Watermill

    The whole watermill block seems a little, er, odd to me. Power from static water?


    How about the standard single block (I've seen elsewhere that people want big animations but not me :D ) It must have flowing water directly above it and an empty square beneath it for the water to flow out of, ie it must have a flow of water through it. In other respects it would be a standard generator.


    This would make for a good addition in mountainous terrain where a small stream could feed a single mill or they could be grouped into large machine halls as if they were turbines in a hydroelectric plant.


    If you then wanted to go full on, maybe 4 mills in a cross with 5 iron/ refined iron, whatever for balance, makes a proper turbine. massive plume of discharge water is, of course, optional.

    I suggest already watermill to give power proportional to quantity of waterflow blocks above it plus one if still water block on top. Water need place to flow out.
    Best if RS signal can close water flowing.
    This can lead to cool looking waterfalls made by players and quite logic.
    Developers are silent about it. :( May be they do not want to change water flow ways.

    Changing the Water Mill was already on Al's list. (It's been a running joke since it came out, apparently... So he probably has a good idea to make up for it.)

    ...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.

    Quote from FenixR

    Well you cant really blame al for the watermill, since water blocks in minecraft are the most weird thing ever.


    Actually the only thing I would really like is a quick fix for the efficiency of a manned watermill. They are just too good and totally useless if you don't have means of automation. A Bucket of Water gives 1.000 EU which is indeed fine, but since the watermills produces 2 EU/t it only produces energy for 25 Seconds. I would just let it produce 1 EU/t in manned mode, which would not make a difference if you just dump a bucket inside sometimes (since you most likely won't do this always and if it produces 1 EU/t and I guess it stores up to 5 buckets you are free to ignore it for about 4 Mins.


    There are some suggestions about watermills already. I don't know what method would be the best, but I would like them to behave like normal watermills. The Block has a direction with input and output side. Next to the output there needs to be a source-block (maybe also a none-sourceblock but if it's easier to only check for source-blocks it should do the trick) and if this is true flowing water is created at the output. If the watermill get's a redstone-signal it will shut the gates, so you are also able to use it as flood-gate. Maybe additional water-sources above the initial source could increase the efficiency, but no idea how easy this is, if it creates trouble it might be better to ignore it. It should be obvious that the windmill does not function if the output faces upwards :P


    But I don't want to bother Al with such things. Watermills work and they are quite fine in regards to balance if you use them in unmanned mode. Maybe the best thing is to drop manned mode completly, since it is too strong with some automation.

    Consider for a sec that IC2 its the only mod you have in minecraft:


    Now Manned Watermills are that good because they are one of the best early games generators but they need user input to be that effective, that restrict them from going to the mid/late game as a good energy source like the geogenerators and similars.


    Then we have the unmmaned mode of the Watermill that isnt that badly considering it works all day and night (And during rain) unlike the solar gen, and doesnt break from producing too much energy like the windmill.


    The point is: Watermills (Like most stuff in IC2) its balanced with IC2 itself, place another mod and you risk destroying the balance IC2 has with itself.

    Considering the cost, Water Mills are actually better then Solar Panels- when ignoring the possibility of automation. (Assuming you set them up with 100% efficiency. With automation, they're practically the best... Al may change it still, but he does like his RP2 automation.)

    ...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.


    Well, I doubt that they are good early generators. Since they require a lot of user-input and they have a hard to defeat competitor, the normal generator. A normal generator is in every point superior to the water-mill.


    The Generator needs feeding every 21 Mins, the Water-Gen every 2 Mins.
    The Generator produces 10 EU/t the two watermills you get only 4 EU/t.


    Since it is so easy to feed the Generator Charcoal which is freely avaible the watermill is totally inferior to the generator.


    Quote

    Al may change it still, but he does like his RP2 automation


    Not sure about this. I haven't found a quote of him saying this. RP automation in regards of macerators etc. is cool. But like nuclear generators automation sometimes defeats the purpose of something they implemented for a reason. In the case of nuclear generators automation makes the cool GUI and fancy mechanism of the generator worthless since it is a lot easier to just pump buckets or ice into it... and it is a lot cheaper. I'm not sure if I would like this.


    I know Al said that watermills are the last generator that needs a rework... well I guess this is a bit doublesided, since it could mean that it is the last one he hasn't done so far or that he is confident with how they work and don't want to touch them in near future. Unmanned mode actually works quite good. It is balanced and you could build cool water-towers or fountains with watergens inside. No idea how they should produce power this way, but it's industrial craft, not reality. But manned mode is somehow broken, it is almost useless without automation and totally OP with, so I would rather like to have it removed, we don't have a manned mode for solars either (how about placing some glowstone inside to let them produce more energy and this even in darkness... would not make sense either). I just think a Generator like Water, Wind or Solar just don't need a mode were it eats fuel to provide power.

    Quote from Bluehorazon


    Well, I doubt that they are good early generators. Since they require a lot of user-input and they have a hard to defeat competitor, the normal generator. A normal generator is in every point superior to the water-mill.


    The Generator needs feeding every 21 Mins, the Water-Gen every 2 Mins.
    The Generator produces 10 EU/t the two watermills you get only 4 EU/t.


    Since it is so easy to feed the Generator Charcoal which is freely avaible the watermill is totally inferior to the generator.


    Even if charcoal its a material that is easily made, its still something that need a process to get it, From planting/looking for trees, to chopping them, to smelt the log in a furnace.


    A manned water mill only needs a bucket of water and 3 water source blocks for unlimited refilling without too much effort.


    So my point still stands, a watermill its one of the good early game energy sources in IC2. Generator is too, but its more for mid game than for early.

    Large amounts of Regular Generators cause amazingly painful lag as well.

    ...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.

    Quote from FenixR

    Even if charcoal its a material that is easily made, its still something that need a process to get it, From planting/looking for trees, to chopping them, to smelt the log in a furnace.


    A manned water mill only needs a bucket of water and 3 water source blocks for unlimited refilling without too much effort.


    So my point still stands, a watermill its one of the good early game energy sources in IC2. Generator is too, but its more for mid game than for early.


    So, just a bit easy math. Let's take a 3 second-cycle to fill a bucket with water and placing it in the watermills. To reach the Generator you need to fill 5 Watermills. Each Watermill eats 5 Buckets so you need to fill 25 Buckets. This is 75 Seconds. After filling them all you have 50 Seconds until the first watermill needs buckets again.


    For the Generator you need 72 pieces of wood, let's say 75 since you need some start-charcoal. This is about 15 Trees. Chopping down a tree takes you about 15 seconds (you should not have a chainsaw). And I guess you need about 5 seconds to run to the next tree. So you need about 5 mins to gather enough charcoal. The creation of charcoal does not need time, since you do this while a stack of charcoal is inside the generator. So you have 5mins of work (maybe 6 for filling the furnace) and after this 6mins your generator runs for 21 mins. So you need about 28% of your Generator-Cycle to produce the fuel, while you need about 62,5% of your cycle to fill the watergens. I guess the Generator is superior to the watermill.


    Quote

    Large amounts of Regular Generators cause amazingly painful lag as well.


    Since this is true for Watermills too, it is actually a advantage of the Generator since you could use more of them. And as we are at the point of manual usage you would not reach a number high enough to cause lags.