[AddOn v1.23] Energy Coupler v0.21.1 - Convert EUs <-> BuildCraft Energy

Quote from KillerLUA

Nice mod, but I'm getting an error along these lines:

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Any ideas?

(Also, really stupid quote error, sorry, in a rush)

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You are trying to load the client part of the mod in your server instead of the server part?

Quote from Zimpixa

again me. I guess its time to register...

As I understood, BC=2,5IC

So 1 combustion engine is fine to power rafinery (full speed). Also combustion engine gave me 10 EU, same as geothermal generator. So 1 geo generator should power rafinery just fine... but it doesnt. Actually I need 5 geo generators to power 3 rafineries (to get it to full speed I need additional power stored at MFE). Could I check if it isnt maybe dividing power in both ways Mean 100 EU->20BC>4EU (while writing this Im wondering why didnt I check it exacly that way...). Anyway Ill try to go sleep. would be kind is U check code for me (I guess U find me little anoying right now, but w/e)

IC2 1.23, BuildCraft 2.2.3 Energy Coupler 0.19.

Test setup:

Combustion Engine with one bucket Fuel -> Wooden Power Pipe -> Gold Power Pipe -> Refinery: Combustion Engine does not power the refinery at full speed (bars are purple, not green)
Geothermal Generator -> copper cable -> Energy Coupler -> Wooden Power Pipe -> Gold Power Pipe -> Refinery: Refinery operates at the same speed, bars are moving at purple, same as the Combustion engine.

Quote from KillerLUA

Sorry, I've checked my downloads and stupid me was trying to install the client version of the coupler *facepalm*.

Thanks for your help, it works fine now.

No worries. I've done the same thing while copying development builds into the correct locations, which is the only reason I knew what that error was.

Quote from d1red

in testing i am seeing i am losing allot of eus

i was testing this mod and i seem to only be getting 1/10 of the eus back
this is my set up an mfsu into a high voltage coupler though gold conductive pipes into another high voltage coupler back into another mfsu . if i put in 1 million eus i only get like 150, back

1,000,000 eu > hvc,gcp,hvc > 150,000 eu

any ideas

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Interesting. I did some digging and I think I found the problem. Wooden power pipes only store 1000 BC Energy. After that, any energy that gets added is just thrown away silently. It seems that the coupler is throwing too much energy at the wooden power pipes and the excess is getting thrown away. The effect is more pronounced with more energy. I think I have a fix, but I'm going to do some more testing. There's still going to be some loss because of the way BC Power pipes handle loss. I think I have it at 95% though.

Update: After doing some testing and an interesting bit of math, it turns out the Wooden Power pipes are basically a bottleneck. The way they work, (and I could be reading the code wrong), is they can store 1000 BC Energy units, which are then output depending on how much is currently stored. The logic is thus: If the amount stored is >40, divide the amount by 40 and add 4. If the amount is <40 but >10, divide the amount by 10, and if <10 output 1. So, 1000/40+4 = 29BCE. So it would appear that the maximum output of a wooden pipe would be ~72.5EUs/tick (29x2.5). Therefore, it looks like a HV Energy Coupler is pretty useless when converting EUs to BCE, since it would output more per tick than a wooden pipe can handle.

I'm wondering now if I should create a wooden pipe without that output bottleneck.

Quote from MJEvans

It would be a wonderful improvement if the coupler could detect that the target was 'full' and not transfer any further energy. Whenever I turn these on to power anything in buildcraft they seem to simply sink whatever the maximum energy is directly in to the target machine or wooden pipe.

Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen unless there is a change in the way BuildCraft Machines request energy. I'll demonstrate with the code from BuildCraft's Quarry:

public TileQuarry() {
  powerProvider = PowerFramework.currentFramework.createPowerProvider();
  powerProvider.configure(20, 25, 25, 25, MAX_ENERGY);
}

Here, the configure parameters are thus: 1 - latency, 2 - minEnergyReceived, 3 - maxEnergyReceived, 4 - minActivationEnergy, 5 - maxStoredEnergy.
So the quarry is set to receive a minimum and maximum of 25 BC Energy. MAX_ENERGY is a constant that is set to 7000 for the quarry. So the Quarry's power provider will store up to 7000 BC Energy.

Hopefully the non-programmers are still with me...anyway, when pipes are transfering energy, they look for IPowerReceptor blocks to deliver energy to. If they find one, they ask it how much energy they want by using the powerRequest method, which is actually shared across all BuildCraft Factory blocks (Quarry, Pump, Refinery, etc):

public int powerRequest() {
  if (isActive()) {
    return getPowerProvider().maxEnergyReceived;
  } else {
    return 0;
  }		
}

So, all Factory blocks will request maxEnergyReceived which, in the Quarry's case as seen above is 25. Furthermore, here's how the Quarry's powerProvider acts when it receives that energy from the source:

public void receiveEnergy (int quantity) {
  energyStored += quantity;




  if (energyStored > maxEnergyStored) {
    energyStored = maxEnergyStored;
  }
}

What that means is the Quarry's power provider will take the energy, add it to its stored energy, then it checks to see if that value is more than 7000. If it is, it just silently sets the energy stored to the maximum, basically discarding it.

Anyway, that's a basic overview, there are a few more things going on but that's basically how pipes hand off the energy to blocks.

Ok, I just posted v0.20. This version changes some functionality, so please back up your save and read this before upgrading.

A redstone signal will now turn the coupler on/off instead of changing the direction of the conversion. Because of the change, I've added a GUI that allows you to select the direction.
Theoretically, currently placed couplers should default to converting EUs to BC Energy. So any blocks you had placed with redstone current to convert to BC Energy will have to be changed in the GUI to convert to BC Energy and then have the redstone current removed in order for them to work again. Placed couplers without redstone current shouldn't need any change. Hopefully.

I also fixed the major conversion loss bug that d1red pointed out. EU to BCE to EU conversion should now be at about %97 for HV and MV and at about 92% for LV. Don't know why it's different for LV, but I think it has something to do again with Wooden Power Pipes. I had to throttle conversion from EU to BCE to about 72 EUs/tick, otherwise the Wooden Power Pipe gets filled and silently throws the excess away. This makes HV Couplers kind of useless for converting to BCE. Not sure how to get around that one yet.

I'm also in the process of moving everything off of IC2 classes. There are some things I haven't quite worked out yet, but that mostly has to do with SSP which is pretty involved. The IC2 Platform and NetworkManager classes make it a lot easier to deal with. So until I can work out my own classes to handle SSP, I'm stuck using them right now...but I'm getting there.