Water Mills and BC transport pipes

Hi everyone, I'm new here (please don't think that makes my suggestion any less valid though).

Anyway, I've got a suggestion: Make Water Mills be able to accept water from Buildcraft liquid transport pipes.

Why? Because it makes no sense to send buckets of water through pipes in order to fill a "tank". It does make sense to send water through pipes to a mill/turbine however, that is how most water turbines work in real dams (drawing in water high up and letting it fall through pipes into a turbine). Even in the old days with wooden Water Mills people would dig shafts and channels to force water onto the wheel (because pipes weren't really an option back then).

Would that make Water Mills OP? I doubt it. Right now even the IC2 pump uses less energy to fill a bucket than a Water Mill can produce, yet no one considers it to be OP. Heck, even with the Thermal Expansion (which adds the Liquid Transposer that can fill buckets at low energy costs and insane speed) you're still better off with a field of Solar Panels. The setup to fill and transport the buckets (and the buckets themselves) costs so many resources you can build 2-3 times the number of Solar Panels. Especially in SSP, where you can skip nights with a bed, there is just no point in considering Water Mills if you compare them with Solar Panels if you ask me.
Also compared to something like a Geothermal Generator it would produce only a tiny amount of energy (1 EU/t vs 20 EU/t). You might argue water is infinite while lava isn't, but in the Nether it's pretty much opposite and combined with other mods you can produce lava from cobblestone, which again is infinite.

As for balance within IC2, it won't change anything. Geothermal Generators are a lot more powerful when combined with Buildcraft, I don't see why Water Mills wouldn't be allowed a similar advantage.

I'm not sure if this is something that needs to be changed in IC2 or if it should be adjusted in BC, but I think it's on IC2's side. If it is something in BC then disregard this, but please tell me so I can suggest it over there then.

Thanks for reading and I hope that you (Alblaka) will consider implementing this.

Quote from GregoriusT

Why arguing with Mods? Vanilla Minecraft has a magic Dispenser, which can put Water Sources into Buckets, and even the other Way around.

True. I'm not sure if a Water Mill can take those buckets out of the Dispenser though without additional mods (ones besides IC2 that is).

Quote from GregoriusT

I disagree. The IC²-Pump gives you a +50% Energy Bonus on the Lava.

With more powerful in this case I meant it's easier to transport fuel (in this case Lava) to the Geothermal Generators. Also, you can power a BC pump with Redstone Engines which would net you +100% energy (though probably at a slower rate as I doubt Redstone Engines can keep up with a Geothermal Generator).
What ever way you look at it though (those 2 aren't the only views I'm sure) it gives you more options to build a power plant and make sure that it's still viable in terms of production vs cost.

Quote from GregoriusT

Its on IC²s Side, but denied, due to being a not that logical Energy Source. If water would flow Downwards (as Source Blocks), and if pumping it upwards, through a Pipe would need Energy, then it would be logical, but this is Minecraft, where we screw Gravity.

Yeah xD In Buildcraft water isn't necessarily a fuel either, but it does go hand in hand with Lava for powering machines. Also, Gravity isn't the only thing getting screwed in Minecraft xD In fact, a better question would be, what isn't screwed in Minecraft? Not much, I'm pretty sure of that xD

Quote

I don't say, your "insert whatever here" is bad,

I'm only showing possibilities for making it better.

I'm certainly getting that feeling with your answers xD I like your mod btw, can't wait till FTB gets updated with all the things (the Industrial Electrolyzer and stuff :P).

Thanks for the support so far everyone.

Anyway, the main point I'm trying to make is that transporting water buckets instead of water makes no sense and that automation of running "manned" Water Mills is already possible, but clumsy and kinda illogical. Within IC2 they're also not very popular because their passive generation is not worth it compared to Solar Panels and no one is crazy enough to sit next to a Water Mill and fill it manually all the time. In IC2 you've got plenty of better things to do than sit next to a Water Mill, let alone in a modpack like FTB with tons of other mods.

If Alblaka feels it would throw off some balance maybe it's possible to include it as a config option? I can't imagine it to be too much work considering it's practically the same as a Geothermal Generator except it runs on water and produces less power (which is already configurable I think).

Quote from MagusUnion

I suddenly realized an easy water filler that may work if you do it right. May need some initial energy to prime it, but I think it wouldn't be that hard of a feat to pull off...

Edit: Yup...

= Liquid Transposer
= Forestry Electric engine
= Aqueous Accumulator (with water Source blocks)

This can run easy off of glass bottles, so no need for piping (unless you want to automate the process of restocking the Transposers)... Just use an initial Water bucket in the Water MIlls to give the electric engines some starter power, and orient the machine block outputs in the upwards direction...

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The idea for this came while I was building a similar setup, I managed to run 54 Water Mills from 1 transposer. The thing is, that requires 2-3 electric engines to run (theoretically 2 can pull if off, but in practice they can't) and it's very hard to keep up with the water demand (my setup had 14 accumelators and I had to use the Industrial Waterproof pipes from the Valve mod, which are 2x the capacity of regular golden water proof pipes) and all that produces a measly 36 EU/t.
Now add in the cost for all the piping to ensure fast transport of buckets and make sure you have even distribution (I used Round Robin pipes from the Additional BC Items mod to do that) + several stacks of Iron for buckets alone and I think you can see the issue (I don't know, can you really run Water Mills with glass bottles? I didn't know that...).
Just to name a number, 5 stacks of Iron for the mills and piping alone, you still need tons of buckets (you can easily add another 3-5 stacks of iron for that), accumulators, a transposer, some engines and a few more pipes to distribute the buckets over the clusters of mills.

Sure you can choke one engine and reduce consumption by 1 EU/t for the other 2, but that still only gets you 40 EU/t... 40 Solar Panels cost only a fraction of the resources and with a simple bed produce 24/7 as well (or if a bed isn't an option, like in SMP, you can build a farm with 80+ Solar Panels... And don't get me started if you have the Advanced Solar Panels mod, just 5 of those tier 2 panels already produce more energy than my 54 Water Mills...). According to my calculations with Advanced Solar Panels you need ~2,5 stacks Iron for those to create 5 panels (with GregTech's nerf to the standard panels that is). Regular Solar Panels are less efficient of course, but I'm pretty sure they still won't cost 8-10 stacks of iron to get 40 of them (in fact, it costs 5 stacks).
80 panels are a different story, but you do get a much simpler setup for that, I mean all you have to do is connect cables and you're done, with Water Mills you'll have a ton of complicated piping on top of the wiring (the main issue with the piping is that you only have access to the Water Mills from the underside and BC item pipes have the tendency to spill items sooner or later, which just adds to the cumbersomeness of it all).

Comparing modded panels with vanilla IC2 mills might seem unfair, but keep in mind I had to add 2 mods to my FTB just to reach that 36-40 EU/t. Without those mods you can never run 54 Mills of off 1 Transposer (regular item pipes have too random distribution and gold water proof pipes can't keep up with a transposer at full tilt, nor can 3 accumulators directly next to a transposer). If I exclude advanced panels and thermal expansion/additional minecraft objects/Valve mod from these comparisons the gap will only get bigger as you will need much more piping and power to get the water buckets where you want them, while the solar panels will still be easy and effective.

Also, it's not filling buckets (or the costs of doing that) that's the point/issue here. It's the fact you even have to do it which makes no sense to me. Fueling Water Mills isn't hard, (with water proof pipes or without) it's just inefficient and strange. As for the Aqueous Accumulator giving effectively free power, there is no way to balance against every single thing every single mod adds... I mean compressing Sand in a compressor and then crushing it also doubles your Sand... Other than that it's still more costly and more work than setting up a Solar Panel plant, and each Mill still only produces 1 EU/t (assuming it's as efficient as a water bucket, this can of course be changed, though I think it should be more than a "passive" mill gives atm). Accumulators also might sound OP, but the fact I need 14 of them to power 54 Mills means 1 Accumulator can only effectively power ~4 Mills.

Again, thanks for the support so far everyone

Quote from MagusUnion

Also, how many Water Sources are you putting around your Accumulators? I can usually rely on a constant stream of water coming from mine (enough to fill an Iron Tank fairly rapidly and keep my Combustion engines cool as well), and usually don't need more than a handful. Plus, the reason why you may want to use glass bottles instead of buckets is the fact that bottles are made of glass, which is an easily renewable processed resource, and doesn't require any excess piping to maintain....

At least 2 sources per Accumelator, but I see in your setup you have ~0,5 MJ/t per Transposer (or a bit more if you have upgraded it with a circuit board), but to run a Transposer at full power you need to fill its energy storage and provide it with 4MJ/t. You can check it by look at how much MJ/t the Transposer consumes (in the blue "energy" tab thingy), as long as it isn't using 4MJ/t you're not running it at max speed. Trust me when I say at max speed 1 or a few Accumelators aren't going to cut it, I did some rudimentary math trying to figure out how much water it uses at max speed (which isn't on any wiki of course...) and I came out at 100mB per tick (~0,5 seconds per bucket, which coincidentally is equal to 40 MJ @ 4MJ/t, the power it takes to fill a bucket) 100mB per tick means ~2 buckets of water per second (which corresponds with the power consumption which supports 2 buckets per second). I don't know how fast an Accumelator works (again a stat no where to be found...), but the fact is in my tests providing water to it is the only bottleneck that's hard to deal with to max out the Transposer.

Now I'm doing some testing with glass bottles and it seems it takes only 40 MJ to fill them (as much as buckets, while tin cans cost 120 MJ to fill...), yet they provide just as much power as water cells (2 EU/t for 25 seconds, for a total of 1000 EU). Seeing how duplicating sand is easy (or create it from cobble) I can see some serious potential here.

But for me that raises the question: Why deny us waterproof pipes when stuff outside of waterproof pipes is obviously harder to balance? I mean every time a mod adds some cheap form of water bucket it could potentially turn water mills OP again... For example, if glass bottles get disabled I doubt we'll have to worry much because the water capsules from Forestry are also easy and renewable to make, though they do take more power to fill.
If he just gives us waterproof pipes he only has to balance it 1 time and that's it. Also if it's as effective as water buckets that still means a "glass bottle power plant" is probably more effective as long as glass is so easy to produce in large quantities (when/if that gets nerfed it might change things, but we'll see).

Edit:

Right now I have a setup with 1 Rotary Macerator and 1 Induction Furnace (both from the mod that adds those upgrades, I forgot the exact name xD It's in the FTB pack be default though) and I'm gaining ~33 EU/t (from the ~74 EU/t I'm producing). I decided to use those upgrades because the number of Macerators I had was starting to lag my game (though other stuff probably contributes as well xD) and they are by far the most efficient way of producing glass (or at least use the least amount of power).
With 2 of each you can produce bottles faster than a Transposer can fill them (which means you can hit ~110 EU/t), in that case production will cost ~50 EU/t and you'll output ~50 EU/t while charging up an MFE to ensure stable production, so you'll probably gain more once that's charged (I'm guessing that's where the left over ~10 EU/t goes to...). So it does seem scaling things up increases efficiency, even though it might only be limited (I haven't gone beyond this... yet).

I have tested with a chest full of glass bottles as well, just to see if a long line of Water Mills with Insertion pipes (from Additional Buildcraft objects) is effective and it is very much so. The bottles managed to supply ~7 rows of 8 Water Mills (for 56 in total, 2 more than my previous much more complex setup), which produced ~112 EU/t. So my theory of "a Transposer can support ~54 Water Mills" is quite accurate.

I've also taken some screenshots in case you'd like to see my setup: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qe47p826lkjyssy/ZaDxQDAyI5
It's a bit messy as that's my test world, but I hope you can figure it out (I did my best to hide unrelated stuff behind CF walls xD). Note that not all the Water Mills you see there are actually working, the design has no way to deal with overflow, so I decided to solve that by just adding so many Mills it can never overflow with this setup (if I start adding more Transposers I'll need to add more Mills as well).

Quote from FenixR

Main reason why Watermill + Pipes hasn't been accepted in iC2 its because WATER ITS UNLIMITED, with the proper setup you will make infinite water for the rest of your world lifetime.

Yeah and Wind and Solar power aren't unlimited? The argument that it's unlimited makes no sense to me. If we start involving other mods like Thermal Expansion lava is infinite as well. Don't get me wrong, I think things should be balanced, but the only balance the passive generators (Wind, Solar, Water) have is the initial investment in resources and how much EU/t they produce (which compared to Nuclear reactors and such is small for the amount of resources it costs to setup).
You can argue that Wind is risky to build due to height, but a jetpack and Feather Falling boots make height damage essentially non existent (and Rubber boots or Portal mod's boots even more so).
Solar Panels might be expensive, but they require no maintenance at all and with a bed in single player they can run 24/7.

Besides that, if you use buckets the only "cost" you have to feed a Water Mill farm is the power it takes to fill those buckets. It's just that the initial investment of such a plant is so high that it's not viable (the piping and machines you need besides the mills costs way more than building a Wind or Solar plant).

Quote from SpwnX

And you would break physics law of energy conservation as you would literally create energy from nowhere.

Last time I checked every single "popular" power plant in FTB and similar packs does exactly that (boilers, anyone? I know they got nerfed though, but still. Forestry also creates power out of thin air.). And if we're talking about laws of physics, moving Water contains a lot more power than Wind or Solar energy, yet in IC2 it's by far the weakest source of power. Also, in the real world water isn't pumped into hydroelectric plants either, they use gravity to draw in water, just like the old wooden Water Mills used gravity to draw in water hundreds of years ago.
On our planet rain and other precipitation take the role of "pumping" water into the plant, but because the weather in Minecraft doesn't do such a thing I think it's only fair we can transport water cheaply in other ways.

Like I said before though, how about a config? That way the people who feel it's OP can ignore it and the people that think it's more realistic can actually use Water Mills as a viable source of energy.
And also, it doesn't have to generate as much power as Water Buckets or bottles/cells/whatever, just more than a passive mill because you invest resources into improving it (let's say 0.5-0.75 EU/t?). That would bring 2 Mills on par with 1 Solar Panel in energy production at the cost of requiring more infrastructure and time (if you use vanilla BC you'll need a pump, engines to make that work and pipes of course, putting that all down costs a lot more time than plopping down a solar panel...). While not getting more powerful than a "manned" Water Mill.

Quote from MagusUnion

Maxing out the Transposers output means you have to spend more energy on production than on aquision. I wouldn't recommend throttling Transposers like that unless you have a huge setup that required it. Last thing you want to end up doing is exceeding your yield with an overloaded intake setup. Better to just "get by" with the lowest cost on MJ and maximizing yield...

Yeah I'll probably make the bottle production the bottle neck instead of forcing it on the Transposer. It's good to know where the limit is though.

Quote from MagusUnion

Now this is an impressively aggressive setup. I will agree, it does seem to scale the larger you build it. But hey, if you set it up in a closed container setup, you can have water sources around the water mills as well, and that generates additional power to handle you MJ loads. If they are en-mass like this, you might have enough passive power to countermeasure your active MJ requirements pending size...

Thanks The passive generation is something I plan to add, but I do have to note that Water Mills running on water bottles don't also produce passive power (it's one or the other, not both). So the only mills running passively would be the ones in the back (or if bottle production is interrupted/stopped), but I plan on keeping those to ~8-10 (to avoid building 30 mills that only run passively xD If I wanted that I would build a passive plant :P).

So, I've done even more testing and I decided to try and find a free and INFINITE way to fill buckets. It's actually quite easy, but you do need some (Autarchic) gates.

Basically what you do is you pump empty buckets into a Dispenser 1 by 1, have a gate next to it that sends a red stone signal when there is something in the inventory of the Dispenser and it'll automatically fill the bucket (without any EU power or anything). Is it fast and effective? Not really, I could only power ~4 Water Mills with it, but you do get a highly efficient setup which can be compacted and mass produced quite easily (the most expensive part is the gate, the rest of it is cheap).

That said though, I still think Glass Bottles are more powerful. The thing is, Glass Bottles produce 2x the power of buckets or waterproof pipes (assuming they would be as effective as buckets or less, 1EU/t or less). You might only get 50-70% efficiency with Glass Bottles, but that means they are equal or better than buckets or waterproof pipes.

Simply put, if you think waterproof pipes are OP you're wrong, Glass Bottles are better or at least equal. If you think Glass Bottles are OP then what is the issue with waterproof pipes? If you think both are OP, look at Wind/Solar power. You might say you get 2 Water Mills for each Generator, but each Mill is also only half as powerful as Solar or Wind "generators" and all the additional machines/pipes you need to transport water to the Mills make a Water Mill setup just as costly (if not more) and certainly more complicated than the other 2 types of energy.

The only reason why waterproof pipes could be considered OP is if they give 2 EU/t or more per Mill. At 1 EU/t they're equal with feeding Water Buckets manually and are out performed by regular item pipes with Glass Bottles. At less than 1 EU/t they are roughly equal with Wind/Solar power and I believe this would be a good balance point.

That would allow you to start with a passive Water Mill plant and then later on you can give it a small boost by using waterproof pipes, or you can go over the top and use Glass Bottles. That would certainly be a lot more interesting than just adding more Water Mills (like you do with Solar/Wind...).

I'm still hoping this will be considered, because so far there really hasn't been any argument that makes sense or can't be solved with a (tiny) bit of balancing/tweaking.