A Rotarycraft Thread (Meanders a little)

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kilteroff

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Jul 29, 2019
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Reika, I has two requests / suggestions (I don't want to make an account on planetminecraft or whatev just for this, sorry)

1: Ever heard of quad or quasi-turbines? They're basically 4-sided wankel engines, it's almost impossible to find information on them because energy companies bought up the patents and buried them (seriously, because they're like 99% fuel-efficient), I think they'd be a neat 3rd tier combustion engine :)

2: Upgrades? I want to play with cams! Let us sit and play with torque curves :) Start them off at 180 timing so you _have_ to set them correctly on install lest your engine shake itself apart :D I know a lot of people are struggling with the basic concepts of your power system but this could be a lil extra oomph to reward those with the know-how :)
 

Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Sep 3, 2013
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1: Ever heard of quad or quasi-turbines? They're basically 4-sided wankel engines, it's almost impossible to find information on them because energy companies bought up the patents and buried them (seriously, because they're like 99% fuel-efficient), I think they'd be a neat 3rd tier combustion engine :)
From seeing that alone I can tell that this is more fiction than fact. For one, a 99% efficiency violates the laws of thermodynamics unless you have extremely high input temperatures or zero losses.
e99601ad6d5c167f7a55000346130700.png


If we assume a 25-degree TC, we get a TH of almost 30000 degrees:
faa740810d14fe425cad591ed2c04efe.png


Neither are possible here. Two, turbines and wankel engines are two completely different things:
Wankel_Cycle_anim_en.gif

2: Upgrades? I want to play with cams! Let us sit and play with torque curves :) Start them off at 180 timing so you _have_ to set them correctly on install lest your engine shake itself apart :D I know a lot of people are struggling with the basic concepts of your power system but this could be a lil extra oomph to reward those with the know-how :)
It also makes the engines far more fiddly than I want, and it will completely ruin most people's understanding.
 
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kilteroff

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Quad-turbine was a lay name, I absolutely understand the difference dude (internal physics aside I'd wager far more than you), getting my A&P took 14 months of 9 hour a day school. The 99% thing was maybe a projection? They were never actually manufactured afaik, this is literally off memory from seeing it on howstuffworks over a decade ago, it even had a gif exactly like what you linked for standard wankels, but with four sides which is what supposedly gave it the insane efficiency. Just an idea bud, put down the flamethrower :p
 

gallowglass

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Quad-turbine was a lay name, I absolutely understand the difference dude (internal physics aside I'd wager far more than you), getting my A&P took 14 months of 9 hour a day school. The 99% thing was maybe a projection? They were never actually manufactured afaik, this is literally off memory from seeing it on howstuffworks over a decade ago, it even had a gif exactly like what you linked for standard wankels, but with four sides which is what supposedly gave it the insane efficiency. Just an idea bud, put down the flamethrower :p

No flames. He is just saying, quite correctly, that 99% efficiency is practically impossible. It doesn't matter what you make the engine/turbine/whatever out of (e.g., frictionless components, ideal gases, etc.) you can't get around the second law of thermodynamics.
 

kilteroff

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I understand the point. My point is this is a videogame and the idea of 4-sided wankels is fucking rad. The 99% thing could obviously be set to whatever the hell Reika wants btw, seems like a odd thing to get hung up on imo, because that figure aside there's no reason these can't exist.. nothing about them is impossible or unrealistic, it's a very simple change to an existing design; you'd have to change the injector layout on the block, that's it.

----------------------

Random thought: ramjet upgrade on ethanol minecarts to achieve server-decimating speeds, heh.
 
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Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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I understand the point. My point is this is a videogame and the idea of 4-sided wankels is fucking rad. The 99% thing could obviously be set to whatever the hell Reika wants btw, seems like a odd thing to get hung up on imo, because that figure aside there's no reason these can't exist.. nothing about them is impossible or unrealistic, it's a very simple change to an existing design; you'd have to change the injector layout on the block, that's it.
Quad-turbine was a lay name, I absolutely understand the difference dude (internal physics aside I'd wager far more than you), getting my A&P took 14 months of 9 hour a day school. The 99% thing was maybe a projection? They were never actually manufactured afaik, this is literally off memory from seeing it on howstuffworks over a decade ago, it even had a gif exactly like what you linked for standard wankels, but with four sides which is what supposedly gave it the insane efficiency. Just an idea bud, put down the flamethrower :p
RotaryCraft strives to be as realistic is possible. Violating laws of thermodynamics flies in the face of that. Using realistic temperatures, the efficiency of this engine drops to less than 30%, which is about average for an engine (better than some, worse than others).


Random thought: ramjet upgrade on ethanol minecarts to achieve server-decimating speeds, heh.
I tried jet engine-powered carts. They crashed the game.
 

kilteroff

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Jul 29, 2019
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Your efforts at realism are precisely why I love your work so much, truly. I proselytize your mod constantly when I'm online to anyone that'll listen and happily walk people through gearing and your power system. I just wanted to suggest something that bends the rules a bit for the sake of f-u-n.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but if you can't hear me it's probably because you so accurately modelled the sound-dampening effects of forcefields, why don't you cross my lightbridge and come inside so we can talk ;)
 

Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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Sep 3, 2013
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Your efforts at realism are precisely why I love your work so much, truly. I proselytize your mod constantly when I'm online to anyone that'll listen and happily walk people through gearing and your power system. I just wanted to suggest something that bends the rules a bit for the sake of f-u-n.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but if you can't hear me it's probably because you so accurately modelled the sound-dampening effects of forcefields, why don't you cross my lightbridge and come inside so we can talk ;)
I do not bend the rules except in cases of implementation possibility or "if you do not change this then you get blacklisted from every pack ever".
 
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Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
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TNT is not stable enough to be propelled at high speed, even pneumatically :p
Actually, it is:
"TNT is one of the most commonly used explosives for military and industrial applications. It is valued partly because of its insensitivity to shock and friction, which reduces the risk of accidental detonation, compared to other more sensitive high explosives such as nitroglycerin."
 

kilteroff

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Jul 29, 2019
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Dammit, nitro is what I was thinking of, I gotta stop watching Vertical Limit -_- Still waiting on your forcefield explanation :p
 
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Physicist

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Two CVT boxes are enough to gear two AC engines to 1 nm of torque and 262144 rad/s. It also can be, with redstone toggle, be geared completely the opposite direction, to 262144 nm and 1 rad/s, or anywhere in between.

They also cost leather and not tons of steel, and only consume a bucket of lube each when you place them.
 
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Physicist

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Simplest Extractor setup using CVT, easy power, and low resource investment. I used a few bevel gears to get the other extractor into better view; adjust as you see fit.
2rwCMPA.png

uzHDAjn.png
NmaV7pp.png
As you can see, the construct is AC Engine > CVT > Shaft Junction (set to 1:1 split) > Extractors.

One note is that you cannot rotate Extractors, so if you build this oriented to the wrong cardinal direction in too confined a space, it might be difficult to use automation (pipes, import bus, etc.) to extract the flakes from one or both extractors.
 
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EyeDeck

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Apr 16, 2013
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One note is that you cannot rotate Extractors, so if you build this oriented to the wrong cardinal direction in too confined a space, it might be difficult to use automation (pipes, import bus, etc.) to extract the flakes from one or both extractors.
I'm not sure what the issue is here, extractors are direction-blind. As far as I can tell, RoC machines in general are direction-blind for the purposes of item piping.

For the curious, particularly because I've seen practically nothing about the Rotarycraft extractor posted elsewhere, here are a few notes about mid-to-late-game extractor usage:
  • For instant operation (that is, no bar visibly filling, processing dozens of ores per second), stages 1 & 4 require 32,768rad/s @ 512Nm, for a total of 16,777,216 W - applying torque >512 Nm has no effect but to waste power
  • For instant operation, stages 2 & 3 require 1,048,576 rad/s @ 1Nm for a total of 1,048,576 W - applying torque >1 Nm has no effect but to waste power
  • Stages 2 and 3 require a lot of water to run at this speed; it took about 14 aqueous accumulators with 2 separate fluiduct outputs to run a dedicated stage 2 & 3 extractor continuously.
  • The different stages seem to share power, so while stage 1 requires 16MW and stage 4 requires 8MW of power (32768 rad/s @ 512 Nm) for instant operation, there's no good reason to build more than two extractors if you've got a complex piping system
  • While the above is true, running a single extractor at 1,048,576 rad/s @ 512 Nm is ridiculously inefficient, so to run a high-efficiency extractor setup either requires a single extractor hooked up to a 16MW power source with a couple of CVTs, or two extractors using factorization routers with one 16MW and one 1MW power souce.
Here's the setup I've got for ore processing:
hnTYrEp.png
For the power system, from left to right, there's a tesseract drawing from my primary power source, with a lever to shut the system off. The first four magnetostatics are configured for 2,048 rad/s, at the fixed torque of 2,048 Nm. All four are hooked up to a bevel gear and a few junctions, outputting 2,048 rad/s @ 8,192 Nm to a 16:1 gearbox in speed mode, which is outputting into the first extractor (ExA) at 32,768 rad/s @ 512 Nm. The fifth magnetostatic is configured to 512rad/s, going through two 16:1 gearboxes and one 8:1 gearbox in speed mode for a final output of 1,048,576 rad/s @ 1Nm, powering the second extractor (ExB). The magnetostatics could be replaced with a couple industrial coils instead, with the appropriate changes to gearing.

Getting into the extractors themselves, ExA is being fed with raw ores from the diamond chests on the left with itemducts, stocked via AE export buses. There's a factorization router on top (with a bandwidth and machine upgrade), configured to extract from slot 1; visit near; Extractor. The output of this is being piped into ExB, along with the water output from 16 aqueous accumulators. On top of ExB is a second router, (bandwidth & machine upgrade; extract from slot 3; visit near; Extractor), which is piping its output back into ExA. Finally, the output from ExA is being piped back into the AE system as flakes, which are smelted elsewhere.

This whole setup was able to process the several hundred thousand ores produced by a 256^2 silk touch QuarryPlus quarry in the space of several hours, taking a pretty manageable power draw of 3,171 RF/t, or 17 MW of RoC power. I've seen setups that require such ridiculousness as 4 gas turbines to achieve a lesser effect, which is really entirely unnecessary.

Now, smelting all the flakes that this beast can produce is a whole other challenge.
 

Reika

RotaryCraft Dev
FTB Mod Dev
Sep 3, 2013
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Toronto, Canada
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I'm not sure what the issue is here, extractors are direction-blind. As far as I can tell, RoC machines in general are direction-blind for the purposes of item piping.
And for water connection, as long as the model visually "connects" to that side.

For the curious, particularly because I've seen practically nothing about the Rotarycraft extractor posted elsewhere, here are a few notes about mid-to-late-game extractor usage:
  • For instant operation (that is, no bar visibly filling, processing dozens of ores per second), stages 1 & 4 require 32,768rad/s @ 512Nm, for a total of 16,777,216 W - applying torque >512 Nm has no effect but to waste power
  • For instant operation, stages 2 & 3 require 1,048,576 rad/s @ 1Nm for a total of 1,048,576 W - applying torque >1 Nm has no effect but to waste power
So even I have been wasting power. :p
  • Stages 2 and 3 require a lot of water to run at this speed; it took about 14 aqueous accumulators with 2 separate fluiduct outputs to run a dedicated stage 2 & 3 extractor continuously.
And failing to supply enough water, too.

  • The different stages seem to share power, so while stage 1 requires 16MW and stage 4 requires 8MW of power (32768 rad/s @ 512 Nm) for instant operation, there's no good reason to build more than two extractors if you've got a complex piping system
I beg to differ. :D

  • While the above is true, running a single extractor at 1,048,576 rad/s @ 512 Nm is ridiculously inefficient, so to run a high-efficiency extractor setup either requires a single extractor hooked up to a 16MW power source with a couple of CVTs, or two extractors using factorization routers with one 16MW and one 1MW power souce.
You should see the people trying.

Here's the setup I've got for ore processing:
For the power system, from left to right, there's a tesseract drawing from my primary power source, with a lever to shut the system off. The first four magnetostatics are configured for 2,048 rad/s, at the fixed torque of 2,048 Nm. All four are hooked up to a bevel gear and a few junctions, outputting 2,048 rad/s @ 8,192 Nm to a 16:1 gearbox in speed mode, which is outputting into the first extractor (ExA) at 32,768 rad/s @ 512 Nm. The fifth magnetostatic is configured to 512rad/s, going through two 16:1 gearboxes and one 8:1 gearbox in speed mode for a final output of 1,048,576 rad/s @ 1Nm, powering the second extractor (ExB). The magnetostatics could be replaced with a couple industrial coils instead, with the appropriate changes to gearing.
Getting into the extractors themselves, ExA is being fed with raw ores from the diamond chests on the left with itemducts, stocked via AE export buses. There's a factorization router on top (with a bandwidth and machine upgrade), configured to extract from slot 1; visit near; Extractor. The output of this is being piped into ExB, along with the water output from 16 aqueous accumulators. On top of ExB is a second router, (bandwidth & machine upgrade; extract from slot 3; visit near; Extractor), which is piping its output back into ExA. Finally, the output from ExA is being piped back into the AE system as flakes, which are smelted elsewhere.

This whole setup was able to process the several hundred thousand ores produced by a 256^2 silk touch QuarryPlus quarry in the space of several hours, taking a pretty manageable power draw of 3,171 RF/t, or 17 MW of RoC power. I've seen setups that require such ridiculousness as 4 gas turbines to achieve a lesser effect, which is really entirely unnecessary.
I love it. :)

Now, smelting all the flakes that this beast can produce is a whole other challenge.
Maybe overclock those friction heaters? :D