Do you feel that applied energetics can ruin some of the fun?

[Pokefenn]

Just to say: This is NOT a flame thread, and i dont mean it to be anything like that in any way.



So after playing with AE for awhile, i personally have found that it ruins some of the fun of ftb/modded minecraft, personally i really liked complicated and badly made buildcraft/redpower systems for crafting and millions of chests for storage, or maybe barrels.

So i was wondering, has anyone else felt like this?

And i repeat, no, im not trying to flame ae, i think its still a great mod, i just feel it ruined some of my fun!

 

[Wekmor]

I personaly don't really like the fact that you can store and craft (etc.) with just a few blocks. I think it's really cool to have giant storage rooms, item sorting with machines, tubes, whatever is just awesome and you have the feeling that you accomplished something. You don't (well, I don't) get that from using ae. It's too easy

 

[KirinDave]

Nothing stops you from making processing and storage outside of ME cells. In fact, in the case of processing you are rewarded; AE is actually pretty bad at processing systems. For example, AE has a hard time "splitting" outputs in such a way that you keep some stuff for storage. A good example is seeds. "Oh, you wand seeds around for thaumcraft? Cool story, but you sent them all to export in a machine. Make seed oil on demand in cans, if you must!"

Whereas splitting outputs in traditional processing systems: trivial.

 

[Hydra]

No, I love it. It allows for a whole new way of designing your base. I mean, I think we've all done this RP sorter + barrels thing to death already right? The main benefit of AE is that it can 'decide' to do stuff based on the amount of a certain item you have in storage. This goes a lot further than simply storing stuff: you can decide for example to only keep a certain amount of wood in storage and turn the rest into charcoal, or always keep a few stacks of honey drops in storage and squeeze the rest into honey.

Nothing stops you from making processing and storage outside of ME cells. In fact, in the case of processing you are rewarded; AE is actually pretty bad at processing systems. For example, AE has a hard time "splitting" outputs in such a way that you keep some stuff for storage..

Level emitters? I have my system set up so that I keep X amount of wood for crafting, and if the amount goes over that the rest gets turned into charcoal for my boilers. If my stored charcoal goes over 50k the rest goed into generators that generate IC2 power for my UU matter fabrication.

 

[whizzball1]

This is why I still take a huge liking to RP2, as it's amazing pipe logic makes for good distribution systems.
For example, if you put two filters on the same pipe, it will split the items evenly, so you can put half your cobblestone in one area, and the other half in the other.

 

[KirinDave]

Level emitters?

Mean that you have an upper limit on what you can store. For example, I'd like to have a DSU full of wood, feed a solid fuel boiler, and never overflow into the world. Doing this with AE intelligently is hard.

Even worse, level emitters are binary; on or off. This means that if you DO want to say, limit the amount of MFR rubber you have in your system AND the amount of rubberwood? You need 2 export busses and 2 level emitters. Look at Dire's current build on his SMP server and note that not only is it going to totally destroy his flagging power reserves, it's going to be a pain to extend if he ever wants to use apples or saplings in another way.

Applied Energistics is terrible for input processing. It's great at storage and auto crafting, though. But if I am wrong, Hydra, please tell me. I'd love to know how to do this stuff with just AE. It's way more convenient to use unified piping. It's one of the reasons I love Infinitubes.

[DOUBLEPOST=1371402863][/DOUBLEPOST]

This is why I still take a huge liking to RP2, as it's amazing pipe logic makes for good distribution systems.
For example, if you put two filters on the same pipe, it will split the items evenly, so you can put half your cobblestone in one area, and the other half in the other.

The big problem with RP2 was that it would only do even splits. You couldn't send 3/4 of your wood one direction and 1/4 another way unless you made unnecessarily verbose builds.

 

[Cutler Pain]

I've done the whole RP2 sorting system, it was ok just not my thing. Since I discovered AE my productivity has trippled. It's just the right sorting system for me, and it's not instant gratification. You have to actually teach your system how to grow and learn. It's nice to tell your self every time your crafting something new and inputing it into the system "this is the last time I have to manually craft this"

 

[whizzball1]

The big problem with RP2 was that it would only do even splits. You couldn't send 3/4 of your wood one direction and 1/4 another way unless you made unnecessarily verbose builds.

Anything except thirds (or any multiple of three) can be made by splitting in half/
For example, say you wanted 3/4 one way and 1/4 the other.
Split it in half once.
Split both ends in half.
One Split goes one way, while the other three combine.
Poof!
Only 6 Filters needed.
Actually, you can do even better by making a second split on only one side.
So a Half Plus a Fourth and a Fourth besides.
Super Simple, need only 4 Filters.
To make it EVEN SIMPLER, just route the first split back into itself (that actually might make it a bit less simple, I feel stupid). Actually, never mind, that won't work.
To make it EVEN CHEAPER, just use transposers.

 

[KirinDave]

Anything except thirds (or any multiple of three) can be made by splitting in half/
For example, say you wanted 3/4 one way and 1/4 the other.
Split it in half once.
Split both ends in half.
One Split goes one way, while the other three combine.

You couldn't send 3/4 of your wood one direction and 1/4 another way unless you made unnecessarily verbose builds.

 

[Loufmier]

Anything except thirds (or any multiple of three) can be made by splitting in half/
For example, say you wanted 3/4 one way and 1/4 the other.
Split it in half once.
Split both ends in half.
One Split goes one way, while the other three combine.
Poof!
Only 6 Filters needed.
Actually, you can do even better by making a second split on only one side.
So a Half Plus a Fourth and a Fourth besides.
Super Simple, need only 4 Filters.
To make it EVEN SIMPLER, just route the first split back into itself (that actually might make it a bit less simple, I feel stupid). Actually, never mind, that won't work.
To make it EVEN CHEAPER, just use transposers.

what a mess... additional pipes distribution pipe, i miss you

 

[Wekmor]

You can make it do straight 1/4 and 3/4 of an item type. Have a barrel with lets say cobble in it. Pneumatic Tube on the bottom side and 2 Retrievers connected. 1 retriever with 1 cobble in it and the other with 3. Then give them both a redstone signal with 1 tick delay from each other (so first receiver gets the signal 1 tick before the second). This way you can do it.

Sure it's more complicated and not as clean. But I like it more :')

 

[KirinDave]

You can make it do straight 1/4 and 3/4 of an item type. Have a barrel with lets say cobble in it. Pneumatic Tube on the bottom side and 2 Retrievers connected. 1 retriever with 1 cobble in it and the other with 3. Then give them both a redstone signal with 1 tick delay from each other (so first receiver gets the signal 1 tick before the second). This way you can do it.

Sure it's more complicated and not as clean. But I like it more :')

It is cool how far off topic we are.

 

[Hydra]

Mean that you have an upper limit on what you can store. For example, I'd like to have a DSU full of wood, feed a solid fuel boiler, and never overflow into the world. Doing this with AE intelligently is hard.

I'm afraid I just don't get what's 'hard' there: A DSU will never overflow and can be attached through storage busses. There's multiple ways to set up the feed to the boilers (depending on what you feed them with) but again with level emitters it's completely trivial.

Even worse, level emitters are binary; on or off. This means that if you DO want to say, limit the amount of MFR rubber you have in your system AND the amount of rubberwood? You need 2 export busses and 2 level emitters. Look at Dire's current build on his SMP server and note that not only is it going to totally destroy his flagging power reserves, it's going to be a pain to extend if he ever wants to use apples or saplings in another way.

Again, I still don't understand what's hard or 'bad' about this: you use level emitters to 'do' something with certain items based on how much you have of them. You can export to whatever machine or storage or crafter you want. It just works.

AE is powerful, the downside is that this awesomeness costs a lot of power. IMHO a totally fair tradeoff because without it it would be to 'cheap'. And I like that I actually have some purpose for the 8 HP boilers in my base and AE gives IMHO a much better 'reason' for needing power than the rather artificial mining laser in MFR (which is still rather cool, don't get me wrong).

Applied Energistics is terrible for input processing. It's great at storage and auto crafting, though. But if I am wrong, Hydra, please tell me. I'd love to know how to do this stuff with just AE. It's way more convenient to use unified piping. It's one of the reasons I love Infinitubes.

Sorry but what? AE is completely awesome for any form of processing. I have a whole story of my based dedicated to processing whatever comes in (and I have a lot coming in; ores, bee products, wood, etc.) and it all works purely based on AE.

The big problem with RP2 was that it would only do even splits. You couldn't send 3/4 of your wood one direction and 1/4 another way unless you made unnecessarily verbose builds.

RP2 machines have different settings. You can do this actually, just like you can do this with diamond pipes. AE works differently; you have to get out of the mindset of 'sending' certain amounts somewhere because your entire system is integrated.

But if you have concrete examples of what you find difficult to achieve in AE I'd love to hear them.

 

[KirinDave]

I'm afraid I just don't get what's 'hard' there: A DSU will never overflow and can be attached through storage busses. There's multiple ways to set up the feed to the boilers (depending on what you feed them with) but again with level emitters it's completely trivial.

But the setup you described will never retain any wood for building OR will only start building after some minimum number is reached. It cannot both store and produce outputs at the same time.

Again, I still don't understand what's hard or 'bad' about this: you use level emitters to 'do' something with certain items based on how much you have of them. You can export to whatever machine or storage or crafter you want. It just works.

You end up with massive fields of expensive blocks just to keep your stuff under control.

Sorry but what? AE is completely awesome for any form of processing. I have a whole story of my based dedicated to processing whatever comes in (and I have a lot coming in; ores, bee products, wood, etc.) and it all works purely based on AE.

For reasons described. It is the most expensive and one of the least controllable systems for farm output processing I have at my disposal.

But if you have concrete examples of what you find difficult to achieve in AE I'd love to hear them.

Help me out here, please:
The spruce farm example is a good one. I'd like to both begins to store spruce planks for building and process spruce wood into charcoal for burning. So I want a DSU full of planks and DSU full of charcoal. Were I to naively wire this with import and export busses, I will radically overproduce planks because my powered furnace will turn out results more slowly than my sawmill will. So I'd prefer to send more wood down the charcoal processing line so that I produce charcoal faster, since 1 wood = 6 planks anyways and the sawmill runs fast. This is not an unreasonable request.

And then:
I would like to convert 90% of my MFR rubber in plastic sheets and 9% as raw plastic, and 1% as raw rubber for sticky pistons. If any one of these resources overfills a DSU, I'd like to start dumping raw rubber out.

My opinion of AE is that it's great, but instead of being a solution to storage problems it exchanges one set of problems for another. It is great to have the autocrafting, but barrel sorting systems tend to be better about handling overflow.

 

[Loufmier]

It is great to have the autocrafting, but barrel sorting systems tend to be better about handling overflow.

you can simulate tubes overflow logic, with lever emitter and another storage/export bus, that would be active when amount of certain item is close to 1st storage capacity. its not that simple as a wall of barrels with tubes above them, but close.
the problem with AE is that you cannot get away with having just one network for everything

 

[Hydra]

My opinion of AE is that it's great, but instead of being a solution to storage problems it exchanges one set of problems for another. It is great to have the autocrafting, but barrel sorting systems tend to be better about handling overflow.

To be honest, I think you're creating problems. AE gives you tools, just like other mods in the pack do. You can try to hammer in a screw but often it's better to take the screwdriver instead. That however doesn't make a hammer a bad tool that 'creates' problems. All in all AE is just an advanced storage system; it's not a tool for every task. But what it does it does VERY well IMHO.

Your issue with planks and charcoal is incredibly easy to solve though: have the machines that 'produce' these items either enabled / disabled through level emittors or have them output to chests connected by storage busses. The latter is how I produce cobble, sand and glass: TE machines outputting to chests connected to the system through storage busses. The chests make sure I never produce 'too much'.

Your issue with plastic doesn't make sense: you want to produce 'stuff' based on how much you actually use, not a fixed percentage. It's how I turn propolis from my bees into rubber for example: whenever my stocks drop under 1k my level emitters dump more into the machines and make some more. You can easily do this with MFR plastic.

And it's funny you mention farms: AE and Forestry multifarms work very well together. It can autocraft fertilizer directly into the farm, and my walnut farm that produces nuts for seedoil gets shut off automatically when my stock of walnuts goes over 1k.

Again: I am not saying it's the tool for every problem but it sure works darn well together with most other mods in the pack.[DOUBLEPOST=1371408226][/DOUBLEPOST]

you can simulate tubes overflow logic, with lever emitter and another storage/export bus, that would be active when amount of certain item is close to 1st storage capacity. its not that simple as a wall of barrels with tubes above them, but close.
the problem with AE is that you cannot get away with having just one network for everything

I have and it works fine. I only have a separate network for my scrap fabrication but that's simply because I want to make sure that if somethings gets screwed up I don't dump metric craptons of stuff into the floor lagging the server to death Functionally it could be on the same network.

 

[quantumllama]

AE ruining fun? You don't have Gregtech I suppose, AE crafting takes the tedium out of many of the Gregtech machines and would be invaluable for that alone. But it's also a very good storage system that keeps all of the stuff you put into it in the same place for easy access. Like KirinDave the wise pointed out, it's hard to micromanage the input, but I got around that by having several specialized networks.

For instance, you could get a setup to send half of the gold and half of the silver dusts to get autocrafted into electrum dust and then get them into your smelting network and when they are nice and ingot shaped you could get them into your main system. I found trying to keep everything in one network all the time to be a logistical nightmare when the same raw materials are used for a few recipes.

 

[KirinDave]

To be honest, I think you're creating problems. AE gives you tools, just like other mods in the pack do. You can try to hammer in a screw but often it's better to take the screwdriver instead. That however doesn't make a hammer a bad tool that 'creates' problems. All in all AE is just an advanced storage system; it's not a tool for every task. But what it does it does VERY well IMHO.

I just want to accomplish tasks. If the argument is, "AE makes some stuff easy!" then yeah, sure. I am with that. AE's autocrafting and machine automation is great for task-driven stuff. Never been better.

Your issue with planks and charcoal is incredibly easy to solve though: have the machines that 'produce' these items either enabled / disabled through level emittors or have them output to chests connected by storage busses. The latter is how I produce cobble, sand and glass: TE machines outputting to chests connected to the system through storage busses. The chests make sure I never produce 'too much'.

Neither MFR farms nor Forestry farms do this very well. Forestry farm have to be hand-cleaned if they back up, and MFR farms spit to the world and aren't disabled by redstone signals. So. Yes, it works for sand.

Your issue with plastic doesn't make sense: you want to produce 'stuff' based on how much you actually use, not a fixed percentage. It's how I turn propolis from my bees into rubber for example: whenever my stocks drop under 1k my level emitters dump more into the machines and make some more. You can easily do this with MFR plastic.

I can't help but feeling you walked around answering my question. The answer is, "There is no good way, of course, and other mods make it very simple to do." Instead you tried to say that my desire to do this is invalid. I feel a bit patronized? "Dave start working in absolute sums when you're about to make 3 million road blocks just keep hitting +64 okay?"

 

[Saice]

I love the IDEA of AE not so much its actual use right now. As dave pointed out the one thing Level Emitor is var vauge on its fine contorl. If the added say a set of Logic Inport/Export buses with a GUI allowing for proity and level contorl. IE. Proity 1 Export set to 64 wood would always get 64 to keep in it connected invtory at which point it stops requesting wood form the network. If you had 3 of them set to 1 2 and 3 that would be 3 stacks wood in stuff all the time while the rest going to your DSU/Drive only pulling more as needed. Something like that would add a layer of fine control.

But my big issue is how server derps and other things can wipe drives of there items. That is a deal breaker to me.

 

[Yusunoha]

I like AE, I really do, but if I remember how it was when using logistics pipes in 1.2.5, and using AE now, I just feel that I could do things more compact and efficient with logistics pipes then with AE.
I really don't know why I feel this way, but I do know I would really love if AE would add some cables that are several cables in 1, with sneaky pipe configuration, so I would only have to hook up 1 pipe to a machine instead of hooking up several pipes making a big mess of the machine setup and just giving the whole thing an awful look.

but if there's ever 1 thing I want to see added to AE, that has to be liquid support/storage