Posts by Shirolol

Quote from KrisBigK

I thought that you were using the heat from a fluid reactor to power the fermenters. Sorry about this.

Apparantly you don't know much about reactors, but if you want to compare other stuff with reactors I highly recommend that you have a deeper understanding of reactors first.

About the EU / fluid reactor efficiency: The following design can at most produce 140 EU/t in an EU reactor, but if you throw it into a fluid reactor it can produce 896 HU/t, which can be converted into 672 EU/t (with an volume of 288 blocks even counting the lever). If a MOX rod is used then it can produce 600+ EU/t in an EU reactor (which uses the exact same fuel rod configuration as the design that I mentioned in previous threads), while with a single MOX a single fluid reactor can produce 1279.68 HU/t (959.76 EU/t) on average. The fluid reactor provides a decent increase in efficiency given the same fuel (reflector) input.

The main reasons that I used EU reactors in my design was 1) they are significantly smaller than the fluid reactor generating the same amount of EU and 2) they are much easier to build than fluid reactors.

reactor design

erp=Bc60roHEXmwTLmBlMz2Lmg3MCLUtff5eB+geFCfXW325ap/+ayNy7MQkj03forQB

672 EU/t Fluid reactor setup

Note: these reactors have operated in survival perfectly fine for at least several real-life days

What I am really concerned about is the necessity to provide heat for the fermenters to get biogas - sure 32 liquid fuel fireboxes can produce 20480 HU/s, but in 1 second they consume 320 mB Biogas, which requires 3200 HU to ferment that many biogas. If you burn biogas to provide heat for the fermenters (which to me seems to be the most efficient way of doing so) then that gives you a net output of only 17280 HU/s, or 864 HU/t, which is already less than 32 HU/t less than what a quad U-rod fluid reactor can produce.

As I have only built a ~280 EU/t biogas based power plant in survival it would be helpful for me to see how things are scaled up if you could post something about your design (e.g. screenshots) so I could take a look at it.

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No, I understand fluid rectors. I built one that outputs 1kEU/t.

Yeah, the fermenter powering is a bit of a flaw in my design, because if I only run a single block of the power plant, I get lazy and just use Electric Heaters, which, yeah, would mean I only get 608EU/t.

I do that mostly because otherwise I would need a station just for the biogas and quite some extra space, which is a problem for just a single block, but if I put 4 in a square, I should be able to get 3kEU/t quite easily.

But again, the space requirement and material cost of it is much lower than a comparable fluid reactor setup.

Like I said the reactor would be SEVERAL TIMES more expensive to build, so unless you can get 40000HU/t with a MK1, it is impossible for fluid reactors to ever be worth it compared to a biogas plant.

And I am pretty sure that my 26880HU/s reactor is about as powerful as it gets.

The internal components and the heat exchangers just completely ruin fluid reactors with their resource costs.

I wanted to get a better screenshot, but I couldn't locate the power plant in my testing world. lol So here is an old screenshot.

Using Thermal ducts because pipes weren't a thing

Quote from KrisBigK

The whole replicator-based reactor thing is indeed intended for end-game renewable power generation, but in general I don't think reactors are poorly efficient.

Code: Part of default IC2 Config

; Balance Values for Fermenter
[balance / fermenter]
need_amount_biomass_per_run = 20
output_amount_biogas_per_run = 400
hU_per_run = 4000
biomass_per_fertilizier = 500

To run a biomass-based fluid reactor that produces 20,000 HU/s (which is identical to what you mentioned and convenient to calculate), it needs 10 fermenters to consume all the heat at 100 HU/t each, which produces 4,000 mB Biogas in 2 seconds, which needs 200 semifluid generators to burn all of those biogas, as they burn 10 mB biogas every 1 second. In total you get 3200 EU/t.

The design that I used in my MOX array was a 4-chamber design with a single quad MOX rod and 4 iridium reflectors, running at roughly 82% heat and giving it a raw output of 600 EU/t each. Taking replication costs into account it outputs 427.668 EU/t on average. A 20-reactor array, which produces 8553.36 EU/t on average, has a volume of 12x11x35 = 4620 blocks. If a 20,000 HU/s design is more space efficient, the volume of it must be under 1728.44 blocks, which to me looks difficult.

Another thing is that your design doesn't scale up very well. I designed my reactors to be easily stackable, but if you want to, for instance, double you output you literally have to build everything again though some parts might be similar. Without overclockers in my fuel processing section, I would consider the thermal centrifuge to be the bottleneck of the maximum rate of fuel production, taking 25s to process a single item, thus taking 50s to process a single uranium ore. Replicating enough uranium ore (without scrap) to match this speed requires an input of 16,070 EU/t on average. Considering only 2872s/10000s of the power produced is used to replicate uranium, this would mean that it can take in 55,950 EU/t for the amount of time that EU is used for uranium replication, which equals to 93.25 reactors running simultaneously. If there are 90, they would have an average output of 38490 EU/t and a volume of 12x11x105 = 13860 blocks. If the 20,000 HU/s design is used then its individual volume should be no more than 1152 blocks.

In terms of building efforts your design would be tedious to build on a large scale, while mine should be much simpler.

As for the amount of machine blocks needed, my 20-reactor design needs 31 + 20 + 80 = 131 machines, while only one of yours needs 200+.

Also, don't forget lag, which is the most basic limiting factor of how large anything can be built. The more machines you use in a single build, the laggier it is, and in turn less of it can be built.

I currently have no idea about what your design is like, so that's what I can say for now. It would be great help for me to analyze exactly how much more efficient your setup is if you could post a world download.

My reactor layout

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I have no idea how you came up with your numbers for the biogas setup, because they don't make any sense at all. 200 Semifluid generators would produce 3200EU/t, but that's not what I am using, I am using 32 Liquid fuel fireboxes, which produces 1024HU/t or 20480HU/s. 200 liquid fuel fireboxes would produce 128000HU/s.

I am gonna do some maths now, but before that I can say that your design and its efficiency doesn't actually matter at all.

You are using EU-mode reactors. I don't know if they are more efficient, but if they are, that just makes the implementation of fluid reactors even more worthless, because this would mean that Fluid reactors are completely outclassed by EU-reactors even though they were designed to be way more efficient.

About space you have a point, that EU-mode reactors are very small, but you cannot build a fluid reactor that would be more efficient than a good biogas setup in both cost and size, which was my main point.

Quote from KrisBigK

I am not intending to offend you, yet I really want to laugh at what you said.

I haven't played IC2 for quite a bit of time, but I believe more than a year ago I have already built a self-sustaining uranium reactor design making use of the replicator. Though that build is not completed (thus not entirely made public), it had already achieved the ability to run on its own with a large surplus of EU. If I remember correctly the fuel rods in it aren't even operating at max efficiency. In terms of the exact minimum efficiency required please refer to this.

As its output scales with the amount of reactors used, the only thing that makes this thing balanced (at least to me) is its incredibly high building cost, the biggest portion of which is the component cost. Once the cost of the reactor components are cut down it would be too OP for such a thing to be even theoretically possible.

You might have missed the point.

Sure you can build self-sustaining reactors.

But I can build self-sustaining biogas power plants that are WAY cheaper and WAY more powerful and probably also need less space.

Nuclear reactors are not balanced, they are pretty much worthless.

The only advantage of them is, if you intentionally build a lot of efficiency 1 reactors, you can quickly burn through uranium to get plutonium for RTG which is good for portable power plants.

Nuclear reactors are a lot more endgame, especially with an automatic replicator setup, so they should MAYBE also have endgame-worthy efficiency and not be completely outclassed by baby's first biogas plant.

Quote from estebes

You can always use both (survival) My First 5x5: BioGas, ~900EU/T, self feeding. 10 Uranium Rods Stable

Well then we have some use for reactor components, but then you have to replace the fuel rods, unlike a pure biogas setup which can run indefinitely until a chunk loading issue starts messing with the steam boilers.

It doesn't change the fact that Nuclear reactors in all forms remain incredibly inefficient.

If I combine an efficient biogas setup with an inefficient reactor setup, I just get a somewhat efficient hybrid setup.

I have to admit, though, heat exchangers are pretty good at powering fermenters. My power plant has the little flaw that starting it up is high maintenance, since a lot of energy goes into electric heaters on fermenters and there is no return for a while because the boilers have to heat up.

Are you sure you picked the right versions?

Quote from yahinstudio

Hello, I encountered a problem when trying to change the solar output. The generated current can be changed to the setting value in the configuration file, but the maximum output current is limited to 8192eu / t. Is there any way to change or Unlock this restriction?

An EU packet beyond 8192EU destroys every machine or cable it touches.

Fluid reactor is awful in general, but basically just use any high-efficiency reactor setup. These are good in fluid reactors.

I'd have expected this question what feels like a century ago.

I think Thermal Foundation took Buildcraft's place in most things, its pipes are based on Buildcraft's I think and they work perfectly with IC2 or just about any mod.

If a mod's pipes don't work, then they don't use Forge correctly.

Is the transformer in step-down mode as it should be?

Can I see the setup?

Pipes work, you just gotta make sure that no pipes have an output facing a steam turbine/steam kinetic generator.

Likely EU loss in the Cables.

If you for example connect a million solar panels with an MFSU over 5 HV cables you actually get zero EU because of the abysmal voltage.

The Steam generator or Steam Boiler is a completely passive object that turns heat into steam.

The Steam kinetic generator or Steam Turbine when equipped with a Steam Turbine item converts Steam into distilled water and KU.

The Kinetic generator turns KU into EU.

The Steam Turbine strangely accepts input of distilled water, so you have to make sure that no pipes or machines could be trying to put water into the steam turbine.

Wait but Steam generators can't be upgraded.

They just sit there and convert HU into steam if possible and set up correctly.

Yeah the list of scannable items is actually getting laughably small these days.

Hardly any modpack leaves all recipes in one piece. Check JEI.

Apparently when the chunks are reloaded, sometimes the boilers and fluiducts start working before the turbine does so it builds up too much steam and goes to Insane Voltage levels.

A spot loader prevents this from happening now.

I did some maths and the reality is: powerful reactors are completely worthless.

The most powerful fluid reactor I could come up(26880HU/s) with is only 133% as powerful as my Melon Power Plant(20480HU/s) while costing several times as much. It's also not more compact.

Granted, the melon power plant costs a lot more tin to build, but in total material value that doesn't matter because replicator is a thing.

As long as the reactor components remain excessively overpriced, nuclear power plants will never be worth it and the only use for uranium that makes sense is a lot of very inefficient reactors for plutonium production.

This also makes lead a lot less useful, because a low-efficiency fluid reactor is a lot worse than a low-efficiency EU reactor.

Is there some big game changer I'm missing or is Uranium really just for depleting ASAP?

Quote from Haanicz

Ok, so I wanted to craft some bronze dust, but the ic2 bronze is not in nei. There's only Thermal Foundation bronze dust. Even though it says it accepts any "dustCopper" and "dustTin", the ic2 crushed copper and tin do not seem to be identified as such. What can I do about this?

Crushed ore is not a valid metal dust.

If you wanna use crushed ore to make an alloy dust, you have to smelt it and then macerate it again.

If in the modpack you play metal dusts obtained this way can not be used to make bronze powder, then the modpack creator isn't very good at what he does.

Since every modpack has TiC anyway, you can use a TiC smeltery to make alloys.

A friend invited me to play the Direwolf pack and in there I have a power plant that uses fluiducts and a Steam turbine.

The Power plant normally generates exactly 512+256EU/t, which is HV. Of course, since Steam turbines can be random sometimes I did arm it to accept EV spikes.

The Fluiducts we use can transfer 600mB of superheated steam every tick, which should be at most 600EU packets, so far away from the 2048EU limit the power plant can tolerate

HOWEVER, often I go back to my power plant and find that the HV cables on the kinetic generators and once even the HV transformer were destroyed, which can only mean there was a IV spike.

Now it seems that Steam turbines have an internal buffer of steam that is WAY TOO LARGE as it seems to accept enough steam to emit a packet that goes beyond even IV.

By all means it should be 100% impossible for this setup to emit IV packets. It emits 512EU packets on average and beyond 600 should be physically impossible due to the way Fluiducts work.

Does anyone have an idea what is happening?

And since Direwolf uses industrialcraft-2-2.8.111-ex112, is this maybe a problem that was eventually fixed?