So I am getting very close to end game on a server I play on. In a little bit (once FTB Ultimate updates to 1.5 or 1.6) we will be restarting the world. Everyone will be starting fresh with no items. I will be using this server for an FTB Let's Play. I am stuck on ideas for a sorting machine. I've used RP2, I've used BC Diamond Pipes, I'm not a fan of AE. What other sorting systems could I use? I don't want a barrel for every item ever. I would like to have chests still, but I don't know of any other sorting systems that could be possible, or will be possible in the 1.5 or 1.6 version of FTB. Help?
Sorting System for Next World
- Thread starter SatanicSanta
- Start date
Use dispensers, hoppers. Like that ride at water parks, where its a big cyclone and you ride the inner tube down any errythin..D
How would this sort things?
The only things left that are in FTB are MFR and Sortrons. Could you get Logistics Pipes added to the server? Or, wait and see what Thermal Expansion item conduits bring to the table. No idea what the ETA is on those though. Oh, I forgot turtles, those are in some ways harder than Sortrons though due to the moving around. Unless you set them up in "bucket brigade" fashion...
One of the problems that I have with AE is, everyone's AE system ends up looking exactly like everyone else's AE system, with the only variation being whether they connect the Interface and Import Bus to a Macerator or a Pulverizer. So if you're doing a Lets Play, and you're using AE, please just say "I'm going to set up the AE parts off-camera because you've probably seen that before", unless you really have found something new and innovative to do.Depending on what your ultimate goal is with the sorting system, building one with AE could perhaps change your opinion about that mod.
Once you get into AE and work out you can sort drives/chests/storage buses in order and then tell your storage chips what you can put on what, you end up with a 1-stop sorting system that has no equal rival.
Yes it takes work to setup, yes it takes work to maintain (adding new items to storage chips) but once setup and running you have the most single powerful crafting/storage system there is.
Become one you have no idea wtf you are missing!!!
Yes it takes work to setup, yes it takes work to maintain (adding new items to storage chips) but once setup and running you have the most single powerful crafting/storage system there is.
Become one you have no idea wtf you are missing!!!
Oddly enough, this happens with most other kinds of sorting systems too. Most RP2 sorting systems look like other RP2 sorting systems. Most BC sorting systems look like other BC sorting systems.
As for setting things up off-camera, what about the people who are new to AE? Not everyone who watches a Let's Play is an expert who has seen that stuff before.
What makes you think he hasn't tried it? I have, and I'm still not a fan. Sure there are great things about it, such as the convenience of creating an Electronic Circuit or even a Low Voltage Solar Array with a single click, but I'm still not a fan.
I have a small AE system, well not that small actually, I have 4 16K drives although only one of them is full, and an autocrafter with two providers and two CPUs, and a line of about 5 or 6 machines to pulverize, smelt, centrifuge, and carpenter Pulsating Meshes into Ender Pearls. But I don't feel the need to expand it beyond that. I have no desire to replace my main sorting system and my storage chests and barrels with AE, I only throw in enough resources to do the autocrafting that AE does for me, and to be honest about half of the patterns in the pattern provider are for upgrading my AE system. The only other thing it does for me is to turn on my skeleton spawner when it's running low on bonemeal.
There at least three major choices with RedPower:
1. Do you sort everything, with default routes for unhandled items? I don't, most people do.
2. Do you pass ores to be processed and then smelted automatically, or do you route the dusts back to the input to be handled in a separate pass? I do the latter.
3. Do you send stuff to individual chests, or do you have barrel walls filled by routers?
You can have separate ME Chests with AE rather than just using the terminal. DW20 did that, but ended up not ever using the chests.
On top of that, there's other stuff you can do. Have you ever seen this done before, and can you guess how it works?
1. I throw something into my Ender Pouch
2. I select a Wireless Remote frequency, "Macerate", "Furnace", or "Recycle" and press the button.
3. Any items that match the item in Slot 1 of the pouch disappear, and gradually trickle back in in their processed form (dusts, ingots, sand, glass, bonemeal, scrap, whatever).
So lets say I'm away somewhere, perhaps in a different age or the Twilight Forest, and I need some glass. I just dig up some cobblestone, pouch it, select Macerate, wait a few seconds for some sand to appear, then select Furnace, and I've got glass within a minute of wanting it. Then I just need to keep making sure the sand is in slot 1 as I send it to the furnaces.
Can you do that with AE? Maybe. I'll believe it's possible. Not sure how though. I can think of two very different ways to do that with RedPower, although getting it to only process materials that match Slot 1 is the hard part, but that's an advanced feature that I added quite a bit after implementing the main remote processing capability.
I've been called a fanboy, I've been called a palladin, and that's all fair enough. I do love RedPower, because it's awesome. Oh, and when I throw a bucket into my sorting pouch, it reappears 30 seconds later filled with water. Lets see AE do that with one EnderPouch.
It's easy to do but I'm not going to waste my time explaining it since you're so anti-AE that you would probably just bring back another counter-arguement.
*finds another thread*
I don't know where you got that from. I've tried it. It's useful. It does what it says, efficiently and effectively. I use it for some functions of my base automation. But it only does a certain defined set of things, it isn't a generic toolkit of multipurpose gadgets that you can arrange into whatever you want.
Really, genuinely, please tell me how to get AE to do that! Maybe it will open up possibilities that I simply wasn't seeing with my limited experience of AE.
Lets see. What's the challenge to solve? It has to detect an incoming bucket, even if it already has buckets in the system. I'm unaware of anything in AE that detects the change in number of items and exports one on a particular interface when one new item comes in. I suppose you could forego ever having buckets in your system for any other purpose, which would make autocrafting tricky if it needs to craft a bucket to make something like a Liquid Transposer. OK, you could set up a separate ME Controller that only processes empty bucket filling for you. But if you connected that with an Import Bus to your input enderchest, then it would be competing with the Import Bus from your other AE system which presumably is sucking everything in. I suppose you could program a big bank of Import Buses with just the items you want to import into your main AE system, and leave buckets off the list, after all that's what you have to do with Sorting Machines.
OK, so it can be done, if you program all your Import Buses with only the items to import, and have a separate ME Controller just to fill your buckets. Not sure if I want to go to that extent, but I could use the same ME Controller to refill my empty tin cans with food like I have now.
Still not sure how I'd do the remote processing... I can't think how to select between "Furnace" and "Macerate" for processing Cobblestone.
Got it! Dark Cable can be turned on and off with a redstone signal, right? OK, so the Wireless Remote switches on one Export Bus, and switches off all the others, so only the Export Bus attached to, say, the Furnace is turned on. Then when I throw something in, it goes to the Furnace. But... only stuff that is pre-programmed will go out on the Export Bus... if I cut down a Canopy Tree and want to turn it to Charcoal, I can't unless I already thought of putting Canopy Tree Wood in the Export Bus. Oh well, it's most of the way there, most of the things I need can be predicted, like glass, smoothstone, sand, to be honest I use it for very little else other than those three. I'd have to wait for everything to finish the first round of processing before using it for something else, though, because if I have sand and glass both trickling into the pouch, I can't think of a way of telling it to only pull the sand out and not the glass - and I might just want sand for something so it can't be automatic. And I might want to add a Fabricator that turns Glass into Glass Viewers, so I can't just leave glass off the Import Bus list.
You could just use an export buss and turn it on with a level emiter every time you get above the level of buckets you need. There's more methods if that's not exactly what you want.
In any way, I do agree with you. I don't have an ae on this map yet, but once I do, I will completely forgo its storage capabilities and will use dsu's or quantum chests instead and a few diamond chests. I will also avoid using it for basic ore processing and sorting and will have the crafting hooked up to an entirely new system, independent of the first.
However, I will use full AE automation for the second system, wherever it's easy to use it.
Buckets, if I ever need 'em, for example, I'd handle with MFR liquicrafters (which are frankly quite awesome)
Oh man, I really should post my biofuel system somewhere it's all kinds of neat and very, very robust.
In any way, I do agree with you. I don't have an ae on this map yet, but once I do, I will completely forgo its storage capabilities and will use dsu's or quantum chests instead and a few diamond chests. I will also avoid using it for basic ore processing and sorting and will have the crafting hooked up to an entirely new system, independent of the first.
However, I will use full AE automation for the second system, wherever it's easy to use it.
Buckets, if I ever need 'em, for example, I'd handle with MFR liquicrafters (which are frankly quite awesome)
Oh man, I really should post my biofuel system somewhere
it's all kinds of neat and very, very robust.Same for every other sorting system. And, as you noted, you have "multiple ways" of doing things with RP2. Same, too, for AE. I put quotes there because of the contrived nature of your multiple ways as eventually most people will converge on an optimal mix of convenience and expedience.
BTW, I actually rarely use interfaces with my pulverizers (no IC2 here, thanks) and rather go with an export bus and a level emitter. But, hey, I forgot, in AE there's only one way to do things. Which, incidentally, is part of the solution to your water bucket problem. See, the thing is you're trying to treat AE like RP2, which doesn't work. No more than when I tried to use RP2 like it was LP. BTW, I'll even help you along, what traveler's pouch is used as an input anyway? IE, input bus, why?
Not like there isn't a fuzzy matching version of the import/export buses.
The thing is, though, that your conflating two different concepts. A sorting system, and a logistics system. Furthermore the OP asked about one, and not the other. A sorting system is a system dedicated to getting the items from an input into the desired storage in the system. A logistics system is the automatic usage of that stored inventory to a variety of purposes.
AE is a great storage system, its logistics is lacking, but a quick perusal of the planned features shows that as time progresses its logistics will get better. To the point where your water bucket problem becomes insanely trivial whereas right now it requires, I will admit, a wee bit of hackery.
RP2 is a mediocre storage system and a poor logistics system. The only place that it shines is in small-scale, self-contained automation prior to injection into a larger sorting and logistics system. Given the glacial pace of development I don't see that changing. In fact, the slow pace of RP2 development combined with the fact other mods have provided better alternatives to almost all of its key features, I don't see RP2 being of central relevance to anyone outside of its current core fan base ever again.
I remember being able to pump items into the side of a filter so that it would end up in the 3*3 filter box. If you can pull them out again then I think I have a way of recreating your cool system of getting sand/glass etc.
So you are out in the world with two ender pouches. One connected to your main sorting input, the other connected to your request system. The request ender chest is connected to Filter A. Filter A pulls out the first item in your ender pouch. It receives a redstone pulse from your wireless receiver. Lets say you are running on frequencies 1 (smooth stone), 2 (glass), 3 (sand). 3 wireless receivers set to those frequencies are attached with red alloy wire to Filter A. You pressed furnace and you put cobble in the first slot of your ender pouch. When Filter A is pulsed it is routed into the side of another filter (Filter B) that connects to a chest full of cobble. Filter B then pumps out an amount of cobblestone into another chest.
Elsewhere on your factory floor, you have three lines. Each one starts with a regulator set with the desired input, followed by a set of machines designed to process that input. If you pressed furnace, then a wireless receiver will pulse a retriever that is infront of a furnace. The output can be pulled out of the furnace and returned to your ender chest. With redstone logic or another wireless redstone pulse, you can evacuate Filter B with a transposer.
Obviously this setup relies on being able to pump items out of a filter's filter. I don't know if you can do that or not and I run 1.5.2 so I can't test it without getting a new instance. Also I maight have over complicated things. Is this close to your system or am I way off. And if you use sortrons and Forth stuff then I have no idea how it might work. I only have room in my head for Lua when it comes to minecraft programming.
P.S. I hope my explanation makes sense
Edit: I have just booted up my old 1.4.7 instance and discovered that you could pump items out of the filter's filter with a transposer.