Developed for SMP - what do you think?

1st Official Post

    What-ho. :thumbup:


    So my friends and I play on a little private SMP server, and recently we've reached the point where we're ready to start going nuclear. I played around with the reactor designer for a few hours last night, learning as I went, and I believe I've finally created something that has the perfect balance: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…gl3am40kghjlvvjzszl9pbv9c


    The requirements are pretty much to hit the "middle road." First and foremost, we want safety. Everyone except myself and one other bloke tends to be rather accident-prone, so I needed a design that I could be sure would not blow up under any normal conditions. With this particular design, removing just one of the singular uranium cells instantly turns it into a MkI-O with excess cooling, allowing it to cool down on the fly. We also want something that we can run fairly frequently, due to the large number of machines this will ultimately be powering (storage in multiple MFSUs), so the small 8-minute cooldown time is appealing, and 120/t is quite satisfactory to us since we've been running with geothermal power until now.


    I realize that the efficiency is a bit low due to the number of fuel cells, but frankly we've been very lucky in our world and have dug up enough uranium to destabilize a small third-world nation. To us, the integrated heat dispensers are far more costly due to their lapis lazuli content, which is why I'm proud of the fact that this design only uses ten of the buggers. Overall, I think that for our available resources and supplies, as well as our safety record, this reactor fits the bill just about perfectly. Fact is, though, I've never actually tried building a long-term reactor setup before, so I want to know: how does this look to you guys? Good? Not so good? Better ideas?

    Huh. That's... Huh. That is a really nice design, thanks! Looks like I still have a lot to learn about reactor design, although the lack of specification on the wiki doesn't help much. Oh well, live and learn.


    While we're here, I have another reactor question regarding redstone. When a reactor is "deactivated" via a redstone signal, what exactly does that mean? Does it freeze the reactor's internal state? Say that a reactor has become hot enough to be an environmental hazard, radiation etc, and is then "deactivated." Will it continue to heat up until it goes critical, or will it just stay as-is, irradiating the area?

    When you deactivate a reactor with redstone it stops the uranium in the reactor from producing power and heat. All of the cooling, both from cooling cells and reactor plating, as well as water/air outside of the still keeps cooling the reactor during that time. The enviromental effects still apply even if the reactor is turned off if sufficent heat level has been reached. The reactor can destroy the redstone/redstone torch/lever which is keeping the reactor off if it is at over 85% heat(already at 40% if the redstone is on flammable blocks).

    I see; also very good to know. So theoretically it's possible to keep a reactor on "manual pilot" as long as you never allow it to heat up enough to destroy the deactivating mechanism?

    True, but I already acknowledged the very low efficiency rating, and again: fuel is of absolutely no concern to us with the amount of uranium we've dug up and CONTINUE to dig up on almost every miner setup. Basically there are seven of us that play on the server, and about two three of us are usually on at once, plus we pool all of our uranium towards the same goal so we accumulate it very quickly. The first run of the reactors should keep us going for a few days anyway, our energy requirements aren't massive; frankly it's just more convenient than constantly sitting around in the nether, twiddling our thumbs while we wait for the miner/pump combos do belch out lava cells. The first run will "only" require 20 uranium cells, and for the 60 or more uranium ingots that remain I intend to split them among 8 cells each, producing near-depleted uranium cells and multiplying our fuel stock enough to keep us going virtually indefinitely.