Applied Energistics - ME Storage detect how much i have?

[khorozm]

I really want a block in AE that maintains the levels of items, so when certain item drops below a limit, it automatically requests the ME system to craft/ process more of it. Now the only way yo do it requires at least 2 block spaces for each type of item.

I also hope there is an option "only used when manually requested" which when ticked the pattern cant be used by the block I want to have. So I can have a slower and more energy efficient furnace to maintain my level of smooth stone, but when I need the many smooth stone it I have furnace with 10 overclockers which do the job quick enogh for me.

 

[casilleroatr]

Ah, I think I was getting confused between RedNet and either Immibis' or Project Red bundled cables or some other RP2 replacement.

Yes, as I already said, that's exactly what I am doing for my charcoal. But the levels have to be hard-coded and cannot be changed without hunting through the pipework for the right emitters. And I can't use a "master control board" of level emitters routed via MFR, as I have more than 16 of them. About 25 I think.

This is the reason why I prefer to use other transport methods for continuous crafting/processing jobs. That being said, I have never imagined needing anything close to 25 level emitters. Out of interest, what do you use them for?

 

[Runo]

Ah, I think I was getting confused between RedNet and either Immibis' or Project Red bundled cables or some other RP2 replacement.

Yes, as I already said, that's exactly what I am doing for my charcoal. But the levels have to be hard-coded and cannot be changed without hunting through the pipework for the right emitters. And I can't use a "master control board" of level emitters routed via MFR, as I have more than 16 of them. About 25 I think.

if i recall, you can use the same colors from diff sides, right? Or at least I thought. that'd be 96 possible inputs.

but yeah, i agree that having to hunt for levels can be tedious. maybe make a room with them and item frames or signs?

i see what you mean now, you want an ME level controlel

 

[PhilHibbs]

This is the reason why I prefer to use other transport methods for continuous crafting/processing jobs. That being said, I have never imagined needing anything close to 25 level emitters. Out of interest, what do you use them for?

Most of them are running my farms. I have Bioreactors with 9 different things in them, so there's 9. Whenever the level of, say Carrots drops below 500, on goes my carrots harvester. Additional to the three sapling emitters, I have emitters for oak wood, spruce wood, and birch wood. So whenever either the sapling count or the logs count go below 500, on goes the appropriate tree harvester. Then four emitters for the charcoal processing, two for refined iron, two for making sand, two for making glass, two for converting rubber into raw plastic... that's 24, I might have a couple of others that I forgot about.

 

[MigukNamja]

I have a room/area/zone/MystCraft Age for "automated processing". Almost all of my Level Emitters are there. I try to keep all machines or ME Lever Emitters 'labeled' with a picture frame of either the material they are consuming or are making. It's quick and easy to find the right ME Level Emitter.

As for my specific charcoal setup, I use a TE Powered Furnace that is set to Active with Redstone. The Level Emitter is pointed at the furnace will emit if charcoal falls below a threshold, like 512. I store wood in a DSU and emit on charcoal, but I could just as easily reverse that and store charcoal in a DSU. I would then emit on wood when wood rises above a certain threshold. But, I generally prefer storing the raw materials unless bursting is an issue, such as making an HV Solar Array that requires thousands of refined iron, glass, coal dust, and rubber in a few minutes' time. I will try to keep a minimum supply/stock of those.

Sure, I may have to tweak my ME level emitters, but they're in a convenient location with my processing machines. I haven't counted, but I have between 20 and 30 ME Level Emitters in total in my processing area.

My farms and my power generation are all "dumb" - no AE automation there. With boilers and DSUs, there's not much benefit to turning power on/off or pausing a farm. I may change that in future playthroughs for a change of pace, though, i.e. minimalism as opposed to brute force.

 

[MigukNamja]

I really want a block in AE that maintains the levels of items, so when certain item drops below a limit, it automatically requests the ME system to craft/ process more of it. Now the only way yo do it requires at least 2 block spaces for each type of item.

I also hope there is an option "only used when manually requested" which when ticked the pattern cant be used by the block I want to have. So I can have a slower and more energy efficient furnace to maintain my level of smooth stone, but when I need the many smooth stone it I have furnace with 10 overclockers which do the job quick enogh for me.

That's possible now. I have a TE Powered Furnace to keep a minimum supply of Refined Iron. It's relatively slow, but energy efficient. I also have an ME Interface with a Pattern for Iron into Refined Iron in the crafting part of an ME Interface. That is sitting on top of an IC2 Electric Furnace with max. upgrades and an ME

If I need a modest amount of Refined Iron, it pulls from my inventory and my TE Powered Furnace slowly replenishes it. If I'm bursting Refined Iron, like making HV Solars, AE will use the crafting recipe on top of the IC2 Electric Furnace when my Refined Iron stock has been depleted. I can also manually request it to make tons of Refined Iron above and beyond my stock if I go into the ME Crafting Interface, change the view mode to 'Craft Only' so I don't see what I already have in stock, and then order up thousands of Refined Iron. Otherwise, with the default view, I would have to manually pull out all of my Refined Iron before I could 'Craft' more.

You can replace Refined Iron in the above example with anything else that is machine-processed.

 

[khorozm]

That's possible now. I have a TE Powered Furnace to keep a minimum supply of Refined Iron. It's relatively slow, but energy efficient. I also have an ME Interface with a Pattern for Iron into Refined Iron in the crafting part of an ME Interface. That is sitting on top of an IC2 Electric Furnace with max. upgrades and an ME

If I need a modest amount of Refined Iron, it pulls from my inventory and my TE Powered Furnace slowly replenishes it. If I'm bursting Refined Iron, like making HV Solars, AE will use the crafting recipe on top of the IC2 Electric Furnace when my Refined Iron stock has been depleted. I can also manually request it to make tons of Refined Iron above and beyond my stock if I go into the ME Crafting Interface, change the view mode to 'Craft Only' so I don't see what I already have in stock, and then order up thousands of Refined Iron. Otherwise, with the default view, I would have to manually pull out all of my Refined Iron before I could 'Craft' more.

You can replace Refined Iron in the above example with anything else that is machine-processed.

Still you need a furnace dedicated for the iron. The setup is very big compared to other ME components.
I just don't like the fact that you can store all your things in less than 10 blocks, but need 3 blocks or so to keep an item at a certain level.

Btw somebody mentioned AE with CC interaction, I guess there is API for returning the amount of certain items and ask for crafting certain items. With programming I can simply make a computer to do the things that i wanted to do

 

[MigukNamja]

The reason I have a TE Powered Furnace and a max. upgraded IC2 Electric Furnace or TE Pulverizer and max. upgrade IC2 Macerator is to have both efficiency and speed (when I need it and I don't care about efficiency) for processing materials.

Not sure how AE + CC will solve this (make it smaller by avoiding machine duplication) in 1.5.2 or 1.6.4 in their current state. We'll see whether/how upgraded/overclocked TE machines will work in 1.6.x .

If you're using any kind of teleportation (MystCraft, Portal guns, teleporters), space/size shouldn't be an issue.

 

[AlanEsh]

The reason I have a TE Powered Furnace and a max. upgraded IC2 Electric Furnace or TE Pulverizer and max. upgrade IC2 Macerator is to have both efficiency and speed (when I need it and I don't care about efficiency) for processing materials.

If you're using any kind of teleportation (MystCraft, Portal guns, teleporters), space/size shouldn't be an issue.

I don't like having a stack of 64 x sitting in a machine's outbound or inbound inventory, and this is almost always the case when you try to implement quick on-demand auto crafting. Sure I have 11,000 iron ingots in my network, but it still feels like bad form to tie a stack up in the "process" of setting up on-demand/inventory levels.

Space & size, again, are a matter of taste, and khor's point was that this mod, which does such a fine job of compacting storage, does a pretty weak job of compacting an autocrafting/inventory management system.

 

[MigukNamja]

For quick, on-demand crafting, one uses Encoded Patterns in the 'Crafting' row of an ME Interface feeding into the machine. It stores nothing in the machine's input or output queue.

Again, I'm not seeing how AE is lacking there for 1.5.2 where TE is for efficiency at a relatively slower speed and IC2 is for max. speed, efficiency be damned. AE has both of those covered.

If we're talking 1.6, I believe AE does indeed have some more controls/improvements in terms of machine-facing crafting.

 

[casilleroatr]

I don't like having a stack of 64 x sitting in a machine's outbound or inbound inventory, and this is almost always the case when you try to implement quick on-demand auto crafting. Sure I have 11,000 iron ingots in my network, but it still feels like bad form to tie a stack up in the "process" of setting up on-demand/inventory levels.

Space & size, again, are a matter of taste, and khor's point was that this mod, which does such a fine job of compacting storage, does a pretty weak job of compacting an autocrafting/inventory management system.

That is the perfect excuse to start learning the other mods that work so well with applied energistics. A pair of translocators between an interface and an inventory can be set to export only x at a time and can also be controlled by redstone. Like I have said before, this is a great way (probably the best way) to not tie up a full stack of material in a machine.

 

[AlanEsh]

For quick, on-demand crafting, one uses Encoded Patterns in the 'Crafting' row of an ME Interface feeding into the machine. It stores nothing in the machine's input or output queue.

Again, I'm not seeing how AE is lacking there for 1.5.2 where TE is for efficiency at a relatively slower speed and IC2 is for max. speed, efficiency be damned. AE has both of those covered.

If we're talking 1.6, I believe AE does indeed have some more controls/improvements in terms of machine-facing crafting.

I use encoded patterns in ME Interfaces all the time -- there is nothing quick about on-demand crafting that requires grinding/pulverizing/cooking, and I'm not going to entangle my lovely base with an IC2 power system just to speed up some of the on-demand cooking. Not sure why you're arguing against AE adding a bit more control over inventory levels, but whatever.[DOUBLEPOST=1380572690][/DOUBLEPOST]

That is the perfect excuse to start learning the other mods that work so well with applied energistics. A pair of translocators between an interface and an inventory can be set to export only x at a time and can also be controlled by redstone. Like I have said before, this is a great way (probably the best way) to not tie up a full stack of material in a machine.

Yeah I'm going to delve into that, seems to be worth investigation.

 

[khorozm]

I am playing in a custom 1.6 paxk with gregtech, so I guess it is not
possible for me to get in to psedo-creative mode in 2 weeks time. So power gen will be a big problem for me. I kind of wish my ME systems always have plates of every metal, alloys, machine hulls ready in the system that I can just pull from the network without waiting.

 

[KingTriaxx]

@PhilHibbs: With that distribution, I only count fourteen individual sets. MFR Cable has sixteen. A computer can take the incoming from the cable and send it to the various machines. A capable programmer could probably do that with Wireless methods. I'd just plug in cables.

 

[PhilHibbs]

@PhilHibbs: With that distribution, I only count fourteen individual sets. MFR Cable has sixteen.

I forgot ME Interface and the 2 processors, I keep 4 of each of those in stock. So 17. So far.

 

[KingTriaxx]

No need for those. Set down an ME Interface, and set the left side to 4 Interfaces, and 4 of each processor. Then place a storage bus against the interface. Now they're outside the system in the export slots, but available for autocrafting. When some are used, either by you removing them or the system using them for autocrafting, the Interface will request more of them be created. Now that I think about it, you could do the same with most of these other materials you're after.

 

[PhilHibbs]

No need for those. Set down an ME Interface, and set the left side to 4 Interfaces, and 4 of each processor. Then place a storage bus against the interface.

I never thought of that! I'll add an Interface next to my DSU array. So now I have a ton of Level Emitters and Precision Export Buses that I don't know what to do with. I guess I'd better set up some more farms. I don't have jungle wood or rubber set up yet.

*Edit* Hm, what happens with this set up when you throw in an item that's stored in the interface? Lets say it's programmed to keep 2 Basic Processors. I drop a third processor into the AE system, the Storage Bus puts it in the ME Interface because there's two already there, the ME Interface then takes it out because there are three and it's programmed to keep two in there, so where does it go... into the Storage Bus again? How does AE handle a loop like this?

 

[AlanEsh]

No need for those. Set down an ME Interface, and set the left side to 4 Interfaces, and 4 of each processor. Then place a storage bus against the interface. Now they're outside the system in the export slots, but available for autocrafting. When some are used, either by you removing them or the system using them for autocrafting, the Interface will request more of them be created. Now that I think about it, you could do the same with most of these other materials you're after.

Would you be so kind as to correct any misconceptions I have about this solution please?
1) the stuff in the left side of the Interface is "exported" from the Network. Normally this would put X number of Y items into an attached inventory?
2) the stuff in the left side of the Interface has nowhere to go so it is stored in the interface itself?
3) attaching a storage bus so that it is monitoring the ME Interface will force the contents of the ME Interface to show up as "in the network" just like any other items in an inventory?

The left side of the ME Interface confuses me to no end

 

[Trunks9809]

Would you be so kind as to correct any misconceptions I have about this solution please?
1) the stuff in the left side of the Interface is "exported" from the Network. Normally this would put X number of Y items into an attached inventory?
2) the stuff in the left side of the Interface has nowhere to go so it is stored in the interface itself?
3) attaching a storage bus so that it is monitoring the ME Interface will force the contents of the ME Interface to show up as "in the network" just like any other items in an inventory?

Correct, yes.

 

[PhilHibbs]

1) the stuff in the left side of the Interface is "exported" from the Network. Normally this would put X number of Y items into an attached inventory?

No, it doesn't put the items into an attached inventory, it puts them in the right hand side.

2) the stuff in the left side of the Interface has nowhere to go so it is stored in the interface itself?

The "stuff" in the left side is just config. It's ghost items, it doesn't "go" anywhere, it just tells the interface how many of what to keep in the right side.
4) Stuff that ends up on the right side, that does not match the config on the left, is imported into the network
5) Stuff along the bottom, when the pattern is used to craft something, results in the ingredients being placed in an attached inventory whereupon somehow the item gets created (furnace, macerator, golem army).