Thought I had better get around to making a thread like this. If you've played Aura Cascade, especially if you've been introduced to it through horizons, I'd be curious as to your thoughts. If not, heres a snazzy website.
Aura Cascade - Feedback and discussion
- Thread starter pixlepix
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I'm enjoying playing around with the system in Horizons, but I have some questions about the system. I'm testing things out (in survival, so limited), mostly in an attempt to get angel steel. And it seems like the max drop is 16 blocks if I recall correctly, and when I was dropping 10000 aura (using an aura capacitor) down the 16 blocks and I was only getting 4 progress per pop. Because of this, I moved the synthesizer up to a 4 block drop (3 empty spaces between nodes) and although I get 40000+ power, I get 2 or 3 progress per pop, not only am I not getting my full 4 progress, but it's inconsistent which bothers me a little. Also, I just did a test run dropping 100,000 aura, and got my 400,000+ power, but only got 10 progress. I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I'm missing a mechanic. Also, no, my dropping node doesn't connect to any other nodes other than the one it drops to.
Overall, I find this mod interesting and a great addition to ftb.
Oh another thing I find trivial for the synthesizer is hooking up and powering all the pumps, I think an addition I would like to see is 8x pumps like the generators in extra utilities. Something compact that does 8 times the power for 1/8th the duration, or something like that.
Finally, my calculations may be off, but it seems like 11 degree steel requires an extreme amount of resources and time (or tons of pumps) just for a single ingot, and since the gear isn't that OP (I don't believe, at least relative to like blood magic) it seems unreasonable.
Overall, I find this mod interesting and a great addition to ftb.
Oh another thing I find trivial for the synthesizer is hooking up and powering all the pumps, I think an addition I would like to see is 8x pumps like the generators in extra utilities. Something compact that does 8 times the power for 1/8th the duration, or something like that.
Finally, my calculations may be off, but it seems like 11 degree steel requires an extreme amount of resources and time (or tons of pumps) just for a single ingot, and since the gear isn't that OP (I don't believe, at least relative to like blood magic) it seems unreasonable.
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There is a diminishing return on cascading blocks like the cascading synthesizer. You get the most progress/power if you aim for 1 progress/second.
The 'fluctuation' is an intended mechanic. Note, however, that there is absolutely no randomness in aura transport. Power through a drop fluctuates based on other nodes, and systems with a capacitor won't settle into a relatively steady state.
I've been considering 8x pumps for a while. Not sure about it - it makes things more server-efficient, but it can simplify stuff.
First of all, I don't expect anyone to legitimately obtain eleventh degree. That being said, high-degree angelsteel tools are powerful because you can stack enchants off their own innate abilities (especially fortune). The potion effects on the weapons make the quite formidable if used carefully.
Hmm, that makes sense, I'll try a 1,000 power capacitor over a 10 drop and see if I get more efficient results.
I guess the variations I observed are most likely due to the diminishing returns on the cascading blocks, sometimes the capactitor drops 10,005, and sometimes it drops 10,100, this could be enough to bring it up to a 3rd progress I guess.
I guess that if eleventh degree ingots aren't expected to be obtainable the need for 8x pumps goes down dramatically, I didn't realize that was the case, I've been sitting around trying to find a feasable setup that would generate enough eleventh degree ingots in a reasonable time frame, with a reasonable amount of resources.
One other thing that I'm sure you know about, but I'm wondering if it's intended behavior, is the ability to make endless violet aura generators. My guess it's intended, but if it's not I'd like to say I like this feature, it acts as a solar panel of sorts for your mod, although I wish there were a way to filter out auras of certain colors, because the end result is millions of violet aura clogging up my networks.
I haven't yet had the chance to play it, but it does look really cool. I like how it models (to some degree) potential and kinetic energy.
Violet aura generators are intended, but the mechanics will be majorly changed in the next update.
I've been playing with Aura Cascade in Horizons. You can see some of my posts in the Horizon discussion thread (starting here).
The short version is that I'm finding the mod a lot of fun! Building out the various machines, and figuring out how to power them has been really interesting. I've got working setups for a Cascading Colorer (I love the use of colored wool), the Cascading Processor, a Vortex Infusion system, and a Cascading Looter.
I'd love to see a better power setup for a Vortex infusion system. Mine is currently powered by four alternating burning aura pumps, pumping up into a network with four receiving nodes and four transfer nodes, then dropping down on to the four infusion pedestals, and back to the aura pumps. It works fine, but I waste a lot of potential power when making arcane gems, because the ingots get charged long before the diamond does.
It would be cool if there was an aura node that acted like a Conserving Aura Node when a redstone signal was applied, and a normal aura node with no signal. That would let me channel all the aura down a particular transfer node once the ingots were finished. Or is there another way to do something like that, maybe using Orange Aura?
I'm powering the Cascading Looter using four burning aura pumps feeding into Aura Capacitors set to discharge 10k aura at a time. That gets me enough power flowing to move things along, but it's a little slow. I did leave things running overnight last night with a stack of coal blocks, and got a lot of loot in the morning, so maybe it's fine and I'm just impatient.
I intend to experiment with some of the other pumps, but since most of them take Arcane Gems to make, and my Infusion setup is slow, I've been putting it off. Any recommendations?
As for the actual trinkets, I've made a Sash of the Angel's heels, which is an awesome step-up boost. I also wear the Green Protection Amulet (Immunity to fall damage) since I also recently built a Mekanism jetpack. Just last night I made a Prismatic Wand. I love the wand! It's like a combination of a BC Builder and a Builder's Wand. Getting the blocks to place how I want them is a little fiddly, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.
I think my next goal is a bookshelf system, since Horizons doesn't have Applied Energistics. What else should I play with?
The short version is that I'm finding the mod a lot of fun! Building out the various machines, and figuring out how to power them has been really interesting. I've got working setups for a Cascading Colorer (I love the use of colored wool), the Cascading Processor, a Vortex Infusion system, and a Cascading Looter.
I'd love to see a better power setup for a Vortex infusion system. Mine is currently powered by four alternating burning aura pumps, pumping up into a network with four receiving nodes and four transfer nodes, then dropping down on to the four infusion pedestals, and back to the aura pumps. It works fine, but I waste a lot of potential power when making arcane gems, because the ingots get charged long before the diamond does.
It would be cool if there was an aura node that acted like a Conserving Aura Node when a redstone signal was applied, and a normal aura node with no signal. That would let me channel all the aura down a particular transfer node once the ingots were finished. Or is there another way to do something like that, maybe using Orange Aura?
I'm powering the Cascading Looter using four burning aura pumps feeding into Aura Capacitors set to discharge 10k aura at a time. That gets me enough power flowing to move things along, but it's a little slow. I did leave things running overnight last night with a stack of coal blocks, and got a lot of loot in the morning, so maybe it's fine and I'm just impatient.
I intend to experiment with some of the other pumps, but since most of them take Arcane Gems to make, and my Infusion setup is slow, I've been putting it off. Any recommendations?
As for the actual trinkets, I've made a Sash of the Angel's heels, which is an awesome step-up boost. I also wear the Green Protection Amulet (Immunity to fall damage) since I also recently built a Mekanism jetpack. Just last night I made a Prismatic Wand. I love the wand! It's like a combination of a BC Builder and a Builder's Wand. Getting the blocks to place how I want them is a little fiddly, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.
I think my next goal is a bookshelf system, since Horizons doesn't have Applied Energistics. What else should I play with?
I have yet to try out orange and black aura myself, honestly I'm not sure what black aura is useful for and can't find a practical use for orange aura. My idea for controlling flow was using pistons to block flow paths, but I have yet to test it. I wonder even if sticky pistons can be used to move the nodes themselves instead of just blocking certain channels.
I also have yet to try the looter, so I don't know how much progress it requires for each loot, but my angel steel synthesizer is just set up with a single capacitor being fed by a small violet aura generator. It's pretty slow, 1 ingot every 80 minutes, but it's functional and I intend to increase the size of the violet aura generator. You could almost certainly do something similar for the looter. Keep in mind the diminishing returns pixlepix mentioned, if you have multiple aura capacitors dropping 10k at a time over a distance larger than one drop, then you are getting well over the required 5000 power per second (I think that's right?) required for the looter, which means it's inefficient. At the very least you can try to have the capacitors alternate release.
As for pumps, the projectile pump is the second fastest for use and you can set it up with arrows in a dispenser, I haven't gotten eggs to work from the dispenser, which is dissappointing and may just be a bug, but if eggs worked it would be easy to set up a chicken farm over a hopper with a dispenser and still get 500 power for free. And the momentum pump is still really good and can be entirely free. Presumably thats what the super bounce pads are for. I don't know if the bounce pads remove fall damage, but you could probably control the mobs in one way or another and have just one mob cycle in it. Redstone is by far the fastest but I have yet to figure out a way to optimize automation for it.
Oh, another resource efficient addition you can use for automation is a clock to disable alternating pumps when they are at low power outputs.
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Yes, a piston is the way to go here. You can also have other setups, such as orange aura, but a sticky piston + cobblestone is the simplest way to block off power to some vortex pedestals.
Pumps no longer use arcane gems on the latest update, though I don't think thats in horizons yet.
Try out kaledioscopic enchantments. A lot of depth there. Angel's steel is an end-game goal aswell.
Black aura is used for setting off capacitors, not the most useful of things. In early builds, we didn't have redstone control of aura, so black aura was essential.
You can't move nodes with pistons, but you can push in cobblestone to block the flow of aura.
Issues with a projectile pump and a dispenser is a known bug, and it should be fixed in the next update.
Well, I think I improved my Cascading Looter quite a bit. Before, when my capacitors fired, they spread most of the aura around in the top of the system, instead of letting it drop down to provide power. My new setup looks like this:
The aura is pumped up to the top layer, where it pools. Then it feeds down one level to the capacitors. Now, when the capacitors discharge, the only place for the power to go is straight down, so all of the aura is used to produce power. That's just a lapis block in between the capacitors so they don't share with each other when they discharge.
After taking this screenshot, I realized how much the drop height mattered, so I moved the whole top part up about 6 more blocks. I'm still playing with it, but it's quite a bit faster now.
The aura is pumped up to the top layer, where it pools. Then it feeds down one level to the capacitors. Now, when the capacitors discharge, the only place for the power to go is straight down, so all of the aura is used to produce power. That's just a lapis block in between the capacitors so they don't share with each other when they discharge.
After taking this screenshot, I realized how much the drop height mattered, so I moved the whole top part up about 6 more blocks. I'm still playing with it, but it's quite a bit faster now.
Yeah, drop height is pretty significant. As Pixlepix mentioned earlier though, do be wary of those diminishing returns. Also, with a pump system such as this, increasing the height doesn't actually help you all too much, because the pumps have to do more work to raise it. So you might have actually slowed it down by increasing the height, since you aren't increasing the speed it goes you are only increasing the size of the packets of power that the looter recieves, and that will cause those diminishing returns to kick in harder.
I'll also note that having the capacitors one level down is what I do as well, but this is a resource inefficiency because you are wasting that one block of power output that your pumps are generating. Maybe instead of using a lapis block there use another cascader that requires less power per progress.
I guess that's fair, but I still think he's losing more with his increased packet size. Admittedly, I don't know your equation for diminishing returns but from I saw it gets pretty steep, and with his four alternating pumps powering that I can't imangine his capacitors are set to anything less than 10,000. Which means, assuming they are dropping all at once over the ~10 block drop he has he's generating 400,000 power of his required 5,000 which my guess is that would only result in somewhere around 35 progress for 80 progress worth of power. Which is losing more than 1/2, and if he used that first drop to power something else it might not all be a waste.
Yeah, I discovered the issue with diminishing returns after I made my post. I also realized that the drop height was important, but not AS important as I thought.
I've switched to having three of the capacitors set to drop at 1K aura, which drops 10 blocks and dumps 10K power into the looter. That gets 2 points of progress, so that's good. The fourth capacitor is still set to discharge at 10K aura, because the system was getting backed up when all the capacitors were on cooldown. That fourth capacitor generates 100K of power, but it only nets me about 12 progress. Just getting all the aura to drop, instead of sloshing around in the top has been a big improvement, though.
I have noticed that sometimes I don't get quite 10K of power when my 1K capacitors discharge and fall 10 blocks. The GUI on the looter will say something like 9980, and I only get one point of progress. I'm not sure why that is. I'm considering moving the whole top piece up one block again, which ought to fix the issue.
Edited to add: I try to make sure the capacitors aren't all discharging at once. I flew up there with some redstone blocks and manually turned off some of the transfer nodes while the system was running to force them out of sync.
I wonder if my problem with not getting quite 10k power out of my capacitors is related to the fact that there's a mixture of aura types in the system. It's mostly violet aura, but there's a smidgen of white aura in there too. It looks like the capacitors discharge with 1000 total aura, but it looks like sometimes only the violet aura drops, and the white aura stays in the capacitor.
Edit: I rebuilt the system as-is, and filled it with just violet aura. After a few minutes of watching it, I'm not seeing any power numbers less than 10K.
Edit: I rebuilt the system as-is, and filled it with just violet aura. After a few minutes of watching it, I'm not seeing any power numbers less than 10K.
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I don't think I ever see exactly 10k. Now that I only have violet aura in the system, I've seen as little power as 10300, plus some slightly higher numbers like 11876, 12067, 11990, 10675.
I'm surprised you were ever getting lower than 10k as well, I have a mix of aura in all my systems and have not ever noticed that issue. Are you sure it's a 10 block drop and not a 9 block drop? You had mentioned that the top nodes are often saturated, so my guess was that you were getting packages of 1100-1200 released from the capacitors instead of just 1000, which would be 9900-10800 power. It's the only way I can justify you getting 10k+ consistently and under 10K on occasion.
Edit: Actually, I think you might be right, it looks like with trace amount other auras floating about, they won't be dropped by the capacitor.
I have another oddity I was hoping you could explain as well pixlepix:
Shouldn't aura be flowing into this capacitor? Rather than it following the rules of equilibrium? Shouldn't a drop always be functional? I think this might be a bug having to do with the detection system of surrounding nodes, because correct me if I'm wrong nodes don't transfer to nodes with similar values within a certain tolerance? But if my capacitor were storing say, 700 aura this wouldn't be an issue.
I also have a question about the kaleidoscopic enchantments, I have red and yellow (level 1) on my pickaxe, this means I should get 2 ingots for mining ores right? But that only happens sometimes, and the prismatic processor triplicates ores, so do higher levels of red with yellow result in more frequent/more ingots for mining an ore?
Edit2: After doing some testing I do believe that it is required for the difference between two nodes to be >25 in order for aura to transfer, but this is calculated on an aura type basis, and it includes drops. But the capacitor takes the total sum of all the aura types, so if you have less than 25 of another aura type floating around in your capacitor, your capacitor's threshold is reduced by that amount, and that aura will never leave the system. Add more aura colors and the issue grows.
Edit: Actually, I think you might be right, it looks like with trace amount other auras floating about, they won't be dropped by the capacitor.
I have another oddity I was hoping you could explain as well pixlepix:
Shouldn't aura be flowing into this capacitor? Rather than it following the rules of equilibrium? Shouldn't a drop always be functional? I think this might be a bug having to do with the detection system of surrounding nodes, because correct me if I'm wrong nodes don't transfer to nodes with similar values within a certain tolerance? But if my capacitor were storing say, 700 aura this wouldn't be an issue.
I also have a question about the kaleidoscopic enchantments, I have red and yellow (level 1) on my pickaxe, this means I should get 2 ingots for mining ores right? But that only happens sometimes, and the prismatic processor triplicates ores, so do higher levels of red with yellow result in more frequent/more ingots for mining an ore?
Edit2: After doing some testing I do believe that it is required for the difference between two nodes to be >25 in order for aura to transfer, but this is calculated on an aura type basis, and it includes drops. But the capacitor takes the total sum of all the aura types, so if you have less than 25 of another aura type floating around in your capacitor, your capacitor's threshold is reduced by that amount, and that aura will never leave the system. Add more aura colors and the issue grows.
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