[WIP] Efficiency of every generator!

While I seriously appreciate your effort and your ingenuity IMO this does not make any sense, except of cause I did get this completely wrong.

Because I dont see how this "EU/t to Minerals" Efficiency figure can be helpfull in any way because it ignores so many aspects which are important later on and therefore is in no way an indicator for which generator to choose.

And even if you are just curious about this kind of "efficiency" they way you calculate it is not significant since you just add up iron with redstone with thin etc. But since some minerals are pretty common, some are harder to obtain some are seriously rare etc. youe need to do some weighting of the relevant minerals before adding them up. Otherwhise the Expenditure of your calculation is in no relation to the effort you need to collect those minerals.

More proof that Geothermal is the most underused and OP energy generator in the game, lol...

But seriously, what value are you using to determine the 'expenditure' cost for your efficiency calculations? Depth of where materials are and amount of those materials needed?

It'd probably be better to use the highest layer spawned as a function of rarity. Then, multiply that by the amount required for a recipe.

For example:
Coal Spawns highest at 70 (ish) layer
Copper spawns highest at 70 layer
Tin Spawns highest at 40 layer
Iron spawns at highest at 61 layer
Redstone spawns highest at 16 layer (but drops at least 4 units per ore)
Rubber spawns highest at layer 64 (sea level or higher pending biome), but has to be smelted/extracted before hand

Cobble/Sand/Glass is negligible due to cobblestone generation (thus equals 0)

So, layer 70 would become (1-.7) due to rarity. We can assume 1 in this sense because dirt/stone generation does not exceed layer 100 (and even when it does, it will not contain valuable materials in reference to the rarity calculation)...
Then, after taking rarity into consideration, you then multiply the amounts needed in order to craft, and add those into a sum..

So a Battery would be:
4 Tin (.6) + 1 copper cable (1/2 copper (.3)+ 1 Rubber (.36)) + 2 Redstone (.84/2) = 3.33 rarity

Keep in mind that this is taken from vMC tech level, as IC tech can easily skew the numbers quite a bit with ore duplication, dust crafting, and other means of eliminating cost of production. Also, Nether ores are NOT included into this calculation, as it's better to treat glowdust from its recipe form for rarity rather than it's Nether spawn frequency (this is due to how 'easy' it is to access the Nether for experienced players)...

Then a Generator would be Battery + 8 Refined Iron + Funance, |OR| 3.33 + 8*.39 + 0 = 6.45 rarity

Divive EU yield per tick by rarity, and you get 1.55 effectiveness for materials acquired. This, ofc, is not including materials consumed in the manufacturing of Refine Iron or the smelting of dust/ores, as those factors are changed in accordance to energy/tech production.

Ok, Rotate the graph counterclockwise, and that shows you the max layer for each ore spawned. in this case, Coal cuts off just before 100 before heading to infinity on the graph. for Clay, the layer it stops at is ~73. Iron, according to the chart, stops spawning at layer 64, and Gold ceases at layer 32...

So it still works so long as you use the x-axis of the graph (y-axis is percentage of ore per stone within that layer), and account for the fact that it's not about how much the player has to find when he reaches said layers, but how far they have to venture in the first place JUST to find the ore that he/she needs...

Quote from Cronoxergoid

I found on the net only the exact spawn rate for diamond:

DIAMOND: 0.1276% of stone from levels 2-16.

Someone has the other spawn rates?

Below row 14, Redstone-Ore can be found in 1.025% of stone.
From levels 2-28, gold ore's occurrence underground is at 0.1437%.
Ironis found in approximately 0.72% of stone from rows 2-61.
coal ore comprises about 1.25% of all stone, regardless of altitude.
Lapis is a bit tricky, but I guess you get it right.

Diamond is wrong, the amount is right, but only below 12 now, but I'm not quite sure about this one. Checked it in my world an no Diamond at 15 and 16 for sure, some at 13 my result in veins starting at 12 and expanding into 13. But the amount is correct and since you don't need diamonds for generators it doesn't matter either.

So since this is only one part, you need to value something different too. The requirements for over purposes. So just give things a value based on uses and frequency in which you find them.

We could be sure to widely ignore the need of coal, glass and rubber, since this are all ressources avaible to create extend, so they should only be weighted slightly. So let's just base Iron at 1. Copper should be 0,3 and Tin maybe 0,7. Redstone should be 0,5, since it is avaible quite easy mining a bit deeper isn't something that costs you anything. Lapis and Glowstone should be valued with 1 too. Coal and Rubber should just get 0,1 since they so incredible easy to get.

So basically a Windmill is 12 pieces of Iron, 2 Redstone, 4 Tin and a cable. Based on this evaluation it would be 12 + 1 + 2,8 + 0,25 (ignoring the furnace...). So it would get a score of 16,05. The watermill is just a halfed generator. So it is the windmill -4 Iron and you get two, which would be 6,025.

Your Windmills EU/t is horribly wrong. A windmill placed as high as possible (126, since if you place it at 128 and use two cables to connect it you land at 126) produces about 1,5 EU/t on average. I think if you choose a stormy region you could get a steady 2 EU/t, but since your windmill will most likely break not many people will do this. About 40.000 EU per day is the maximum you could expect from a windmill on regular basis. A normal Windmill placed at 80 (it will never break) produces 19.500 EU/d which should be around 0,8 EU/t. This is still better as the solars, but quite on par with the unmanned watermill. You should take this number for a "normal" windmill.

With a little help from RedPower, water mills are pretty damn awesome.

dont forget you can macerate ores

Quote from MagusUnion

More proof that Geothermal is the most underused and OP energy generator in the game, lol...

But seriously, what value are you using to determine the 'expenditure' cost for your efficiency calculations? Depth of where materials are and amount of those materials needed?

woudln't exactly call them overpowered as one has to track down the lava to use in them. Unless one is using Equivalent Cheater Exchange lava isn't a renewable resource.

Well Lava produces 80.000 EU for every piece of Tin. Since although Lava isn't renewable the only thing that needs large-scale Energy-production is a mass-fab which you could easily place in the nether, which would mean almost endless amounts of lava. You will need some Ice for water, since you need a cobble-gen to produce scrap there (well... Netherrack-Quarry should work in theory, but it hits lava too easy).

Quote from MagusUnion

More proof that Geothermal is the most underused and OP energy generator in the game, lol...

Yep. Geothermal for the win. I'm terrible at Minecraft in most other respects; I installed Mo'Creatures not long ago, and have lost massive amounts of resources due to being repeatedly slaughtered by werewolves. However, one thing I did figure out very quickly, was that once I go underground and find a large enough lava lake, I've got constant power for close to a real time week. Put the generator and the pumps in, and Bob's your jolly uncle, to quote GameChap.

No explosions, and no other fuss. It just works. I'm not up to the point of making a nuclear reactor yet, but given my discovery of geothermal, I've got no idea why I'd bother, to tell the truth. Geothermal power might be a lot slower, sure; but it is constant, it's stable, and it is much, much safer.

Quote from Ook

woudln't exactly call them overpowered as one has to track down the lava to use in them. Unless one is using Equivalent Cheater Exchange lava isn't a renewable resource.

This is true. Being reliant on geothermal power is a lot like surfing; you have to go where the waves are...glowing orange waves, that is. IC 2 doesn't exactly lend itself to being nomadic, either. Generally once I put my machines down, I tend to want to settle in for a while, at a given site. It's just too much bother to have to pick up everything and move every five minutes, not to mention the energy cost with the lossless electric wrench.

Quote from petrus4

This is true. Being reliant on geothermal power is a lot like surfing; you have to go where the waves are...glowing orange waves, that is. IC 2 doesn't exactly lend itself to being nomadic, either. Generally once I put my machines down, I tend to want to settle in for a while, at a given site. It's just too much bother to have to pick up everything and move every five minutes, not to mention the energy cost with the lossless electric wrench.

yeah.. even with a Lappack the energy cost is rather nuts for losless mode. Last time I had to move a 128 panel solar array (didn't have compact solars or it's predecessor installed) I drained the thing at least once. Granted I had a full MFSU so energy wasn't too much of an issue, just time sitting around waiting for it to charge up.
For lava I usually rely on buildcraft pumps and waterproof teleport pipes to drag it into a huge tank. Think "ground level" and built up as needed to the max height. Haven't built one in 1.2.x yet with the new height yet though. Used to be bedrock to max height. Something tells me I won't have to do that anymore.
Course i've got a (bad?) habit of pumping out lava all over the place and then not using it for anything as by the point where I can afford a set of teleport pipes i've already got a nice power grid based on solar or wind. Surface lava lakes are usually exempt from pumping, they just get glassed over (usually with Redpower glass covers) and kept in place unless they're very far from my base.

Quote

This is true. Being reliant on geothermal power is a lot like surfing; you have to go where the waves are...glowing orange waves, that is. IC 2 doesn't exactly lend itself to being nomadic, either. Generally once I put my machines down, I tend to want to settle in for a while, at a given site. It's just too much bother to have to pick up everything and move every five minutes, not to mention the energy cost with the lossless electric wrench.

This is where Hydro also comes in. Geothermal early-to-mid serves as a strong power source to enable alot of resource gathering, but toward late game you will begin to tap out on lava resources, even in the Nether. The best solution that I've found has been to invest in either Forestry or large scale Hydro. Doing so enables renewability in your lava investments long after the molten fluids have cooled...

version 3 of the Hydro dam should be in a future episode of my Let's Play, as well as some electric Forestry work...