automatic water gen with red power

As of Redpower 2's pr4 release, it is definitely possible to feed water-filled buckets to a system of watermills, yes. I know this, because I have also done it.

Considering that Direwolf20 does the same thing with lava buckets in his recent Let's Play world, I'm not sure who would think it was impossible. I imagine it's done much the same way, with filters?

Basically, you feed a line of tubes below the water mills. At the beginning, you have filter which is attached to a deployer which grabs water form an infinite water pool. The filter needs to be set to grab water buckets. After all the water mills at the other end, you have a retriever which should retrieve empty buckets and feed them back into the deployer. Here are a few images:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/46/20120103035303.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/560/20120103035316.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/80/20120103035240.png/

Mind though, with this many water gens, it causes some major performance issues, as I dropped from a solid 60 fps to 40 fps while the system was running at a pulse a second. With a much larger system (+32 water gens) I could imagine massive lagg.

Quote from HeadHunter67

Considering that Direwolf20 does the same thing with lava buckets in his recent Let's Play world, I'm not sure who would think it was impossible. I imagine it's done much the same way, with filters?

It might have been impossible in the past.

I know that it takes RedPower machines to do it, so before that, there wasn't any easy way. I think that's why Pigalot created the Bucket Filler add-on before. That's still a great add-on but it's nice to see that there are ways to do it within the mods themselves, now.

I used to something similar with EE and lava buckets. I believe it also required the addition pipes BC mod.

I'm in the process of making of making a generator room based on this on my neighborhood server. 128 EU/t expandable in blocks of 64 or 128 EU. The only thing about it is that it is expensive. ~80 buckets, 64 water generators, 8 bat boxes, and the red power items. The very painful part is the 8 ender pearls. I can never seem to find them.

I built this on a creative flatworld(for testing purposes of course :P)

It's large and not the greatest of designs, nor efficiency, but it does look cool.

What do you guys think?

(forgive the crappy quality, I haven't actually gotten around to purchasing Fraps or anything yet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYr1LJUWcBM

I build such fancy things sometimes too... but they aren't effective and produce really low amounts and the wiring is a bit tricky (normally I don't waste glass-fibre for this^^).

Quote

i didnt use addtional pipes only rp2. and thats pretty massive watch out for lag i heard water gens cause alot. and ender pearls ar somewhat difficult to find to but i found 2 my 3rd night or somthing

You only need

1 Deployer, 1 Filter, 1 Retriever, N Buckets, N Watermills, N + 5 Tubes (I thought I needed 5).

N is the number of watermills. 1 Retriever could easily work about 20-25 Watermills, producing 50 EU/t.

I compare the design towards nuclear and it's just totally OP (that's the reason I want watermills to drop to 1 EU/t in manned mode, while working twice as long with one bucket).

30 Watermills create 60 EU/t. You only need 240 Refined Iron, 30 Batteries (60 Redstone, 120 Tin, 30 Cables) and a little stuff for the RP stuff and 30 Buckets made of tin. Compare this to a nuclear reactor and it easily wins and is totally easy to set up.

I only used glass fiber as a test part

I've already got ideas for improved designs and I'll be testing those out later. What I'm trying to do is create things using only IC2 items, not relying on other mods to assist with this(other than NEI for getting items).

I'll post a video of that once I get it done. Maybe I should invest in buying Fraps if I'm gonna be doing this more often

ETA: I've made a more improved method made with cheaper parts. The new method produces ~70 EU per second and consists of 25 watermills, 4 LV transformers, and(I think) 20 insulated copper cables. I'll attach a pic for everyone to see.

I'm making my "purpose"(for the lack of a better phrase) to find make designs that will beat out Solar Panels as the go-to free energy. I have nothing against Solar Panels, I just like there to be other options that can beat it out

I know the purpose

And waters-gens are fine, but they get insanely OP if you use them in manned mode. Normal water-towers are fine and create good energy at low costs with some setup necessary.

Actually what you did is to produce 2,3 EU/t (70 EU per second) while using a lot of space and materials. Pop down 5 Solars to achieve the same. And while the solars themself are more costly you don't need any of the wiring, which again gives some of the ressources back you spent on the more expensive solars.

True, the design could be done with fewer Solars, however my design is a constant stream of EU, while Solars only work during clear weather. So, it's a give and take. I'd still like to have my design, as it is made of cheaper goods

The other benefit is that you can, with some digging, set all this up at your underground lair next to your xp grinder where solar is impractical.

I played for about an hour with this tonight including trying to incorporate a sticky piston to move the water mill to alternate the input/output from the bottom facing but the rotten thing refused to budge! Haven't played with retrievers yet so didn't think to use them. Running a small nuke now 40 EU/t at eff2

I tried making an automatic water gen system with 16 gens running constantly, and does work, but its not free. You'll pay for it with your FPS if you make too many of them.

Quote from pablovansnogger

ya im only going to have 16 since that is 32 eu/t. but i havent noticed a drop in fps at all......

16 isn't that much

Also depends a lot on you system. Older PCs tend to have more problems, but with a adaquate system you should have no trouble.