[Addon v1.113 WIP] Extra Energy Storage [SMP/SSP]

Thats a really neat idea. what is it's max transfer rate?

although the EU teleportation i would imagine is WAY overpowered... even if you make the blocks extremely expensive...

Quote from Celant

The battery is a Modified Tier 3 device, so it has a max transfer rate of 1024 EU/t. The teleportation, because I agree it would be Overpowered, will have a 50-75% EU loss rate, I might even add a energy loss dependent on the distance + a baseline loss amount

My suggestion for how to do the calculation for energy loss, How about do it in a realistic manner?

This will point in a specific direction, and, rather than having an energy loss, Have an energy spread. You do this by having it project in a cone (maybe some sorta upgrade to narrow the cone). Any receiver in the cone will pick up the amount of energy relative to the area of the cone at that distance (and then prevents any receivers "behind" it from getting energy)

Based on the angle of the cone, you can tweak the energy loss, and the energy loss will increase with distance, though can be countered by adding more receivers (then have the receivers be expensive)

If you want, I can go and determine the needed calculations for making it work at any angle.

A sample however: If the cone angle is pi/12 (15degrees), then here is a table of distance/flux, where flux is in % of transmitted per block (these are rough calculations, can be refined for a bit more accuracy). Also included a 1 degree cone (pi/180)

Distance (# chunks) Flux(pi/12) flux(pi/180)
1-3 1 1
4 0.95 1
8 0.477 1
16 (1) 0.239 1
32 (2) 0.119 1
64 (4) 0.0597 0.895
160 (10) 0.0239 0.35
320 (20) 0.0119 0.179 <-- 82% loss at 20 chunks for narrow, 98+% loss for wider.

I apologize about the formatting on the table, seems tabs go poof when posting...

This would then allow for long distance transmission (have whatever is needed for focusing be rather costly) and will have a fairly realistic way of determining power loss.

Quote from Celant

-Multi-block energy storage structure

LESUs ? I'd like actual MultiBlock structure (because LESU are UP for now), because these can be cheaper than others devices, but will take some space, so this is kind of a balance you have to determine. I know it doesn't really make sense in SSP/Role Play, but it's cool in PvP

Quote from Celant

LESUs? I don't believe I am familiar with those

Try GregTech
I suggested those months ago to vanilla IC2, Greg added it, but they're ... kind of UP

Ok, I will update this post with some calculations which should allow for the power to be transmitted an arbitrary distance, depending on your choice of angle. the simplest way to implement this would only allow for power to be transmitted along the x and z axes, but if you have some way to do rotations, then you should be able to send it any direction.

If you do this, you might need to put a restriction on how close together the receivers can be, say by having them take up slighly more than 1 block (maybe even have them something like the ICBM radar dishes in size, but only collect from 1 block worth of area?)

Needed Mathematics:

Note: I will probably use z as vertical and y as horizontal for these calculations, as that is what I am more comfortable using.

first I should mention that I know very little about java syntax and coding (only ever used C and lua, have looked at java a couple times, not much more), so hopefully you can convert this into the needed format

Let the transmitter be at location (x₀,y₀,z₀) and the receiver at (x₁,y₁,z₁)

Let θ be the total angle spread of the transmission (I will use units of radians for this, an example in degrees would say be 15% for short range)
Let P_T be the power transmitted and P_R be the power received.

The distance from the transmitter to the receiver would then be r = |(x₁,y₁,z₁)-(x₀,y₀,z₀)| (I assume there is a vector maths library or similar?)

The basic calculation needed would then be:

P_R = Min(P_T, P_T/(rθ))

You would also need to check that (x₁,y₁,z₁) falls within the cone of power transmitted.

This can be used to check that:

Let φ be the angle counter-clockwise from the x axis (if only transmitting along and axis, will be much simpler than this, also, I am using y as the other horizontal axis for this calculation)
Let ω be the angle down, starting from straight up (so vertically up is 0, straight down is pi)

The midpoint of the beam at distance r would be:

(x₂,y₂,z₂) = (x₀+r*sin(ω)*cos(φ), y₀+r*sin(ω)*sin(φ),z₀+cos(ω)).

To check that the receiver is inside the cone, then check:

|(x₂,y₂,z₂) - (x₁,y₁,z₁)| < r*sin(θ/2)

Rounding down the distances between points at each step would then add some nice amounts of loss.

You should also check that the line from the transmitter to receiver has no other receivers between, or this could be exploited (if you only check loaded chunks, then you could have power transmitted over unloaded areas. If you want to make certain things block the signal, you can start the check from the transmitter, and disallow anything after whatever blocks it from receiving power)


Note: Depending on how forge handles directions, you should convert whatever it uses to radians before applying the above formulae. Also, these equations will technically work even if you go and swap around x,y and z, so you might not need to modify them much to work in MC's rotated frame.


On implementing this for different ranges:


I suggest having a range of upgrades for the transmitter, preferably quite expensive, which serve to narrow the beam. You should probably also have something that automatically points the transmitter in the direction of a receiver (say you right click receiver first, then right click transmitter and it orients itself).


For the transmitter upgrades, Maybe have each one decrease the angle by a factor of 2, with the base angle being pi/6 or pi/12 radians (30 or 15 degrees). As shown in my previous post, a 15 degree spread will lose over 50% of the power after 8 blocks, so probably start there.


with this, 4 upgrades will result in transmitting 128 blocks for the same loss.
8 upgrades would allow for a transmission of 2048 blocks.

P_R = min(P_T, P_T/(rθ/2ⁿ)), where n is the number of upgrades

To balance this, Maybe have it harder to add more upgrades, or have multiple upgrades for range orders (say tier 2 upgrade is made with 16 or 64 tier 1 upgrades?)


You could also then have an upgrade which increases the power transmitted.

Quote from Celant

Congratulations, you have successfully made my brain ache... It might take me some time to plunder over that

Then, do NEVER come in France to study at my school

Quote from GregoriusT

Is there something supposed to be hard to understand? What I see is just basic spherical Geometry, nothing what causes headaches like sunlight for example.

It is just basic spherical geometry.

The relevant wikipedia page might be a good place to read up on it. <-- meant for the OP, not greg

Quote from GregoriusT

Is there something supposed to be hard to understand? What I see is just basic spherical Geometry, nothing what causes headaches like sunlight for example.

Except that calculating sunlight requires spherical geometry. Anyway, a power transmission system would probably involve lasers, so there would be no spread. The energy loss would be a fixed amount based on the conversion and some slight increase based on the properties of the substance transferred through, (opacity, density, ect.) anyway, a mostly fixed loss would be useful for this sort of purpose, so that it becomes a reasonable alternative at extreme range, but very impractical over relatively short distances.

Quote from Kenken244

Except that calculating sunlight requires spherical geometry. Anyway, a power transmission system would probably involve lasers, so there would be no spread. The energy loss would be a fixed amount based on the conversion and some slight increase based on the properties of the substance transferred through, (opacity, density, ect.) anyway, a mostly fixed loss would be useful for this sort of purpose, so that it becomes a reasonable alternative at extreme range, but very impractical over relatively short distances.

at extreme ranges lasers do have spread, usually a few mili-radians or so.

The systems which I have seen studied for long range power transmission all used microwaves, which will have a small, but not negligible spread. The main reason why I suggested this method was that it gives a simple calculation for adding in a loss, It also somewhat conforms to the difficulty in collecting energy from a laser or microwave system.

If I was suggesting a laser based system, I would have added in the equations for working out the power based on a Gaussian beam distribution, and used that to calculate the amount of distance based loss, which can be found here: laser profile (updated to now be numbers for minecraft, rather than needing 200km range on the laser)

I guess you could use the above system as well, Have it draw a line from the source to the target, Identify the first receiver on the way, then use the calculations in that spreadsheet to work out the received power. You could then have the transmitter be a FEL with the "upgrades" being undulators for the beam

Quote from GregoriusT

I was referring to something else Mr. Data. My lightsensitive Eyes don't react that good to Sunlight, causing Headaches.

How interesting, I have something similar, I get very bad headaches from any light source more blue than about 500nm.

Quote from Thutmose

How interesting, I have something similar, I get very bad headaches from any light source more blue than about 500nm.

Lol, so I guess even playing is ... a torture ?
If I wanna protect my base against you ... I'll make it in BLUE WOOL!