Alternative source of recycle fodder?

I believe snowman can be quite compact but you also need a autocrafter thats fast enough.

Thermal expansion provide cobblegen in the box, a little bit too cheap, but gets rid of lag. One double chest from snowmen provide enough space for 9 autocrafting tables and I don't think you can do better than warm redstone engine. However one chest should be enough for 8 recyclers (IIRC recycler needs 2,25 s for item, engine works once per 2,5 s, in autocrafting table you get only one craft per engine pulse).

Red power tubes anyone with tubestuffs autocrafter?

its not as 'fast', but if you want to be artful about it, you could do it with an auto treefarm.

Actually the laggy part about cobblestone generators is the lighting update that happens each time lava transforms to cobblestone. This can be completely prevented if every block in that system that could cause a change in lighting is completely covered in opaque blocks. Rule of thumb: if there is no light emitted from your construction and no air block (or other transparent, non-water block) inside, the system won't cause much lag at all.

This of course only helps on small setups, if you create a 1000-block / second cobblestone generator nothing will help to reduce that lag.

A single snowman can give you four snowballs per block-breaker tick (half a second) if it's constrained to stay on the corners of those four blocks -- you can use glass panes or iron bars to create an appropriate enclosure, after which you only need push the snowman into the middle. The resulting output of two snow blocks per second should be more reliable than a cobblegen, though you still obviously need an autocrafting system to match.

Well, for the less moral people out there, there are always other ways ...

I was actually wondering how you guys got enough "junk" to keep recyclers running without mods such as EE, BC, RP2. But there always seems to be some sort of "cheesy" mechanic involved.

Quote from huldu

I was actually wondering how you guys got enough "junk" to keep recyclers running without mods such as EE, BC, RP2. But there always seems to be some sort of "cheesy" mechanic involved.

How do you do it without RP2?

With BC you have quarries, they would supply you with an endless stream of "junk". With RP2 you have cobblestone generators and so forth. EE, well I'll leave it at that.

<edit> Either one of those mods could give you a nice supply of "junk". However without those mods it seems a lot harder, especially if you're playing "fair".

Quote from huldu

With BC you have quarries, they would supply you with an endless stream of "junk". With RP2 you have cobblestone generators and so forth. EE, well I'll leave it at that.

Either one of those mods could give you a nice supply of "junk". However without those mods it seems a lot harder, especially if you're playing "fair".

Well due to the fact that they haven't been nerfed in any way, it seems to me like they were intended to be used with RP2 or BC (not EE, nothing was intended to be used that way). I see it as just a simple way of speeding up mass fabrication for less cost, and I don't see how this is not "fair" (except in cases where people build like 500 cobble gens).

even quarries are quite balanced cause you still need 11 diamonds to build one and it's very slow compared to RP2 quarry or miner, so everything's fine and legal

I think that's the beauty of it. It doesn't require any knowledge or experience to use. There's a reason why BC/IC2/EE etc are so popular. They're pretty basic and you have machines that does fancy things. You have the same in RP2, the only difference is that you have to build most of it yourself. That takes time, a lot of people playing games really don't have that much time on their hands and just want to "enjoy" the basics of the game. While RP2 is awesome once you get around the steep learning curve it becomes awesome. However what you can do in RP2 you can do with the other mods, much easier. Which brings me back to my original point, that's what the "average" player wants, clearly. If that wouldn't be true servers wouldn't be running BC/IC2/EE at all. RP2 just gives the more "hardcore" player the option to create his own contraptions.

Quote from huldu

With BC you have quarries, they would supply you with an endless stream of "junk". With RP2 you have cobblestone generators and so forth. EE, well I'll leave it at that.

<edit> Either one of those mods could give you a nice supply of "junk". However without those mods it seems a lot harder, especially if you're playing "fair".

Awhile back I built a setup with 4 IC miners that would generate cobble and put it into chests. It worked well, but it was a huge pain manually emptying the chests and feeding the recyclers.

Fishers? Best way ever! Made with vanilla redstone pulse and Minefactory fishers

Melons... lots of melons 4-8 slices and since my GGR has gone up even got 3 whole melons in one harvest. Automatic melon breaker is handy for those.

Screenshot is my auto melon breaker. Place melon infront of the piston and watch auto-Gallagher at work.

You could just use the Buildcraft fillers ....

Lava + Water on each side of the cobblestone wall, a Filler set to destroy anything in the lower row of cobblestone (where the cobble gets generated) and lot of obsidian pipes/iron pipes to lead the cobblestone to the recyclers. Make sure you size it carefully. A fully charged filler (with maximum energy input) will be able to destroy 12 cobblestones, or even 16 with some lags on a server, before the cobblestone get generated again. 2 set of Filler will make busy a single recycler with 9 overclockers (and you cannot add anything yourself or it will overflow)