The issue was the factories as I mentioned above with how much power draw they had. I liked the idea of smelting 7 items at once, just not when it would take more fuel to smelt them than a vanilla furnace. This might be different if using a UE coal generator for power over a TE steam engine though, but if the coal gen produces more power then it
Part of my distaste for it might come from a few other things though, but I am mulling over re-installing it into my 152wgt pack with AS and some other mods.
Thing is all of the furnace replacements smelt less than 8 items when powered by one. On the flip side, if you use a TE steam engine yo power an energy cube and then use the cube to power a powered furnace it smelts 19 items.
Hmm, any tips on how I should start out working with UE? I plan on doing the usual TC start I do to get a smelter running and a hammer.
Running a set of Heat Generators into any number of Electrolytic Separators (set to dump the Oxygen), then the output of the Electrolytic Separators into an equal number of Hydrogen Generators*, can significantly increase the amount of power on hand. With the most recent Mekanism release, I /think/ it output about six times the energy it takes in -- note this ignores the cost of the water pump, if you're not using a ThermalExpansion Aqueous Accumulator. Four Heat Generators and two hydrogen stacks is usually more than enough power for ore processing and an AE network, and even early AtomicScience uranium refining.I don't know what Dave is talking about with his hydrogen splitters, maybe he could explain it more?
Running a set of Heat Generators into any number of Electrolytic Separators (set to dump the Oxygen), then the output of the Electrolytic Separators into an equal number of Hydrogen Generators*, can significantly increase the amount of power on hand. With the most recent Mekanism release, I /think/ it output about six times the energy it takes in -- note this ignores the cost of the water pump, if you're not using a ThermalExpansion Aqueous Accumulator. Four Heat Generators and two hydrogen stacks is usually more than enough power for ore processing and an AE network, and even early AtomicScience uranium refining.
* I'd recommend putting them side-by-side; piping doesn't seem reliable.
Once you've got more infrastructure, or at least a few Energy Tablets, you can bypass the Heat Generators entirely and just jumpstart a pair of Separators into an infinite fuel loop, but this is can have somewhat tricky results due to the voltages (if you don't just use Universal Cable).
He was saying start off with heat generators, move onto to hydrogen gens that are jump started by heat generators, and then once everything is all good loop the hydrogen gens so they power themselves.
Well, it seems it should be noted that if you have Gt installed that you should smelt the steel dust you get from the infuser in a TC smeltery rather than a furnace. If you pop it in a furnace it turns it into GT steel dust that requires a a blast furnace -_-
Well that's just how it was set, but it's not that bad since you can still make steel using the TC smeltery which can be semi-automated via using seared glass, liquiducts, and vanilla hoppers. If anything the added challenge of automating steel production while bypassing furnaces makes it kinda interesting.
For my starter power I ended up going with a hobbyists steam engine. It can produce power a good deal quicker than the heat generators and since both are temporary I decided to go with the easier to set up solution. Just made some of the universal cables so I can hook up my TE machines to the energy cube I have right now until I can get some conduits since BCs conductive pipes suck the life right out of the cubes. Once I find some gold I'll also be able to upgrade my other energy cube into an advanced one so that will also help a bit.
At the very least they don't draw 32 mj/t worth of power from the energy cube when all the machines are idle
Also, already having to deal with radiation in my mines under my house cause of all the ore. I decided not to take any chances and stash the uranium by itself in a chest away from my main pathways. Since I finished building my main base I'm also working on setting up a quick drop off station for my mines. The idea is to have a single BC pipe leading from my mines into a sorting area and rather than using chests with redstone engines and whatnot on every floor I'm setting up obsidian pipes so I can just throw stacks of items at it and let it go up and sort itself out. The only problem is needing iron pipes and a wrench to turn them, so my next step is to get some cyan dye and make an Omniwrench so I won't have to worry about it.