Water Mill oddities

  • Hi,


    I am relatively new to IC2 and we (me and friends) are currently exploring through the various (and very fun!) possibilities of IC2, especially the energy generation. During that I encountered a strange oddity about Water Mills. In short: they are not at all generating the EU described as in the Wiki and in combination generate more EU than the sum of each individual one.


    My setup is as follows ( :Tesla Coil: =Water, :Tin Ingot: =Tin cable, :Rubber Trampoline: =Stone block):
    :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline:
    :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline: :Tesla Coil: :Water Mill: :Tesla Coil: :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline:
    :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tin Ingot: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil:
    :Tesla Coil: :Water Mill: :Tin Ingot: :Batbox: :Tin Ingot: :Water Mill: :Tesla Coil:
    :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tin Ingot: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil:
    :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline: :Tesla Coil: :Water Mill: :Tesla Coil: :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline:
    :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Rubber Trampoline: :Rubber Trampoline:


    This is one (horizontal) layer of my water works setup, between each of the (currently) 3 layers there are 2 pure water layers to have the water mills surrounded with the 3x3x3 water cube. Each layer is connected with isolated copper between the Batboxes and the top layer converts using a MV to HV and sends it to the collector. All Batboxes are set to emit power constantly (if available) and the MV-converter is hooked up with a permanent redstone torch.


    The issue (each measuring has been done repeatedly to verify the results and at least over 200 ticks):
    - Each water mill reports to generate 0 EU/t (as expected from the rounding down). Measured at the tin cable of a single Water Mill.
    - A layer reports to generate 1.5 EU/t (but it should generate 1 EU/t). Measured right above the Batbox on the isolated copper wire of the lowest Water Mill layer.
    - The entire set of 3 layers report to generate 7.25 EU/t (but it should do 3 EU/t according to the Wiki or 4.5 EU/t according to the layer measurement). Measured right above the last Batbox of the entire set of Water Mill layers.


    Now while I do not complain about the extra EUs these generate, I'd really like to know whether this is a bug, an extreme measuring error on my behalf or intended?

  • Well, there are 3 things you have to consider..


    1. EU Readers does NOT work well with Generators that give out varying EU/t amount as they operate. Sometimes it'll give you terribly huge values, and others stupidly dumb negative results. Don't trust it as far as energy yield is concerned..


    2. The saturation of your watermills can only reach up to .25 EU/t due to the fact that the mill has to be connected to a cable to output power. This yield is decided by 25 blocks*.1 EU/t. Thus, you have to space 25 blocks worth of room out to allow for Water to flow around the Water Mill in order to generate electricity. Otherwise, the mill will be 'under saturated' with the potential of energy that it can generate.


    For a 3*3*3 cube of space, this is how the water/water mill/cable should be arranged:
    :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: : :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: : :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil:


    :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: : :Tesla Coil: :Water Mill: :Glass Fibre: : :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil:


    :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: : :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: : :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil: :Tesla Coil:


    Top : Middle : Bottom


    3. Do keep in mind that cables carry current over quite a good distance, which you can use to your advantage pending cable type. Because of this, and the fact that Water Mills can 'share' flowing water blocks at the same time, you can have a long series of Water mills on a setup leading up to a single Batbox. The great utility of Water Mills is that they are created quite cheaply, and thus can be used in mass. It's a good idea to experiment with the best ways to resolve the proper space for both water and cables to obtain the most effective yield with this particular generator...

    Would anyone like to try a Slowpoke Tail?! Only 1 Million Yen!


    Quote

    this isn't about arrogance or ego, I have a block that I put a lot of freaking work into


    Every Mod Author, in existence. And yet, you STILL say otherwise.

  • Thanks for the answer. I will double-check my measuring later today and add a signal to the line to check how many pulses I am capturing.


    The setup you described for the water mills is actually exactly how I set them up, I was just too lazy to draw the intermediate water layers. ;)


    Although I could hook up to 20 Water Mills on a single tin cable line, Batboxes are cheap to produce and provide some nice energy buffer should someone suddenly withdraw big amounts of EU from the central storage unit. In addition they ensure that more than the 0.25 EU a single Water Mill is supposed to produce travel over the line and therefore reduce the loss of EU by a good amount.

  • After experimenting with the water mills yesterday it seems like I just wasn't measuring long enough. As of the very low EU output, the reading stabilized at something like 1000 ticks and reported the expected values. However I encountered some other oddities:


    Water Mills sometimes for no particular reason do not output energy at all
    In the same setup without changing a single block, 4 water mills running on water supply that I manually added did output 0 EU. A few minutes later without me changing anything they suddenly, after consuming like 20 cans of water, started outputting their 1 EU each. I am not sure what causes these malfunctions, but those very much messed up my first readings. ;)


    Water Mills have a way too low output when running unmanned
    With their 0.25 EU output maximum water mills loose already 10% of their generated EU on the first cable block, so to have them run efficiently you need to link them to a collector or transformer right away, which increases the effective production cost of water mills way beyond every other generator in the game. In addition a proper water mill setup is way more difficult to construct than a wind or solar setup, which makes them not only the most expensive (as those collectors/transformers are not optional), but as well the most inconvenient generator in the game.


    I have a setup of 36 wind generators at the moment which on average output ~50 EU/t. To generate the same EU with water mills, I would have to construct about 230 of them, which would not only be way more expensive, but would required a huge amount of space as well. I rather setup a few more wind generators. ;)

  • The IC2 E-net doesn't work like that. You can't lose power amounts of less than 1EU and the losses are rounded down. For example, if you have a tin cable carrying a 1EU packet for,lets say 30 blocks, you still get the whole 1EU in the other end ,not something like 0.25EU.

    • Official Post


    We are both right, SpwnX is only a bit more exact. After 40 Blocks you will not get any EU (I said 32 because i thought Steelcable loses 1 EU per Block).

    It does. Actually Uninsulated Steel cable loses 1EU per block.
    But he mentioned 3x Insulated Steel cable which loses 1 EU every 1.25 blocks

  • So we did some tests yesterday on cable loss and stuff. Here are the results:


    Setup 1
    - 40 isolated copper cables connecting 2 Batboxes
    - 10,000 EU is inserted into the sending Batbox


    Result:
    As expected there was a strong cable loss, only 8,120 EU were received.


    Setup 2
    - 40 isolated copper cables connecting a chain of 11 Batboxes, no individual connection between two boxes was longer than 4 cables.
    :Mobile Charger: ->:Batbox::Copper Ingot::Copper Ingot::Copper Ingot::Copper Ingot::Batbox::Copper Ingot: ... :Copper Ingot::Batbox::Copper Ingot::Copper Ingot::Copper Ingot::Copper Ingot::Batbox:
    - 10,000 EU is inserted into the sending Batbox.


    Result:
    All 10,000 were received at the last Batbox.


    That test shows clearly that 1 EU is lost ever X blocks; a single block of cable does not loose a fraction of EU. This was further verified using 39 blocks of tin cable and a water mill.
    Those tests with water mills as well make me to theorize that the lowest possible amount of EU transfered could be 1 EU, but that requires further testing.


    That test shows that you can hook up water mills at up to 39 blocks of tin cable without loosing a single EU. Water mills however are still extremely buggy and do not reliably work (using 1.95b). Sometimes they work as intended, sometimes the output 0 EU while they obviously work.

  • Two


    Don't trust the EU meter when you measure unstable generators (primarily water and wind), it's quite bugged on them.


    At rest of you post... Oh you don't say cap'n! 8o

  • Don't trust the EU meter when you measure unstable generators (primarily water and wind), it's quite bugged on them.

    The EU reader works fine when measuring wind mill output(s). You just need to wait for a while before before it says the somewhat average energy production. I suggest over 5000 ticks or 250 seconds.