Liquiducts and BC gates: is there an easier way?

[Westingham]

I'm trying to automate my biomass production which will optimally be supplied by apple juice but will fall back to water when necessary.

This is what I've got so far: http://imgur.com/a/wc37X

Apple juice tank on the left, water tank on the right. Apple juice tank is attached to an Iron OR Gate and the liquiduct coming out of the apple juice tank is connected to a Gold AND Gate; water tank has a redstone torch underneath it and the liquiduct coming out of the water tank is connected to a Gold AND Gate; red pipe wire extending from Iron OR Gate to right-hand Gold AND Gate, blue pipe wire extended from right-hand Gold AND Gate to left-hand Gold AND Gate. You can see how the gates are setup in the screenshots.

Basically what this does is have water flowing out of the water tank at all times unless there is liquid in the apple juice tank; then the redstone signal to the water liquiduct is turned off and the redstone signal to the apple juice liquiduct is turned on.

Now... is there an easier way to do this? Sure, it would probably be easier if I switched to BC waterproof pipes but I love my liquiducts too much, I'm asking for other alternatives or perhaps saner gate setups.

 

[KhrFreak]

you'd have to use golden waterproof pipe sadly

 

[Greyed]

Sure. If you are using a pack with RP2. don't use the structure pipes for the entire run. Cook up some red alloy wiring and run that. Make it pretty with covers. It might also be better served with RP2's gates, as well.

 

[Abdiel]

Juice tank gate: Liquid in tank --> Red pipe signal
Juice valve gate: Red pipe signal on --> Redstone signal
Water valve gate: Red pipe signal off --> Redstone signal

I am not exactly sure what you're using blue pipe signal for... none of the gates in your image emit it.

If you don't want the liquids to switch every time a drop of juice gets in the tank, use a RS latch on a pipe for the juice tank gate (you will need a golden gate):

Blue pipe signal off --> Red pipe signal
Red pipe signal off --> Blue pipe signal
Tank full --> Red pipe signal
Tank empty --> Blue pipe signal

The other two gates are unchanged. This setup waits until the tank fills up, then drains it all at once into the fermenter.

 

[vScourge]

Here's my apple-juice-when-available setup:

Spoiler

Aqueous Accumulator in lower left takes in water like usual. Squeezer in upper right makes juice when it can, which goes to small tank. Gate on the waterproof pipe is set to turn redstone on when "liquid in tank". This turns on the redstone engine next to it, and also runs the signal on the red alloy wire underground to the Accumulator, shutting it off. When the Fermenter uses up all its water the juice automatically flows in. When that's used up the gate turns off and the Accumulator turns on again, restoring water.

Works great.

 

[MilConDoin]

I've got a similar design to the above, but with a few changes.
When the tank is full (not if it contains any liquid), the gate (on structure type beneath the tank) emits a redstone signal to the AqAcc to shut itself off, while the liquiduct (instead of waterproof pipe) from the tank to the fermenter pulls permanently. This way as soon as the juice in the fermenter drops to zero again, the water will instantly refill, because the AqAcc did have enough time to refill itself.
Another small change: The hopper is for the saplings from the tree farm (connected via item tesseract), and the mulch is pumped in from a chest via autarchic gate set to IF fuel < 25% THEN energy pulse.

 

[Westingham]

I am not exactly sure what you're using blue pipe signal for... none of the gates in your image emit it.

To be honest, I'm not too sure at the moment either. I think I was using it for a different setup that I moved away from.

Thanks for your input and ideas, everybody, I really appreciate them.

 

[heavy1metal]

Use forestry's new farm. You'll never run out of apples. I have about 15 biogas engines, 3 fermenters, and 1 squeezer. I now have more apples/saplings than I know what to do with. I thought the new farm would add a little challenge but honestly I have an over-abundance of mats now.

I have an 8LP boiler running off of charcoal from excess logs coming out the farm, this boiler powers the farm with excess MJ I'm using to slowly charge energy cells and plan to use for another farm. Saplings/Apples get fed into squeezer/fermenters if there's space in the inventory. Excess goes into barrels. I have had this setup for maybe a day and the only issue I have is the relay gets clogged on apples (sitting at 3 barrels currently).

 

[DoctorOr]

Accumulators take zero power, can they even shutoff? And why would you bother?

 

[MilConDoin]

The shutoff of the AqAcc is used to let the fermenter run dry of water, so that the apple juice can pour in.

 

[Westingham]

Use forestry's new farm. You'll never run out of apples.

Unless Forestry farms provide more apples per tree than trees planted and harvested in other manners, I'll stick with my SC2 method.

 

[DoctorOr]

Unless Forestry farms provide more apples per tree than trees planted and harvested in other manners, I'll stick with my SC2 method.

Use an Orchard, and they do indeed. No wood or saplings though.

Alternatively you can breed a tree that produces even more apples than vanilla Oak, but again that will require a forestry farm (or creative turtle programming) to automate.

 

[heavy1metal]

If you're using apple-tree saplings then SC2 may be close or more, but when you use normal saplings forestry auto-converts them to apple-tree saplings and the apple yield is insane. Your squeezer will never run out lol. I'd run a second squeezer if I had the demand for it.

As for actual sapling production, the one farm is more than keeping up with 3 fermenters and 15 engines. I'm unsure of your exact setup / demands and haven't tested my setup with sc2, but during this config I was constantly charging energy cells to power my full sized quarry. (Four at a time)

 

[Westingham]

I looked at Orchards but I didn't think it would be automated enough for my needs, it looked like I would need to plant my own trees all the time. Am I missing something here?

 

[MilConDoin]

Orchards don't destroy blocks. They just ruffle through the leaf blocks, searching for apples to harvest. Just plant a few apple oaks (remember to put them through the treealyzer first, because trees from unanalyzed vanilla saplings won't work) and watch the magic happen.

 

[heavy1metal]

You need to add 3 extension blocks to: give it power, give it liquid, and give you the ability to push/pull items from the orchard.
Once you do that you can fully automate it similar to the old logger / arb setup. You give it saplings, it plants them, grows them, and cuts them down.

 

[Westingham]

So the trees never get chopped down because I've changed the farm from Arboretum to Orchard?

 

[MilConDoin]

Correct, an Orchard only harvests, but never chops down.

 

[Westingham]

And apples keep growing despite the tree never being chopped down?

Also, I noticed some people are specifically saying "apple oak" instead of "oak". Is that a specific breed of tree?

 

[Velotican]

Forestry renames the Oaks to Apple Oaks. Vanilla trees also drop Forestry-style saplings so long as Forestry is installed, so if you search NEI for saplings you'll see the vanilla tree types are listed twice; the Forestry versions have genetic data.