leaves.

If I do another distant station, I may take a stab at making drilling fluid on site, shipping lubricant instead. It’s only 20 L per 5000 L of drilling fluid, and that’s much, much less demanding on the train. Stone dust is a common byproduct of drilling so that’s not a problem.

Water’s the problem, I’d have to set up a semi-serious water collection setup on site. I don’t really have a handle on how often in rain happens, and precisely how fast an Agricraft tank collects it. If the deposit is in a desert, it’s a non-option.

Alternately, I can run multiple trains. Which means setting up signaling to avoid collisions, which I haven’t bothered with so far since I’m only running 1 train on the track.

Or I could just use one of those rapid infinite water sources like the aqueous accumulator, which I consider “cheating.” Though I can justify it if the site is under the ocean or next to a river. I do wish Minecraft’s water mechanics were better.