If you are wanting 'plug and play' options, a Turtle is still a much better option. The Excavate command comes standard, although there's options to include torch laying as well, if you browse the forums a bit for someone else's programs to run.
Automated Mining, RP2 vs BC vs Steve's Carts
- Thread starter Dark0_0firE
- Start date
Once I saw the tbm in Direwolf20's series, I knew I wanted one for myself - so I went to my test world and learned the heck out of frames and framemotors. After that, I recreated a bigger version in my playworld. Now, the only thing that quite literally "bugs" me, is the timer/sequencer-chunk-crossing-crash-bug, which is, whenever a timer/sequencer on frames crosses a chunkborder (and you are present at that time), the game crashes. Oddly enough, when I am NOT present - it's doing its job just fine. ^^
My TBM at work
The tech behind it
Basically there's three problems one has to tackle for a TBM to work: You need a way to pulse redstone to the Blockbreakers and the two motors in the right order (sequencer is quite helpful there), have enough energy ready for the whole thing to work constant and, maybe most important, may not confuse "Covers" and "Panels". While learning to create my TBM, I watched a video, that had a quite helpful hint - use colors to indicate which is which. So everything "green" means: Not sticking, outside walls of the tbm. Everything "red" means: Stuff sticks to it, insides of the tbm. In my second image, you see my try at all of this. Its the two motors (one moves the frames, the other one gets the first motor back into its original position), a sequencer that first sends a signal to my wall-of-breakers, next sends its signal to a Non-Invert-Cell, because the second pulse coming from that cell is just long enough apart from the first one to power the "move frame" motor first, the "move motor" motor (^^) second. Last pulse gets send to the Retrievers, activating a batteryswap (empty out, full in) from an ender chest.
This thing gets so many resources, I will have to think of something else to do, now that mining is no longer part of my playtime.
My TBM at work
The tech behind it
Basically there's three problems one has to tackle for a TBM to work: You need a way to pulse redstone to the Blockbreakers and the two motors in the right order (sequencer is quite helpful there), have enough energy ready for the whole thing to work constant and, maybe most important, may not confuse "Covers" and "Panels". While learning to create my TBM, I watched a video, that had a quite helpful hint - use colors to indicate which is which. So everything "green" means: Not sticking, outside walls of the tbm. Everything "red" means: Stuff sticks to it, insides of the tbm. In my second image, you see my try at all of this. Its the two motors (one moves the frames, the other one gets the first motor back into its original position), a sequencer that first sends a signal to my wall-of-breakers, next sends its signal to a Non-Invert-Cell, because the second pulse coming from that cell is just long enough apart from the first one to power the "move frame" motor first, the "move motor" motor (^^) second. Last pulse gets send to the Retrievers, activating a batteryswap (empty out, full in) from an ender chest.
This thing gets so many resources, I will have to think of something else to do, now that mining is no longer part of my playtime.
Still ends up being play style. The default tunnel command out the box for the tunnel is pretty much crap it does not do torches and does not handle gravel. So unless you want to learn Computer craft we are back to If you are already using steve's carts his tunnel bore is most likely the better option for that sort of player.
We can go back and forth until we are blue in the face and pretty much almost everything can come down to. Well you can code a turtle to do that. Making it the best tool around. And I am not suggesting it is not a powerful tool. Only that when we get down to what is the best tool that will always go to Well what is your play style and what mods are you knowledgeable in. Best is a term stacked miles high is personal option since there is so many ways to do things and even when comparing things within a single mod config options can create bias for one method over another.
The difference being you don't need to learn LUA, just get someone else's program which can and run it instead. Then it, again, becomes as simple as 'type this program name in and hit enter'. There's a whole forum dedicated to sharing such programs, with the better ones stickied. Including a branch mining program which is quite lovely. Just put a stack of torches in the first slot, some fuel in the second, then type in 'Branch' and hit the enter key. Done. It's literally that simple. Keep torches and fuel in the chest it checks back to and let it run.
I am suggesting that Steve's Carts method is extremely expensive, probably the most expensive out of any of the options, and does not see a significant return on the investments. Even things like the Quarry and even the IC2 Miner are better than it, for significantly fewer resources invested and 'plug and play' functionality.
You know what would be awesome though? An IC2 miner which works horizontally rather than vertically... that would be really sweet.
As someone who has tried to explain coping CC code from a post into game for a friend trying to get it to work on a server with the http option turned off I still have to say for some players it just not that easy.
I just copy the stuff into the lua folder for turtles on my PC and I'm good. But thats me I also have some limited programing skills so while I don't know LUA I can most times bash it into working when needed.
And I'm not auguring that it is not expensive. This would be the 'best' option for the same sort of player that likes to use carts as there item transport and sorting system over say RP or BC. Trust when I say there are people that see the cart system as easier to understand then BC pipes or RP Tubes and sorters.
That would be really awesome. But sadly would run into chunk loading issues. but still awesome I would totally make some weird RP frame branch miner with that.
Sofar I used quarries most of the time, mainly because our server is still on Beta A and we don't have RP2. I really like frames though so once we have RP2 I'm going to make me a frame quarry.
Don't you find this kinda 'cheap'? I mean, for me the whole point of FTB is to build complex machines and stuff. I really like turtles but I am not going to use a program that I did not create myself because for me it would be like creating a quarry or frame quarry in creative mode. Feels like cheating.
So yeah. Making a turtle and using someone else's creation is for me definitely the easiest solution. But for me it's too easy.
Don't you find this kinda 'cheap'? I mean, for me the whole point of FTB is to build complex machines and stuff. I really like turtles but I am not going to use a program that I did not create myself because for me it would be like creating a quarry or frame quarry in creative mode. Feels like cheating.
So yeah. Making a turtle and using someone else's creation is for me definitely the easiest solution. But for me it's too easy.
I tested some of them.
Quarry is the best one if you just want to set it up and forget.
Turtle cheap but not so fast. You need more Turtles working parallel.
RP2 Frames get killed easy by water and lava (maybe could be avoided somehow). Generating cobble in front of the Block breakers give you much cobblestone but no further movement. My Vertical RP2 Framehead was once encased with Cobble because of lava and water flowing on the drill plattform
Quarry is the best one if you just want to set it up and forget.
Turtle cheap but not so fast. You need more Turtles working parallel.
RP2 Frames get killed easy by water and lava (maybe could be avoided somehow). Generating cobble in front of the Block breakers give you much cobblestone but no further movement. My Vertical RP2 Framehead was once encased with Cobble because of lava and water flowing on the drill plattform
I always use turtles, with a program similar to excavate, but way more efficient and faster.
With my program, I need a little more setup, but it mines about 3 times as fast as the default excavate, so it is competitive.
I also saw a video about quarrying with a combination of MFFS and Frames, it was crazy fast, but I have no idea on how to make it (crazy fast as in even faster than a normal frame quarry).
With my program, I need a little more setup, but it mines about 3 times as fast as the default excavate, so it is competitive.
I also saw a video about quarrying with a combination of MFFS and Frames, it was crazy fast, but I have no idea on how to make it (crazy fast as in even faster than a normal frame quarry).
Out of curiosity:
Default excavate movement logic with two changes:
- Y-movement three down instead of one
- horizontal movement change of
turtle.dig()
turtle.forward()
to
turtle.dig()
turtle.forward()
turtle.digUp()
turtle.digDown()
?
How big can you dig with that, using one stack of charcoal as fuel? excavate 15? (assuming a start around sea level)
You can also set the turtle to go back and dump loot in a chest, pick up coal from that chest, and refuel itself to keep going.
or give the turtle a ender chest, when all 15 slots are full, put down the chest from slot 16, dump everything in , pick it up again in slot 16 and go on with mining.
A stack of charcoal is a lot.
According to the wiki, 1 charcoal should give 80, but I am sure I have seen something like 96 or so too.
But yeah, that's basically what it does, and it dumps on top, because I don't think you always have ender chests while starting turtles.
But with the 80 per charcoal, you gain 5120 moves per stack.
16x16 would take 3 time as much (16x16x64 = 16 384), and that's not even counting the moves to get back and down again for each time the inventory is full.
So yes, block per charcoal, it can't really match some other solutions, but I tend to prefer them anyway, as I can code pretty much whatever I want into them.
The 96 per charcoal is an older number, which was changed in 1.48 to 80 (if memory serves well).
Remember that excavating 16x16x64 doesn't need 16384 moves, since you only move around every third layer and bedrock will be found around layer 5.
Remember that excavating 16x16x64 doesn't need 16384 moves, since you only move around every third layer and bedrock will be found around layer 5.
Oh do I just love these conversations, you learn so much in so little time. Couple of things about the above stuff I'd like to throw out there.
As to water/lava stopping frame machines, there are XyCraft blocks coming that act as water source blocks you can put in a square around the back of your block breakers to just turn everything into obsidian on the way down. Also, a good turtle tip is if you use the right control button, you can use ctrl+v easier.
Now, onto breaking things!
I've always found the best system is to use all available systems. With the TE distribution of ore, Tunnel bore's lost a bit of weight, as it would take a very, very tall bore to get all of the resources. So, you're looking at the following to be equal.
16x16 Frame Quarry
4x 16x4 Tunnel Bores
16x16 BC Quarry
16x16 Turtle Grid
9x Steves Carts (Preferably hardened drill head or higher) (Note, this makes a 9 5x5's, so an effective 15x15)
Now, in terms of resources...9 steves hardened drill carts and all the tracks for the...yeesh. Next expensive is probably the BC quarry, but has the upside of almost purely vanilla materials. Tunnel bores' will take a fair amount of brass, i.e. tin/copper, but don't require constant fuel. Turtles are by far the cheapest, but do require fuel. (Recently found out that RP picks work in place of a diamond pick)
As far as speed, Steve's carts are actually fast, but you have to temper that with it taking longer and longer to get back to your original cargo manager. A bonus though, they chunkload themselves with the right module. I don't have exact numbers right now for turtles, But a properly setup turtle can go through ~3 blocks in 1.5-~2 seconds. They can also be programmed to go forever as well as be chunkloaded, however, a chunk loading mining turtle can't be wireless, so to control it you'll have to start looking at more turtle to assist, and that kind of takes it beyond just a simple program. The new quarries I believe are faster than turtles, feels about 2 blocks a second, but that is at full 48mj speed. That's about 12 magmatic engines, or 1.2 buckets of lava per 10 seconds (Approximation, don't have exacts in front of me). Frame quarries can be as fast or slow as necessary, it can be more about interactions between machines than actual speed of the breakers. A layer every 2-3 seconds is usually adequate.
There is a third and even fourth part of this equation though. I'll get the third out of the way. Environmental impact. Can't really argue that a bc quarry or frame quarry remove large swathes of land. Tunnel bores and steve's carts, however, are under-earth, but that could be a plus or minus depending on what you prefer. I've seen a left alone auto-bore eat someone's underground base before. Imagine your surprise when you log in to find tons of machine blocks, rp2 machines, energy condensers, well, you get the idea, all in the overflow chest.
The fourth is perhaps one of the most important parts usually not added in, but trust me, it's the hardest and longest part. Planning.
I don't think I need to go into the planning needed to setup and get working a single steve's cart, let alone four. Turtles can actually take longer or as little as a few minutes depending on the complexity of the programming. Frame machines and tunnel bores are similar, it can take a long time to get every cover and panel just right, but tunnel bores are a bit easier by nature now, you can probably setup four as fast as a single frame quarry. The least time is the BC quarry, but depending on how elaborate you want your power setup, that could also be very intensive.
Now some of you may have been thinking 'Hey, where's the IC2 miner!'. Well, we're talking about a targetted variable machine here, you can literally set it up to ONLY go after copper and tin, or just lead, or just silver, and go to town. It's not exactly fair to compare a machine that customizable on it's own to the above mass-mining methods.
As to water/lava stopping frame machines, there are XyCraft blocks coming that act as water source blocks you can put in a square around the back of your block breakers to just turn everything into obsidian on the way down. Also, a good turtle tip is if you use the right control button, you can use ctrl+v easier.
Now, onto breaking things!
I've always found the best system is to use all available systems. With the TE distribution of ore, Tunnel bore's lost a bit of weight, as it would take a very, very tall bore to get all of the resources. So, you're looking at the following to be equal.
16x16 Frame Quarry
4x 16x4 Tunnel Bores
16x16 BC Quarry
16x16 Turtle Grid
9x Steves Carts (Preferably hardened drill head or higher) (Note, this makes a 9 5x5's, so an effective 15x15)
Now, in terms of resources...9 steves hardened drill carts and all the tracks for the...yeesh. Next expensive is probably the BC quarry, but has the upside of almost purely vanilla materials. Tunnel bores' will take a fair amount of brass, i.e. tin/copper, but don't require constant fuel. Turtles are by far the cheapest, but do require fuel. (Recently found out that RP picks work in place of a diamond pick)
As far as speed, Steve's carts are actually fast, but you have to temper that with it taking longer and longer to get back to your original cargo manager. A bonus though, they chunkload themselves with the right module. I don't have exact numbers right now for turtles, But a properly setup turtle can go through ~3 blocks in 1.5-~2 seconds. They can also be programmed to go forever as well as be chunkloaded, however, a chunk loading mining turtle can't be wireless, so to control it you'll have to start looking at more turtle to assist, and that kind of takes it beyond just a simple program. The new quarries I believe are faster than turtles, feels about 2 blocks a second, but that is at full 48mj speed. That's about 12 magmatic engines, or 1.2 buckets of lava per 10 seconds (Approximation, don't have exacts in front of me). Frame quarries can be as fast or slow as necessary, it can be more about interactions between machines than actual speed of the breakers. A layer every 2-3 seconds is usually adequate.
There is a third and even fourth part of this equation though. I'll get the third out of the way. Environmental impact. Can't really argue that a bc quarry or frame quarry remove large swathes of land. Tunnel bores and steve's carts, however, are under-earth, but that could be a plus or minus depending on what you prefer. I've seen a left alone auto-bore eat someone's underground base before. Imagine your surprise when you log in to find tons of machine blocks, rp2 machines, energy condensers, well, you get the idea, all in the overflow chest.
The fourth is perhaps one of the most important parts usually not added in, but trust me, it's the hardest and longest part. Planning.
I don't think I need to go into the planning needed to setup and get working a single steve's cart, let alone four. Turtles can actually take longer or as little as a few minutes depending on the complexity of the programming. Frame machines and tunnel bores are similar, it can take a long time to get every cover and panel just right, but tunnel bores are a bit easier by nature now, you can probably setup four as fast as a single frame quarry. The least time is the BC quarry, but depending on how elaborate you want your power setup, that could also be very intensive.
Now some of you may have been thinking 'Hey, where's the IC2 miner!'. Well, we're talking about a targetted variable machine here, you can literally set it up to ONLY go after copper and tin, or just lead, or just silver, and go to town. It's not exactly fair to compare a machine that customizable on it's own to the above mass-mining methods.
Damn, I code the entire program, and I can't even do math correctly...
64/3 = 21 (and a little, as 21x3 = 63)
so 16x16x63 = 5376
Yeah, much better, thank.
Still, that's not counting the moves needed to empty, so I would count 200 or 300 for that, at least.
64/3 = 21 (and a little, as 21x3 = 63)
so 16x16x63 = 5376
Yeah, much better, thank.
Still, that's not counting the moves needed to empty, so I would count 200 or 300 for that, at least.
Since there seems to be at least some interest here are a few pics of our IC2 frame miner (build by me, computercraft code by my friend).
http://imgur.com/a/rGmnl
It is powered via a geothermal gen, and obviously spits the output out to an ender chest for processing back at base. As I stated earlier the batbox between the geothermal and the miner is used to determine when it is done, then a retriever pulls the drill out and puts it into an ejector (which is used to reinsert at the appropriate time). A retriever was needed since you only have one side that slots to the drill (and only 1 free side besides that). Once the drill is pulled out a filter is used to pump mining pipes out of the ender chest as they retract and a regulator reinserts them into the hopper and also checks for when the hopper is back to the appropriate level. Computers are used to manage the movement, though everything is also hooked up to levers for manual operation.
The system I am least happy with is the cell managment one, since it uses 3 managers which is where most of the cost of the setup comes from (shit tons of redstone in particular). I was unable to think of a better option though since space is SO tight in order to have everything next to the things they need to be for optimal operation. If one were to expand the setup to multiple miners I imagine much of it could be centeralized and the platform expanded, likely allowing the managers to be eliminated. In any case, a manager is hooked up to the pump to keep empty cells supplied, up to a liquid transposer to keep lava cells supplied, and to a (dedicated) ender chest to hook back to base. Both the transposer and pump output their empty and filled cells respectively to the ender chest. Back at base any water cells are emptied and the water is voided by a liquid transposer, while a magma crucible and liquid transposer refill empties with lava. By using liquid transposers obviously I am not losing any cells in the system.
The other part I am less than fully satisfied with atm is powering the liquid transposer. First I had an electrical engine, but it was drawing a significant portion of the IC power that could have been going to the miner, I switched over to a magmatic engine, but that kept locking up because it produced FAR too much energy and I was unable to get a redpower deployer to un-stuck it with a crescent hammer. I ended up just shoving a redstone energy cell in there yesterday, and if my napkin math is right it should need to be changed less than once every 24 hours, maybe much less.
Oh, and for some reason the setup seems to be duping mining pipes, on the order of 1-2 per mining cycle, it has not caused a problem yet, but I keep pulling them out when there gets to be too many. I imagine if you let too many build up it would interfere with the detection of when the drill is fully retracted.
http://imgur.com/a/rGmnl
It is powered via a geothermal gen, and obviously spits the output out to an ender chest for processing back at base. As I stated earlier the batbox between the geothermal and the miner is used to determine when it is done, then a retriever pulls the drill out and puts it into an ejector (which is used to reinsert at the appropriate time). A retriever was needed since you only have one side that slots to the drill (and only 1 free side besides that). Once the drill is pulled out a filter is used to pump mining pipes out of the ender chest as they retract and a regulator reinserts them into the hopper and also checks for when the hopper is back to the appropriate level. Computers are used to manage the movement, though everything is also hooked up to levers for manual operation.
The system I am least happy with is the cell managment one, since it uses 3 managers which is where most of the cost of the setup comes from (shit tons of redstone in particular). I was unable to think of a better option though since space is SO tight in order to have everything next to the things they need to be for optimal operation. If one were to expand the setup to multiple miners I imagine much of it could be centeralized and the platform expanded, likely allowing the managers to be eliminated. In any case, a manager is hooked up to the pump to keep empty cells supplied, up to a liquid transposer to keep lava cells supplied, and to a (dedicated) ender chest to hook back to base. Both the transposer and pump output their empty and filled cells respectively to the ender chest. Back at base any water cells are emptied and the water is voided by a liquid transposer, while a magma crucible and liquid transposer refill empties with lava. By using liquid transposers obviously I am not losing any cells in the system.
The other part I am less than fully satisfied with atm is powering the liquid transposer. First I had an electrical engine, but it was drawing a significant portion of the IC power that could have been going to the miner, I switched over to a magmatic engine, but that kept locking up because it produced FAR too much energy and I was unable to get a redpower deployer to un-stuck it with a crescent hammer. I ended up just shoving a redstone energy cell in there yesterday, and if my napkin math is right it should need to be changed less than once every 24 hours, maybe much less.
Oh, and for some reason the setup seems to be duping mining pipes, on the order of 1-2 per mining cycle, it has not caused a problem yet, but I keep pulling them out when there gets to be too many. I imagine if you let too many build up it would interfere with the detection of when the drill is fully retracted.
You could wield some detection system to pull excess pipes out of an enderchest over your limit and have them tossed into a recycler.
You give me many ideas.
You give me many ideas.
Just a side about Turtles and fuel. You all know you can load them guys up with buckets of lava use Refuel All and yeah having so much fuel that can take out a whole 64x64 area with no need to refuel. I usely give my turtle something like 10 or 20 buckets of lava and then its like I never have to worry about fuel unless I do a huge project.
If you have space around the liquid transposer, 3-4 redstone engines are good. For my mining bore, it's only like 6 levels high, and 5 wide. It pulls in a good amount of resources, and i don't get stuck with all the dirt and whatnot. My sorting system is Ender Chest to Buildcraft pipes with a void pipe linked to a diamond pipe which filters dirt, gravel, cobble, quartz crystals, (and can add whatever i dont want) into the void pipe. The rest of the materials move into a diamond chest with a sorter attached to it, which then puts all my stuff in barrels.
This thread makes my head hurt but it's an interesting read. I think the furthest I would ever go is using a Turtle and those confuse me enough as it is (I know how they work but that doesn't mean I can do it!)