[Support] Please help me understand water mills

    Hi folks,


    In researching to answer another member's question, I loaded my SSP 1.7.1 test world and set up 4 water mills, surrounded them with 25 water blocks each and piped them to a batbox with tin cable.


    Using the EU meter is giving some really odd results like 0.02 EU/t over 14000 ticks. If I spam-click once a second I'm getting numbers like 60EU/t then 6EU/t then two lots of negative numbers like -69EU/t over ~4700 ticks.


    I'm reasoning that since the watermill is putting out such small amounts, it needs to save up for several ticks until it can spit out a packet with an whole number of EU. However the results are mystifying. I left the EU meter counting while I typed the post and got 0.32 EU/t over ~20,000 ticks. I had hoped that such a long period would average out the pulsing output but I dunno.


    Would someone please help me understand how to calculate the effectiveness of watermills? Perhaps the exact number of EU/t/waterblock? Also is the EU reader bugged?


    ---


    Also, the wiki states that water towers are "no longer working" but doesn't explain the manner in which they are no longer working. Anyone know what's going on there?


    Cheers,

    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment or chain letter? This is left as an exercise for the reader.


    Efficiency 3, 50% duty cycle. SMP friendly. Alternate two of them slowly with an rp2 sequencer for a steady 120 EU/t.
    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1j10101001501521s1r11r10

    I had hoped that by ganging 4 water mills I would overcome that. I'm guessing that does not? Is there a number of watermills where they will give accurate readings?


    Also, my questions regarding the official output of a watermill and the "this no longer works" comments on the wiki remain unanswered. Can you fill me in on those?

    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment or chain letter? This is left as an exercise for the reader.


    Efficiency 3, 50% duty cycle. SMP friendly. Alternate two of them slowly with an rp2 sequencer for a steady 120 EU/t.
    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1j10101001501521s1r11r10

    The EU reader is buggy (I read somewhere it was linked with varying sources like wind and water mills).
    The water mill produces 0.01 EU/t per adjacent water tile, as the wiki says. I tested with one water mill linked to a batbox: this works.


    I support the question about the "no longer works" thing though. I tried, and I get much much lower lower results than what was expected. What's going on? Is it a bug or a feature?


    I have an underwater secret base and I can't use windmills (too deep) or solar panels (water blocks the sun). All that's left is lava/coal (boring) or nuclear power (low yields, even more boring and extremely expensive to build...)


    Nyu.

    After some more testing, it seems that each block of water can only be used by one water mill. The best placement I've found is this:

    Code
    XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXX   XXXX
XXXX W XXXX
X    |    X
X W--B--W X
X    |    X
XXXX W XXXX
XXXX   XXXX
XXXXXXXXXXX


    B = batbox, W = water mill, - = cable
    This can be repeated vertically (leave two spaces of water) indefinitely.

    Nice work. A pain in the arse to test that.


    Would be nice if some of the fundamentals (E.g. "As of 1.7x, water mills will not share a water block") would be made clear. By all means let the community figure out the the best applications but in the absence of reliable measuring tools, the laws of physics should be stated clearly. It'd also save people from having to cheat to get the information by having a look at source code.

    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment or chain letter? This is left as an exercise for the reader.


    Efficiency 3, 50% duty cycle. SMP friendly. Alternate two of them slowly with an rp2 sequencer for a steady 120 EU/t.
    http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…=1j10101001501521s1r11r10

    My reliable measuring tool is the batbox... link basic stuff to a batbox, let a few seconds pass, compute how many EU were sent, divide by the duration... There are 20 t in a second. But it would be nice if the wiki stated it clearly.