How does a dimensional anchor compare in terms of its effects to a world anchor?
You set how large an area you wish to chunk load and pay the appropriate price. For instance, I use 3x1 X-Line, which loads 3 chunks along the x-axis, and one piece of coal gives me 30 minutes. One piece of charcoal gives me 6 minutes. Thus, it sounds like 1 Alumentum will probably give me a full hour, if twisto is correct. I have been using charcoal because I have 2000 stacks of it, but yeah I've been meaning to set up a TC process to turn all my charcoal into Alumentum which I should have done long ago (even if I do have the standard CreoTek CreoStak 36 churning out the free charcoal for me nonstop).
I had to re-arrange my base because of the cost of the Dim Anchor - a 3x3 chunkload was just too expensive even with all my free charcoal. To me, that's the only drawback - the material costs are
very expensive. I would normally do a 3x3 or even a 5x5 base, but due to the cost I scaled way back into a 3x1 base on the SMP server just so I wasn't using up all my charcoal.
I do not like the concept of "charging" the player for chunk-load ability, even if I do understand why it is done - which is, in an effort to get players to keep their chunk loading to an absolute minimum. And it does work - just look at my words above. But I dislike it very much, because in modded minecraft, I believe the ability to chunk load and have your stuff working while you're not even online is at the very heart of this game. Without it, especially in THIS modpack... well, I hope you plan to play for many years in that case.