Posts by Nightdagger

Weeds are really, really easy to spot once you know what you're looking for. However, it does mean that if you're trying to cross-breed plants, you have to watch them like a hawk, lest a weed take over while you were down grabbing just a little bit of coal to refuel your generators and ruin several generations worth of crossbreeding. Like my super-roses that got eaten by weeds this morning because I decided to go make a cheese sandwich to nibble on without pausing the game.

So, I spent a bit of time tonight messing around with overclockers, and here's what I found out.

First of all, for point of reference, a fully heated induction furnace processes a full stack of resources in approximately 42 seconds, drawing 16 EU/t during the operation, for a total energy consumption of about 13.5k EU. This is my basis of comparison, since the point of this is to determine whether or not overclockers are "worth it" over advanced machines at any point.

Now, an electric furnace running off of 4 overclockers has roughly the same draw as an induction furnace, but processes much, much slower. As in, slow enough that I didn't even bother clocking the time needed to complete a stack, it's obviously much less efficient than an induction furnace. A fifth overclocker draws more energy than an induction furnace, and still processes slower. A sixth requires a transformer upgrade, because it's now drawing 34 EU/t to operate, but has roughly the same speed as an induction furnace. It is, however, much less efficient, requiring double the energy draw of it's advanced counterpart. Adding more overclockers will trade energy efficiency for speed, and will surpass the speed of an induction furnace.

Now, it does need to be said that the induction furnace can process two stacks at once, and thus, it's efficiency is effectively doubled, meaning it only really takes about 6.75k EU to process one full stack (split it across the two slots in the induction furnace, and it takes 21 seconds to process instead of 42). However, it is limited at this, whereas you can keep putting more and more overclockers into an electric furnace.

This is where overclockers start to shine. It doesn't really show too much until you've hit your second transformer upgrade, and your 10th overclocker. This causes the machine to draw 170 EU/t, but to take only 10 seconds to process a full stack. It does cost 34k EU to do it, but you're trading 5x the energy to process twice as fast. The 11th overclocker drops the processing time to 6 seconds, but raises the energy cost to 260 EU/t...three times as fast, at 4.5x the cost. The 12th is the magic bullet, 370 EU/t, but only 3.5x to process a full stack. Six times as fast, 26k total EU consumed, only about 4x the cost in total EU, so you've hit a point where the electric furnace really shines with 12 overclockers. 13 overclockers won't even run unless you have an energy storage upgrade in it, draws 512 EU/t (plus probably some from the internal buffer), and still takes 3 seconds to process, so the 13th is a major downstep.

The true point of comparison is induction furnace vs. electric with 12 upgrades. Induction takes 21 seconds per stack processing time, 6750 EU to process, whereas electric Ux12 takes 3.5 seconds but 26k EU. I would say that, given the fact that charcoal is easy to come by and lava produces 20k EU per bucket, if you're running the equipment for long periods of constant operation, like an automated smelting line, induction is the way to go. Slower, but steady, low energy consumption for when speed isn't of the essence. If you're doing on-demand operations, electric Ux12 is definitely the way to go. Yes, you burn up more energy processing it...but you process it FAST, meaning you spend less time standing around waiting for machines to finish processing your materials, and more time using them. And time is a lot more valuable than a couple of extra pieces of charcoal worth of energy.

Now that I've taken the time to type all of this out, I really, really hope I didn't miscalculate somewhere or otherwise make a total ass of myself, lol

Well, it WAS up.

If anyone happens to get on before I do, please shut off my combustion engines, I really don't want them exploding due to a crash.

Quote from Levint7012

iWell 1 more day of fun... but maybe just maybe it will be fixed tomorrow... just maybe, if so i know 1.1 buildcraft, redpower and ic2 have been ported we are just waiting on forestry and iron chest, tp pipes and advanced machines, and if possible minefactory but last i heard it may not get updated... so we shall see.

Wouldn't count on Advanced Machines being ported, because IC2's upgrade capabilities make it somewhat redundant. Haven't heard on Bukkit ports for any of the others yet, I know they're all ported for SSP.

Yeah, I've never been able to get meaningful readings out of water mills.

If nothing else, the server being down finally motivated me into devoting some time into doing my Lets Play series I'd been intending to do for a while now.

Yeah, quite honestly, if you're using Buildcraft, it's likely more efficient to burn the wood into charcoal and then burn it in a generator than it is to take the time to macerate it down into dust and process it into coalfuel. You'd get more energy out of the coalfuel, but you'd also use more energy and spend more time on the process.

Great. So if all you're doing is growing crops and you have full fields, you're fine, but if you're trying to do any crossbreeding, it does require micromanagement (and smaller, specialized fields specifically designated for it, so that any weed invasions don't wipe out your general crops)

Good to know. Time to redesign my agricultural center <_<

Quote from raGan

You just have to make sure no plain cropsticks are in your garden. Also make sure there is no weed starting to grow, then you can leave.

Exactly.

I'm not so sure about that. I had a field of crops that got completely overrun with weeds, and there wasn't a bare crop stick in the group. Unless the crossbreeding sticks count...which if that's the case, then that's somewhat annoying because it basically means you're going to have to have separate fields for growing existing species and crossbreeding new ones.

I guess it's kind of realistic in a way, but still annoying.

Hopefully the map can be saved...I'm rather fond of my house, and I'd hate to see all of the work I put into it wasted...but if not, that's cool too. After all, we've had two x-rayers who worked over the more populated areas of the map for a few days each before getting busted, so it's no wonder I've been having trouble finding diamonds. Most likely, they've mined them already.

Wouldn't be surprised, if the modem was on the verge of death it might have been cutting in and out.

Looks like it's good and dead. It pops up for a few seconds, I connect, fall into the Void for about 10 seconds, and then get kicked to find the server's down again.

And yeah, Lolzar's been noticed by a couple of people using x-ray.

Umm, the design you linked is a MKII-1 with a 69 minute cooldown .

Just don't complain when you find out that your sexy house got blown to shit with nukes because your admin got bored.

Hell, teleport pipes was basically invented to combat lag issues. It wasn't really meant as a means of making things easier, it was meant to reduce the load that having fifteen thousand entities swimming through mile-long pipes creates.

So much for "I'm here to play tonight", huh?

Okay, folks, for anyone who doesn't know already, and to help prevent lag on the server (which is already creeping back in due to leaky machines apparently), here's how you make an overflow system.

First, you need an advanced distribution pipe. You make it the same way you would make a stone pipe, but with redstone on top of it. What it does is try to force any item that comes through it into the attached inventory, but if it won't fit, and ONLY if it won't fit, it sends it out to another pipe. You have to connect it with stone pipes, cobblestone won't work. What good does this do? Try this setup.

Say you have your precious cobblestone generator, or quarry, or whatever. It's happily working away at filling your chest with cobblestone. But what if your chest fills up? It's going to spew cobblestone everywhere. And that causes lag. The more crap that piles up, the more lag is generated. It's mostly noticeable only to people who have the chunk loaded from the client's standpoint, so if you're standing next to a leaky cobblestone generator that's what's really going to lag you, but it does stress the server if the chunk is loaded at all. Thus, you need a way to make sure that the cobblestone is taken care of properly. That's what advanced distribution pipes do.

Quarry goes to chest, but instead of having a stone pipe going into the chest, you have an adv. distribution pipe, with another stone pipe leading out. That stone pipe leads to your recyclers, all 10 of them or whatever. Advanced distribution pipes on top of the recyclers try to fit the cobble into those, starting with the first one, then moving to the second if it won't fit, then the third, or whatever. At the end, an open pipe above a pool of lava. Anything that is trying to be recycled that won't fit into the recyclers will now be destroyed instead of piling up into a lagarific mess.

Modify the system to suit your needs, but please, please use the advanced distribution pipes, and please, please have a lava bin to catch overflow and destroy it. Don't assume that having 3 or 4 or 5 recyclers will handle anything you throw at it...I've personally managed to overload a system of 10. And having a thousand recyclers won't do you any good if you accidentally let your power banks drain completely and they stop working, or if a creeper takes out a power cable, or something else happens that causes your recyclers to stop functioning properly. Any system that's capable of generating items without you personally putting them in there should have an overflow prevention method attached.

...This will not end well.

Have to say, thebluebear is a known griefer, he caused a lot of trouble on Gult's Gorge a while back.

Server appears to be kaputsky for now. I'm pretty sure I turned off the steam engine by my oil pump, but if someone could double check for me and make sure it's off if I don't get back on right away, I'd appreciate it.