Mod Feedback [By Request] RotaryCraft Suggestions

[TomeWyrm]

Holy crap guys, back off. THE REACTOR HE BUILT IS SAFE! This is modded MC and steady supplies of water are one of the LEAST buggy things in the damn game.

So yes, if it runs for a MONTH without exploding? It IS a safe reactor. Maybe not recommended, might not work with another water supply, obviously does not work with ammonia, but still 100% safe with water.

Safe (adjective):
1. protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost.
2. uninjured; with no harm done.

So sorry, Reika but you should probably find a new word, the reactor WAS in point of fact safe. The only risk is in a change of parameters because the system as set up is quite stable barring Work Of God level coincidences.

Now, not wanting to boost ammonia because MongrelVigor is building outside expected parameters? That's reasonable. Telling someone that's been doing something for a solid length of time that they're doing it wrong is not. When something works, it works. A long safety track record is proof positive that reactors running at more than 450 C can actually be safe, and having to LOWER the output of your boiler to get the benefit of ammonia is indeed counter-intuitive, but the mechanics for ammonia are currently realistic.

 

[Rubyheart]

Righto, writing you off as a troll now at this point.

It doesn't matter how long something has been "working", if it's wrong, it's wrong.

 

[Reika]

Holy crap guys, back off. THE REACTOR HE BUILT IS SAFE! This is modded MC and steady supplies of water are one of the LEAST buggy things in the damn game.

So yes, if it runs for a MONTH without exploding? It IS a safe reactor. Maybe not recommended, might not work with another water supply, obviously does not work with ammonia, but still 100% safe with water.

Safe (adjective):
1. protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost.
2. uninjured; with no harm done.

So sorry, Reika but you should probably find a new word, the reactor WAS in point of fact safe. The only risk is in a change of parameters because the system as set up is quite stable barring Work Of God level coincidences.

Now, not wanting to boost ammonia because MongrelVigor is building outside expected parameters? That's reasonable. Telling someone that's been doing something for a solid length of time that they're doing it wrong is not. When something works, it works. A long safety track record is proof positive that reactors running at more than 450 C can actually be safe, and having to LOWER the output of your boiler to get the benefit of ammonia is indeed counter-intuitive, but the mechanics for ammonia are currently realistic.

The reactor is at unstable equilibrium. That means that as soon as it deviates from its state, it will likely run away entirely. I do not see a reasonable way that could be called safe. Under that logic, a 500-ton boulder balanced on a pole, as long as it was there for a month or two, would be deemed "safe" to stand under.

MongrelVigor, methinks your reactors don't have enough cooling. That is, there's too many cores and not enough boilers. Though I've never built with ammonia in mind (never found enough ammonium chloride to make it worthwhile), I believe the general rule of thumb is to take the amount of cooling you think you need and double it. Yeah, it makes things bulkier, but a reactor that runs cool is far, far more preferable to one that runs hot. At least with a cool reactor, you aren't running the risk of turning your house into Chernobyl.

That, and they run more efficiently.

 

[MongrelVigor]

The reactor is at unstable equilibrium....

That, and they run more efficiently.

Once you've decided a track record can never indicate that something was safe, and your original projections on what can be safe are inherently unfalsifiable there's no point in trying to dissuade you...it's a bit like debating with religious people, I suppose.

I suspected what you said about the cooler reactors being more efficient (you mean in terms of fuel consumption right?). However uranium is so plentiful that from a gameplay perspective that's not very important.

 

[Rubyheart]

Ah irony, so thick you can almost taste it.

 

[MongrelVigor]

What irony are you referring to?

 

[Pyure]

Once you've decided a track record can never indicate that something was safe, and your original projections on what can be safe are inherently unfalsifiable there's no point in trying to dissuade you...

This is actually a very valid observation. If we're supposed to learn through observation, the fact that a reactor explodes a few times a year isn't very informative.

There's ways you can MAKE it informative...if, for instance, a reactor-computer (which survives the explosion) provides some sort of feedback ("Boiler 4 overheated" or some such), that would make more sense.

 

[MongrelVigor]

That's a pretty cool idea! A little black box for fission

Edit: perhaps that feature could somehow be woven into the cpu control?

 

[Azzanine]

Lol Jesus, man. I offered a suggestion in this suggestion forum, and then questioned the premise that a reactor's track record should never be taken as evidence that it's safe. Meanwhile I offered to help, running some experiments and gathering numbers.

This has devolved into bickering, but I've made no complaints or whining about the game. I was simply offering suggestions on the mod's balance, however wise or unwise those suggestions may have been.

All I saw was you claiming that ammonia was broken becasue it would blow up in a reactor that's safe when using water.
Hense my diesel/ petrol engine analogy.
You are putting petrol in your diesel engine here and saying petrol is dangerous/ useless (or the other way around). Sounds like you need to scale your reactor down to figure out how to best use ammonia.
Just becasue your reactor is safe with water doesn't mean it should be safe with ammonia. Folks here are telling you that your logic is wrong, you are treating ammonia like an upgrade to water. It might just be an experimental alternative.

Now if it was impossible to make a safe or functional reactor with ammonia then Reika would have to give some answers, as to whether he intends on it to be set and forget I.e safe.

 

[MongrelVigor]

All I saw was you claiming that ammonia was broken becasue it would blow up in a reactor that's safe when using water.

That is the very problem. If you only register a small percentage of what someone is saying you can expect to frequently get the wrong idea.

 

[Blood Asp]

You would get one atom of helium per fusion reaction (2H+3H).

That still does not help me solve the issue.

In truth, I wasn't asking for ReC purposes. It was a similar discussion regarding the GT5u fusion reactor, and whether the various types of plasma should produce byproducts. I figured this was the best place to learn.

Just read some stuff about that. Seems that the fused helium stays in the tomahawk until it is shut down and the fusion chamber gets cleaned completely. After that the fusion is reignited. But since a 1GW Fusion Reactor produces only about 500g helium per day, that must be done only about once per year.

 

[EyeDeck]

I suspected what you said about the cooler reactors being more efficient (you mean in terms of fuel consumption right?). However uranium is so plentiful that from a gameplay perspective that's not very important.

I would imagine lower fuel efficiency would also mean there's more waste to deal with, which is a concern if you're storing your waste the Reika-approved™ way. Then again, if you're just dumping it into an AE cell I don't really blame you.

 

[MongrelVigor]

That's a very good point, personally I send mine to nullifiers.

Additionally I suppose it's likely the case that you find yourself getting twice as much power per turbine, using the same amount of steel for turbines, and the same amount of lubricant, though I don't know enough about using ammonium to say that that's the case, it would certainly help to justify using lower energy reactors that can accommodate ammonium, and dealing with the demands of ammonium use.

 

[MongrelVigor]

Another suggestion: (I may have said this a few months ago, sorry if so)

It would be great if the section of the manual that talks about each machine's power requirements also mentioned the maximum speed from which each can benefit.

 

[Azzanine]

Correct me if I'm wrong but... Isn't that already a thing? The requirements for each machine are stated in their respective pages.
It doesn't list maximum speed requirements though. But the limit is essentially however many operations can be fit in to a tick.
For some machines the max could only be limited only by the max amount of power that can be generated.

 

[MongrelVigor]

The requirements are listed. The maximum beneficial speeds are not. Might be good.

 

[Someone Else 37]

The requirements are listed. The maximum beneficial speeds are not. Might be good.

The last time this was brought up, the answer was "The rad/s needed to max out the speed of the machine is that which causes it to perform one operation per tick". However, Reika buffed almost all the machines shortly afterward, and now they will perform an extra operation per tick each time you double the rad/s going into an already 1-tick'd machine. In short, for most machines, there is no max.

There are a few machines that still max out at one operation per tick. I don't remember the full list, but the Bedrock Breaker was one of them, because getting it to grind away one sliver per tick already requires an absolutely ridiculous amount of power.

 

[MongrelVigor]

Groovy. It may be good to list the rads at which each machine reaches that number of operations per tick.

 

[Braidedheadman]

Most of the machines have their formula expressed in their respective wiki articles. You can compute whatever values (rad/s, torque, power) you need from those. A bunch of them are also listed in the in-game manual (turn the page). The only machines that don't seem to have entries in either location fall under the ReC umbrella. As far as I can tell, however, RoC is well-documented in that regard.

 

[MongrelVigor]

That helps, thanks