Transporting MJ over a long distance (Mindcrack)

[Damoklesz]

I have my base with a TON of Biomass already in huge railcraft tank. I also have a quarry far-far away (1000+ blocks) . If possible I'd like to produce all my energy at the base, and transport it to the quarry.

I know that I could just place a fermenter at my quarry and enderchest my sugarcane into it. I also know I could put a few engines there and transport the biomass via liquid transposers, cans and enderchests (or railcraft tanks). Probably the easiest solution would be using electric engines on site, and transporting EU via lapotron crystals (enderchests again). But this is not what I want.

Thermal Expansion has a wrench turtle with a Crescent Hammer, that I thought could do everything I need. A player can pick up Redstone Enery Cells with a Crescent Hammer and it will keep it's charge. My problem is that when I break an Energy Cell with this turtle, it doesn't pick it up into it's inventory. The Energy Cell drops properly onto the ground, with charge, but for some reason the turtle ignores it. It picks up everything else though, flowers, conduits, dirt... the only thing it ignores is the Redstone Energy Cell.

Any ideas?

 

[gusgillis1]

Umm..... use lots of redstone energy conduits? I unno

 

[Milaha]

a transposer or obsidian pipe on the ground where you remove it can get it into an inventory where you could handle it from there.

 

[Damoklesz]

Umm..... use lots of redstone energy conduits? I unno

I actually thought about that. A turtle could probably place the conduit line, so there are only 2 problems with that.
1: I currently don't have the resources.
2: I'm worried about loss. I know that there is no distance loss, but every conduits segment has an internal buffer, that loses it's energy over time. I'm not sure how this would translate into a 1000+ long conduit line. I'd have to fill the 1000 buffers when I start up my quarry, but as long as the quarry doesn't stop, there should be a constant flow, so there should be no loss, right? But what if my quarry stops? Then there is no way for the energy to go, so it slowly disappears from the conduitline. I suppose I could build some logic to detect if the quarry is running, and cut the power line at my base (wireless controlling a Crescent Hammer turtle) as soon as it stops. Then all I need is a Redstone Energy Cell at the quarry side as a buffer (being empty during normal process), that could accept all the energy from the pipes.... But this is getting a bit too complicated...[DOUBLEPOST=1358645900][/DOUBLEPOST]

a transposer or obsidian pipe on the ground where you remove it can get it into an inventory where you could handle it from there.

Yeah, this is much simpler. I don't know why I haven't thought of that. Thanks!

 

[Domicilius]

I actually thought about that. A turtle could probably place the conduit line, so there are only 2 problems with that.
1: I currently don't have the resources.
2: I'm worried about loss. I know that there is no distance loss, but every conduits segment has an internal buffer, that loses it's energy over time. I'm not sure how this would translate into a 1000+ long conduit line. I'd have to fill the 1000 buffers when I start up my quarry, but as long as the quarry doesn't stop, there should be a constant flow, so there should be no loss, right? But what if my quarry stops? Then there is no way for the energy to go, so it slowly disappears from the conduitline. I suppose I could build some logic to detect if the quarry is running, and cut the power line at my base (wireless controlling a Crescent Hammer turtle) as soon as it stops. Then all I need is a Redstone Energy Cell at the quarry side as a buffer (being empty during normal process), that could accept all the energy from the pipes.... But this is getting a bit too complicated...[DOUBLEPOST=1358645900][/DOUBLEPOST]

Yeah, this is much simpler. I don't know why I haven't thought of that. Thanks!

If you have a ton of Biomass already, you probably have way to make it really quickly as well. Why does it matter if its wasting MJ at the end of the quarry when it stops? Just check it occasionally until its done.

 

[Damoklesz]

If you have a ton of Biomass already, you probably have way to make it really quickly as well. Why does it matter if its wasting MJ at the end of the quarry when it stops? Just check it occasionally until its done.

Beacuse I hate systems that leak energy... I know this sounds crazy. I have no problems with huge unefficient systems as long as they are working in a cool, Rube Goldberg machine kind of way. But having a pipe that leaks energy is not fun .

 

[slay_mithos]

Why not use gates (iron or superior) and pipe wires?

 

[Zelfana]

Conduit loses 5% of total energy transferred regardless of distance and at 1000 blocks or so it would make sense to use instead of conductive pipes. But it would also make more sense to transfer something else instead as that's quite a lot of gold and silver you'd have to sacrifice.

 

[Damoklesz]

Why not use gates (iron or superior) and pipe wires?

You can't use gates and pipe wires on conduits. I don't even understand why would you want to use them on a 1000 long conduit. I could use Gate Readers instead of gates, and wireless redstone instead of pipe wires if I followed the conduit line idea.

 

[Damoklesz]

Conduit loses 5% of total energy transferred regardless of distance and at 1000 blocks or so it would make sense to use instead of conductive pipes. But it would also make more sense to transfer something else instead as that's quite a lot of gold and silver you'd have to sacrifice.

I'm 100% sure you're wrong. Conduit loses 0% of total energy transfered. Golden conductive pipes are 0.01% per block, which would be 10% total loss.[DOUBLEPOST=1358675936][/DOUBLEPOST]I actually implemented my turtle idea btw.
Here is a link to the ComputerCraft forum:
http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/9591-mj-transporter-turtle/
And to the Pastebin:
http://pastebin.com/kYzwB3T5

Currently it's a bit expensive on turtle fuel though...

 

[Robert Dalton]

Don't mess about with a line of conduits! Just set up a redstone cell auto recharge station. The cell powers the quarry, when the cell is empty using a gate you can get a block breaker to remove it, since its empty no worries about the power loss. The cell is them moved into the enderchest where it is sent back to your base.

When the empty cell is detected using wireless redstone your recharged full cell is then removed using either a turtle or if you are simple like me a redpower device with a cresent wrench that will remove it (I can't think of its name)
The cell will then stop onto the floor with its power where an obsidian pipe picks it up and puts it into another ender chest. It is then taken out and placed back at the quarry

I've never done this before, I looked at the above comments and this was my thought process to your problem. If its complete bullshit or not possible, Sorry!

 

[Omicron]

I'm 100% sure you're wrong. Conduit loses 0% of total energy transfered. Golden conductive pipes are 0.01% per block, which would be 10% total loss.

Regardless of how sure you are that he's wrong, he's completely right And, don't trust the advertised value of golden conductive pipes either, they are far more lossy than that.

Based on the following series of tests in a Mindcrack v6 world:
1.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected directly to a redstone energy cell
2.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via wooden pipe + 1 golden conductive pipe
3.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via 2 redstone energy conduits
4.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via wooden pipe + 49 golden conductive pipes
5.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via 50 redstone energy conduits

Expected energy production: 72,000

I didn't wriite down my test results, but you can easily get exact numbers by replicating the test setups. Here's roughly what I got:

1.) ~ 71,500
2.) ~ 70,500
3.) ~ 68,400
4.) ~ 29,000
5.) ~ 68,400

Note test case 4... yeah, 0.01% my ass, energy loss was greater than 1% per conductive pipe! Test cases 3 and 5 confirmed that conduits lose 5% regardless of distance.

 

[Damoklesz]

Regardless of how sure you are that he's wrong, he's completely right And, don't trust the advertised value of golden conductive pipes either, they are far more lossy than that.

Based on the following series of tests in a Mindcrack v6 world:
1.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected directly to a redstone energy cell
2.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via wooden pipe + 1 golden conductive pipe
3.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via 2 redstone energy conduits
4.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via wooden pipe + 49 golden conductive pipes
5.) magmatic engine with 4 lava connected via 50 redstone energy conduits

Expected energy production: 72,000

I didn't wriite down my test results, but you can easily get exact numbers by replicating the test setups. Here's roughly what I got:

1.) ~ 71,500
2.) ~ 70,500
3.) ~ 68,400
4.) ~ 29,000
5.) ~ 68,400

Note test case 4... yeah, 0.01% my ass, energy loss was greater than 1% per conductive pipe! Test cases 3 and 5 confirmed that conduits lose 5% regardless of distance.

You're probably right about golden conductive pipes, this is not the first time I heared that they are broken. Personally I've never tested them, because even if they worked as advertised, they'd still need logic built behind them, because they are not "smart", like the conduits.

But about the conduits... I think you just don't understand how they work. They have an internal buffer. When you pipe MJ from an engine, towards a redstone energy cell, first they fill this buffer, then the buffer is full, they start filling the energy cell. Also, the magmatic engine is a terrible tool for testing, because that's also "smart". It's supposed to decrease it's output when Thermal Expansion believes that it's wasted. I'm not completly sure about the conditions of that, but it would be way better to use a non-Thermal Expansion engine for testing purposes.

But here is a better test you could do:
Place 2 Redstone Energy Cells some distance from one an other. One of them full, the other empty. Connect them with conduits and let the power flow from the full engine to the empty one. Wait a few seconds, so that the buffers of the conduits can fill, then destroy both Cells, and replace them the same way (one is full, the other empty). Now wait until all the power goes from the full to the empty one. You will see that you lost no power whatsoever (maybe 1 MJ rounding error), no matter how long the conduit line is.

 

[Poppycocks]

I tried to come up with a solution for you, and this is my current setup:

Spoiler

the gate at the charging station cell is set to "is full", the filter at the charging station has an empty cell in it. The gate above the quarry cell is set to "is empty" and the filter has a full cell.

The turtle is an engineering turtle (crescent hammer + turtle)
The code is:

Spoiler

while true do
  while true do
  os.pullEvent("redstone")
  if redstone.getInput("left") then break end
  sleep(1)
end
turtle.attack()
turtle.suck()
turtle.turnLeft()
turtle.turnLeft()
turtle.drop(1)
turtle.turnLeft()
turtle.turnLeft()
end

Make sure to either name it "startup" or have it run from a different startup script. This way, you won't have to restart the turtle after a server restart / turning ssp off+on

I haven't tested this thoroughly, but it seems to work just fine atm .

By the way, it's perfectly possible to have another turtle move the quarry and everything after the quarry's done.

 

[MilConDoin]

But here is a better test you could do:
Place 2 Redstone Energy Cells some distance from one an other. One of them full, the other empty. Connect them with conduits and let the power flow from the full engine to the empty one. Wait a few seconds, so that the buffers of the conduits can fill, then destroy both Cells, and replace them the same way (one is full, the other empty). Now wait until all the power goes from the full to the empty one. You will see that you lost no power whatsoever (maybe 1 MJ rounding error), no matter how long the conduit line is.

I did this test you proposed and as expected: It works exactly like King Lemming, Omicron, Zelfana and everyone else stated. 5% loss without distance based influence. Source empty, Target 570k MJ.
Did you maybe change in your thermalexpansion.cfg I:transport.conduit.energy.loss=5 to 0?

 

[Damoklesz]

Don't mess about with a line of conduits! Just set up a redstone cell auto recharge station. The cell powers the quarry, when the cell is empty using a gate you can get a block breaker to remove it, since its empty no worries about the power loss. The cell is them moved into the enderchest where it is sent back to your base.

When the empty cell is detected using wireless redstone your recharged full cell is then removed using either a turtle or if you are simple like me a redpower device with a cresent wrench that will remove it (I can't think of its name)
The cell will then stop onto the floor with its power where an obsidian pipe picks it up and puts it into another ender chest. It is then taken out and placed back at the quarry

I've never done this before, I looked at the above comments and this was my thought process to your problem. If its complete bullshit or not possible, Sorry!

When I first read your comment I was like: "Great, one more person who doesn't know what he's talking about!". But you've actually got one part right.

First, this is what you're wrong about:
- You can't use a gate on a redstone energy cell, or redstone conduits. You have to use a Gate Reader and a Computer. The Gate Reader comes from Misc Peripherals and it's a block (that can also be built into a turtle). EDIT: I was wrong about this one as seen on the picture bellow.
- As far as I know if you remove a Redstone Energy Cell with a Block Breaker, it also loses it's settings. This means that you'll be powering that quarry with 50 MJ/t (the default output), and that's really inefficient.
- As far as I know there is no Redpower device with a "cresent wrench". According to NEI, the only recepies involving Crescent Hammers are turtles.
- You don't really need wireless redstone, you are using enderchests.

What you're right about:
- Enderchests


They are really OP...
Tomorrow I'm changing my turtle program. It will involve 2 turtles, one on each side, for placing and dismantling REC. Instead of teleporting, the system will use a pair of enderchests. Again... I really don't know why haven't I though of this myself... [DOUBLEPOST=1358688738][/DOUBLEPOST]

I tried to come up with a solution for you, and this is my current setup:

Spoiler

the gate at the charging station cell is set to "is full", the filter at the charging station has an empty cell in it. The gate above the quarry cell is set to "is empty" and the filter has a full cell.

The turtle is an engineering turtle (crescent hammer + turtle)
The code is:

Spoiler

while true do
  while true do
  os.pullEvent("redstone")
  if redstone.getInput("left") then break end
  sleep(1)
end
turtle.attack()
turtle.suck()
turtle.turnLeft()
turtle.turnLeft()
turtle.drop(1)
turtle.turnLeft()
turtle.turnLeft()
end

Make sure to either name it "startup" or have it run from a different startup script. This way, you won't have to restart the turtle after a server restart / turning ssp off+on

I haven't tested this thoroughly, but it seems to work just fine atm .

By the way, it's perfectly possible to have another turtle move the quarry and everything after the quarry's done.

WTH???
How are those gates working???
They don't even connect???
This makes no sense...

 

[Poppycocks]

When I first read your comment I was like: "Great, one more person who doesn't know what he's talking about!". But you've actually got one part right.

First, this is what you're wrong about:
- You can't use a gate on a redstone energy cell, or redstone conduits. You have to use a Gate Reader and a Computer. The Gate Reader comes from Misc Peripherals and it's a block (that can also be built into a turtle).
- As far as I know if you remove a Redstone Energy Cell with a Block Breaker, it also loses it's settings. This means that you'll be powering that quarry with 50 MJ/t (the default output), and that's really inefficient.
- As far as I know there is no Redpower device with a "cresent wrench". According to NEI, the only recepies involving Crescent Hammers are turtles.
- You don't really need wireless redstone, you are using enderchests.

What you're right about:
- Enderchests


They are really OP...
Tomorrow I'm changing my turtle program. It will involve 2 turtles, one on each side, for placing and dismantling REC. Instead of teleporting, the system will use a pair of enderchests. Again... I really don't know why haven't I though of this myself...

No mate, you are wrong, look at my post above .
- You can use a gate on a redstone energy cell, just stick it onto a wooden pipe in a block touching the cell
- Not only it's settings, but the power as well. And no, it's not that inefficient, quarries have been sped up in the recent releases and it seems that they keep speeding up to 50 MJ/t.
- There is, a deployer with a wrench in it. It doesn't work though as you need to shift right click, not just right click as the deployer does.

 

[slay_mithos]

You can, however, put a useless pipe (gravel ones are the best for that) where you need the gate.
It is shown in a screenshot above (with wooden pipes instead, but that's the same thing).

Crescent hammer is a tool. As such, it is not required to have a recipe using it, when you can use it directly as a player.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

So you're looking for effectively 100% lossless MJ transport over any distance?

Energy->Magma Crucible->Lava->Lava Bucket->Enderchest->Filter->Combustion Engines->Retriever pulls empties back into enderchest.

With XYtank auto-filling you could do it without a liquid transposer when the pack updates.

If you're that fussed about the transposer energy use, a RP pump+grate-> lava source blocks and a deployer+bucket collecting them would work.​

 

[Damoklesz]

I'm gonna have to start being less sure about myself. It seems there are a lot of things that I know wrong.
I had no idea about the gates...
The most embarassing thing is the conduit loss. I was so sure about that, I haven't even did my own test. Until now. Sorry. Has this chaged recently, or have I always been thinking it wrong?
The Deployer doesn't work for this, so I guess I got that one right at least...
I knew that the quarries have been sped up, but as far as I know someone tested it and it mined the most blocks using a given amount of MJ while working at 7 MJ/t... so in my dictionary everything above it is inefficient. I get that it's probably worth to go over that, beacuse it's faster, and it's cheaper compared to setting up more quarries, but that still doesn't make that quarry more efficient.