Are Water Mills as useless as they seem to be?

    A simple doubling of the unmanned watermill output (from 0.010 to 0.020) would make me a very happy creeper. I need energy underground that will be generated without any resources (im building a foolproof unmanned bunker) and the current unmanned output is just ridiculous.

    Quote from Ghosti

    A simple doubling of the unmanned watermill output (from 0.010 to 0.020) would make me a very happy creeper. I need energy underground that will be generated without any resources (im building a foolproof unmanned bunker) and the current unmanned output is just ridiculous.

    Edit:nvm


    Long as you use BC an automated bucket filling and loading pipe system works very nice for static power, without any other sub-mods. At a constant 2eu each the water mill is nice in the deep mines. I have been using this system for ages now.


    I have a 24 mill 2 pump system that I use to charge the MSFU in my mining area. This allows me to recharge all my gear & tools when I need to unload resources. The lava I find gets converted to cells or pumped out via pipes for other uses.


    When I get home I'll get some shots here. As others have stated, each form of power has it's pros/cons. The simple fact that we can create infinite water and throw down water mills anywhere at any time makes them perfectly balanced the way they are. When I go looking for a new oil reserve I always carry a few mills and a batbox to get the new drill site started. I do this as many times while exploring I find cave systems or abandoned mines and need to recharge gear on the fly.


    My only complaint is how loud the noise is on them, to the point that I removed the .ogg for the mill.

    or have an inv full of buckets and the mobile pump mod and go to nether, place buckets in big hole and use geo gens so that water mill system can be a 10 E/U per tick per geo generator i dont know why at first i made a water mill system. :?:

    Quote from Rick

    You dont get it watermills are so bad its better to make windgens on top of the world and run a line down to bedrock layer than to make a watermill at the bedrocklayer.

    So why are water mills so bad? If in a far more dense configuration and with far fewer resources I can make a static water mill farm at bedrock, why would I use windmills? Plus if you look at windmills at best you'll get 3eu, and then account for cable loss running from 120s to 5, you are below water mills running at 2eu.

    True, but again, as I pointed out this is a single power generator system for me. Besides the one watermill/2 buckets/ bat box I carry when I go on really far expeditions. You also have to understand I have many power systems feeding in to my network, wind/water/nuclear/mechanical and even an automated cacti farm. I am even looking into the power coupler (submod), but so far for a no worry, hands off, infinite power system my bucket supplied water mill is best suited for a bedrock rail station hub.

    Liquid energy, atm, is one of the better systems of energy so far... with Geothermal, you do have to (not-so-much-now) tediously farm lava to feed into a Geothermal system. Which, in some/most cases, requires nether hopping and the transfer of cells from place to place. In mid-game, Geothermal is a very attractive form of energy generation...


    But towards late game, water mills look attractive due to the fact that resources (should) be very readily available for them. A constant, 24/7 energy system, which does not require feeding can be of great benefit for many users. The reason why the yield is not high is because it is constant, static energy generation. No matter where you are in the world, or at what times the systems are running, you will always be accumulating energy from your setup.


    For instance, on my v2 Industrial Dam, I have 16 by 20 towers in it (that's 16 towers, 20 Watermills per tower). That's 320 Water Mills in total. At pure saturation (where each mill is mostly, if not completely, covered by water), a mill will generate close to .21 EU/t. Thus, the Dam itself generates 67.2 EU/t of energy every game second. That's actually runs in competition with Nuclear energy, because while it requires a HUGE amount of machines, it does not run the risk of exploding, nor do you have to keep feeding it with materials (as this attribute is optional with Water Mills in general).


    So no, Water Mills don't generate 'huge 1337 amounts' of EU... but they have the highest reliability out of all the energy generation means.


    (although now that I think about it... I do think that they deserve a bit of a buff... lol)

    Would anyone like to try a Slowpoke Tail?! Only 1 Million Yen!


    Quote

    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

    The thing is that solar panels have a higher average output last I checked, twice as much, unless the 0.25 average output of optimal waterwheels was increased to 0.5 or higher, and take up far less space. (although they cannot be built underground)
    water wheels are *slightly* cheaper, but not by much.

    Yeah, since they cheapened the already horribly overused solar panel there's even less reason to use anything else...

    16 towers? 20 windmills? Lategame? LOL(make it double,no triple-capital letter)


    exept if you meant lategame as "bored as hell but cant get arse off the (chair/couch/bed/recliner/other kind of ass support)
    4EU per tower? are.you.f***n kidding me?
    make 25 windmills, less resources, more energy , not to mention all that time to craft that shit
    unstable? slightly, still more EU per buck, if unsure make 40 windgens, these outperform your setup any day, not to mention they are easier to expand if you do it right
    for now i run 16 windgens, will expand it to said 40 and see if this will allow me to run massfab indefinetly ;)

    Ever notice when forums have a suggestion board, there's a small group of idiots who just hang around that little forum section? Yeah, I'm one of those guys. (c) by That one guy

    Lots of debate here.


    As a major user of Geo gens and solar panels, I don't have much room to speak, but I have begun setting up a small water plant using Buildcraft and the Bucket Filler. At the moment all it does is power a miner and a recycler, and with only 2 water mills at the moment, it can only take a basic drill. (It produces an excess, very slowly though. ~4 EU/t consumed by ~3EU/t) I'm going to keep building it up until I can run a diamond drill in it 24/7.


    Also at the moment it seems like Buildcraft and IndustrialCraft stuff doesn't want to get along. I can only pull and push buckets into/out of my watermills (in the correct spot) from the top. Anyone else having this problem?

    Quote from Xeca

    So why are water mills so bad? If in a far more dense configuration and with far fewer resources I can make a static water mill farm at bedrock, why would I use windmills? Plus if you look at windmills at best you'll get 3eu, and then account for cable loss running from 120s to 5, you are below water mills running at 2eu.

    Watermills only make 2 eu if you babysit them else they make max 0.25 eu, windgens make 2-4 eu on top of the world without any babysitting. Cable loss would be like what 5% with HV cable and transformer? So it would still beat watermills by far. Windgens are the best and cheapest energy to make if you make them at the top of the world.

    Quote from mkcompy

    Lots of debate here.


    As a major user of Geo gens and solar panels, I don't have much room to speak, but I have begun setting up a small water plant using Buildcraft and the Bucket Filler. At the moment all it does is power a miner and a recycler, and with only 2 water mills at the moment, it can only take a basic drill. (It produces an excess, very slowly though. ~4 EU/t consumed by ~3EU/t) I'm going to keep building it up until I can run a diamond drill in it 24/7.


    Also at the moment it seems like Buildcraft and IndustrialCraft stuff doesn't want to get along. I can only pull and push buckets into/out of my watermills (in the correct spot) from the top. Anyone else having this problem?

    use zeldos tele pipes/additional pipes addon,it has an advanced wood pipe which can pull a specific item like the empty bucket from any point of the machine though i dont see what real problem pulling from top is.

    Quote from gecomol

    use zeldos tele pipes/additional pipes addon,it has an advanced wood pipe which can pull a specific item like the empty bucket from any point of the machine though i dont see what real problem pulling from top is.

    Ah. Thank you.
    The problem with pulling from the top is that I want to make the loop between the two things as small as possible, get the bucket in there as quick as possible and then back out just as fast. Currently travelling from the bucket filler to the watermill is 4 pipes in distance (wood, stone, diamond, wood) and from water mill to bucket filler is 2 pipes in distance (wood, diamond). Hopefully with the Adv. Wood pipes I can get it down to 1:1. Didn't know I could use those pipes for that. I thought they were only for chests.

    Here's the simplest and most efficient design i could come up with. The update was actually a boon in disguise. Line of pumps in the middle, 1 chest 1 water on either side, alternating. Add pipes and redstone engines and it'll run forever at full speed. dimensions are 5 long, 7 wide (including blocks for redstone) and 4 high. Design is best when stacked vertically or lengthwise


    According to my measurements a water gen is equal to three solars over a minecraft 24hr, because you have to cut the solar's 1EU/t in half due to night. the water gen loses about .2 of it's EU/t to the pump. so gen makes 1.8/t, which is around 3 solars, conservatively. 24 iron for 3 solars VS 16+1(circuit)+2(engines)=19 iron for watermill+pump+2 redstone engines


    One bucket just flops back and forth between the chest and the watermill. If the bucket is empty, the pump fills it and puts the full bucket back in the chest. Easy as pie, no loop required.


    Takes a lot of wood to make this though, for the stupid engines. Could also be more efficient (pump-wise, 1 pump can supply about 1.2 gens) with tele/distro pipes but this is built for vanilla IC and BC

    Yeah. Its not worth it.


    Unless you just REALLY wanna make something, its not worth automating a water mill cluster.


    Way too many engines and loss of FPS over huge systems, not to mention all the extra resources you have to pump into that to even make it.


    If it could be done with nothing but rp2 it would be a different story. Unfortunately, bc is required for it because of the way the wooden pipes work.


    windgens are practically as cheap, and offer 12+ times the energy output completely unmanned if they are placed correctly. And when tin cables get buffed, they are going to be even more ridiculous. But on the other hand, I would never make a wind farm simply because its hideous. I cant play on max view distance so placing a windfarm at the top of the world irritates me. It looks like wires from space are powering my house, I would take a MASSIVE watermill farm over a few windgens every day of the week for this reason alone. Unmanned water mills should have their eu/t doubled, or you should get 2 mills for every recipe. I would also encourage wind power having at least 1 effective eu/t knocked out of it, and able to place them at layer 64 and higher without any energy loss, top of the world is retarded.

    It's worth it if you want a hands-off, always on energy source with the smallest x/z footprint and potentially no surface presence. No need to pipe energy from the surface where shit can get stolen/griefed or make ugly wind arrays in the sky.

    Quote from Igawa

    It's worth it if you want a hands-off, always on energy source with the smallest x/z footprint and potentially no surface presence. No need to pipe energy from the surface where shit can get stolen/griefed or make ugly wind arrays in the sky.

    Maybe to some people it would be.


    But living underground, uranium shouldn't be hard to come by. You could make a long-lasting 20 eu/t 0 chamber reactor thats completely safe and outputs a total of 4mil eu for a fraction of the time and resources it would take to automate water mills with bc.


    Im not saying your design was bad, or it was pointless. Its actually quite cool and a nice cluster you have there. MinecraftCreeper