Version 1.337 is out!, watch out for them reactor changes ;)

1st Official Post

    Be warned that in the next version a Reactor's output is doubled by default, therefore you may have to upgrade your cables /before/ installing the next IC version to prevent melting cables.

    For example: if your reactor was outputing 70 EU each tick and you were using gold cables on it, the next version will output 140 EU each tick and melt the cable.

    I just thought I'd post this before the next version to stem the torrent of "My reactor isn't working now, why!?!" posts ;)

    The reactor planner will be updated once the next IC version is offically out.

    It shouldn't affect the heat, though, right? Basically, safe designs will still be safe, but they just require a more robust wiring system?
    That doesn't worry me - I've always used Glass Fibre cable from reactors and an MFSU is always a first stop on the diagram.

    Good to know.. i'm running glass fibre cable from my reactor but I would hate to have to upgrade the MFE's.
    Course i'm just running a MK I 35EU/t reactor so everything should be fine. (in theory)

    My plans to build a reactor are still delayed on RP2's next release, but I do wonder how much the cooling of a bucket has been changed... if buckets only do 100 now that could make things /drastic/.

    Seems the forum didn't tell me there was a new post in the Public releases section, heh.

    Well, the planner is updated now (yay)

    Reactor related changes are:
    - Outputed EU doubled by default, heat levels unchanged.
    - Heat dispensors no-longer jealously keep one point of heat to themselves no matter how long you wait for them to cool.
    - Ice blocks reduce heat by 300 and requires the hull to be at 300 heat before being used.
    - Water buckets reduce heat by 250

    Quote from Talonius


    Reactor related changes are:
    - Outputed EU doubled by default, heat levels unchanged.


    YAY, except now Generators and GeoGenerators also output x2 the power so over all it's not a reactor buff but a Solar/Wind/Water nerf (which is awesome on it's own) and a buff for energy generation in general (except for solar/wind/water)
    Still makes we question the benefits of making a 120 EU/t reactor over using 6 Geotherms which are a simple matter of making a bunch of empty cells and using my right click macro on my G15 keyboard to empty pools of lava and return home with some 500+ lava cells.
    Sure, i don't have to refuel my reactors as frequently (i can still place a full stack of lava cells in a geogen though) and i don't have to make as frequent trips to lava pools (or the nether, where i can have >9000 lava cells in a jiffy) but i just get the feeling the normal generators could have stayed as they are and made solar/wind/water generators ½ the output and nuclear 2x the output.

    Quote from Talonius

    - Heat dispensors no-longer jealously keep one point of heat to themselves no matter how long you wait for them to cool.


    Never had an issue with this but it's a bugfix so YAY?

    Quote from Talonius

    - Ice blocks reduce heat by 300 and requires the hull to be at 300 heat before being used.
    - Water buckets reduce heat by 250


    :thumbdown: This just makes it easier to make ice based CASUC over bucket based ones. And bucket based CASUC requires more mechanics to operate and as such are harder to use.

    I bet EE people will be extatic over this change as they now can make 1820 EU/t reactors (which is equal to a 910 EU/t reactor in 1.23, where they used to have a max of 845 EU/t in 1.23) using their OP obsidian aggregators or whatever they have for FREE resource overload.
    It also makes it pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to make a useful CASUC deisgn with buckets maxing out at 4 buckets per second in a 5 chamber and 8 buckets per second in a 4 chamber... (making a 4 chamber possibly more effective than a 5 chamber using buckets)
    The results are that now a bucket fed CASUC cannot outperform ICE (1010 in a 5 chamber and 1510 in a 4 chamber) in any possible way. Who would ever want to use buckets ever again for reactor cooling???

    Right... Buckets are free to get and (assuming we aren't using EE to make ice) making ice costs power. Let's look into the compressor rates shall we?
    First, we need to produce 6 ice blocks per second to keep our reactor cool. (300 * 6 = 1800 heat cooled, our 1820 EU/t reactor produces 1809 without water blocks around it, i assume we can squeeze in 20 water blocks around a 5 chamber CASUC relying on ICE, so it's a non issue. (Giving us 1789 excess heat)

    EDIT: All this below is wrong... See my additional edit below!

    6 ice blocks = 625 EU * 6 = 3750 EU = 187.5 EU/t
    or...
    1 ice block = 625 / 2 = 312.5 ticks = 15.65 seconds to make one ice block.
    Thus...
    One ice block per second = 16 compressors
    Six ice blocks per second = 96 compressors
    96 compressors will draw 192 EU/t

    Ok, that's a LOT of compressors BUT... Considering you could make a net gain of 118 EU/t with an ice based reactor over a bucket based one. Where an ICE based (while a lot more expensive in compressors) is EASIER to build than a bucket based one. And a bucket based one can require as many as 324 buckets (486 iron ore blocks) to keep the flow going, not to mention a lot of piping. A diamond and the resources to build whatever engines and redstone you need to pump the buckets at a constant 4 or 8 buckets per second...

    Either way, i foresee that nobody is ever going to wanna build a bucket based CASUC now... Which is very sad since they are indeed much harder to design and operate safely.


    EDIT: I forgot about the snowballs... You have to make snowballs to make ice blocks. So that's really 384 EU/t and 192 compressors... Making a bucket CASUC a possible 266 EU/t gain over an ICE based one (except for those using EE, which is still as pointed out above the compressor calculations...)

    But we still need to remember just how hard it is to make a bucket based CASUC and now we can only make a 1510 EU/t CASUC (IN THEORY) with buckets (equivalent to a 755 EU/t in 1.23 where we used to have a theoretical max of 960 EU/t which would be equivalent to a 1,920 EU/t in IC² l33t)

    Oh, while i am at it, we can now make 2,400 EU/t reactors when they are filled with just U-cells in a 6 chamber and pulse them for 1 second and let them cool for 72 seconds (Though it would be safer to let them cool for 80 ore more) giving us some MAD amounts of EU's at 4.44 eff.
    It would require 80 (at a 80 seconds cooldown) reactors to get an effective 2,400 EU/t out of your nuclear plant... For some reason i get the feeling this is more viable than making a CASUC... (Without TMI or EE that is to make free ice coolant)

    ... It just rubs me the wrong way that Al made buckets worse than ICE that's all.

    Quote from nou_spiro

    you must first melt that ice to water and then heat up to boil. that take quite lot of heat. so yes it is realistic that ice take cool more than water.

    Well, the problem is ice is easier to use in a reactor... You can stack 64 ice per slot while you can only have a single bucket in a slot... UNLESS ofc a reactor allows stacks of buckets now?
    And even then, you have to remove the empty buckets from the reactor whereas ice just melts and evaporates leaving no bucket behind.

    So yeah, ice is colder than water but water is a lot more difficult to use as a coolant...

    It's not that bad.

    You are forgetting that there is a new feature coming in a day or 2 : The RedPower 2 RETRIEVER!!!

    I did a bit of quick planning : if you have an array of 4 retrievers and 4 filters sending water buckets back to the reactor (plus 4 deployers). Assuming they can operate twice a second. (timer delay of 0.4)

    Use a 5 chamber reactor, with just 1 pipe entering the reactor.

    Here's a design : http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/reactorplanner…1g01521s1r11r10

    This assumes that the fix was good and that reactor inventories are now properly handled.

    So twice a second, we take out empty buckets and twice a second send in full ones. That's 2000 heat removed/second, and the reactor needs 1704 heat removed. There should be 1 full bucket left at the end of every reactor update (which happens once a second)

    The energy shield addon will help a ton I think...could shut the shield down for refueling the reactor, and it means that all the complex stuff (the retrievers/filters/pipes/circuitry) you can have OUTSIDE the containment, so if you blow one you only lose the reactor itself plus a little bit of piping and wiring. Could even rig up a circuit to shut down part of the energy shield every 5 minutes and have a transposer suck up the contents of the containment chamber (which would recover any cells and reactor chambers dropped from the explosion)

    The big advantage of this over an ice cooled reactor isn't EU/tick : it's EFFICIENCY. That's why the above proposal is a terrible idea...why give up 15% of your total energy output per uranium ore?

    You cannot massfab for uranium, and it only takes 3 hours to burn up 30+ cells in one CASUC. After 40 hours of play I only have about 90 uranium I have legitimately gathered. That's using a set of 3 miners about 30 times.

    Quote from Alblaka

    I'll probably disable bucket/ice cooling entirely and replace it with a proper addition-block of some sort. Eventually something you can use instead of a chamber, not providing coloumns, but large amounts of cooling.

    NOOOO please don't do this (unless the special chamber will need external materials). I'm slowly building a CASUC myself, not because I actually need the massive amount of power it can output, but because I just don't feel like a few cubic metres of metal blocks with signs painted on them and a wire coming out looks like a genuine industrial nuclear reactor. Real nuclear power plants consist of massive reactor cores with a whole building full of pipes and pumps and other strange and mysterious hardware around the cores, and I want an excuse for my IC reactor to look the same way. If CASUCs are overpowered then nerf ice and water buckets (as you already did in the latter case a bit), but please don't make them impossible or completely useless!