Posts by Sheenus

Quote from VirMan

I was actually thinking of energy tiers like cable conductor has main influence on cable losses...

That's an interesting idea actually; so we have the large majority of the resistance/loss from cables being based on their metal type, which is then fortified by their insulation/covering? Seems like an interesting mechanic, but I don't know how complex that is to do in Java, and there's likely a large priority list before any kind of power transmission revamp at present.

Not sure what you mean when you describe the function of dense or 4x cabling though; you say the packet sizes stay the same (Ok, fair enough), but it allows for a transmission rate four times that of regular cable? That I can get behind, but I don't know whether that might be imbalanced or not. I mean, you get the same EU/t transmission from the next 'level' of material, but it might allow larger packets or have less loss in transmission.

Quote from VirMan

in lossy order [most lossy] iron->tin ->bronze->gold->copper->silver->graphene[almost losless]

Concerning your material resistivity flow chart, I see nothing wrong from a real-world-translating-to-minecraft point of view; however in terms of gameplay, I'd change a few things;

1) Either move bronze up to be better than both tin and copper or scrap it completely. I don't see anyone putting the effort in to make bronze cabling if they can just extrude copper (or tin, if it were better) instead; less effort, better results, and I'd say wasted programming time coding an item I foresee few people using.

2) Maybe keep gold above copper in terms of conductivity; it doesn't make sense from a real world standpoint (which probably makes all the Power Engineers that play this mod and others with similar transmission systems somewhat irate [IT MAKEZ NO SENZE]), but similar to the current system, gold is (at least before you obtain an advanced miner) slightly rarer than the other metals; thus making its use more valuable if it can transmit more power, or have more conductivity than other more common metals (I'd say iron is the exception to this only because you use so much of it to make other machinery anyway, to then have to use more ingots as cabling is just a kick in the nuts. At least before you obtain an Advanced Miner).

3) I'd be tempted to say take silver out, if only because IC2x (on it's own) doesn't have silver ore as part of its worldgen (making it a rare, end-game (mid-game?) resource), but I'm pretty sure myself and others that play without a mod that worldgens Silver Ore are in the minority. Leaving it in, I'm also seeing silver as a 'cheaper' alternative to graphene, assuming graphene is made as hard to make as Glass Fibre is now; if it's just basically a type of coal dust wire then that may end up being easier to make, at which point silver cable runs into the same problem as bronze (more productive to make the next level of cable).

I also like the idea of being able to colour the cabling, but only in that it would seperate different lines by colour. I find playing AE2 that it's often easier to separate sub-networks via adding quartz fibre between cables then colouring it instead, but it's two different ways to the same solution; I don't need to differentiate the networks visually, I just need to separate shortest paths for channels. My personal preference is still for example using the wrench to enable/disable cable connections on a side, but honestly if the painted cable was implemented I don't think I'd complain (only when I have to colour a line last-minute because my planned layout didn't take into account adjacent cabling :P), but I think it would be wasteful coding if they implemented both for the sake of community happiness (assuming more people want one or the other).

I didn't mind the old system at all, where we had differing energy loss per cable length dependant on cable type. It always sucked when you lost a certain amount out of transmitting power from for example a reactor to a factory, but I could (kinda) deal with it when I looked at it in percentage losses per EU/t generated. My only gripe with it was having to, for factory-type setups, transforming power down or up in order to use tin cable (which then also slowed down the EU transfer rate) for greater efficiency, but I guess that's the trade off; do you transform down, cut your power transmission rate and transmit more efficiently, or do you keep a high transfer rate and eat the losses.

The only real problem (and at the point I describe it should be just a slight irritation) I see is that you have to have a Tier 3/4 processing setup being fed somewhere on the underside of 70EU/t (think it's 69EU/t for all 4 machines?) as a minimum currently to have them running continuously which requires using copper cable to transfer as tin won't transfer that much power. If they're grouped (and you're using ejector upgrades to push relevant outputs to the next machine), it also requires transformers or transformer upgrades on all the machines bar the centrifuge (unless there's an item that I haven't heard about that lets you separate adjacent wire connections?). If you have your storage unit close enough to the machines then I guess it's not that much of a problem (as always with IC2, Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance), but I could see it being an irritation to a lot of less thorough people (mind you these mechanics I've described are not new, so it's likely those that are annoyed by them have already moved on to other tech packs).

TL;DR: while I have my annoyances with it, I liked the old system, I don't think it needs to change much. Do think we could use some sort of item to separate adjacent wires though (since any wire placed adjacent to another will always connect no matter what).

Quote from MauveCloud

instead of using the redstone modes of the MFE to determine when to activate the reactor, you can set that to "None" and use a redstone comparator to get a redstone level based on how full the MFE is.

Holy Moses, you can actually use a comparator to send a different strength signal depending on how full it is? That's kinda cool (P.S., you learn something new every day :D). I might have to play around with that the next fluid reactor I make.

Quote from MauveCloud

I haven't checked to find out what Stirling generators do when the energy storage blocks they're feeding (and any internal buffer they might have) are full...

You're basically right Mauve; Once a Stirling Generator's energy buffer fills completely, it stops accepting heat (as it's got nowhere to buffer the converted energy to). If this happens for all the Stirling Generators on a reactor this basically causes a cascade failure (the generators can't accept heat, which in turn prevents the LHEs from cooling coolant, which in turn forces any further heat generated by the reactor into the core, thus causing my previous issue, the stages of a reactor going into meltdown).

As for my problem; I seem to have solved it, but it's probably not the best solution (by far). I added a splitter cable directly adjacent to the MFE, so that it only transfers energy once it's completely full; otherwise it waits to fill up. It's a bit of a counterintuitive solution; you'd think I'd want to shunt energy out as soon as possible, but when I was mucking about with it I noticed that without the splitter cable the RS signal from the MFE wasn't updating. However, once I added the splitter cable, the signal down to the reactor worked as intended/planned. Still don't have a clue what's going on, but it's gone though nearly a full set of fuel rods now without so much as a hiccup, so I'm not complaining.

I made an album with pictures and more detailed comments here if people are interested.

Quote from MauveCloud

As far as the reactor hull melting, here are some things you might double check (though putting 9 of the fluid ports together on one side may make it difficult to check the center one):
1. Do all the LHEs have a full set of heat conductors?
2. Do all the LHEs and fluid ports have fluid ejector upgrades? (and are they configured to eject to the appropriate sides?)
3. Are all the LHEs and Stirling generators oriented correctly to transfer the heat?

I made sure when I assembled it that I had all the requisite doo-dads (fluid ejector upgrades, heat conductors), and I'm pretty sure I've got the stirling generators and LHEs oriented correctly (the two machines should have the side with the orange square touching the other machine, such that the square for each respective set of machines is touching, correct?), but it never hurts to double check; which I did, and it's all fine, all machines and their peripheral devices appear to be installed correctly.

Quote

Also note that as long as the redstone port isn't directly touching one of the inner reactor blocks, the reactor will shut down when one of the hull pieces is destroyed by those effects.

I find that when it does switch back to EU mode that the reactor is still running, even though I've got the redstone port sitting on the upper third of the reactor hull (where it shouldn't be touching any part of the interior reactor chambers), it still continues to operate. This doesn't seem to be an issue (as I said, the configuration appears stable provided I've got coolant running around), but I am more familiar with your explanation mauve, and the fact that that's not happening here is somewhat disconcerting to me.

I'm running a mockup of the reactor internals atm just to check if it is truly stable (no offense intended Mauve, just covering bases), and if it's all good I'll have to have a think about how this is happening; my hunch is that the coolant's stopping somehow, likely due to a full MFE/generator buffers.

Actually, depending on how EU packets are transferred these days, it could be the setup between the MFE and the factory; I've got a MV-transformer in front of the MFE dialing down packets to 128 EU/p before getting sent to the CESU factory storage buffers on each side (well, 3 CESUs and a MFE chargepad, but all at 128 EU/p. Depending how the packets transfer, no matter how intense the factory's working, the MFE just may not be draining quick enough to take on the extra power generated as the reactor cools down.

Hey guys, I've run into a frustrating issue regarding the 5^3 fluid-cooled nuclear reactor; it appears to overheat and melt parts of the pressure vessel/hull, even though the setup I'm running should be quite stable. I haven't stared at it to see it overheat, however periodically I'll go down to check on the reactor and see it in EU mode (shouldn't be) and a random piece of the reactor hull missing (hence why it's in EU mode); I can only assume from this observation that something is stopping the coolant from cooling and returning to the reactor via the Liquid Heat Converters, thus forcing the core temp up until part of the reactor hull melts away.

So setup is the 5x5x5 (5^3) nuclear reactor in fluid cooling mode, with the following configuration (using Mauvecloud's IC2x reactor planner)

01010C090C090C090C01010A140D140D140901010C0D0C0D0C0D0C01010A140D110D110901010C0D0C0D0C0D0C01010A140D140D1109

The planner shows that the internal configuration is quite stable, though the heat distribution changes somewhat over different simulations. From the reactor itself I've just got a simple Stirling generator setup converting the ~800Hu/s to ~400Eu/t. The 9 fluid ports, LHEs and Stirlings required are all grouped on the top of the reactor in a 3x3 format. I can take/grab pictures if visual detail is needed to help me troubleshoot.

At present I've got it running my factory so that if none of the machines are running and the storage unit (an MFE) fills up, the MFE is in empty/partially full redstone mode, with redstone connecting from the MFE to a lamp adjacent to the reactor redstone port which, once drained slightly, will turn on the reactor and attempt to fill the MFE back to full, before the MFE deactivates and waits to be drained enough to turn the redstone signal on again. I've also got luminators running off of a batbox filled directly from the rearward stirling generators ('rearward' being the side of the reactor opposite the side with the access hatch). Again, i can grab pictures if verbal descriptions are less than helpful.

If I were to hazard a guess as to the issue, (assuming all other things working) I'd say the problem lies in the storage unit setup, specifically how I'm activating the reactor when the factory is effectively 'idle'; there are some units (e.g. Thermal Centrifuges, Heat Generators for the Blast Furnace) that constantly require a trickle of energy; this continuously drains the MFE, but not quickly enough to continue the redstone signal before the reactor fills again, thus a sort of toggled effect takes place within the reactor. I'm not sure how this would adversely affect the reactor stop it from being cooled, as even if the MFE were completely filled, I was under the impression that the Stirling generators would have enough of an internal buffer to stop the reactor effectively 'backing up' and stopping coolant to run.

At this point I think the easiest solution would be to just install Nuclear Control and install a failsafe switch to shut the reactor off if and when the core temp reaches intolerable levels (what's melting point these days, 50%?), but I'd like to solve the problem without installing more mods if I can help it. (I'm using a homebrew modpack at present, quite tiny and trying to keep it that way.)

If anyone needs further info (or aforementioned pics of the Nuke setup), just ask. Any and all help, assistance and advice is greatly appreciated.

And fluids can be manually added to a canning machine by shift-right clicking on the machine while holding the filled fluid container (bucket, cell, Universal Fluid Cell, etc). Be warned though: Adding fluids manually to a canning machine will not prep it to enrich or fill; one manually filled, the fluid needs to be transferred to a second canning machine via a fluid ejector upgrade to be put in the proper tank.

Yeah, I remember having to install pumps next to miners to get through fluids when I played ages ago, and thought it odd when it just went straight through with these latest builds.

Appeared to just go straight through w/o much of a problem with some earlier (but still rather recent) builds, but current build appears to be kinda finiky; sometimes goes through lava, doesn't go through water; but both can be fixed by placing blocks under the miner (through the fluid) for the miner to mine (assuming you can place said blocks in the fluid). Playing with an attached pump doesn't appear to do anything; may have been disabled for whatever reason.

I seem to remember needing two pumps side by side in order to pump quickly enough for the miner to pay mining pipe, otherwise one pump wouldn't clear fluid quick enough and the miner would just get stuck a the first layer of fluid (assuming it hit a pool greater than one layer deep). Was that still an issue?

I noticed recently in the latest build (#658 ) that miners are now not able to burrow through liquids (they used to on the older build I was using; I can't remember which one it was though. ); This seems normal, but when I test using a pump to pump out the water, it still gets nowhere. have I done something wrong or not done something I should have? Should miners still be able to burrow through fluids? Or is there another device we need to bypass that kind of stuff?

My opinion: why not give players a choice in how they get it? the whole 'Iridium Anomoly' thing certainly seems like decent RL precedent to argue for the inclusion of iridium as a potential ore, and though I'd guess we don't really get too many iridium-laced micro-meteorites impacting our planet in the modern day, I could see a rare-event iridium micro-meteor, perhaps similar to how Ars Magicka has moonstone meteor impacts, being a neat mechanic alongside iridium ore. perhaps giving you a tiny piece of iridium/iridium nugget when mined.

However these possible mechanics would still need to be balanced with the fact that the QuantumSuit is quite a powerful piece of tech, and while one currently needs 40 pieces of iridium ore to craft it, it makes you, to quote Chocohead, 'immortal'. So the power it gives the player does need to be balanced with how hard it is to make (and thus, the iridium being the main production bottleneck, needing to stay quire rare indeed)

Besides, the whole 'find the ore in a dungeon' always seemed silly to me. Dunno why; it is after all, thought to be an extra-terrestrial metal. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I suck at finding dungeons.

I must admit, I was kinda thrown off by the quite large gap in utility between the NanoSuit and the QuantumSuit, and the exponentially increased production costs between the two. This seems alleviated somewhat by the magic that is the digital miner advanced miner and it's ability to continue to pull a large amount of materials out of the ground for you once you get to a substantial Tier 3 setup, thus allowing for continued production into power devices for the Mass Fab, but it feels like there could be an in-between set (or perhaps upgrades to the NanoSuit) that could fill that role.

Yes, the QuantumSuit is quite powerful, but as a 'balance' it's quite the grind to create (and at least for the helmet at present, maintain). I can't speak for whether it ignores armor-piercing weapons (as I both don't use Tinkerer's Construct and play modded minecraft on SSP), but I agree that if it doesn't it should; otherwise it makes all that resource-farming, including about 76.8GEu (assuming 16MEu = 1mB UUM) completely pointless if some scrub with a TiCo rapier can come in, kill you and (I'd argue even worse) steal your shiny QuantumSuit (I mean, isn't that the reason the nanosaber destroys it on hit, so that kinda thing doesn't happen?)

Just my two cents.

So to control the quantum jetpack you need two buttons; your IC2 Boost Key and your IC2 Mode Switch Key (which from your previous post appears to be bound to M). As you seem to be getting, you can toggle hover mode by holding the jump key and pressing IC2 Mode Switch key (Jump+Mode). However to toggle the jetpack (in order to use either mode) you need to hold down the mode switch key and tap the Boost Key (Mode+Boost).

Doing this should toggle the jetpack on and off, you should get a text prompt saying 'Quantum jetpack enabled/disabled' depending on it's previous state. Once activated you can press Jump+Mode (as described above) to toggle hover mode, just like the other jetpacks (you'll get a text prompt for that as well).

P.S. if you notice yourself sinking slightly in hover mode, don't worry, that happens.

EDIT: If you're not sure what buttons these are bound to, look for them under 'Controls' in the Options menu.

I remember when I used to play other modpacks that the TE3 tesseract was godly for this kinda thing when used in conjunction with a quarry; strip mining got you shitloads of cobblestone, so you funnelled back to your base via tesseract, then from there shunted the cobblestone to the mass fab. Alternatively I think you can have a similar setup using AE2's quantum link devices. (though only conjecture on my part at this point; I have to refresh what quantum linking does in AE2).

However this does seem like a decent setup for a 'pure' IC2 playthrough, if slow at managable levels and super laggy at high-input levels. Must admit all I've been doing is mining netherrack in the nether when I pine for some more iridium (but then I'm only running my mass fab on a 400Eu/t output nuke reactor setup, so I've really only got myself to blame; I should probably redesign for higher output if I want faster iridium).

Going back to the mob grinder recycler, doesn't that require a fixed location near a mob spawner? I don't know about you guys, but I could never get non-spawner grinders to work...

Upon further investigation, all appears fine; tested it in both Creative and SSP worlds and could use the new canner for canning uranium. *shrug*

NEI's still telling me the old canner's the only option though; maybe a bug with NEI?

May have been mentioned before, but doesn't look like the 'new' canning machine (the Fluid/Solid Canning Machine) is wanting to process Enriched Uranium Nuclear Fuel into Uranium Fuel Rods; only the 'old' canning machine (simply called 'Canning Machine') will do that, and it looks like this is consistent across all the nuclear fuel. Is this intentional; to have essentially a nuclear and non-nuclear canners?

Quote from MauveCloud

As far as I can tell, even the insulation on other cable types isn't necessary when placed in the world (still necessary for some recipes, though)

I think, because the e-net's switched off by default presently, that ALL negative effects to ignoring power ratings are disabled, including stuff like getting shocked for touching live, uninsulated cable.

I have noticed though that some transformer blocks aren't transforming EU right. Is that a side-effect of a disabled e-net?

Quote from Chocohead

Single block windmills have had their recipe removed in favour of the giant kinetic wind generators instead.

Are they a recent addition? I swear I remember seeing the recipe for the Wind Mill block working just the other day... (I guess that 's 2.x for you... )
These new wind generators look interesting though; will have to play around with them a bit methinks.

Just so I have a point-of-reference for Wind Mill energy farm design, is there any change to the Wind Mill's energy generation mechanics with respect to what's on the 'official' wiki? I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask this, so if someone could point me in the direction it'd be much appreciated.

I found this thread asking about Wind Mill height limits, but it's over a year and a half old. Is the discussion there still relevant?

Just a quick question concerning windmills and their Power bonuses in inclement weather; do they still get the bonuses in non-rainy areas, such as savannas and deserts? Always looked to me like weather was a universal variable (no matter where you were in the world, it was the same weather everywhere), but is the rain just a visual effect, done away with in non-rainy areas, or does it signify something in particular, especially concerning energy generation by Wind Mills in savannas/deserts?

TL;DR version: Do non-rainy areas affect the bonuses given to Wind Mills during inclement weather?

P.S. This may sound pedantic, but can we change the name from Wind Mill to Wind Turbine? it's an energy turbine, not a wheat mill.

EDIT: So apparently we're not using Wind Mills at all anymore; but the kinetic wind generators appear to get the same kU generation bonuses from inclement weather; does operating a kinetic wind generator in a non-rainy area affect it's operation?

Also, can I take back my pedantic comment?

Hey guys, just wondering if any of you know of a decent piping mod that goes alongside IC2 currently for MC 1.7. I like a lot of the pipes mods out there (indeed my favourite atm is EnderIO's pipes), but they either don't work at all with IC2 or add clutter that I don't want. Has anybody made a 'pure' IC2 transport-pipes mod?

Failing that, if anybody's got suggestions other than TE3, Mek or BC pipes I'm all ears.

I guess I should consider myself lucky that it didn't blow me the f**k up when I hooked it up then.
Thought that that kinda thing would've happened when I upgraded the system to medium voltage; so I made transformer upgrades for all the machines. then added some more machines before adding the transformers and realised 5 mins after I hooked them up they should've taken out a sizeable chunk of the part of the base they were in.

A bit of an off-topic question, but I think still (kinda) relevant; are we still referring to packet sizes as difference in voltage? How does EU per packet (EU/p) differ in practicality (how they affect machines) from EU per tick (EU/t). Are packets applied per tick, and so making the two units synonymous or is there some fundamental difference in how they affect IC2 machines?

I get the feeling I should start a new thread with this question...