[Suggestion/Question] If geothermal generators accept BC piped lava, shouldn't water mills...

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    Yeah, I just tried this and it doesn't work. I could understand the balancing problems, though - water can be gotten infinitely with a BC pump powered solely by RS engines. That'd make for a super cheap 2EU/t generator without placement constraints, thus at least 4 times as "awesome" as solar cells. :whistling:


    However, I feel this is somewhat inconsistent. :S I'd rather have an extremely nerfed version of piped water mills :Water Mill: than not following the "we accept pipes now" logic. My spontaneous suggestion would be to say that if a BC pipe gives a water mill :Water Mill: water (a certain amount of buckets per time), it will work as if it were surrounded by water completely. 8|


    That way, you could build a huge dry array of generators not stronger than solar panels which also need a water piping system that needs a bit of infrastructure to work. I imagine it's going to be a bit of a hassle building it with all the cables :Cable: , buffering blocks :Batbox: , pipes, pumps etc. The player would have to decide whether they'd trade resource costs (water mills are way cheaper) and independence of sunlight and height for an engineering challenge. This would be one for the money saving kind.


    What do you think? Also, emoticons.

    Quote from FenixR

    Water is unlimited, Lava is not.


    Besides Geothermal didnt have a "Unmaned" mode.


    After reading your post... Nop my comment is still valid, might as well remove the "Manned" mode since a WaterMILL isnt supposed to be eating water to work (If we apply logic to it).


    Funny how a watermill has = power production to a solar, yet is considerably harder to set up.

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    Quote from Shalashalska


    Funny how a watermill has = power production to a solar, yet is considerably harder to set up.

    I guess its because they are a lot cheaper that they require a harded setup. And i dont remember Water mill producing 1EU with a efficient model, unless you are refering to both Day and Night cicle as a single one compared to the sole Day cycle the solar generator have.

    Would be a bit overpowered if the EU wasn't dropped.


    There could be a BC-Integrated add-on in IC2 that lets you run water THROUGH it, with pipes... Would be an interesting idea.


    Watermills generate 2eu/tick while manned, last I checked... So, you would get a bit over 8 solar panels every time you craft a single (two, technically) watermills.


    8, assuming Night lasts it's entire time, and a bit over due to weather.


    PS: RP2 Sorting Machine+Retriever can let you do this OP thing with water buckets.


    PS2: Watermills suddenly seem amazingly overpowered to me. If the Adv. Machines mod isn't updated soon enough, I might just go pure watermills.

    ...What? There's no pineapples here.


    GENERATION Pineapple: The first pineapple you see, copy it into your sig on any forum and add sqrt(-1) to the generation. Pineapple experiment.

    Just face it. If you use another mod to pump liquid into the Geo-Gen you could do the same with Water-Buckets and a Watermill.


    Unmanned Watermills don't really produce much power. Watermills in unmanned mode will be as good as solars under the best circumstance (they produce 0,25 EU/t but since they work all day and you get two out of the recipe it's much the same). But Achieving this is rather unlikely, because the EU/t is so small that you have to use good cables or place some badboxes and since you can only place one watermill every next block (need to be one space between them) it's a little bit troubling to set them up. Water-Towers on the other hand are easy to set up, but they only produce 0,17EU/t.


    If you bring mods into play it is as easy to pump water in the watermill as it is to feed it with buckets. But the other point is. You would need a small watertower to create 2 EU/t. But to automatically feed a watermill with water you also need some ressources to set this up. Watermills are really cheap so you might end up investing more into your pump-system then the watertower would cost you.


    Oh and the abusive energy-sources don't end here. Of course scrap has a better use, but by using 35 EU on a Dirt-Block you turn it into a 870 EU Item. RP-Cobble-Gen -> Recycler -> Generator.

    For such "Abusive" energy system, its only appropriate that a complicated system should be made in order to abuse them like so. Pumping water with BC water pipes its such a "Abusive" idea because the amount of water you can find and pump its at least 100x of the Lava needed to power a Geothermal also Lava exist in abundance, but its actually quite complicated at times to find these lakes, unlike water where you can simple move a few chunks and find a absurdely big water source (I have been draining a river with 2 pumps for a few days and there is still quite a crapload of water to pump from it, its actually quite amazing).


    Besides Albaka also think of WaterMills as a Pretty OP energy source, otherwise why would you think that watermill can only be powered with BUCKETS and not with CELLS?

    Quote from FenixR

    For such "Abusive" energy system, its only appropriate that a complicated system should be made in order to abuse them like so. Pumping water with BC water pipes its such a "Abusive" idea because the amount of water you can find and pump its at least 100x of the Lava needed to power a Geothermal also Lava exist in abundance, but its actually quite complicated at times to find these lakes, unlike water where you can simple move a few chunks and find a absurdely big water source (I have been draining a river with 2 pumps for a few days and there is still quite a crapload of water to pump from it, its actually quite amazing).


    Besides Albaka also think of WaterMills as a Pretty OP energy source, otherwise why would you think that watermill can only be powered with BUCKETS and not with CELLS?


    I guess, because it's even more abusive with buckets since you don't have to replace them. 4000 EU for each Tin-Ingot? That's not really much. It's 80.000 EU for each Tin-Ingot if you use Geo-Gens. So basically water is better and since endless-waterpools are easy to transport buckets are far easier to use than Cells, compared to the geo-gen. I guess there is just no need for Cells in the Water-Gen because it would be quite a waste and water is easy to get nearby. The Cell-Thing for Lava is mainly because you have to travel over a great distance.


    So the question is not why Cells are forbidden for Water-Gens it is why they are allowed for Geo-Gens. If you automate your manned Watermills you might as well automatically draw out the empty buckets which is possible with either RP or BC, which you would also need to pump water or cells into the watermill. So basically there is no difference. A retriever isn't that expensive if you manage to get 2 ender-pearls and filter and deployer are even cheaper. So even if the PC Pump is even cheaper the placement is limited to somewhere near a moderate amount of water, as the bucket-mode only needs a small endless source of water.


    As soon as any kind of blockinteraction like Breaking (Cobble -> Recycler -> Generator) or Interacting (Water -> Deployer -> Watermill) comes in play IC2-Energy-Production is broken in terms of balance. The watermill is fine in regards to this. I consider the Recycler -> Generator to be a greater problem, since the Watermill only outputs 2 EU/t while the Generator runs on 10 EU/t.

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    I consider the Recycler -> Generator to be a greater problem, since the Watermill only outputs 2 EU/t while the Generator runs on 10 EU/t.



    Guys, guys, i don't see a problem in that. Ok, look:


    A good set-up using BC and RP into a nuclear generator, can be damn more that those 10 EU/t.
    Snow golem=>compressors=>nuclear reactor. Same you can do with water, buckets i mean. Like that i used to keep ~359 EU\t without much complicated work.(if i remember correctly about the number, somewhere like 350-360).
    Just a generator? Auto-collecting cacti and reed, you are done.
    Watermill? Looping those buckets is an easy and cheap setup.


    So? I don't see any problems in that, i got 359 EU/t for making a little complex setup for nuclear reactor, if i would spent more materials for compressors, pipes and other things, i would get more. The EU you get is just compares to the time\resources you spent for the setup.

    Yeah but a energy generation system that involves some degree of automation (Remove empty buckets and insert filled ones for example, or the Whole Super CASUS that involves farming the snow of snow golems), requieres some degree of logic thinking and alot more of materials that simply inserting a water pipe in the watermill :/, WaterMills are fine right now. (Although i still think that logically "Manned" mode should not exist at all, water doesnt generate Energy, its the motion of flowing water moving the "mill" that generates the energy)

    Hmm... I'm not sure. But compared to the total materials I might even manage to build a setup only using generators which provides more Power and will cost less, well it's just 39 generators and an automated treefarm. But Again Nuclears are totally out of this discussion.


    Solars, Winds and Water are like Generator intermediate Energy-Sources. They are not meant to feed massfabs or such, but they run your everyday-machinery. You won't run your first two macerators using a nuclear reactor. But using 4 Watergens with a bucketfiller and some storage will be enough to power your first machines. Some Windmills (10 are more then enough) will easily produce enough energy for macerating and smelting everything you find underneath the earth. Some Solars are great to build small recharge-stations for tools and packs. The only gen that is somehow a rival to nuclear-power is the Geo-Gen, because it actually is the only gen that needs something expensive to run, namely lava. But again with a lucky start or some fast digging underground you might even use the Geo-Gen right at the beginning, but since he isn't so easy to automated into an endless cycle he is somewhere out of this discussion.


    So basically Generator, Water-Gen, Solars and Wind-Gens fight for being the superior fire and forget energy-source, which you will drop early. All have there value, but this discussion is about if pumping water into the water-gen would favor it against the others.


    Watergen
    +Cheap
    +Cheap Fuel
    +Could be used unmanned and later used manned if the machines necessary are avaible
    -Early Setup would require many Batboxes and Cables since even slight loss will kill the small EU/t Production


    Generator
    +Placeable everywhere
    +Produces much EU/t (large pakets decreases the negative impact of energy-loss)
    +Cheap
    +Able to burn many materials if EUs are needed
    -Although later automation is possible you need to think about placement


    Windmill
    +Produces a lot of EU
    +Even without any Fuel
    -Hard to setup without glass fibre


    Solar-Gen
    +Easy to setup
    +Fair amount of EU without Fuel
    +Placeable next to each other
    -Expensive
    -Hates Night, Rain and Thunderstorms
    -Relies on energy-storage



    If you don't care about BatBox-Waste and setting up I think Windmills are Nr. 1
    Solars are good if you need small amounts of energy. I have a small Solar-Plant near my "sawmill" to refill my batpack, which seems to be a fair use of solars. If you set up lots of them you might also invest a little bit more time for setting up a windpark if you have the space and exspecially if you have glass-fibre cables, which makes setting up windfarms much easier.


    Generators and WaterGens are the great winners if you use additional mods for automation. They are both able to beat Wind and Solar anytime, since Water produce constant 2 EU/t and Generators up to 9EU/t (10 is only reachable if directly burning reeds, since you normally use some of the produced energy to process the materials that are burnt).


    So clean IC2 without mods I would go for early Solars and Wind. With RP or BC Generators and Watergens are really great to start with since they are incredible if you manage to build a clever automation system. This is exspecially true for the Watergens which become incredible good early on if you manage to get two diamonds for a saw to make a retriever with redpower (or use IC-Diamonds, which will work now too, since they became normal diamonds).


    Under this impression I don't feel anything speaking against pumping water into the Water-Gen. It would just equal BC with Redpower, since BC without Addons makes it a little bit harder to retrieve the empty buckets (although possible).

    Quote

    think that logically "Manned" mode should not exist at all, water doesnt generate Energy, its the motion of flowing water moving the "mill" that generates the energy)


    I think its like we are pouring a bucket of water on the weel of our generator, all i can think about at least.
    Still, that would make more sense if flowing water would give us more energy...


    Quote

    requieres some degree of logic thinking and alot more of materials that simply inserting a water pipe in the generator :/


    Waait, but you can't pipe anything into generators directly?


    Quote

    Windmill
    +Produces a lot of EU
    +Even without any Fuel
    -Hard to setup without glass fibre


    Tin cabels? I thought they almost don't have any loss at all, no?

    Well Lava into the Geo-Gen, but not Water into the Water-Gen. I don't remember another Generator which accepts liquids. Making a nuclear reactor accept water or lava pumped into it would be a bit more difficult (and actually... who would really want to pump lava into a nuclear reactor).

    Quote from z3rO

    I think its like we are pouring a bucket of water on the weel of our generator, all i can think about at least.
    Still, that would make more sense if flowing water would give us more energy...



    Waait, but you can't pipe anything into generators directly?

    Logically thinking, a bucket of water will not make the "mill" move more than floating water. And the second one was derp lapse while writing i meant watermill.


    Also the best i can think of integration with BC Water pipes is... Make the water generator something that can be put between 2 pipes, it will generate energy when liquid from side A goes to side B, Amount of energy produced will be "Low" (But more effective than the actual model, because you only need one pipe not 30 source blocks or w/e it works now), and of course Speed of liquid will slow down when passing through a water gen. Also only 1 Input and 1 Output side for generator (Logically speaking Water from B side wont be able to go to A side).

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    Well Lava into the Geo-Gen


    That, erm...Kinda changes the situation...The profit of thinking about all those complex systems was all about, not just placing a pump near the a geogen...Ah, now i see the main thing of discussion here.


    The difference is that lava is limited, but not the water.
    That will just make another place/forget generator, emitting more power. No need in that.


    Quote

    Also the best i can think of integration with BC Water pipes is... Make the water generator something that can be put between 2 pipes, it will generate energy when liquid from side A goes to side B, Amount of energy produced will be "Low" (But more effective than the actual model, because you only need one pipe not 30 source blocks or w/e it works now), and of course Speed of liquid will slow down when passing through a water gen. Also only 1 Input and 1 Output side for generator (Logically speaking Water from B side wont be able to go to A side).


    It will be a little hard to implement water speed in BC pipes i think.
    If not adding (and removing for geogen) direct pumping, it will be normal.

    Actually the watergen is this already, so won't make much difference.


    FenixR solution to the watergen is actually what the strainer does. I agree with that it would be better, but since pumping water through it is only possible with BC I understand why it doesn't work with it. Basically it should be enough to set the 2 EU/t to 1 EU/t. 2 EU is just to much for such little effort.


    About realism. I think the generator has a water-reservoir on it's top and if you fill it with water it's flowing over a turbine and transforms it's potential energy into electrical energy. So it would work. Creating as much as an average windgen this way is still strange.


    But I reducing the output to 1 EU/t but letting the buckets last longer (twice of course) would do the trick. This improves the watermill without automation and makes it weaker if you automate the process.


    Pumping in water via BC-Pipes or Buckets via RP tubes is much the same for me. It's both easy not very costly and makes the pumps manned permanently. Although the RP-Version with buckets is even better, since you only need on retriever, deployer and filter for an endless amount of watermills (20 work quite well), the BC-Version is easier to setup first.

    Quote from z3rO

    It will be a little hard to implement water speed in BC pipes i think.
    If not adding (and removing for geogen) direct pumping, it will be normal.

    I dont think its actually that dificult, but cant say with 100% accuracy since i havent seen the BC Code.


    And that second line, what? Removing from geogen? Explain that second line better plox.


    @Above: I was thinking of 0.20-0.30 EU/T since it doesnt consume the water. Maybe a little more, how it would funtion exactly (Code Wise) is still a little funky to me.


    Graphical Example:


    :Glass Fibre: = Water Pipe


    A :Glass Fibre: :Glass Fibre: :Glass Fibre: :Water Mill: :Glass Fibre: :Glass Fibre: :Glass Fibre: B


    Water is extracted from point A, Travels the pipe until it reaches the Watermill, then it will travel the watermill as if it was a Pipe (But the speed would be 2x-4x slower than a stone pipe), then it goes to point B, nothing its consumed in the process. For Every unit of water that passes throught the water mill some EU its produced per tick (0.20-0.50 maybe).


    Several watermills could be linked but that would slow the Water moving through even more.

    Ok, no I have some kind of idea, that might work.


    Manned mode is gone.


    Unmanned changes quite a bit.


    To produce Power the Water-Gen needs water above and air or flowing water underneath itself. If the WaterGen has water above itself it produces power and water is flowing out underneath the watergen. This would be the normal function of a watergen and might also create some cool looking water-plants.


    Production would be up to 0,5 EU/t although I would go with the 0,25 actually unmanned mode produces. Since you need less space.


    :Batbox::Rubber Log::Rubber Log::Rubber Log::Rubber Log::Rubber Log:
    :Batbox::Water Mill::Glass Fibre::Rubber Log::Rubber Log::Rubber Log:
    :Tesla Coil::Rubber Log::Batbox:


    :Batbox: - Block like Dirt or Stone
    :Rubber Log: - Water
    :Tesla Coil: - Air


    This would look cool and provide power. You could create real waterplans like the hover dam with this :P

    So a Up-Down water motion no? The same could be applied to Right/Left-Left/Right. Of course limit this by having a side of the watermill "Accepting" water and the other side "Expulsing" the water. the other sides would do nothing.