Building a big industrial fortress [IC2, RP2, CC]

Hey folks,

several weeks ago I started a new MC server with a friend to spend a little time chopping some blocks. After a while I got bored from the vanilla stuff and looked for some mods with new blocks. IndustrialCraft looked really interesting so I spent some hours with reading and getting into the mod-zone.
When mods were added and server was fired up it was time to leave our old sky-home (little fortress hovering about 30 blocks from ground) and discover the new resources included from IC2. We built a nice second fortress, powered from solar panels and set up the IC machines. A few weeks later I thought it would be cool to have some more mods, cause I started thinking about a nuclear reactor and wanted a precise redstone control system. So I picked RedPower2 and for further possible automation I chose BuildCraft2 as well.

With these new stuff I started a new world, fixed some problems with the block-IDs and testet some litte things in creative mode. Having everything checked for proper function I used MCEdit to put our two old homes near each other in a fresh world. That was our best option to have all the new stuff from beginning besides our existing storage from vanilla and IC2 runs.

Now it was time to farm resources a lot, cause I wanted to build something BIG. Spending some time with RP and BC I built my first MK1 CASUC with snow-golem and ice-cooling, outputting 1820 EU/t. In further attempts with BC I built a stone-brick-generator using lava, water, blockbreaker, filter, induction furnace and the automatic crafting table. With that machine it was pretty easy to gain the massive amount of blocks I intended to use for the new BIG fortress while spending some time idle on the server at a safe spot.

While starting the construction I discovered the awesome scaffolds of IndustrialCraft and not much later the extremely useful filler from BuildCraft. Building the foundation and the walls that way was pretty easy. I decided to use walls with a thickness of 3 blocks, so I would be able to hide some wires within the walls.
As the fillers were working I did some samples for lanterns, lights, which I could use later on.

Alright, that's pretty much the actual progress, time for screenshots:

=============== Update #1 ===============

Building a big industrial fortress [IC2, RP2, CC] == Update #1 ==

=============== Update #2 ===============

Building a big industrial fortress [IC2, RP2, CC] == Update #2 ==

=============== Update #3 ===============

Building a big industrial fortress [IC2, RP2, CC] == Update #3 ==

That's it for now, more to come

TODO:

• remodel the surrounding landscape incl. planting trees, etc.
• build an outer wall around all existing houses leaving enough space for some more
• find a good lightin concept
• finish the sorting machine with the remaining items
• optimize the factory
• ...

At this point I don't want any ratings but advices and constructive criticism is always welcome

Greetings,
foxxx0

PS: Please excuse possible mistakes in language cause I'm from Germany but I do my very best

Edit1: Sorry for the issue with the screenshots, resampled and uploaded again for lower filesize
Edit2: Added TODO list
Edit3: Update #1 - floor lightning part1
Edit4: Update #2 - mob trap, second basement, some progress at the storage room and sorting system
Edit5: Update #3 - factory, energy storage, sorting machine, wheatfarm
Edit6: moved Update #1, #2 and #3 out of the first post as 10.000 characters aren't enough

Thanks for your comment

I haven't posted any screenshots of our other homes yet, where most of the stuff is stored. I am very proud to say, that no resources are cheated! We spent hours of farming in the vanilla-way: digging down to y=12 and run for it. That time we haven't had much machines so far, therefor we did it the old way.

1. Cobblestonegenerator:
Just like you said, pretty soon I was bored of the bugging cobblestone-generator, too. Every couple of hours it needs to be fixed. Your solution sound somehow good, but a bit complicated. Would be great if you could explain a little further, maybe with some screenshots ?

2. Lanterns:
My samples were just some try-outs, nothing final. Having done some googling I'm not able to find the design of Redled72, do you have any sources ?

3. Factory:
At the moment I can't really guess what you mean with that. On my TODO there's of course a big sorting-machine for the storage-room, but it is scheduled a bit later, when most of the fortress is finished.

Right now I'm running out of bonemeal and ink-sacks for the RP lamps, probably have to force my friend farming some stuff for them

Next I will add a TODO-list in the first post

PS: Schön, dass hier noch ein paar Deutsche unterwegs sind Wenn du mal Zeit und Lust hast, kannste gerne auf meinen Server joinen, bei Interesse schreib einfach ne PN

Update #1 - floor lightning part1

New floor, with more lamps covered by scaffolds (first half done)

Temporarily control center for the lights

Scaffolds are awesome !

Update #2 - mob trap, second basement, some progress at the storage room and sorting system

Floor lightning is already finished, I guess there are no screenshots needed for that.

Glad to say, that I got another friend involved to this project, as the other one is totally occupied by his studies at the moment.

As we were running out of bonemeal for white lamps I decided to build a mob trap for collecting as much bones at the lowest effort possible. Because I already watched a couple of "Let's play" videos I was pretty familiar with one design. After a couple of hours, especially the water flow was very time consuming, the trap was finished. With placing a filter at the correct spot with two chests, it was time to burn mobs!
The top part of the trap with the lava is integrated in the second basement, where the whole IC2 machinery will be put in.

@ GregoriusT: I didn't have enough time to look at your cobblestone generator, but after some more progress I will. Also I throwed in ComputerCraft and did some pretty basic tests in SSP, it's quite astonishing, what you can do with it. As I'm a little bit experienced in microcontrollers and assembler / ANSI C, I will definitely find a way to use it

This looks pretty nice, will become part of the cobblestonegenerator anytime soon. It it currently suspended as we already have quite a lot stone bricks.

The computer toggles the timer for blockbreaker or am I misunderstanding something ? It will allow the blockbreaker to run for 30 seconds with the timer (1 pulse every 1.5 sec ?) and stop it for it for one second, before it continues to run ?

Also thank you for the examples and the interesting turtle programs

PS: Dass mit ctrl (en) strg (de) gemeint war, ist mir klar Bisher hatte ich einfach noch keine Zeit mit den Cobblestonegenerator näher anzusehen, da erstmal die Räumlichkeiten mit Lager und Sortiermaschine gemacht werden müssen, bevor ich mit IC2 Maschinen und Cobblestonegenerator weitermache

Probably he will expand his tutorial to ComputerCraft guides, just ask your question in his tutorial thread here:

http://forum.industrial-craft.…page=Thread&threadID=5198

I will show some CC stuff, too, but it's still a long way to go until I'm going to get a bit more into CC. My friend is actually working on the sorting machine, but we have some discussion about the redstone pulses and how they can be done with fewest lag. Our sorting machine consists basically of a lot of filters, because we didn't want to use that annoying blutricity stuff, as we already got enough different power types (IC2, BC2).
One redstone tube is running nearby all chests, and the filters should suck in the stuff what has to be delivered to their chest. I don't know yet at which distance the filters could suck in, but that's needed for the correct time of the pulses going into the redstone tube.

Also I have to mention that I had to stop playing for a while as I have some exams to do. Updates will come in 1-2 weeks from now on

Quote from GregoriusT

Filters cannot suck up items out of the Tubesystem, therefor are Retrievers, but if you mean items, which are laying around the Filter/Transposer, then it will suck up a 3x3-Area in front of it (on top and on bottom are also possible), if you apply a single Redstonesignal.

Oh they can, that's just what my sorting machine is based of. A quick and dirty scheme:

= blank (no item)
= chest
= redstone tube
= filter

The left chest is the input chest. All the stuff will be pumped out from it into the tube. At the same rate the sorting-filters (connected to their individual chest) will suck in their stuff right out of the tube. I tested it multiple times in SSP and we have just finished the big one in our storage room. At the moment, the timer which pulses the redstone tube (and thus all the filters) is set to 10 seconds, which seems a bit too slow, cause sometimes the filters will miss the right spot, where they can suck in their item from the tube. According to your tutorial a value below 5 seconds should NEVER be use, so we'll try 5 seconds later on.

But the mechanism itself is working just like shown above, dunno if that's the best way to do it (probably not ^^)

Quote from GregoriusT

The Filter can pump out of the chest into the Pipesystem, if adjacent to the chest, yes.

But not out of a chest connected to the large Tubesystem, which is not adjacent to the Filter what you accidently said.

Your scheme doesn't need to pulse the other six Filters, only the Chest2Tube one. So it don't needs the Redstone on the Tube.

An efficient and lagfree Chest2Tube fillingmechanism is already in my Tutorial and uses an Itemdetector as fast Timer and a normal Timer for checking every 30 seconds if there is something (the first thing i added to the Tutorial, which i'm editing after this post).

Ich werde jetzt einen Lagerpart in das Tutorial aufnehmen, kann so 10 bis 20 min dauern. EDIT: Fertig!

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I'm not really sure if you understood me. The whole unsorted stuff ist pumped out from the first chest by and adjacent filter in the right direction. The other filters, which are only for sorting purposes, suck their stuff out of the tube, where all the stuff from the first chest is flowing through.
But you say, the redstone-pulses for these sorting-filters aren't necessary, which sounds pretty cool. I'll have a look at your tutorial later, after some hours of MineCraft it's time to learn again for the exams, 2 to go

Quick comment on the progress:

sorting machine done, obviously pretty similar with your tutorial-version
factory in progress (for ores, food, rubber, uranium)

Today I did some testing with ComputerCraft in SSP and the API for RedPower ist really awesome. One single computer can be a really powerful microcontroller when using bundled cables, allowing you to use 5*16 I/O ports (in total: 80, if you can also wire to the front of the computer, it would be 96) and the lua programming language is pretty easy. For testing purposes I just wrote a little disco-program with flickering RP lamps in different colors