[SUGGESTION] Lower-tier matter fabrication (EU-Fuel)

Yeah, let's make it sound as vague as possible so people click on it.

Purpose: To bridge IC2 EU to other mods in the simplest way (or, at least, so I believe).

Description: A machine that when supplied with EU and a redstone signal, will create a solid fuel.

The coal dust above could easily be carbon-plate. For lack of a better name (taking suggestions!), let us called this solid fuel EUF (EU Fuel)

Properties: EUF will burn and produce energy anywhere items can burn. Furnaces, boilers, engines, locomotives, even IC2 generators.

Caveats

• The transfer must be lossy. Under no circumstances should you be able to create EUF, put it in a generator and get a net increase in energy.
• The energy input (in EU) and output (in whatever unit Minecraft uses) would be configurable in case someone should find a method that resulted in a breach of (1)
• EUF would not be maceratable. It is not a replacement for coal for armor nor for solar arrays.

Discussion: I've seen suggestions for electric minecarts, I've seen mods for electric engines (quite a few of them, actually). I've seen the suggestions for nuclear reactors to create heat so it could look more realistic. I've personally been puzzled at how to move non-IC power around due to the mod restrictions of the server-owner where I play.

My thought is that if this one machine were implemented, it would be at the very least a workaround for:

• Locomotives (and perhaps even vanilla MC furnace carts) could be indirectly EU-driven;
• Electric boilers;
• The output of a "vanilla" nuclear reactor could be funneled into a bank of these converters and the EUF piped into the boilers.
• I'm sure there are more possibilities, but they evade me.

Edits: Formatting of the thoughts, and another caveat.

Quote from wasmic

Maybe just give them different burn-values in different machines? That would men that it would have a lower heat value in a boiler than in a stirling engine, and a lower heat value in stirling engines than in generators. CovertJaguar did something like this for charcoal in boilers.

Yes, I have seen videos where EU generation, heat, etc was listed separately, but I thought it was doing conversion from a single value (ie, a value of X for coal would be Y EU, Z Heat, etc). If it really can be a different value for different machines, that would indeed help the balancing -- thanks for mentioning it. One of my main concerns is that this not even approach a Perpetual Motion Machine. Would the Forge-format configuration file be capable of configuring a hash like this?

Rick: Yes, before I knew about the possibility of differing values (if true), I was worried about that, but again, no PMM's.

gone: The point of this is the conversion of EU into energy in N other mods without the necessity of writing N (or more!) converters.

Notably, the conversion of solar power and nuclear power. Even geothermal, since lava buckets in furnaces are nerfed by IC2. Yes, you can run an electric engine to get BC power and then convert from there, but that doesn't help with minecarts. You can install another mod that has a solar-powered cart, but that doesn't burn EU, and doesn't help underground. You can build a fantastically complicated device that farms logs, creates charcoal, and automatically supplies the trains with fuel (might just do that sometime!) but that doesn't address the desires of the nuclear steamers.

*shrug* Had a thought and Just checked; scrap approaches this. It can burn in a boiler, but not in a locomotive. I might ask for the extra burnable attributes to be added to scrap, but having a fuel that is reliant on someone building a good cobblegen might not be the best of directions.

Quote from stephenmac7

You can always use the oil/lava fabricators from Minefactory Reloaded if you want fuel from EU...

Again, fuel in the sense of something solid that burns and is used by any or most mods . A coal/charcoal analogue. I'm not sure where I wasn't clear in my original post.

Although, for the lack of support, I suppose a wood multifarm hooked up to an induction oven will have to be it.

I tried, nuclear-steamers!