Posts by Corbald

I have been having some issues with finding the lapis I need to get the system up and going. I don't want to just creative it because I'm going to be using it as well. I'll let you know when I have it up and running. I'll be sure to get it operational without all the cover plates and walls in place to hide the wiring, so you can see everything.

Some time tonight I'll recreate my setup. I think it'll work out better for you, but I'll let you decide once you have seen it. The (very) nice thing about it is that you could make the MFSUs in 'clusters' so you could have that massive reserve you were talking about, but with a power meter to read it's storage at-a-glance.

Indeed!

For example; In my last world I had a butt-ton of batboxes INSTEAD of MFSUs so that I could check the input/output of each one and display the results on an at-a-glance RP2 light display. Each batbox would trigger the output of the previous one only when it was empty, for cases where my power supply failed or was shut down, and would fill sequentially as well. This gave me a way to have something similar to the meter on the MFSU, except externalized into the world. I was still working the system out when my -supposedly- stable bucket reactor went critical... My fault entirely. I had forgotten something simple that I won't mention here...... The most recent backup doesn't include that setup, unfortunately, and I have moved on to a new world anyway.

P.S. The OreVeins is turning out to be quite entertaining! I would love to have the resources to set up a server with 'Extreme' mode. Talk about some real industrial commerce that could develop! Must say; it's made the ore scanners MUCH more valuable! I have (as a side note) 'reprogrammed' my scanners so they can be used to discover which ores I'm detecting. By setting the top 3 desired ores (coal/iron/diamond) each to some factor of 10, it's MUCH easier to understand what's beneath your feet. (Coal = 100, Iron = 1,000, Diamond = 10,000.)

Quote from SpeedDaemon

Something downstream has to actually be accepting power during the tests.

You can feedback the storage here so you don't need downstream draw. FYI. Suggest having THAT test on a branch of the output, rather than on the primary output.

EDIT: Can I ask; are you looking for some sort of lit indicator? Like something you would check at-a-glance in a control station, rather than something that requires flipping of switches/etc...?

EDIT2: Guess what I mean is: WTF are you actually trying to DO? Can't really think of how you would want it set up w/o that info!

Detecting the full state is easy, obviously (redstone the storage and add a detector wire on the output). It's the empty state that's in question, I guess. Considering that you'll likely be getting at least a trickle of EUs into the storage, you won't be getting a true empty state at all, unless you shut off the energy input once the storage is full. Is that your setup? If it is, I can give you my setup that uses RP2 circuits to fill/empty a storage in cycles... I'm sure it could be replicated with base redstone if required.

P.S. Incidental, this circuit is also useful for measuring gross EU/t over time. If you just wire the output to a counter, you can see how many cycles it's gone through in a period of time. Do some math and you can figure out EU/t. Ideal for charging customers for their power usage. "Customer has emptied a MFSU 15 times, that's N EU/t/day.." If you are using batboxes, you get more cycles/time, and less cycles/time for larger storages. Obviously the cycle time is dependent on a static EU/t input of some sort.

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

Elifre, your MK-V popped because the timer circuit was in a different chunk (which was unloaded) than the reactor, possibly?

Yeah, it's hard to get around the feeling that something is very much like cheating. I try to remember all the time/mental energy I had to spend to create the ridiculous Reinforced Stone production facility when I design a 6 meter thick reactor chamber just for testing ideas!


I think I'll hold off on helping you test for the time being... I'm not looking to start up a new world until IC is in 1.0 and it really sounds like that's exactly what I'd want to do to really be of any help. That and I don't think I can handle any more chunk loading lag! TBH though, you DO have me a little excited (oh my!). I'm already mentally designing a RP Frames machine which would check blocks-harvested each mining action and try to trace veins of ore! I always did think the even distribution of ores was a bit silly. I'll PM you my e-mail anyway. When you get the chunkloading issue resolved, drop me a line and I'll at least take a look and let you know what I think!

Cadde, I really DO see your point. If I were playing Dwarf Fortress and had a team of little guys to share the workload, I would also ask for more balance from the system (mods and all). But it's just me, by myself. I'm really more interested in making complex systems of automations. I think we share the same general goals, it's just that I'm willing to fudge a bit, here and there, to keep it seeming like a game, and less like work. I, for example, will be replacing my quarries with frames once they are supported. Sure, quarries do the same job, for less resources, and are MUCH easier to set up. Frames, though, are just more FUN! I'll have so spend HOURS constructing the initial gantries and logic systems that move them. I guess I just see Initial Time Invested as a more valuable resource, and Maintenance as a detriment to be avoided where you can. I actually LIKE the idea of having to clean the solars with mineral oil based cleansers, so long as my giant, convoluted, multi-part machines can do it for me!

IRL we build dams, employ hundreds or even thousands of people to maintain and operate them. We build solar fields and again, employ hosts of people. All in the name of renewable resources. I don't have hundreds or thousands to keep my systems running, but they DO require maintaining. Various bugs plague them. RP tubes don't work with BC Auto-Crafters. BC wood pipes keep flipping around on me (ERGH I hate that). I'm CONSTANTLY worried about my bucket feeder CASUC (590 EU/t off a 0-chamber FTW!). Worst of all, I'm running on an old laptop. I have to keep everything in separately loading areas or it KILLS my FPS. I can't even get above 15fps if my tree farm is loaded! GODS FORBID I watch my quarry fields! It's for that reason that I finally, after fighting it for so long, had to abandon my over-large BC power plant and install (ugh....) Power Converters! It really was a sight to see, too...

Anyway, I'm not sure where I was going with this... suffice to say "To Each His Own" and all that rot. I think I would like working with you, so long as YOU do the mining!

P.S. I always rooted for the machines in the John Henry / Paul Bunion stories... A man isn't a man without his tools!

BTW... Any chance that that Veins mod is public?

I don't think any less of RP's solars than I do of IC's. Both require an investiture of resources and both supply free energy, but only during daylight. Should there be an addon to either IC or RP that allows the conversion of EU to RP current, I'll be installing it with the intention of using some portion of my Reactor's output to run the RP systems. If I have to be honest with myself though, I don't even think of Uranium as a finite resource... It's coming up in my quarries with ridiculous frequency. What's more, my quarries run off of a tree farm to charcoal energy system anyway. It's all about the renewable resources. We have solar panels IRL, and they work, why not in Minecraft? Just think of the RP machines as being very efficient.

You could, in all honesty, just set up a massive field of quarries, have the Uranium auto-processed, feed it into some 0-chamber Mark 1 reactors stuffed with plating and get the (much more complicated) equivalent of free solar energy.

Personally, I go with a Reactor setup because of the EU/t/block it supplies. Instead of 100+ solar panels lagging me out, I have one (or a few) Reactor outputing the same amount.

If you want to run your setup w/o 'free' energy, so be it, but if you are simply asking which (RP or BC) pipe system is superior for feeding coolant into a reactor, the answer (IMHO) is obviously RedPower. Remember, even if you aren't using the BC engines to supply the system with power, you still have to 'waste' space to collect solar energy, balance the energy grid so you use the minimum number of necessary panels/batteries to generate the needed power and last through a night (and any storms) and wire the whole damn thing, lol!

EDIT: Also, keep in mind that the RP solar panel is currently the only way to get power into the RP system. I'm expecting more energy generators in the future, and MANY more devices to use the energy ON!

P.S. For those thinking of conversion mods, please measure by RP/IC solar input conversion. One panel's output = one panel's output.

Well, since you're using an ICE CASUC, I would just switch to the RP tubes. No spillage and you just set a Transposer or Filter to stuff the tube with as much ice as you can per .2 seconds (on the RP timer). Should keep you're reactor SO supplied with ice you can potentially run OUT of ice and have to deal with increasing your production! I almost never see any leakage from RP tubes. If you stick too much in one, it just backstuffs the sending Trans/Filter, which is no big deal, since it'll just clear out when the Reactor has room for more ice.

I have been experimenting with the RP2-PR4 machines, and I must agree with the previous poster, it's going to become MUCH easier to set up CASUC designs. Unlike the last poster, I don't think this is a BAD thing at all! It feels MUCH more 'Reactor' like. I never did like the 'One Box to Power Them ALL' style reactors and making them work better with BC/RP pipes/tubes only brings the more complicated (and dangerous) designs into the realm of the conceivable for the rest of us!

Nope, that's something everyone did. You're just (basically) shutting the HVs off. In reality you are trying to convert the no-energy in the workshop grid to EV in the EV line, so the HVs are thinking you intend to add to the HV grid and will act accordingly. So long as you keep the three dot side to the EV wire, you're set.

Personally, I used a RP Blockbreaker/Deployer combo as a switch, but I like to over-complicate thing

Quote from Alblaka

O M G
If IC stuff works on RP and i've implemented the Warmode...
Godfuckinghell, once i've got the T4s implented, you could essentially build a gigantic unstable BH-Generator, moving itself into the enemy area and BOOOOOOOMMMWOOOOSHHDEEAAAAAATH!

HAAAHAAHHAHAAAHAhaahah!! Haven't laughed so hard in a while! Assuming that BH stands for Black Hole, I'm suddenly VERY excited for Tier 4!

On a serious note (yeah right!) I think our visions of terrain-eating mobile death fortresses has broken something critical in Alblaka!

There's also the potential that frames will only function properly with RedPower components on them. (or I should say only Redpower Components will function on frames...) That being the case, you could try my idea. I'll be building a fleet of 16x20xN earth borers/tunnelers that lay down tubes behind them and return the mined resources to me, where they are processed and some are converted into more tubes to keep the whole thing going. They also line the tunnel with glass, so I can see all the pretty ores they didn't grab. They'll lay down track, so I can visit them for maintenance, and a simple Detector from RP can be set to stop them on mining of planks or stone bricks, so I can avoid tearing through a mineshaft or stronghold.

Sounds like FUN!

If, and that's a BIG IF, it's possible to attach IC stuff to frames.... OMG.... Mobile Factory that just bores through the earth from bedrock to skycap!

I'll be building a 'rough up' out of wood planks as a stand in for frames and some other RP machine to stand in for the frame motors, in case anyone is interested in the concept. I have already worked out most of the problematic things, like how to attach/move the borer head so it gets all the blocks in front of this thing.

EDIT: Just thought of a way to do a water cooled reactor.... Water might not move with the frames, but Deployers will!

Hack into the local power grid and get enough EUs to run a stolen UU Matter Gen. Use this to get the basic resources to construct a Miner and a Compressor. In the meantime hunt/farm creepers and convert all UU-Matter to gunpowder. Construct a giant nuke block (at least 10x10 chunks, top to bottom) and detonate it all. Get banned.

j/k

Looks promising!

Here's a preliminary design I have been working on. It's a 'Full-Tilt' setup which extracts empty buckets each pulse and sends full buckets, regardless of the state of the buckets in the Reactor. A chest is used to collect and redirect any overflow, so no backstuffing of the Retrievers takes place. Please note that I'm 'simulating' the Reactor using 8 Deployers. The deployers fire once every .4 seconds, as does the entire cooling system. So, that's 8(ish) buckets incoming to the reactor every .4 seconds.

One serious issue is that on the initial startup, and every time the Reactor is restarted, you have to load it with plating or some other filler instead of U-Cells, leaving room for the buckets. As the cooling system gets flowing you can begin to replace the plating with Uranium Cells... Alternatively, you could just leave the Reactor empty and replace buckets in the system with U-Cells until you reach equilibrium.

Fortunately, because empty U-Cells still produce heat (or at least the 'Depleted' ones do) you can just reload the Reactor with new Cells when it needs it, without a shutdown.

Does anyone NOT use RP2 with IC2? I know some small minority is in that camp, but I can't imagine doing so myself. That being the case, I find I treat RP, IC and BC like competing companies. I use the products that I need to fit the circumstances. I use the RP Lights for when I need them to turn on and off. I use the IC Luminators for when I need something that will hold a charge. I use BC for when I need leaky pipes ! I know the RP lights don't run off the power grid, but I can simulate that with the new EUD wires.

Not really trying to make a point, just my 2 cents.

Actually, I have switched over to using an array of Deployers to simulate the Reactor. I'm using the previously mentioned 8 buckets per second as a benchmark for how to wire up the Deployers to behave like a Reactor. If I get extra buckets piling up in them, I'm feeding too fast. If I don't have ANY buckets in them, I'm feeding too slow.

Obviously, this is preliminary research only and will have to be adjusted once the 1.0 version of IC2 comes out. Right now, I'm just trying to find out of the RP2 machines and tubes can exceed BC in reliability and reduce complexity (and size). I'm working with a bucket system right now because I don't have compressors to make ice with. I'll be checking on that to see how it'll rate once it's possible to do so.

I'm hoping to replace BC with RP entirely, once the frames from RP are out. I LIKE BC, don't get me wrong, it's just that to power a complex industrial operation, you need a butt load of engines and a way to fuel them. Either Combustion engines, which means lag from fluids moving through waterproof pipes, or Steam engines, which means massive tree farms (steam has 1/4 the power output of Comb. engines, IIRC) to convert to charcoal. My computer sucks, so I need a less laggy alternative.

Here' s my latest setup. It's messy, but supplies 8 buckets per .4 seconds to the 'Core.' It has backstuffing protection and should be safe if the cooling is started before the Reactor and the Reactor is started with low/no U-cells in it (they'll be added as buckets get flowing properly.)

Ok, using 16 Retrievers, I have managed to get my bucket system to around 10-15 buckets per second (at a guess). Only issues are that the system still backstuffs BADLY if you shut down the reactor while it's cooling and that it takes a few minutes to get the BPS stabilized. One solution to the second problem is to fill the reactor with the initial buckets and all the remaining spaces with plating. Once the cooling starts flowing you can start to replace plating with U-Cells as the flow can handle it. I'm working on a better solution.

I'll be making a request to Eloraam for a bi-directional Filter, or a modification to the existing one (possibly a button in the Filter GUI) which will allow a Filter to act as it normally does, but also pass items through in reverse. Even an electric buffer would be nice... Similar to a Buffer but can have Blutricity and Redstone applied to pass it's contents into (or out of) an inventory as space is made.

Anyway, most of the issues are caused by tube lag, as mentioned above by someone....

Tired.... Going to nap!