BC/IC Power Conversion?
- Thread starter Flexico
- Start date
Not directly. The closest you can get is magma crucible -> geo generator, but that's only a 1:1 ratio with cobble.
Or feed the crucible Netherrack and power them with Magmatic engines. Just requires the occasional Nether run to replenish netherrack, and will actually create more lava than the magmatics consume. You can then use this surplus to drive GeoThermal generators and make EU.
There are several indirect choices. Use your excess BC power to run:
1. Magma Crucibles > lava > geogens as mentioned above (geothermal generators need a balance pass - they are a bit too cheap / efficient with a currently abundant lava resource).
2. Forestry Bio Generator to burn Biomass or Biofuel > EU.
3. Petroleum Generator (not included in DW20, but can be added from the MC pack) to burn Oil or Fuel > EU.
4. Railcraft Boiler (which will often be the source of excess BC power) to power a Steam Turbine > EU.
Options 2, 3, and 4 are balanced against each other as reasonable lossy conversions, with increasing gains for additional resources and setup cost.
1. Magma Crucibles > lava > geogens as mentioned above (geothermal generators need a balance pass - they are a bit too cheap / efficient with a currently abundant lava resource).
2. Forestry Bio Generator to burn Biomass or Biofuel > EU.
3. Petroleum Generator (not included in DW20, but can be added from the MC pack) to burn Oil or Fuel > EU.
4. Railcraft Boiler (which will often be the source of excess BC power) to power a Steam Turbine > EU.
Options 2, 3, and 4 are balanced against each other as reasonable lossy conversions, with increasing gains for additional resources and setup cost.
Actually it's quite lossy with cobble. The only thing that is 1:1 is netherrack at the moment. And yes, both geothermals and magmatics need a bit of a balance pass - I have it on pretty good authority that magmatics are getting one, so I would not rely too much on them.
They'll still be useful, but there's a somewhat incorrect perception that they're by far the best engine right now. Unfortunately, perception is everything (even if wrong), so they get a nerf to wake people up.
Actually it's quite lossy with cobble. The only thing that is 1:1 is netherrack at the moment. And yes, both geothermals and magmatics need a bit of a balance pass - I have it on pretty good authority that magmatics are getting one, so I would not rely too much on them.
Hmmm... how is netherrack a 1:1 conversion?
My (admittedly not always flawless) math tells me that spending 8,000 MJ to make 20,000 EU is a 2.5:1 ratio. Whereas with cobblestone you're spending 20,000 MJ to make 20,000 EU. How are you counting it, if not like that?No, they output BC energy. It's like a huge generator. You throw in coal, it gives you steam. And when you feed the steam to engines, they turn it into MJ.
Steam Turbines are a lousy way to generate EU, since you are eating up 99 Steel every time you have to remake the Turbine Rotor.
my suggestion is the Magma Crucible to turn netherrack into lava to feed into one or more Geothermal Generators.
Before I start hearing more complaints about OP, this is simply a more lag-friendly method of setting up a pump in the nether. Otherwise, you just hook up a pump to one of the vast nether lava oceans and pump out to a liquid loader for the tank cart which runs through a portal to the liquid unloader which fills the iron tank that supplies your geothermal generators. If anything, you've got some loss built into the conversion, rather than feeding direct. Then again, it won't lag out the server because of all the flowing lava blocks, so there's a trade-off.
Once you establish a nether presence, EU production is no longer a problem. Ever.
my suggestion is the Magma Crucible to turn netherrack into lava to feed into one or more Geothermal Generators.
Before I start hearing more complaints about OP, this is simply a more lag-friendly method of setting up a pump in the nether. Otherwise, you just hook up a pump to one of the vast nether lava oceans and pump out to a liquid loader for the tank cart which runs through a portal to the liquid unloader which fills the iron tank that supplies your geothermal generators. If anything, you've got some loss built into the conversion, rather than feeding direct. Then again, it won't lag out the server because of all the flowing lava blocks, so there's a trade-off.
Once you establish a nether presence, EU production is no longer a problem. Ever.
Actually it's quite lossy with cobble. The only thing that is 1:1 is netherrack at the moment. And yes, both geothermals and magmatics need a bit of a balance pass - I have it on pretty good authority that magmatics are getting one, so I would not rely too much on them.
They'll still be useful, but there's a somewhat incorrect perception that they're by far the best engine right now. Unfortunately, perception is everything (even if wrong), so they get a nerf to wake people up.
Nooo not my beloved magmatics
.. they are quite awesome when used as you likely originally intended. But I honestly don't mind a tweak there as I tend to move to boilers as soon as I have the resources. It's really the geotherm that's tossing conversion out of whack at the moment.Boilers create BC energy, burning fuel (solid or liquid) to heat water and generate steam, which drives steam engines. Up to 18 commercial steam engines per full-sized High Pressure boiler (9 commercials on a full-sized Low Pressure boiler). That's 144MJ/t and 72MJ/t, respectively. The reason that was brought up is because it is often the source of excess BC which is a good candidate for EU conversion. If you already have excess BC stored, say, in a redstone cell that you are looking to convert, then that option doesn't directly apply (neither do the bio/petrol gennys for that matter).
You are back to using that stored BC energy to create fuel to generate EU (whether through a refinery, farm, etc), which is what you are doing with the Crucible - the only difference (besides current conversion rates) is which energy net the generator is sitting on. BCs EU generators control the conversion loss well. IC's Geotherms, accepting a universal fuel, weren't necessarily designed with the current situation in mind, which is trucking lava and its elegant contemporary, netherrack, back across dimensions as a nearly limitless resource.
If the Crucible created "Lava Goo" which couldn't be processed by the Geotherm without a BC-controlled lossy conversion, it still wouldn't matter - because lava pumps / bottlers / ender chests / mystcraft etc. The Crucible actually solves the liquid laghell caused by that scenario.
Right. You don't design EU generation around the turbine. You use the turbine to spend excess resources. You use any of the converters to burn off excess whatever (like that tank full of biofuel). The reason they are lossy conversions is to respect the fact that a system should benefit from being on its native energy net, and the two nets don't scale in parallel (which is why the "based on 1 unit of coal" conversion mods suck).
Surely you see the problem, then. Unfortunately, as much as I want to give the geotherm gen the evil eye here, it's not entirely fair - because in a closed IC2 map the abuse of the resource wouldn't be an issue. It just needs its output and / or recipe balanced to be in line with other mods, when playing with other mods.
Conversion loss does not equate to a stack and a half of iron gone up in thin air. It is, bar none, the WORST way to get EU out of MJ.
Not really. I was running my massfab on a series of geothermals in my nether base back before FTB came out. It was a neat self-contained system which did not require Mystcraft portals nor Railcraft. It just pumped from the lava lake directly into the battery of nine geothermals to produce 180/t for my massfab.
Well, you always have Transformers... But I'm sure people will complain about the balance of that add-on. It's configurable, so adjust it as you so wish...
Right. In a completely contained IC2 scenario, where the geotherm wasn't an alternative to BC > EU conversion methods, which is what we are discussing.
Hmmm... how is netherrack a 1:1 conversion?
Fundamentally, and bear in mind this conversion is flawed - the nominal ratio for MJ to EU is 1:2.5; that is to say that one MJ is worth 2.5 EU based purely on the coal conversion. Due to the scaling of each system, as has already been mentioned, this is an extremely flawed comparison and mods that use these values for conversion are basically broken.
Still, going with the nominal values (let's say you have transformers installed and there's no loss), you can spend 50,000 EU to make 20,000 EU with cobble. Alternatively, with Netherrack, you can spend 20,000 EU to make 20,000 EU. No dice.
Or perhaps (as in my case) you could tighten the settings in thermalexpansion.cfg
The line/s to tweak are:
I:factory.crucible.netherrack.energy=8000
I:core.lava.mj=20000
In my opinion Geothermals don't need any nerfing. Pumps should simply not work in the nether. At all. Just like water can't exist there we can find some 'reason' why a pump would not work (too hot perhaps) and this would solve the issue with 'free energy' that Nether-pumped lava creates.
And people go back to compact solars producing 512/t?
Seriously, it's easy to get renewable energy. Geothermal is fairly tame, when it comes down to it. At least pumping out of the nether requires sufficient hoops to jump through to make it fun to set up, rather than just clicking until my fingers cramp and my eyes bleed.