Posts by Omicron

MOX works exactly like uranium. The behavior in the reactor is the same in every aspect.

The only thing that changes is the EU/t output as an additional step after the primary calculation, based on the percentage of hull heat the reactor has. The fuel rods inside don't change. They still perform as they always did. They do not suddenly change efficiency or output more heat than before or anything like that - they simply gain an additional bonus that's independent from anything else. Any design that is safe with uranium is also safe with MOX. However, if you want to maintain a high hull heat level, you will run into troubles with components that exchange heat with the hull (and the fact that almost all common uranium designs force the fuel rods themselves to exchange heat with the hull).

What you'll want to do is read Alblaka's reactor overview (and I mean read, don't skim or TL;DR) so you understand how components and fuel rods behave in certain situations. Best grab the reactor planner and try to see it in action. Then when you're firm on that, read about MOX reactors. Useful designs start cropping up after the bugfixes on page 2, but the earlier posts also discuss some theory that you might want to check out.

Yes, that would explain it. Which build generated that config, out of interest? That would be one heck of an undocumented reactor buff.

Yes, the multiplier over what the reactor planner states is the heat bonus. It scales from x1 (at 0% heat) to x5 (at 100% heat). Therefore, if I manage to get the heat so high that I get the maximum bonus, I will produce 675 EU/t with one such 3-chamber segment.

If you are getting any more than that, it's a bug and you need to tell Thunderdark that Player broke something again

EDIT: quick confirmation in build #298: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.…0/2013-11-15_19.17.09.png (don't mind the wildfire)

Yeah honestly... it's a distribution platform for third party modpacks nowadays (and a pretty good one at that).

You're obviously not going to be able to play the mod if it's not installed on the server. Their helpdesk guy apparently had no idea what you wanted from him. Did you explain it properly?

I'm fairly sure you're encountering one of the following issues:
- You bought a vanilla server, or
- Your server runs the wrong Minecraft version, or
- Your server runs the wrong Forge version, or
- You ran into an ID conflict on the first attempt to install IC2, because you have a ton of other mods already installed

2048 EU/t? What math leads you to that? It's going to produce a maximum of 135 x 5 = 675 EU/t if I hug the heat threshold.

And, well, technically I don't need anything in those two slots at all. I just put them there because well, if I have nothing else to put in there, might as well reduce the damage a hypothetical explosion might do, even though I know it's never going to explode because the reactor will never ever change its hull heat anyway.

Just imagine a tomato in their slot. It would be just about as useful

Another three-chamber design I just made: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…52r1fz97v993yb8qvlfyckcg0

Kinda proud of this one. If anyone can get more output out of three chambers without using hull transfer components or CRCS, let me know! ...Why three? Well, let's say I have a little project in mind.

I'm fairly sure I never found uranium above sea level in any version of IC2.

Not a glitch, but simply a result of how tile entities are moved. They can't maintain their functions and connections to neighboring blocks; they temporarily get "packaged up" and then redeployed after moving them. So the act of moving quite literally demounts the reacter chamber from the reactor, moves both, and then recombines them. However, since the heat level is saved in the main reactor block only, as soon as that comes back online, it notices a lack of heat capacity and detonates.

Yeah, the turning-things-to-lava seems to be a thing of ages past... I've honestly never seen it happen, come to think of it. Maybe it disappeared even with the reactor rework in 1.3, who knows?

It's just that, up until now we didn't have that much reason to build high heat reactors. The occasional breeder liked to run hot, sure, but even the smallest ones were fast enough to support all but the most exotic of reactor setups, so there was never really a reason to push the boundaries that everyone thought existed.

Quote from LezChap

So what do you think? Good idea? Workable? Bad?

I'm thinking, for the second time this week, that you really didn't read the MOX reactor thread at all, did you

We already went over this on page 1. Admittedly, back then things were a little bit more complicated, because you had to account for 1.) fuel rod efficiency from neutron pulses, 2.) heat efficiency from hull heat percentage, 3.) heat efficiency from absolute hull heat values, and 4.) bug efficiency from having the fuel rods as close as possible to the upper left corner of the setup. After Thunder's bugfixing spree (shortly before you came in), 3.) and 4.) stopped being relevant, so technically nowadays you just need to multiply your basic efficiency by the MOX heat multiplier and you're done. But the formula I proposed works just as well still, because it's completely agnostic of what multiplies where in what way. It works off of EU/t alone, which any player can see ingame in their reactor GUI without additional mods (or out of game tools) being required.

EDIT: linked for posterity

Are you sure the coolant cell thing is a bug, and not simply related to the fact that reactor components are processed one by one, left to right, top to bottom? Maybe the slot where the coolant cell was inserted had simply been processed already, if the insertion happens during the one tick each second that the calculation is being run...

Yeah, basing your entire play plan on a temporarily disabled feature in a development build is probably not the best idea

Thanks LezChap for testing it, now that I know the limit I can plan around it.

Question: is the result of transformer upgrades in machines capped?

In other words, if I insert enough transformer upgrades into a machine to bring it to 8k EU/t allowance - the highest rating supported by cables and EV transformers - will I be able to add more still? Will I be able to go to 32k, then 128k and so on? Or is there a cap at 8k?

I'd say it's a valid endgame goal on a 24/7 server, with the proper steps for offline production taken. Singleplayer? Yeah, not going to happen.

By the way, if anyone wants to use this reactor in legit survival gameplay... you really have your work cut out for you

Let's say you take an uranium reactor with a large number of fuel rods so you can generate plutonium as quickly as possible. Something like this one. for example, because after all you still want a modicum of efficiency.

Every 5 hours and 33 minutes, you'll generate 28 tiny plutonium. You will need 1,512 tiny plutonium to stock that CRCS monster. Therefore, you'll be running that reactor for... just a few minutes short of 300 hours. In other words, just under two RL weeks, 24/7. And if you don't want to accept efficiency 3.00, you'll probably have to double that number - reactors running efficiencies above 4 generally can't fit more than 12-14 fuel rods.

So maybe you want to build many reactors to cut that time short by a lot? Well, there's another issue: you're also going to need 1,134 blocks of uranium ore to pull it off. That's almost 18 stacks... two thirds of a chest filled with nothing but uranium ore. Since uranium spawns anywhere below sea level, you can't focus on tunnel boring specific heights. Good luck with your mining endeavours!

The second link in his post (under "30,000 EU/t") is an ingame screenshot.

I approve of this suggestion.

Quote from LezChap

Now that you mention that I should have a plan, I've already come up with one. Instead of coming out the bottom, I'll come out the 4 sides of the reactor chambers, and go underground from there...and split the transformers to the 4 cardinal directions. And won't I still need 15 to 16 transformers to handle the 30-31k output?

Yes, but only 4 per cable, since glass fibre is supposed to hold up to 8192 EU/t. If your reactor outputs (just shy of) 32k, then you split it into 4 lines of 8k each, and each of those 4 lines has 4 transformers (for a total of 16) to break the 8k further down into 4x 2k so that it can be accepted by MFSUs.

Quote from LezChap

On top of that, a special (and probably badly designed, but I wasn't looking for efficiency or speed, just something that'd help them cool off a little bit faster) reactor designed to cool Overclocked Heat Vents had to be produced.

Quote from LezChap

I thought component heat vents supplies an additional 4 cooling to surrounding components (ie the overclocked heat vent). (...) Would a setup like this be better: http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…je0cmlunrby25af8pp5zz2tc0 ?

Yes, that setup would definitely better. You see, your original setup is essentially this one with a whole bunch of components thrown in that do nothing at all. The component vents do not spread heat around, you need actual exchangers for that.

Quote from LezChap

I calculated that the reactor output is in the neighborhood of 3 billion EU per cycle (assuming MOX lasts 5000 seconds, and there's 20 ticks in a second each producing 30,000eu/t).

Runtimes were changed in build #288. MOX fuel lasts 10,000 seconds and Uranium 20,000 now.

Quote from LezChap

All this power runs underground via a single glass fibre cable.

Just so long as you're aware that the moment they implement cable behavior, your reactor will instantly melt any single cable... when the e-net gets finalized, you'll need four individual lines of glass fibre coming from your reactor without touching each other, each leading into four transformers. Might be a good idea to come up with a design idea for that, just in case.