I've almost completed my working design of a *working* LZH-condensator replacing reactor,
complete with "cooling rooms" (where it auto-crafts them back to full) and fully automatic replacement of the LZH's when they reach breaking point.
I just can't really do it reliably without redpower, so I'm kinda waiting on that, even though everything else is set up and working correctly.
I'm kinda in the same boat with my DDoS. Until RP2 comes out, I simply won't be able to manage it automatically.
ShneekeyTheLost Maybe your comparison of your DDos system and my 420 eu/t reactor isn't the best. Probably because the efficiency is different and the total eu/t is different. Maybe 11 of these + 1 of this vs 8 of these (with 3 extra thick plates per reactor, because they need to be replaced once during the cycle, this way it is fair when comparing the costs of the reactors). Yours cost 5720 copper, 15165 tin and 3047 iron. 8 of the normal reactors cost 4432 copper, 1512 tin, 2472 iron and 272 gold. That is 1288 copper, 13653 tin and 575 iron less, though 272 gold more. That is more or less a fair comparison: both 1360 eu/t, 5.67 efficiency and are both Mk 1 (sort of). Sure, the 272 gold is sort of a lot, but it is a lot cheaper on the copper, tin and even the iron. But its anyone's own choice.
How did you end up with three times as much iron as I'm actually using?
1092 iron, 448 Tin, and 972 Copper is what I'm using for my cooling towers.
The actual reactor itself is 660 Copper, 568 Tin and 44 Iron, plus 48 uranium cells.
With this setup, I'm producing 1360 eu/tic. So I've actually got you beat on ALL resources.
I still prefer using my Mighty nanosaber which actually does the same damage as athame, but its rechargeable.
I just use my Chainsaw. Sure, maybe not quite as efficient, but a whole lot more entertaining 
Refueling reactors is as easy as a Supplier Pipe hooked up to your reactor and a crafting pipe hooked up to your compressor + a couple of autocrafting tables.
Next.
So basically... tin wire in CF. Done.
Honestly, CF is a great building material for your house. Very blast resistant, and can be colored to decorate the interior. Now you never need worry about it again.
Sure i mean it 'only' uses up 2812 lapis in a cycle and a double chest can hold 3456. But i think the problem lies elsewhere. Probably in actualy filling the chest with lapis.
4 UU = 9 Lapis. However, that also doesn't seem very cost effective.
The big question is whether or not this design if more efficient than if you would have spent all those resources on just a few stable reactors. Beside the resources required for the reactor itself, you need additional filters and pipes as well as several spare-coolant cells.
That is, of course, the million-Eu/tic question. Honestly, I don't know yet, this is still in the realm of theorycrafting. Hence my caveat at the beginning of my post that this is just thinking out loud and trying ideas well out of the box.
The immediate advantage I can see with this setup is that it requires no gold or diamonds. Gold, in particular, has always been an Achilles Heel of mine because I have an inordinate fascination with Logistics Pipes and autocrafting. Granted, my Assembly Table has tremendously helped with that, however I'm still leery of using stacks of gold on a reactor system, as i have seen in some build designs.
Overclocked Vents and Component Heat Exchangers both use gold. And every system setup I've seen uses copious quantities of both of them.
The other question is if you can get over 1.3kEu/tic out of stable reactors at a lower cost than what I have used here. That's quite a lot of energy output.
Let's do a bit of cost analysis, shall we?
I jumped over to the 'official list of good reactors' thread, and used this beast with a production of 420 Eu/tic. You're going to need FOUR of them to match my reactor's output.
This would be 1264 Iron, 2140 Copper, a mere 260 tin, and 240 Gold.
The DDoS has a lower iron and gold cost, but a higher Tin and Copper requirements (mostly due to the massive number of coolant cells required).
Seems to me to be a possibly worthwhile tradeoff. Actual milage may vary, of course.
New reactors usually require a lot of materials used each cycle. So, to properly calculate it's effectivity we should know energy price of making replacements. Especially if we use lapis. And for that, we should know the price of making scrap.
If we'd have rp2 (i.e. breakers), then it would be only price of recycling - 12k per matter or so, because we can feed recyclers with generated cobble slabs.
But how to make scrap without block breakers?
Generally, I use the tailings from my Quarry system to feed recyclers. One only needs so many stacks of cobblestone, dirt, and sand. Set up my recyclers on the 'overflow' pipe, so that when the chest is full, excess gets fed straight to the recyclers.
Another option would be to set up mass renewable resources. For example, a Forestry Reed Farm produces quite a bit of reeds which can be recycled. Farms produce a surplus of seeds and wheat which can also be recycled. Likewise, darkroom mobgrinder provide copious quantities of recyclables. Usage of a 'lava blade' will obviate its secondary use as an xp farm, but will fully automate it with the use of an obsidian pipe.
Fantastic.
I have to add something:
your reactor will run for about 173 seconds, after that the Coolingcells will melt.
you can easily make a timer with Redpower or any other timer
setting it to 160 seconds to autoshut the reactor off.
Hmm... that would prevent hull heat buildup during cooling cell exchange.
So the redpower system would look something like this:
Timer set to 160 seconds.
Filter set to pull out all coolant cells.
Tubes are hooked up to coolant towers as the viable inventory slots for them to go into.
Once all coolant cells have been removed, coolant cells from a different coolant tower (round robin logic?) are then placed into the reactor.
Reactor starts up again.
Quotealso you schould consider to put some Reactorheatvents into the Reactor,
so it can Cool itself if some Heat will get to the Hull
Hmm... the engineer in me agrees with you. While the above *should* prevent hull heat, no engineer relies on *should*. However, every reactor heat vent is one less coolant cell or uranium cell. May have to increase size to accommodate.
Also, as a question, is it a bug in the designer that a reactor heat vent is not activated, regardless of hull heat, when it is all by itself, not touching any other components?
I'm mostly just thinking out loud here, trying some 'outside the box' approaches to cooling nuclear reactors. One of these ideas, no clue how good it will actually be, involves a lot of coolant cells.
Specifically, we use coolant cells to soak up the heat, then yank them out before they melt and replace them with fresh ones. Then we cool them down elsewhere.
Now, Coolant Cells themselves eat up 4x Tin instead of 1/4 tin, so that's kind of painful in the amount we're talking about. Then it's 3x of them plus six more tin for a 30k coolant cell. Then, it's two of those, six MORE tin, and a dense copper plate for the 60k version.
My plan is to look into the viability and cost efficiency of setting up a Continuously Applied Coolant Cell setup, much like the old CASUC reactors, either in sticking them in rapid cooling 'generators' or simply tossing them. Or, to apply a cute moniker, the Decentralized Distribution of Steam, since that's what ya get when ya heat water.
Now let's talk about the cost of coolant cells. Since we're reusing them, it makes sense to use the biggest ones available, to minimize the amount of transfers made. So, per 60k coolant cell, you need 6 coolant cells, 12 tin, and 2 dense copper plates. So, 36 Tin and 16 Copper.
So now let's start talking about cooling. Now, ideally, we're wanting to get away from heavy resources, that's why we're looking into this concept in the first place. However, that's actually probably possible, because we won't need to be using overclocked fans or advanced fans or anything.
So what we would need for this concept to work:
* Cheap, reliable coolant towers. No gold, no diamonds.
* A method of getting used cells to said coolant towers.
* A method of automating the above.
Now, HAYO Corp has provided us with a design for a coolant tower which is quite potent, 80 cooling in a 2x4 grid. However, it requires gold and even diamonds, so that's probably not going to be practical for our considerations, even though it is very HAYO-ish.
Now, just the coolant tower itself requires an investment of 52 Copper and 36 Iron. So, not *too* bad, in terms of resource. Something certainly reproducible, if not spammable.
Regular heat vents require refined iron and four iron bars each. A Reactor Heat Vent takes one and a couple of Dense Copper Plates. An Overclocked Vent requires the reactor heat vent and a couple of gold. A Component Heat Vent eats up a basic vent, some tin, and some iron bars.
A Heat Exchanger is a Dense Copper Plate, and Electric Circuit and three Tin. Not bad at all. Reactor heat exchanger takes two more dense copper plates, plus the above. A Component Heat Exchanger eats up a Heat Exchanger plus four gold.
Now then, if we are cooling down nearly-dead coolant cells, then things that suck up hull heat are worthless to us, because there won't be any. So either Basic, Component, or Overclocked vents are the order for the day.
So let's do a cost analysis.
Basic heat vent is about... let's call it six iron, a bit less but I don't like dealing in fractions. It cools off 6 heat. So about a one iron per cooling ratio.
Overclocked heat vent cools 20 heat. BUT, they require a basic heat vent, a couple of dense copper plates, and a couple of gold.
I suppose at this point, you're going to be needing to look at your gold reserves. Personally, I hardly count the cost of copper, I have so much of it. If you are swimming in gold, don't sweat it. It's much more efficient, from an Iron standpoint, so gold is the only real factor to consider.
Now, the Heat Exchangers are where this can get pricey. Basically, we'd normally want Component Exchangers, since we're not dealing with hull heat. Unfortunately, those are the ones that eat up four gold *EACH*. So Basic exchangers. which transfer 12 heat per side, is probably more economical.
However, there's a cute trick we can pull here... Component Heat Vents.
Basically, they cool off everything around them 4/tic. If we have them surrounded, that's a potential 16/tic cooling per each. That's overtwice what Basic vents do, AND don't require exchangers. Plus, they're relatively inexpensive, at a mere 4 tin and 4 iron bars on top of your basic vent.
So now we're looking at some kind of checkerboard pattern of component heat vents, with your heated up coolant cells interspersed.
Something like this would have 108 cooling at maximum capacity. Only two cells would have 8 cooling/tic, most of them would have 12/tic, and two lucky ones have a coolant of 16/tic. It turns out an average of 12/tic per square.
It'll be just over 50 copper, 40 tin and just under 100 iron to produce this cooling tower. A bit heavy on the iron, but it doesn't require any gold or diamonds.
Viable? Depends on your iron. However, this is a static cost, rather than a recurring cost.
Right, so just over 100 heat dissipated per tic per tower.
Now, let us look at cost effectiveness at a big coolant tower like this one.
This bad boy cools off some 336 heat per tic. However, it also requires 244 copper, 112 tin, and a whopping 273 iron.
It's more efficient on your Iron to build the big boy, but not everyone has that many resources to devote to a cooling tower, so the choice is yours.
So, these are your coolant towers. A bit pricey on the Iron, Tin, and Copper... but no diamonds and no gold necessary. Now, what are we going to be using these on?
Well, let's take a look.
I started with a cute little design.
1360 Eu/Tic isn't a bad starting point. The 3648 Heat/Tic I'm not so thrilled about, however. That's going to be about eleven of the big coolant towers. That's going to be a significant investment in resources. Now, it could be possible to make it entirely out of UU Matter, but at 5 UU per 4 iron... that's going to be expensive. Copper and Tin are cheaper... 3 UU per 10 metal each.
So for 12 of these large cooling towers, you'd need 4095 UU for Iron, 879 UU for Copper, and 404 UU for Tin. Unfortunately, producing this much UU would require almost 900 million Eu. So probably not feasible.
So how do we get this to work? Simple... we don't treat it like a Mk. I reactor and assume we can ablate the entirety of the heat immediately.
If we build four of the large cooling towers, it turns into a much more manageable 1092 iron, 448 Tin, and 972 Copper. You'll make the EU to produce all that out of your first full cycle.
That means having a larger number of 60k Coolant Cells in reserve, switching out full ones for empty ones as necessary. Then at the end of the cycle, you wait for the cooling to catch up. Something like a Mk. II reactor.
Is it resource intensive? Yes (although at least no gold or diamonds were used in the making of this design). But hey, if you really want something that functions like a CASUC? This, or the Condensators, are about as close as you are going to get. The advantage of this system over Condensators is that all the costs are *static*, no components are 'used up', except the uranium cells themselves. You don't go through a chest of Lapis or Redstone every cycle, but you're still producing over 1kEu/tic.
This is probably cost effective for those who have long-term goals, something to set up as a massive initial investment which will produce dividends over the longer term. This probably also won't be your first setup either. You'll need to be firmly established to get that much UU or Iron. But it just might be your last.
Alternately, use logistics pipes and teleport pipes to fill up Lapotron Crystals and transport them to your quarry to run... whatever it is you are running it on. 100% energy efficiency over ANY distance in discreet 1m Eu/Tic packets!
I expect people to stop mentioning condensers or any design that employs them.
Wait... you expect people to STOP talking about new reactor component parts that are a part of the new mechanics of nuclear technology... in the Nuclear Engineering Forum? Umm... yea. Good luck with that.
Besides, what precisely do you USE Lapis on? I end up with diamond chests FULL of the stuff. This gives me a way to make a reactor that is even BETTER than CASUC was, AND stop having to feed lapis to my recyclers AT THE SAME TIME! Double-plus WIN!
Quote
Chambers are cheap. Vents costs a lot. You can count yourself, but i think it costs several chests of copper, iron and gold to make enough vents to cool of 4keu/t reactor. And i think it is simpler to just make several identical reactors, microcycled if necessary, instead of moving cooling cells around.
And you don't have several chests of copper lying around? I generally do. And this is also precisely why you spread the cooling capability out among several single-chamber reactors... that way it's not an iron and gold sink.
Quote
Keyword - "renewable". You can't make uranium from energy or otherwise. Actually, nuclear reactors (along with geoterms) was ONLY NON-exploitable generators.
Really? I guess my solar flowers were just a figment of my imagination then? CASUC was an exploit. Cry about it all you like, but you won't find any sympathy here.
For five minutes, until you run out of lapis.
Did you expect that much energy production to be cheap?
Quote
Reactors don't cool components anymore, you will need chests full of coppers and other ingots to make vents.
You are either missing his point, or are not aware of what he is talking about.
A cooling reactor is a single-chamber reactor with a pile of coolant fans, designed to rapidly eliminate heat from components. Basically, you transfer high-heat items the cooling reactor to cool them off, then shoot them back when done. It can all be set up with Logistics Pipes to automate it. Since the cooling reactor has no uranium in it, all of its coolant output can be used to cool inserted components.
So use coolant cells, switch them out when the components get close to melting, and repeat the process.
CASUC was an exploit, pure and simple. It's like using EE2 to produce FreeStuff(tm) by doing things like Darkrooms, Cow/Mooshroom Milkers, or any of the other rapid production of renewable resources to harvest for massive EMC gain tricks. I'm not sorry to see it go. Moreso when you can get an even higher EU/Tic by Doing It Right(tm).
Pretty sure he stated he thinks his reports aren't being read anymore. As someone who has played on Kane's server - he does alot of testing and reporting, he is quite obsessive with it IMO - but mod devs need people like him IMHO. A team of Kane Harts testing a mod would have no bugs lol
Pretty sure that since it was his first post on the site, he's never posted ANYTHING in the Bugs forum. Kind of hard to read a report that isn't put in the proper location. Maybe he needs to use the proper channels?
There's a big difference between submitting a bug report, or even a series of them, and complaining that things are broke.
To use an old engineer's axiom:
Quick, Cheap, Quality. Pick two.
Cheap has already been chosen for you because... well... FREE.
You want stable releases? Stop pestering for early release. You want early release, expect there to be bugs.
I mean, come on. It's almost literally looking exactly like this:
Fanbase: Y U NO 1.3.2 release?!?
Greg: buggy
Fanbase: We don't care! Give us SOMETHING!
<release>
Fanbase: Buggy! Y U NO FIX?!?
<facepalm>
I suppose DW20's server play has done one disservice to the mod authors... he cuts out most of his crashes, because he's trying to produce a show, and crashes take up airtime which could be devoted to content. As a result, people are under the mistaken impression that dev releases are, in fact, mostly stable. Because 'DW20's on a dev server, and it NEVER crashes'. Which isn't actually the case.
To the actual OP: You want hotfixes? You're apparently in a prime position to do something about it. You're already bug-hunting on your own server, right? Well, instead of bellyaching and complaining, you could compile the bug information, including how to reproduce and suspected culprit, and provide that information to the dev team. Suddenly, instead of being Yet Another Griper, you're actually contributing to the mod which you 'love and use', for very little additional effort on your part (posting the collection of bugs you have already researched). It might net better results.
While CASUC is out, it is possible to run a high-SUC reactor, although it would eat up redstone and lapis like candy. Well, I suppose the term Continuously Applied Single-Use Coolant would still apply, because you are still continuously applying SUC, but it can't be the ONLY component other than nuclear material anymore.
Basically, you use Logistics Pipes. You've got autocrafting tables set up to make Lapis Condensaters, and replace when depleted. Depending on the amount of heat you can divert to a single component, you can get quite a bit of cooling here. It will eat up a lot of Lapis, though. And I mean a -LOT-. Like you'd need EE in order to keep yourself supplied a lot.
Use a Chassis Mk. II pipe for feed. Have a supplier module supplying full Lapis Condensaters. Have an Extractor Module pull empty ones out.
Mind you, there would be some lag as the Lapis Condensaters are being produced. You may need to establish a buffer chest with a Supplier Module and Provider Module to keep supplied with Lapis Condensaters in order to keep up with demand quicker. And even then, there would be some delay as the logistics system realizes the nuclear generator requires one and transit time. This would need to be taken into consideration to make a fully automated system.
He is using BC at the moment. I am aware of relays, personally I use Immibis bufferchests or a filter hooked up to a buffer.
With a regulator that can ensure that items are sent by the stack instead.
Filters require a timer, Relays don't. Relays also take up less space, being the 'buffer chest' with a built in filter + regulator combo AND the timer to boot. What you are describing can be done, but it's quicker, cheaper, easier, and less hassles to just use a Relay and be done with it.
Seeing how you are using your pipes. Start using bufferchests and extract the items by the stack lol.
By 'buffer chests', I'm assuming you mean Relays?
For those who don't know, a Relay acts as a valid chest-like inventory for things to get dumped into, and it automatically spits out stacks of items out the back end. No lagbombing timers necessary. It's basically a combination of a buffer chest, filter, and timer on 1s delay, without the lag of a 1s timer, all by itself. Hook it up to BC pipes for better transportation, hook it straight up to your Quarry even.
Quite a clever little machine, actually.
Now if only there was a machine like a Filter that didn't need a timer, but automatically sucked things out of an adjacent inventory (like an IC2 machine), I'd be in heaven.
i have no idea what you're both talking about. i'm using PowerConvertersBC3_Client_1.3.4 with the latest IC2 and BC3.1.5 and everthing works fine
how do you line them up? when i place them above the pump the first layer works, but the second layer stutters very hard.
What version of Forge are you using, and do you have Modloader also installed? Because I just tried on a fresh install, and it wouldn't work. It didn't crash, but it didn't load PowerConverters either.
How do I have them set up? Simple. You have three gold waterproof pipes set up, with a gold pipe going back from the middle connected to the pump. Three above the gold waterproof pipes, three in front of, and three behind. Used to work all the time, before the mod died.
Eh, not much point in the mod now, except the Water Filters to replace the whole bucket-driven RP2 setup. Forestry has all your conversion needs.
Powerconverters is updated, right here
Doesn't seem to be working with IC2 v 1.103 and BC 3.15. Or if it is, the recipes are hidden, and changed. Or maybe it isn't compatible with Forge build 171. Whatever it isn't compatible with, it isn't working.
