My understanding is that the e-net gets a redo mainly to make it less taxing and to fix stupid things like pushing thousands of EU/t through copper cable by using tens or hundreds of parallel packets.
Then it should only affect wires, not machines.
Posts by Strill
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I think it's quite silly to make arguments for whether or not the old or the new system is "realistic". Anyone who knows even basic concepts of how real electricity works understands that IC2's e-net has absolutely nothing to do with it, and uses terms like "voltage" only as a proxy. It never made any claims of being a simulation of reality, either. This hasn't changed between the old and the new system.
I know a thing or two about how real electricity works and it seems to correspond pretty well to voltage, current, and power.
QuoteDisplay MoreWhat changed was that you no longer have this silly disconnect between packet size limits and actual power transfer, which coupled together with packet-based (not power-based) loss over distance confused the heck out of every newcomer. It was an artificial, unnecessary complexity, a corner that development had painted itself into. The new system gets rid of that by setting packet size equal to power. It's a massive simplification for the player. Less different terms to lern, less different numbers to keep in mind, no idiosyncratic behavior where you can route an amount of power in one way and have everything explode, but route a hundred times that amount of power in a different way over the exact same cable to the exact same machines without causing a squeak.
There's now just power. One key attribute. Everything else is irrelevant.
Of course, now it's no longer the newbies that are confused, it's the old established players who are so used to exploiting the idiosyncratic behavior of the e-net to transmit any amount of power over any kind of connection (another reason to better not bring up the realism argument, by the way). The new system shuts off that loophole. You now need to build differently.
Also, in case nobody noticed, not only storage got bumped up in tiers. Cables did, too - copper does 128 EU/t natively, not 32 EU/t. And machines as well. You macerator can handle 128 EU/t just fine with zero transformer upgrades, and 512 with just one. I've set it up like that in my world, there's no issue at all. In fact, I only know two things in the entire mod that will blow up on more than 32 EU/t, and that's the batbox and the luminator. Everything else I have tried is at least MV. The thermal centrifuge even does HV by default.
Aha! I knew someone would bring this up, because it's complete and utter nonsense. The previous system was extremely simple. It's the new system that's more complex. Players NEVER needed to know any of this nonsense about packet sizes except for calculating power loss from cables, which is what should've been the only thing removed in the new system. In every other application, all players needed to know were two things: EU/t, and Voltage rating. There were never multiple numbers, and you never needed to learn any of these stupid terms in the first place.All of that bullshit with EU/p and p/t was created by the wiki editors. I repeat, it was the WIKI, not the system. Take this piece of crap article for example:
QuoteUnlike Real Life™, there is no actual "voltage" in IC². EU travels in "packets" through wires with near-infinite speed and has smart pathfinding (somewhat like RP2 pneumatic tubes). Packets are measured in size (in EU/p) and volume (EU). (Size being the amount of energy it contains as it leaves a storage unit, volume being how much energy is left in each packet after inefficient cable usage).
If redstone power is not applied, it consumes 128 EU in up to 128 EU/p and converts them into up to four 32 EU/p. All conversions are limited to one per tick. (Converting 2048 EU into 4x512 EU is considered one conversion.)
If redstone power is applied, it consumes 128 EU in up to 128 EU/p and converts them into one 128 EU/p. All conversions are limited to one per tick.Introducing the player to packet sizes and all of this crap is completely unnecessary and only a source of confusion. This whole section could be shortened to:
"The LV Transformer outputs up to 128EU/t. It outputs Low Voltage normally, or Medium Voltage with a redstone signal."
Voila. Problem solved. All the player needs to know is EU/t, and voltage rating. Dead simple. Now it's not simple. Before all you have to tell a player is not to hook up a machine to a source of a higher voltage rating. Now you've gotta explain to them why connecting their xth generator all of a sudden made everything blow up, or why hooking two transformers makes things blow up, or give them the formula for how many things they can have on a line, and all this unnecessary garbage complexity that comes with the new system.
The argument that this was to make things simpler is a straw-man.
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For starters, for the amount of materials you've spent on the overclockers you could build several machines for processing and use less overclockers and still reach higher output at lower energy cost.
You can always do that, but it makes things more complex. That's the trade-off of overclockers. I feel this is getting off-topic though. The topic is the new energy system, not overclockers.
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You realize that a machine does not suck up the maximum it is rated to take right? A machine has a cost per tick and a maximum voltage per tick, if it is exposed to voltage greater than it can handle, it explodes. If it is exposed to an acceptable voltage, it siphons off its cost per tick and sends the rest down the line. So if I have an array of 6 macerators on the same line with no overclockers the entire line of macerators will cost a grand total of 12 EU/t. They are rated for 32 EU/t. So long as I send at least 12 EU/t and no more than 32 EU/t down the line, they are all powered, none explode. So let's say I have some combination of machines on the line that requires 50 EU/t (TOTAL) to run, there is NO WAY to supply power to all of them, unless you give them all a transformer upgrade. Once they all have a transformer upgrade, you cans send at least 50 EU/t and no more than 128 EU/t down the line and they will receive the requisite power and not explode. So now I start over clocking these machines and they require 300 EU/t to be powered, so I have to install 1 more transformer upgrade in each machine and send at least 300 EU/t and no more than 512 EU/t down the line. Lets say I keep on adding machines and overclockers to the same line and end up requiring 10000 EU/t to power them all. This means I have done something retarded and maybe should have designed my machine shop better. I could send 8096 EU/t down the line and it would power most of them, all of them if they are not running simultaneously. With that many machines/overclockers, I sincerely doubt they would all run simultaneously anyway.
When actually playing the game, I don't bother with any of this math. If I notice that the machines at the end of the line are being underpowered, I make more transformer upgrades and upgrade my power supply. Or I split them and run a separate line to each. If you need to run glass fiber cable to every pair of machines, then you have overclocked them to the point that they are probably completing an operation in one tick, or you are overclocking the mass fabricator, in which case, what did you expect?
I hope this helps you understand how the wiring system has changed.
Requiring 10,000 EU/t only means you have three machines with maxed-out overclockers. That's not unreasonable at all. And of course I want to run them all at once. Why wouldn't I? I can certainly see myself macerating cobblestone into sand, then cooking it into glass while my compressor is compressing plant balls from my auto-farm.Quotef you need to run glass fiber cable to every pair of machines, then you have overclocked them to the point that they are probably completing an operation in one tick,
Of course. That's what I always do in any world I use IC2 in. Why is that a problem? Overclockers are in the game for a reason are they not?
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...This?
Won't work. It only accepts at one point, so as long as cables are limited to 8,192 EU/t, that's the limit of the P2P Tunnel. -
I for one prefer this system. A few transformer upgrades in each machine and you quickly raise max EU/t far above EU/t cost. I supply 512 EU/t to my machine shop, the 512 line is split into 2, so I send 256 to each side of the room. Every machine has 2 transformer upgrades and 3 or 4 overclockers. None of them explode, none of them receive too little energy. Once I put my max 6 overclockers in every machine, I will probably need to upgrade to 3 transformers per machine and boost the input to 2048. Simple.
I'm missing something. How much power can each machine accept? 512EU/t? Even so, once you near your limit of 3689EU/t, you'll have to run a separate glass fiber cable from your power source to every two machines.
I suppose if they add some higher-tier cables that can accept 32,000EU/t or 64,000EU/t, and also allow transformer upgrades to stack indefinitely that could be an acceptable solution to this issue.
QuoteI admit its more complicated than the old system, but I think that's a good thing.
Complicated is only a good thing if it leads to creative, interesting solutions. Otherwise it's just pointless tedium. What interesting solutions have you thought of? -
All I'm saying is that if you have that much power it's likely you also have the resources to build a grid that can use it the way you want (be it parallel GF cables or a storage bank at each machine).
Resources were never a problem I listed in the first place.I will add, however, that space IS a problem. Now instead of a neat line of machines, I'll have to have some ugly enormous line of cables going everywhere.
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There is a new limit on cables a new limit 8192 EU/t (not packet).
I understand that. I'm saying that's the ONLY change that needed to be made. None of this other stuff involving machines exploding was necessary.
If your at the point of a world where the difference between 3/10 and 1/20 of a second is really worth that much power then building a grid for it shouldn't be that much of a problem.
A difference of 3/10ths and 1/10ths of a second is triple the speed. That certainly sounds like a very large distinction to me, and something that's worth spending a lot of power on.How will building a grid not be a problem? What solutions are there to any of the problems I've proposed in the OP? As it is it looks like I'll have to run a separate wire to each machine, connect multiple transformer blocks to each machine, connect several transformer upgrades to each machine, do a bunch of calculations for each machine to make sure I've got the right amount of power supplied, then do the same thing all over again for all my generators. Of course I'll need a spreadsheet to keep track of all this nonsense.
I want to know why a system that requires all this busy-work is necessary.
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As for being more realistic, both where pretty far from realism, the older one was more realistic but also more exploitable.
How was the previous one unrealistic? The only unrealistic aspects I can think of are the fact that machines don't consume power while idle, the extremely large amounts of power storage, and the fact that EU lost to cables doesn't create heat. If you wanna get nitpicky you could also ask why the system apparently runs on DC power instead of 3-phase AC, but that's kinda beyond the scope of the game. -
I mean there is only 1 packet running in a wire at a time, if you have 2 gens they add together to form 1 packet, instead of being separate like in the old.
If you have a machine actually running at 512 you either have far to many overclockers or it's a UUM machine which you can give it it's own line or upgrade to 2048 or 8192.
Unless overclockers have changed in experimental, macerators can consume up to 3689 EU/twith the maximum number of overclockers. I also find your assertion of "far too many overclockers" offensive as you are claiming that the way other people prefer to play the game is wrong.QuoteThe new system is more realistic, if you have seen someone run over a 64x64 grid of HV solar arrays (2097152) on 1 line you should know how broken the old way really was.
The original system is far more realistic. Machines explode if more voltage is applied to them than they are rated for. They don't explode just because the generator is capable of producing a lot of power.
If you wanted to fix the "tons of stuff on one line" problem, then you redo the limitations on cable, not on machines.
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Each machine doesn't need its own block transformer, a macerator takes 2Eu/t, so 1 lv transformer could power up to 16 unoverclocked macerators.
Edit:@Above: One solution to that is to have separate power lines, you could have, let's say, 16 MFSUs 4 pointed north, 4 east, 4 south, and 4 west. This would equal 8192Eu/t per direction, and 160,000,000 Eu storage per direction, then you could have separate sides of your base get 8192 from different powerlines, for a total of up to 32,768 Eu/t maximum supplied to your entire base.
That's just a partial workaround, not a solution. I'd still need to rip up all my wires if I wanted to upgrade things, and I'd still need to do a ton of calculations to make sure things are getting enough power without getting too much, and I'd still need to separate the power lines from each of my generator clusters, and all the other stuff I mentioned. It doesn't really solve anything.
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No you don't need block transformers, in my current world I have all my machines running off a MFE with out any block transformers.
So then how do you keep them from exploding?
QuoteAnd in Experimental all p/t=1, so 10 EU/t IS 10 EU/p.
It's not as complicated as your trying to make it.
I'm not understanding what point you're trying to make. If you mean that each generator/supplier outputs one packet per tick, then it was already like that in standard IC2. But you already said there are no packets in IC2 experimental, so that sounds like a contradiction to me.
I'm not saying a combined draw of all the machines.
The MFE outputs 512 so I give all my machines 2 upgrades (except for thermal centrifuge which has 1) so each can take the FULL 512, not divided between them all.
I already addressed that. If you do that then only one machine can run at 512EU/t at a time. If you want all of the machines to be able to run at 512EU/t simultaneously, then each need their own transformer block. Even if you want them to run at less than 512EU/t simultaneously, you still need block transformers because as you add more MFEs and MFSUs, unless you have the block transformers, you'll need more and more transformer upgrades to keep up.I still have yet to see a single reason why this new system is better.
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No you don't need block transformers, in my current world I have all my machines running off a MFE with out any block transformers.
And in Experimental all p/t=1, so 10 EU/t IS 10 EU/p.
It's not as complicated as your trying to make it.
For the sake of example let me make up numbers.Let's say I'm supplying 2,000 EU/t. I have four machines rated for 500EU/t each. If I connect these machines to the power source, they all explode because they'll receive more power than they're rated for. I therefore need to put transformers on all of my machines to throttle the power. I could put one transformer for all of them, but then only one of them would be able to run at full capacity at a time. I could put four transformers in parallel, but then they'd just all explode. I could give them transformer upgrades to boost their rating from 500EU/t to 2,000EU/t, but that would be unsustainable if I later decide to scale up my power production. Say I decide later to scale up my supply to 10,000 EU/t. All of a sudden, even if my machines can now take 2,000 EU/t each, that won't be enough and they'll all explode.
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In IC2 all power is in terms of EU (there are no volts, amps, watts, etc.)
It seems the only difference in the power system is that there are no packets anymore, 2 coal gens on a line is 20 EU/t not 2 packets of 10 EU/t.
So if your macerator has 2 transformer upgrades it CAN handle 512 EU/t
In standard IC2, Voltage is EU/p, Current is p/t, and Power is EU/t. Of course players don't need to know any of that. They only need to know EU/t, and whether voltage is High, Medium, or Low.But anyways, that confirms my fears. I'll have to put transformer upgrades on all my machines to increase their power rating, AND connect each one to its own transformer block well to throttle the power, AND I'll have to bust out a spreadsheet to keep track of how much power is being supplied vs the power ratings of all my crap, and I'll have to separate my generators into clusters and run separate wires from each of them and all the other stupid unintuitive nonsense that I mentioned in the OP.
I just want to emphasize that I think this new system is terrible and it's going to make things far, far, far more confusing and unnecessarily difficult.
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I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that... all they do increase input voltage by 4x, so if you have 2 transformer upgrades in a macerator for example, it will except 512Eu/t, 3x is 2048Eu/t etc etc.
In the new system, machines that receive more POWER (not Voltage, POWER) than they're rated for, explode. Voltage is no longer a factor at all. So if a Macerator is rated for 32EU/t, and it receives 33EU in a single tick, no matter what the packet size and no matter what the source, it will explode. Transformers in the new system throttle power to prevent machines from receiving more power than they are rated for. For example, a transformer would request 128EU once per four ticks, and output 32EU/t consistently.Therefore, if you have a set of machines that can only handle 32EU/t, and you want all of them to be able to run at 32EU/t simultaneously, they would all need their own transformers connected directly to each machine in order to throttle the power to prevent them from exploding.
Connecting two transformers in parallel to a group of those machines would cause them all to explode. Each transformer would output 32EU/t, for a total of 64EU/t. If they both happen to supply the same machine in the same tick, that machine will have received 64EU/t, and will explode because it received more power at once than it is rated for.
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The current E-net system is still undergoing a large overhaul, so don't be surprised if most of this changes, also the MFE, and MFSU where bumped up a tier and therefore can take and output 4x the voltage they could beforehand, glass fiber cable can handle 8192Eu/t enough for 4 MFSUs on a single line.
A good setup is instead of transforming power at your storage units, transform it when it gets close to your machines, also transformer upgrades are one of your best friends now.
Do transformer upgrades throttle power? If not then in order for each machine to run at maximum capacity, it not only needs transformer upgrades, but it also needs its own actual transformer. -
I'm not sure where else to leave IC2 Experimental feedback, so I'm leaving it here.
I've read about and tested the new wiring system in IC2 Experimental, and I have to say it seems like a huge step backwards. Rather than machines exploding when they have more voltage than they can handle, things explode when they receive more power than they can handle. So If I understand this correctly, I should expect the following problems:
- You cannot simply connect generators to power storage. You now need to calculate the power coming from your generators, separate your generators into clusters, segregating the wiring for each cluster, and have each cluster connect to its own individual power storage device.
- If you miscount your generators, miscalculate the power from your generators, or let a wire cross, your power storage will explode.
- You cannot upgrade generators on-site if they're already at the limit of their power storage device. You must tear up all your wiring, split the generator cluster into multiple clusters, recalculate the power from the new generator clusters, add new power storage devices, and re-wire the setup to connect to the additional power storage devices.
- If you want multiple machines to run at maximum power usage, you cannot simply connect them to multiple generators or multiple storage devices. If you are providing enough power for all of them to run at their respective limits simultaneously, sometimes more power will go to one of them and it will explode. Therefore you must attach a separate transformer to every single machine to throttle the power going to any single one.
- Whether a machine will explode is no longer deterministic. If there's a machine constantly drawing power, there's a good chance that your new machine might not explode...until you turn the other machine off.
- This system requires the player to perform calculations for each and every connection between each and every component.
- The system is a far less accurate model of electricity.
- The system requires players to remember far more information.
- At least right now, the system lends itself to catastrophic disasters. In the previous IC2, connecting a component with the wrong voltage would cause at most one machine or one wire to explode. One machine is not a huge loss. In this system, connecting ONE additional generator, or ONE additional power storage device, can cause ALL of your machines to explode.
In other words, it's far more complex, far more convoluted, far less intuitive, far less realistic, and far less predictable than the previous system. I cannot see any advantages whatsoever to this new system.
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The biggest question I have is "why"? Why in the world did you feel the need to change things? The previous system was incredibly simple. All you have to remember is not to plug things into voltages they can't handle.
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Un-charged batteries use different ID than a charged one, and I don't think they will add 3 more ID's just so we can auto craft.
Plus how mane crystals do you craft with to justify auto crafting?
Hundreds. I had to make an MFSU factory because it was so tedious.
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Packets of EU do not stack...
That basically means that the cable is receiving 19 packets of 1 EU/t, instead of the cable experiencing 19 Eu/t at it's final junction. It's an odd feature with the implementation of the E-net system, but it remains unchanged due to how many renewable energy systems would break should that change be made...
And yes, it confuses the hell out of those of us with electrical engineering training, lol...
Why don't they just skip explaining all this convoluted nonsense about EU/t and EU/P, and just call it all High Voltage, Medium Voltage, and Low Voltage? The number of machines hooked up never matters, just whether they output high, medium, or low voltage.
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Please think twice before you randomly flame somebody in the near future. This isn't a bug, but a FEATURE mentioned by myself multiple times and recorded in the wiki.
Lumis on Cables ALWAYS take on a "full" texture, because it usually sucks to see the cables behind them. Using CF-covered cables will cause the luminators to stick to their normal behavior.
Well then it's still messed up for me then because they always show their full texture even on CF-covered cables, and when showing their full texture while attached to the ceiling, they glow out of the top rather than the bottom. For example, the Luminators on the ceiling in my screenshot are attached to CF wires, and are powered, and emitting light, yet they're not glowing.
