AE question about ME Interface & TE Machines

[Beleriond01]

Dear FTB community,

I've lately started using the AE mod (running DW20 recommended pack) much more heavily than before and have made a setup similar to DW20's single-player setup but I've run into a problem I cannot seem to solve. For lack of screenshots, I'll explain in text for now. As an aside, SSes will be extremely difficult anyways due to the ME cabling being "hidden" in my walls to keep things looking half decent.

ME interface on top of a TE pulverizer. ME cable hooked into the back of the ME interface and an ME import bus (stack mode) hooked to the back of the pulverizer (input = top set to blue; output = back set to the "colourless mode"). In the ME controller I can see that my ME Network recognizes the ME Interface has been hooked up. For testing purposes I have placed a formatted crafting pattern that should craft 1 coal dust from 1 coal in the ME Interface. The ME cable connecting the ME Interface and Pulverizer to my ME Network runs past my ME Chests so the ME Interface isn't directly linked to the ME Controller, but as I said before, the ME Controller does recognize the ME Interface is present.

The problem now is that somehow the coal dust isn't being crafted at all (and thus no coal extracted from my ME Network) when I click the "craft" button in my ME Access Terminal. The strange thing (IMHO) is that this exact same setup does work for an IC2 Compressor on the other side of my machine room for making Mixed Metal Ingots.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Bel*.

 

[Omicron]

Someone else had this issue in the QA thread yesterday. Try moving the interface one block up, and placing a single Buildcraft pipe (cobblestone will do) between it and the pulverizer.

 

[b0bst3r]

Could it be that the coal dust (30256) from a pulverizer has a different ID from that of a macerated coal dust (21257:240)?

So when you click the recipe for coal dust it says well, this isn't the coal dust he asked for. To counter this make a recipe and replace the output coal dust with one from a pulverizer, on the downside you'll have 2 different stacks of coal dust in your system.

Edit: when making a recipe for Raw Carbon Fibre make sure to include one for both coal dust types, at that point your recipes combine so no duplicates are needed.

 

[Beleriond01]

Could it be that the coal dust (30256) from a pulverizer has a different ID from that of a macerated coal dust (21257:240)?

So when you click the recipe for coal dust it says well, this isn't the coal dust he asked for. To counter this make a recipe and replace the output coal dust with one from a pulverizer, on the downside you'll have 2 different stacks of coal dust in your system.

Still have to double-check this once I get home but I actually simply pulled 1 coal from my ME Network and macerated it. Then I used another piece of coal (from the same stock pile) to create the ME pattern.

@Omicron: will try doing that though I find it strange that this exact same setup works in DW20's episode 80 downloadable world which I downloaded to test and see...

 

[Omicron]

I agree that it should work, but I have no personal experience with AE in 1.4.7 (I play with a custom 1.5.2 pack nowadays). I was merely offering a workaround that is guaranteed to work

 

[Loufmier]

regardless of result, me interface should send and item to adjacent inventory or pipe, when requested. so it seems to me that you havent configured your pulverizer`s input right. if you want to have ME interface on top, you should configure pulverizer`s top to be blue. pulverizer can also output products(red, yellow and orange colors) to adjacent inventory and pipe, so you can use second me interface to retrieve coal dust from pulverizer, which is a bit cheaper than import bus.

 

[b0bst3r]

Someone else had this issue in the QA thread yesterday. Try moving the interface one block up, and placing a single Buildcraft pipe (cobblestone will do) between it and the pulverizer.

This is only necessary if you don't set the output of TE machines to colorless, ME Import BUSs work just fine on colorless sides, I have all mine setup like this.

I've just tried your setup replicating it exactly, with a TE coal dust in the recipe the crafting icon stacks with macerated coal dust, but when you click this icon and request coal dust it creates a separate stack of that coal dust (cos the IDs are different).

I then altered the recipe to tell it the output dust was the macerated ID and it still made the coal dust and still created a separate stack.

The only thing I can think of here is that you are requesting carbon (anything) with the IDs of macerated coal dust and that will not work with both coal dusts unless you have a recipe in for both coal dust types to raw carbon fibres.

 

[Beleriond01]

This is only necessary if you don't set the output of TE machines to colorless, ME Import BUSs work just fine on colorless sides, I have all mine setup like this.

I've just tried your setup replicating it exactly, with a TE coal dust in the recipe the crafting icon stacks with macerated coal dust, but when you click this icon and request coal dust it creates a separate stack of that coal dust (cos the IDs are different).

I then altered the recipe to tell it the output dust was the macerated ID and it still made the coal dust and still created a separate stack.

The only thing I can think of here is that you are requesting carbon (anything) with the IDs of macerated coal dust and that will not work with both coal dusts unless you have a recipe in for both coal dust types to raw carbon fibres.

@B0bst3r: as I mentioned already, what I did was: grab 1 piece of coal from the 11k coal stack in my ME Network and macerate it. Grabbed the resultant coal dust and another piece of coal (from the same 11k stack and used those 2 to make the formatted crafting pattern. Then removed all coal dust from the system (was 1) and clicked the craft icon...nothing happened

Will definitely look into the item ID thingy though, perhaps it is acting up or something. If all else fails then I guess I'll have to revert to the BC pipe solution...will make it aesthetically less appealling but at least functional.

Thanks a ton though!

Bel*.

 

[Heliomance]

I'd recommend trying setting the top face of the pulveriser to colourless. AFAICT, machines of any (non-TE) sort only interact with colourless sides.

 

[Loufmier]

I'd recommend trying setting the top face of the pulveriser to colourless. AFAICT, machines of any (non-TE) sort only interact with colourless sides.

do you even know what colors on TE machines mean?

 

[Heliomance]

In general, yes. And they work just fine with pipes and other TE machines. I've never managed to get any other machine to work with anything other than the colourless side, though.

I don't specifically know what the colourless side means, other than my trial and error suggesting that it's "use this if you want to use anything other than pipes or other TE machines here".

 

[Loufmier]

I don't specifically know what the colourless side means, other than my trial and error suggesting that it's "use this if you want to use anything other than pipes or other TE machines here".

colorless side means "i`m gonna pretend that i`m a dirt block" and thus it wont respond to anything

 

[Beleriond01]

Right,

I finally figured out what was causing the problem. From left to right the setup of machines on this line is Rolling Machine > Pulverizer > Powered Furnace. As explained above, the Pulverizer is the one with the ME Interface on top and the ME Import Bus on the back.

What I hadn't accounted for was that indeed (correct there Loufmier) ME Interfaces will input to any adjacent inventory. The thing that happened was I had a Hopper on top of the Rolling Machine. As a result, the ME Interface dumped the items into that rather than the Input slot on the Pulverizer (as an aside Loufmier: if you read my explanation you should have noticed that I had already configured my Pulverizer to have the blue input slot on top).

Essentially then, the entire setup was correct in the first place but due to a Hopper being adjacent to the ME Interface it output into there rather than the Pulverizer...LOL. Just feel somewhat silly I hadn't thought of checking the Hopper earlier, just never occurred to me it would be a valid inventory at all. Only when I tried b0bst3r's solution of adding a BC pipe did I notice that the pipe connected to the side of the Hopper. I then figured...if a pipe connects, then the ME Interface might also be connected, albeit not visually.

Fixed the problem now though...simply removed those hoppers and BAM!

Thanks for the input and thoughts guys and I hope this now helps others figure out similar issues

Bel*.

 

[Heliomance]

colorless side means "i`m gonna pretend that i`m a dirt block" and thus it wont respond to anything

No, not blank side, colourless port. You can change the ports on the side to various different colours, you can make the port grey/colourless, or you can remove the port entirely. I know removing it makes it pretend to be a dirt block, that's obvious. It's the colourless port that I'm a little confused by.

 

[Loufmier]

No, not blank side, colourless port. You can change the ports on the side to various different colours, you can make the port grey/colourless, or you can remove the port entirely. I know removing it makes it pretend to be a dirt block, that's obvious. It's the colourless port that I'm a little confused by.

didnt even notice it before. after some testing, it seems that grey/colorless input allows pipes to put items into machine`s output slot. i dont see a use for that though

 

[Heliomance]

I know routers just flat don't work with TE machines unless one of the sides is a colourless port. Possibly only for extraction though. I'd hazard a guess that the colourless port is one that lets machines pull from the output. Note that the coloured ports that correspond to the output slot auto-eject if there's something compatible to eject to. I think that colourless probably allows access to output without auto-ejecting.

 

[Juanitierno]

Colorless port means "passive inventory". Its like if the machine was a chest, will not actively output, but will make the slot visible to external machines as a normal inventory slot.