Posts by Cadde

Quote from Rick

There is endless space in minecraft why you pay like 6x cost to use up less space? Also your calculations are a bit off. 7.4% is only applies when you compare 6 solar gen to 1 windgen in space which isnt a very realistic situation. If you compare 4 windgens those solars will still have a big space advantage but alot smaller than in your post.

Also since when sand was hard to get? You can get it from:
-The millions of sand that spawn in your world
-Cobblestone generators (macerator..)
Dont tell me its hard to smelt sand to glass.

Windgens always produce a decent amount of eu while solars stop making them at night/rain/thunderstorm. Ye you can sleep IF you are next to your bed but that requires you constantly checking the weather and time. It wont work when you are inside some cave.

... You are just grasping at straws now. Constantly making things up to suit your side of the story. You keep forgetting the negative sides of your "utopia"... But for the last time i will make another valid counter argument.

Chunks... Placing 16x16 solar panels in one chunk gives you 128 effective EU/t. To reach that number (on average) with wind gens you need 52 of them. The square root of 52 rounded down to the closest whole integer is 7, so you need 7*5+5 = 40x40 to make a wind gen farm of 49 generators. Then you need an extra 5 tiles on either side to add the last 3 generators. So that makes it 45x40 tiles. That covers 9 chunks in total instead of just one. Thus you have to keep those 9 chunks loaded to gain full generation from your wind farm. This is bad for servers and bad for you in SSP since chunks will unload if you go a certain distance from them. Forcing you to stay closer to your base than you otherwise would have to.

Sure, you can get 81 blocks of cobble, macerate them and burn them to glass. That operation costs you 75,978 EU's to do (That is 19 charcoal) and using a single macerator and a single electro furnace this operation takes 21 minutes to complete. If you have 2 macerators and one furnace this time is roughly cut in half, it's still a lot of time spent.
Right, so now you don't just need 9x9 blocks of glass... To match the 16x16 solar array you would have a platform that is 40x45 tiles. That's 1,800 cobble to macerate and burn to glass... That's 1,688,400 EU's required to do that. The equivalent of 422 charcoal. That takes 3.90625 HOURS to complete using two macerators and one furnace. Even if you have 8 macerators and 4 furnaces you still take up to an hour of constant crushing and burning to make that much glass.

So now you will argue that "But who needs to use glass, why not just use wooden planks or the actual cobblestone without processing it?"
Because it's...

• Fugly
• Blocks daylight, causes mobs to spawn on the surface, forces you to place torches... Really messes up what otherwise was an evenly sunlit landscape. (do you know just how many spawn on hard difficulty?)
• Just doesn't make sense to have a solid structure floating like that. (glass doesn't look as heavy)

And then you might argue thusly: "Why use glass blocks? Use glass panels instead!"
Have you ever placed 1,800 glass panels up in the sky?

Right, so glass blocks it is because they are the only blocks that actually make any sense...
-"But... but... Scaffolds!?!?!?!"

Yeeees, i am aware of scaffolds... You would have to make 400+ pillars from ground level to the sky to support scaffolds across a 40x45 tile area.

-"But... WorldEdit?"
Go ahead, CHEAT all YOU want.

Ok, so i will hold with those future possible "reasons" you may have that are completely irrelevant and impractical...
Now, lets consider the build time... At ground level (that is, you have something to stand/walk on already) you can place stuff at a rate of around 4 blocks per second. 256 solar panels thus takes ~64 seconds to place.
To build a platform in the sky, you have to sneak to avoid constantly falling off or grow some chronic bone disorder. At best you can achieve one block placed per second. That makes it 1,800 seconds (30 minutes) of tediously placing blocks to make your platform alone.
If you are going to cycle between placing your platform and going down to your factory to collect more glass then consider the time it takes to travel UP and DOWN several times as well. If you are using a jetpack an/or quantum boots then you need to take into account the resources spent on keeping them fueled as well.

-"Buuuuut, don't build a platform then. Just build the windgens and don't drop anything..."
Fine, you crawl around at height level 127 on narrow walkways and not misplace a single thing. Having to break it which inevitably leads to you dropping it having to go all the way to ground level to retrieve it before it despawns.
As well as measure distance between each windgen to get the spacing right.
Not to mention you accidentally falling off the walkways because holding shift for so long made your pinkie finger go numb.

Now we get to the next "fun" part. Where are you going to find 1,800 cobble to begin with... You say it's abundant, i beg to differ!
1,800 cobble is 28.125 stacks. That is a little over half a double chest. Consider the time it takes to collect 1,800 cobble for this purpose alone. Then consider all the other things you can use cobble for, namely making smoothstone into bricks. As well as glass for other applications. Not to mention using it as filler material. Or running it through recyclers to get scrap for your scrap hungry matter generators.
Cobble might not be worth much per block but when you have a chest full of cobble it adds up to being worth quite a lot!
Especially since i build most my houses exclusively out of bricks (since they are the cheapest resource to build with that doesn't look like sh!t)

-"Just use Buildcraft, place a filler with a clear recipe or use a quarry. You now have TOO MUCH cobble for anything..."
There are two things wrong with that though... But i will let you suggest the next thing as well since i foresee one of the answers covering the next suggestion too.
-"Use Equivalent Exchange to make glass from whatever stupid conversion EE has...?"

• We are talking about IC2 balance here. Not IC2+FiftyEleven other different mods!
• Fillers and Quarries take OMGWTF amounts of power/resources to operate for extended periods of time.

And finally, Equivalent Exchange? Are you MAD? I might as well use TMI...

...................

Really, stop coming up with odd reasons as to why solar panels are underpowered because if you compare them to regular generators of all kinds you see that solar panels are by far more desirable than any of them. Wind power on the other hand isn't as desirable because wind power is really messy to set up and only someone with lots of spare time and motivation would set one up.
...
Oh wait, i feel another irrelevant statement coming up...
-"Just build your wind generators at sea level! They still outperform solar panels!"

Yes, technically they do outperform solar panels at sea level... Here comes the list of things that makes them less desirable than solar panels on the ground...

• They take up space, two times as much to match the output of solar panels using twice as many wind gens, space is important. The more space you consume on ground level the further you have to walk between your buildings etc.
• They STILL are unreliable power sources. They can generate 0 EU/t or they can generate 2.5 EU tick at sea level. (And they can get stuck on 0 EU/t for a long time since they only change their production once every 6.4 seconds)
• You want a relatively flat area (that covers not just 40x45 but 55x60 since you now need that area to set up 104 wind gens at sea level) and making a 55x60 tile large flat area where, say, half the blocks need to be cleared in the area. (That's 1650 blocks to clear, possibly more)
• Did i mention chunks? I think i did!

Ok, i know you are going to find some small little loop hole in this one as well... At least i am not calling you an idiot and instead am making an effort to (really) show you how wrong you are.
But in the end, you are not the brightest person i have seen posting on a forum. As a matter of fact, you are among the top most ignorant and self proclaimed posters i have seen. (And that is saying a lot!)
I feel i won't have the energy to deal with you anymore after this though, maybe you should just save your breath and stop posting garbage like "solars have been nerfed, that is proof that they are underpowered" or something silly along those lines.
Just stay out of it, period.

We already kinda have in inofficial system in place.

I call mine a 1740 8 BPS CASUC (1740 EU/t, 8 buckets per second CASUC)
Mark rating is irrelevant for CASUC designs these days. So is efficiency since most of them have around 4 eff anyways. (Thus they get the EA rating)

For ice CASUCS that would be 1820 6 IPS CASUC (1820 EU/t, 6 ice per second CASUC)

EDIT: Changed that 64 ice per second down to 7 since 64 is just overflow.
EDIT #2: Had one chamber too many on the ice CASUC... Numbers have once more been updated for correctness...

I remember one specific instance with a game... I just don't remember which game that was. Either way, they had a release date set. A group of gamers had prepared for that release date and rented a place for a lan party etc. They had booked flights and some had booked hotel rooms and planned all sorts of things to celebrate the release.

As the release date got closer the developers where forced to push the release forwards a month or something.
Rage ensumed on the developers forums and some even demanded that the DEVELOPERS would re-fund their investments for said party... (Really!)

Release dates are RELLY bad, sure it's nice to have a general idea when something is going to be finished but in the end, you can never know what's going to happen. And following a release date blindly just leads to rushed development and last minute bugfixes that actually cause more issues than they solve.

Quote from SpeedDaemon

Well, now that begs a question I haven't seen answered anywhere... Do cable junctions split packets, evenly distribute whole packets, base it on cable length...?

Question for the OP: You say they're right next to each other... Is the output face of the batbox touching the mfsu? (you'd probably actually see the power in the batbox jumping around between 0-32 EU if this was the case)

Yes, cable junction splits packets. They don't merge them but they do split them.
Say you wanted to only supply 1 EU/t to a machine (like Power Crystals BC<->IC2 conversion mod's energy link) you can place a bat box, 2 cables from the output side and then 4 bat boxes on the outside of this cable feeding the split power back to the first bat box. Place one extra cable after the splitter and then the machine.

First split: 32 / 5 = 6 EU
Second split: 6 / 5 = 1 EU

The remaining "missing" EU's (32 / 5 = 6.4 and 6 / 5 = 1.2) will go into ONE of the splitting bat boxes. The reason it does this is because machines CLOSER to the split that happens get the extra EU. Hence why you add one extra cable after the splitter to make the target machine be the farthest from the second split.

Obviously you don't have to use bat boxes. You can probably use LV transformers (I haven't tested those though) or any other power hungry machines. Just remember that the Larger packet after a split gets sent to the CLOSEST receiver.
You can also build a straight line. It's easier to see what is going on by doing so.

Here is a demonstration video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkHIHtHnPjk

Sorry for taking so long to reply but i was reading the source on Wind Generators and checked a lot of other threads that had replies to them before this one.

What i intend to do with an Empty/Full detector is:

• When empty, Trigger a bunch of feeders to my generators to fill them with charcoal.
• When full, trigger a bunch of unloaders to unload my generators.

And anything in between OFC. Like an automated system to feed just as much resources to my generators as my energy storage can handle.
I also have plans on making my base lit by a bunch of luminators. I want the luminators to stop receiving power when my energy storage reaches low levels so that (roughly) the luminators will turn off at the same time as the energy storage is depleted or at least stop consuming power for all light systems (only leaving emergency lights on) when power level is low.

Obviously, the suggested consumption meter is a neat extra!
Thanks for the feedback/advice, it helped me get a better understanding of what i need to do.

Quote from Rick

In order to match 1 windgen output you need several solars. Even with the worst cables they make more than solars do. Its not that hard to make a LV and MV transformer and some hv cables which will boost the output by alot. But like i said even with copper cables they make more than solars do no point in making solars except for the looks. Solars make 0.5 eu/tick average if there is no weather like rain. With the rain/thunderstorms i think it drops to like 0.3-0.4 maybe even less.

Also windgens always produce a good amount of eu it only varies a bit. You can count on them more than solars which produce nothing in the night and with rain/thunderstorm.

I think it would be alot better if solars get a big buff when they are in the desert (like 2x output). It would make them more situational while boosting their usefullness.

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Wind gens generate on average slightly over 2.5 EU/t at height 127 and 2 cables in it's "obstruction zone".
They increase their power by 50% during a thunder storm and by 20% during rain. (More wind)
They require an empty space around them that covers a 9x9x7 area. As such, you want to make a platform in the sky that covers a 9x9 area so you can catch any broken cables etc as you build your wind farm.
I assume people want to use glass (to let sunlight through) and they need at least 81 glass blocks to make that 9x9 platform. That is a lot of resources right there per wind gen. Given, the next win gen (if you make more) will only require an additional 5x5 blocks. (25 blocks)

If you place 6 solar panels on the ground you get 3 EU/t average on a day/night cycle. You just exceeded wind power generation using 7.4% of the space required. And even though solar panels are more expensive they are more predictable than wind power.
Wind power generation can fluctuate (GLOBALLY) between 0.002666 EU/t and 7.75 EU/t (That is a theoretical max, thunderstorm and all! Very unlikely) and can stay at very low EU/t levels for OMGWTFIHATEWINDPOWER long time.
Solar panels on the other hand will generate 0.5 EU/t on average until it rains or thunders. You can sleep away rain (during night time) and thunderstorms. You cannot sleep away bad wind conditions.
You can sleep away night time PERIOD and thus increase your net EU/t gain with solar power. No matter how much you sleep, your wind power will either suck or be great. You never know what power levels you will get with them...

You can argue all you want but there is a reason why people STILL use solar power exclusively. Even though they have been nerfed some.

Quote from Corbald

The fact that people are arguing SO vehemently both FOR and AGAINST the new Solars is evidence that they are now TOTALLY BALANCED! YAY!

P.S. rougs ar toltily OP an i haz prof!!1 STELTS! +9000 enternetz1

Except one side argues with detailed facts while the other claims to have "proof" based on misconceptions about them.

EDIT: Just for the heck of it... If i made a poll with the question "do you think i am gay?", do you think the poll will show 50/50% or will it be in favor of me being gay because this is the internets after all?
You see, for every reasonable man... There are over nine thousand retards.

Quote from FnordMan

Technically the fastest way is by gravity into a pool of water. From that height it'll need to be 2 deep and probably 3x3 so you won't miss it.

Yeah, you got me on that one! Except i don't like water. It makes me move slowly! (For that i use a jetpack to get above the water level fast so i can sprint in mid air away from water)

Quote from SpeedDaemon

Or just have quantum boots... I've had the q-suit nether portal glitch send me way up above the top of the map, and still easily survive the fall (if I don't get kicked for "hacking"...)

I can't afford quantum stuff yet. And they use energy to dampen the fall right? I don't know how costly a fall of 64 tiles is but a jet pack is fueled by saplings and a few EU's to compress them into biofuel cells.
The benefit is i can "jump" higher than 127 tiles where as you can jump 15 (IIRC)

EDIT: TL;DR


A wind generator will on average generate 2.5 EU/t (*) but can generate as much as 7.75 and as little as 0.00266666667 EU/t (it will only send whole EU packets though. Packet sizes will be between 1 and 8 EU and will be sent when the fractions of an EU exceed 1.0)
During a thunder storm, production increases by 50%.
During rain (not a thunder storm and not sunny), production increases by 20%

There is a VERY VERY small chance that a wind generator breaks (replacing it with a standard generator and dropping 1 to 4 iton ingots for the blades) if it's production should exceed 5.0 EU/t. At most this chance is 0.0075%. Every 6.4 seconds.

* - The average is slightly higher than that. Read the full post if you want to understand why!

...
This is out of interest for another thread, but here goes...

Currently (as of 1.337b) wind generators operate as following:

each tick (20 times per second) the generator gains "fuel". (internal workings)

Each 128th tick the generator updates it's production values. (every 6.4 seconds, this)
Every 128th tick the generator updates its obscured block count. (except for ticks 1024, 2048, 3072, 4096 and so on. This is most likely a bug! It should be every 1024 ticks or 51.2 seconds. I have made a bug report about this)

When the generator updates it sets it's "subproduction" (temporary) value to:

subproduction = windStrength * (height - obscuredBlockCount) / 750

Wind strength is a random number between 10 and 19 initially. Wind strength CAN change every 128th tick (6.4 seconds) and can go as high as 31 and as low as -1. (Yes, this means subproduction can reach -0.1666)
If wind strength is less than or equal to 20 then it has a flat 11% chance of increasing by 1. For each strength above 20 this chance is reduced by 1%. At strength 31 there is a 0% chance of wind speed increasing.
If wind strength is more than or equal to 10 then it has an 11% chance of decreasing by 1. For each strenth below 10 this chance decreases by 1. Even at a strength of 0 there is still a 1% chance of it decreasing by 1 to -1)
Do note however, IF wind speed increases then there is no chance of wind speed decreasing. So there is a 11% chance that wind speed will not decrease alongside the 11% chance of it increasing. I'm not good with such math but someone else probably is.

If subproduction is less than or equal to 0, "fuel" gain fails. The generator will produce as much power as it did when it was last updated. (thus, a wind generator will never produce negative energy even with a negative windStrength)
However, if it is positive then we proceed to make some additional adjustments to subproduction.

If it's thundering then we multiply subproduction by 1.5.
if it's raining then we mutliply subproduction by 1.2. (Even though it's raining during a thunder storm, in game code it is ONLY raining when it's raining and not a thunder storm. thus, you cannot multiply it by both 1.5 and 1.2 during a thunder storm!)

At this stage, if subproduction is greater than 5 there is a ((subproduction - 4) / 5000) * 100 percent chance that the wind generator will break and drop 1 to 4 iron ingots.
For example, say you have your wind generator at the top of the map (height 127) and the wind strength is 31, during a thunderstorm. You only have 2 cables going to the generator through the obstruction area. The math is:

subproduction = (31 * (127 - 2) / 750) * 1.5 = 7.75

You run a 0.075% chance of breaking your wind generator. That is, at THAT production level, one wind generator will break on average every 8533.33 seconds. (~2 hours 22 minutes 13 seconds)
Pretty small chance but it does exist.

Now, if all has passed (subproduction is greater than 0 and your generator hasn't broken from overproduction), multiply subproduction by 100 and divide it by 100... In other words, leave it as is! (The reason i mention this is because it is in the source code. A constant value called energyGeneratorWind exists that is set to 100 but has probably been another value in the past.)

Right, you now have your subproduction temporary value. Your generators energy production is the integer part of that value.
Let's say the IC2 wind strength is an average 15, your generator is at height 127 and has 2 cables going into it and all other blocks around it is air blocks. The weather is sunny and clear.

subproduction = 15 * (127 - 2) / 750 = 2.5

Your production every even tick is 2. Your production every odd tick is 3. Your average production is 2.5.
The reason it works like this is because EU's cannot be split in decimals. But the wind generator will compensate for that by holding on to the fractions of an EU for you.

As far as production goes, this is all you need to know about wind generators in IC2 1.337b.

---------------

Note: Alblaka might ask me about the chance percentages, how they can be correct... Reason is simple! You are using <= instead of just < in code. This makes it include 0 as a valid chance. F.E: random.nextInt(10) gives you a value between 0 and 9, not 1 and 10 or 0 and 10. If you check for random.nextInt(100) <= 10, there are 11 chances that the condition may be true. (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are all <= 10)

LATE EDIT: Clarified that when a wind gen breaks, it is replaced by a normal generator and 1 to 4 iron ingots are dropped in it's place to simulate the blades breaking off.

In the 1.337b source i found what appears to be an unintentional mishap.

In TileEntityWindGenerator.java:69

if(ticker % (8 * tickRate()) != 0 || !initialized)
            {
                updateObscuratedBlockCount();
                initialized = true;
            }

I believe the intention was to run this every 1024 ticks but due to it having a "!= 0" instead of a "== 0" it is run every 128 ticks EXCEPT for the 1024th, 2048th, 3072nd, 4096th ticks...
Small easy fix. Just stumbled on it as i wanted to understand wind generators a bit better.

Quote from SpwnX

Instead of using jetpacks, use magnetizers.
they are cheap and a fast way to go up. [faster than jetpacks]

But you need to go down as well. The fastest way is... A jetpack ofc!
Plus, refueling a jetpack is cheap considering all the saplings you are going to have that otherwise would be wasted.

Quote from Trifler

Since I'm the one who started listing tools in the first place, and a couple of other people have now started doing it too, I'll just say that if something doesn't list a tool, it means that either nobody has identified what tool it needs or nobody has updated it yet. If it says "N/A" for the tool, that means that no tool is required. Note that the tool listed is generally the minimum. So, if it's a stone block, it should list a Wooden Pickaxe, even though any pickaxe will work. The Wiki only differentiates between pickaxes, and is not concerned with different types of shovels, hoes, etc. This is because there is never a situation where you can only dig something with a diamond shovel, for example.

So, if someone tests a Bronze Wrench and finds that it is indeed the tool to use on Luminators, you can mention it in the Discussion tab for the Luminator on the wiki and someone will update it.

Well, like i said. I have tried wrenching, punching, drilling, sawing, cutting, axing, shoveling the luminators. All those tools break the luminator as if it was glass. You don't get the luminator back...

It's as you say. You cannot split 1 EU packets.
Add the bat box after the MFSU using a MV and LV transformer.

The Wikipedia states that Splitter cables and Detector cables can be used to detect overflow or detect when a storage is empty.
The question is, how does it work?

The only way i know how right now is to make a feedback loop so that if EU's are passing through a detector cable then the storage has power. For this i have to make another storage just for that feedback loop. I don't want that...
Could anyone provide examples on how to make a storage full/empty detector without using an extra storage. Thanks!

What i was saying is, it should be enough for the luminator to turn on when it has MORE than 1 EU stored and turn off if it has 0 EU stored.
But there is one issue remaining though, if the luminator is on and the last EU is consumed then it turns off and wastes the last EU.

How about making the luminator ONLY turn off if the luminator is asking for power but there is no power to take from storage?
So you send 1 EU to the luminator, the luminator turns on. The stored EU is now 0 but the luminator will ONLY turn off after it has gone through a light cycle, if one is present.

Quote from Rick

Solars are way more expensive than windgens cadde....It takes longer to make solars than to make windgens.

They are not THAT much more expensive... And you still have to feed wire down to sea level which does cost extra resources for Windgen unless you place them at sea level.
No matter how you twist and turn it though, windgen takes more space than solars and takes longer to build. The cost difference between the two is:

Solar / Wind

10 iron / 12 iron
12 rubber / 0 rubber
3 glass / 0 glass
3 coal / 0 coal
2 redstone / 0 redstone.
6 copper / 0 copper

I consider rubber to be infinite and so easy to get that you might as well skip rubber alltogether... But if you wanna be nit picky about it... Insulating cables for sky limit wind farms will consume more rubber than your solar array so...
I consider glass to be so abundant (cobble -> sand -> glass) that it is pretty much irrelevant.
So after all is said and done. The only thing more expensive in solar panels over wind farms is the 3 coal, 4 redstone and 6 copper you need... Wind requires 2 more iron so lets call the copper cost even.
Since you require a lot of other building materials to make a wind farm (platforms to stand on, a long cable going to ground level etc) and it takes time to build stuff high up in the air i would much rather build a large solar array than a large wind farm.

However, i don't want to build either of them. It's the whole "once set up they never need to be cared for again" thing. It doesn't take any skill to set them up and there are better performing generators out there, it's too cheap IMHO.

Now, will you stop making irrelevant claims? Time IS money. The extra time i would have to spend on building a wind farm instead of a solar farm is time i could have spent finding resources. In the extra time i spend building a wind farm over solar i could have found a whole bunch of ores.

Quote from HeadHunter67

Well how about that. I had built a fuel jetpack but never used it and had not realized it was that much better than the electric one.

It's a pleasure to serve.

Quote from MJEvans

Yes, however that still doesn't fix the bug that the luminator is then /consuming/ that eU without providing any lighting duration for it.

Currently:

0eU (buffer) + 1eU (incoming) - 1eU (for on) = 0 eU ==> Luminator off (power evaporates without performing work)

What it should do:

'on for one more cycle' == buffer value of 1eU

0eU (buffer) + incoming + 1eU if buffer == 0 eU (reflecting 'off' to 'on' transition) -1 eU (for on) = incoming left in buffer (which is incoming - 1 lighting ticks)

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There is a clear difference between >1 and >=1...

I didn't even finish reading your proposal... There where a number of reasons as to why:

• It's 2048 EU, not 2024...
• More tiers are not interesting anyways.
• Learn to format a post. Divide it into relevant sections instead of simply making a brain dump.

Empty RE batteries are stackable, why not just make empty energy crystals and empty lapotrons stackable? Wouldn't that make more sense? (And easier to code?)