1.6 Alternative to RC Boilers for 100MJ+ power ?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Hydrogen Generators from Mekanism will probably be able to do the job.

Consider, if you will, that boilers are already 'small engine spam', in that it requires a whole boatload of steam engines to turn the steam into power. Replacing the steam engines one for one with a combination hydrogen generator and electrolytic separator will produce higher MJ output for much lower price and overall lower footprint.

 

[Not_Steve]

Not to necro the thread but big reactors is a serious option nowadays

 

[AlanEsh]

Not to necro the thread but big reactors is a serious option nowadays

I'm currently in the process of digging my underground reactor complex; looks like a fun mod. I love multi-block structures, and I love it that Big Reactors is relatively simple, with only what, 20 blocks/items in the entire mod?
Can't wait to see how much power I can get out of various reactor configs.

 

[GreenZombie]

It is my opinion that CJ and the BC team has nerfed BC into unusability.
The base BC engines produce reasonable amounts of power, but due to the broken MJ power network you cannot rely on the "Power Requested" signal to run an engine farm to provide loads of power to (say) Extra Bees machines on a chunkloaded server as the engines will never stop.

With RC you can build a steam plant, but again, on a chunkloaded server, the ongoing resource requirements are too high. Unless you add Forestry to the mix (I mention Forestry as the "native" MJ tree farm option. Obviously any mod that can farm saplings can be used). I find Forestry tree farms to be rather lame, as now the fuel to BC comes just all to easilly - EXCEPT for the potential non renewal apatite resource that needs to be scraped from the ground. A little goes a really REALLY long way so I suspect that practically, even on a chunkloaded server, you can run a max sized tree farm for months of real time between searching for and replacing your apatite reserves.

Again, while a treefarm is an "almost" inexhaustible (and trivially scaleable) source of logs for a solid fuel burner or saplings for a Forestry fermenter -> uel -> Liquid Fuel boiler, the farms require the occasional top ups of dirt and fertilizer that are going to require a logistics pipes setup (Even if its basic emerald pipes and BC signal wires) if youre not going to be online at least once a week.

Which means, using "pure" MJ mods (BC, RC, Forestry) the only practical power solution on chunkloaded servers is to create a powerplant per device being powered, and use a "Work In Progress" gate on the device in question to fire it up. This means not-quite-as-large-as-they-could-be MJ plants, which means your ExtraBees / Gencraft machines are slow.

Though - other than ExtraBees / Gencraft - what mod adds machines that require 50+MJ/t for an in-your-face operation?

 

[SandGrainOne]

It is my opinion that CJ and the BC team has nerfed BC into unusability.

There has been no change to BuildCraft as such. The change is that you can no longer use Thermal Expansion to transport BC power. That is not a nerf to BuildCraft, but a change to Thermal Expansion. If you are unhappy with that you should complain to The CoFH team.

The base BC engines produce reasonable amounts of power, but due to the broken MJ power network you cannot rely on the "Power Requested" signal to run an engine farm to provide loads of power to (say) Extra Bees machines on a chunkloaded server as the engines will never stop.

The old conductive pipes had up towards 20% loss. That was broken, so people used Thermal Expansion Conduits instead. That was understandable, but a lot has changed after that. BuildCraft now has a fully functional power network system and Thermal Expansion has its own power type. If you can document anything to be broken with the new kinesis pipes, please report it on the BuildCraft forum or github.

Which means, using "pure" MJ mods (BC, RC, Forestry) the only practical power solution on chunkloaded servers is to create a powerplant per device being powered, and use a "Work In Progress" gate on the device in question to fire it up. This means not-quite-as-large-as-they-could-be MJ plants, which means your ExtraBees / Gencraft machines are slow.

That didn't make much sense. It is true that some machines will require more a dedicated power system, but there is no limit to how large you can make them. I have 16 combustion engines start up when I tell my Assembly Table to make me a new gate.

The fact that BuildCraft power sometimes must be made where you need it when you need it, is part of the design and it is made like that on purpose. We believe it gives more choice and options for the player. It's also a way for BuildCraft to distinguish itself from other power systems.

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

There has been no change to BuildCraft as such. The change is that you can no longer use Thermal Expansion to transport BC power. That is not a nerf to BuildCraft, but a change to Thermal Expansion. If you are unhappy with that you should complain to The CoFH team.

What version of BC/TE are you talking about? As far as I know, conduits in TE 3.0.0.2 convert to MJ.

 

[Vircomore]

What version of BC/TE are you talking about? As far as I know, conduits in TE 3.0.0.2 convert to MJ.

I think he's referring more to the fact that you can't take a BC engine and connect it to TE conduits any more. Conduits now only accept power from RF sources/dynamos.

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

I think he's referring more to the fact that you can't take a BC engine and connect it to TE conduits any more. Conduits now only accept power from RF sources/dynamos.

Was that change made in the TE 3.0.0.0 release? I wish they'd kept a changelog in the beta.

I got excited when I read SandGrainOne's post because I've been hoping for at least a config option to disable any kind of RF/MJ conversion.

 

[Nooska]

What version of BC/TE are you talking about? As far as I know, conduits in TE 3.0.0.2 convert to MJ.

convert TO MJ, yes. But you can't transport MJ with TE conduits. (RF -> MJ, yes, MJ -> RF, no)[DOUBLEPOST=1389906320][/DOUBLEPOST]

I've been hoping for at least a config option to disable any kind of RF/MJ conversion.

Since the conversion is done RF side of things, don't expect it from BC or other MJ using mods.

 

[Henry Link]

IWhile it's cool to see balance in a multi-mod environment being addressed, have you seen what it takes to run a heavily modded server? I have a four person server barely scraping by on a quad core VPS with two gigs of memory. I've looked at the costs of a dedicated machine or a proper XEN vps.. I simply refuse to pay over one hundred dollars so that me and, my friends can play modded Minecraft together.

This may be a little off topic. But, I do use a dedicated server from OVH that is less than $50 per month and isn't a VPS. So far it has been able to handle about 6 or 7 us playing without any major issues.

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

Since the conversion is done RF side of things, don't expect it from BC or other MJ using mods.

Right, as a config option in TE or COFH Core.

More generally, the BC API should allow a particular block to specify whether it should (not can, but an unenforced flag that it should) accept MJ from a power system with large-scale storage like TE's that runs against BC's design. It would be up to the other mod to decide whether it fits this description. Then that mod can decide whether it will cooperate, and I suspect that TE would by default. That mod could then include a config option to ignore the flag.

 

[Nooska]

That sounds liek a LOT of work for a mod to figure out what generated the power it is looking for tbh.

 

[OnmyojiOmn]

That sounds liek a LOT of work for a mod to figure out what generated the power it is looking for tbh.

Not really. Suppose I create a power mod that includes batteries and cables. I know that my mod isn't entirely in the spirit of BC since it includes batteries so by default, the cables only push MJ into a block if it's an IPowerReceptor and block.getPowerReceiver(side).shouldAcceptStoredPower() == true. This is around four lines of code on BC's end and one line in my mod.

The difference between this and the current state of affairs (where a mod with batteries either violates BC's design or doesn't support MJ at all) is that it works on a block-by-block basis. Power mods can respect BC's intentions while supporting mods that accept MJ and don't care about power storage. Also, BC itself could some day include limited converters for RF and similar systems, and those blocks could specifically accept power from mods with power storage.

 

[GreenZombie]

There has been no change to BuildCraft as such. The change is that you can no longer use Thermal Expansion to transport BC power. That is not a nerf to BuildCraft, but a change to Thermal Expansion. If you are unhappy with that you should complain to The CoFH team.

The brokenness of the pwerloss notwithstanding, I refer to machine perdition. People hate BC power because of it. And it makes "Power Requested" gates useless because there's always power requested.

The fact that BuildCraft power sometimes must be made where you need it when you need it, is part of the design and it is made like that on purpose. We believe it gives more choice and options for the player. It's also a way for BuildCraft to distinguish itself from other power systems.

Why then is TE is even more popular after BCs switch from power loss to perdition? Because there are less, not more, efficient engine plant designs that are possible.

I don't frankly understand the mindset that says that BC requires either perdition OR powerloss over distance. Distance 'costs' are balanced by golden pipes being bloody expensive. And perdidition is just a very complicated way of saying you get less MJ per unit of fuel - so why not just make fuel produce less MJ then and get rid of the stupid mechanic.

 

[immibis]

BC's power system is designed around machines that need a relatively constant amount of power over a long period of time. It's not really surprising that it doesn't work well for other types of machines. (You could even argue those machines are badly designed for choosing BC power over IC2 or TE power)

 

[PierceSG]

Well, put this to a rest. BC devs wants power perdition for BC, so be it. TE3 supports MJ by converting it from RF via conduits, great. A little more effort is required on my side (player) to stop MJ machines from siphoning power on idle? Just have to drop an Energy Cell in between the power source and the energy conduits connecting to the machines, set the EC's redstone signal requirement to high and slap a lever on it. So to power the machines, I just flip the lever. And once I'm done, flip it off.
It's a hassle but works for me.

 

[GreenZombie]

Who is talking about other kinds of machines?

And if so, the paradox is, very few "native" MJ machines actually require power for long periods of time.

There is the BC quarry. Strips 16 chunks to the bedrock for hardly anything. Even the quarry (I find) works so fast that the real hassle is just re-locating it to a new site. Or just running it on a single combustion engine to keep it slow.
Other than the quarry, there are no BC machines that are not going to complete their operation almost immediately.
In RC - how many tracks do you need to make? I made an always on machine that processed iron into steel, wood into sleeper beds. I had a myriad of RC machines all hooked up, Ran it for 5 minutes and made a stockpile of railway beds I - months later - still havn't burnt through.
Forestry has its multiblock farms. They require a whole 2MJ/t to keep on going.
Which leaves us with gencraft / extrabees genetics machines. These are the ONLY native MJ devices I know that are hungry for 50MJ/t - and that 50MJ/t is so that you can get the gene operation completed "now" rather than waiting 5 minutes.

So a network of native MJ machines is mostly always in standby mode. The power system doesn't meet the needs of its own native MJ consuming devices?

With BC, RC and Forestry - It doesn't matter what power system you might have started off considering - if you have built a solid fuel boiler, you have a forestry tree farm - you can't find enough coal to run a solid fuel boiler unless you want to make your game an exercise in operating and relocating as many quarries as possible. If you build a forestry tree farm, because you say, want to try biogass, you quickly go back go to a solid fuel boiler because biogass has the energy density of a burp now, and you need to do *something* with all that wood its making. Unless you are located in an oil biome, even an oil well can't keep a liquid boiler going on a server with activity, and ongoing perdition means a centralized powerplant will exhaust it, powering mostly nothing, because (again) there are no actual buildcraft machines that actually require ongoing power, except for the quarry, and even the quarry at max size finishes in just a few hours and needs to be moved.

 

[PierceSG]

Just give it a rest, BC is fine, we have TE3 now.

Thing is the BC devs wants the power perdition in, so we let them be. TE3 is out and I'm liking it. Sadly, there's not much point trying to convince them otherwise.

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[GreenZombie]

I don't want to give it a rest actually. the point is I actually LIKE BC and don't want to passively aggressively fix its shortcomings using TE.

 

[PierceSG]

I don't want to give it a rest actually. the point is I actually LIKE BC and don't want to passively aggressively fix its shortcomings using TE.

Well, good luck. You'll need it.

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