Big Reactors: getting one's feet wet

[madnewmy]

Occurs to me I accidentally ignored part of your response.
This is the thread. Its FTB 3rd-Party. But, again, going by my massive knowledge (sarcmark) of your likes and dislikes, I suspect it won't be to your taste.[DOUBLEPOST=1404747403][/DOUBLEPOST]
This looks suspiciously like response to a "howmuch powerz cani get?!? give me tha best dezines plz!!!" thread.

I desperately tried to frame my question so I'm not one of those people!!

If that actually applies to tiny reactors however, then OOPS, and sorry!

Yea i realized this wasent really what you where looking for xd but 7x7x3 is fairly small

 

[Pyure]

Yea i realized this wasent really what you where looking for xd but 7x7x3 is fairly small

Infi-Tech author posted today that this particular mod hasn't received much tinkering from him yet, so its entirely possible I'll be able to leverage "unlimited power" much earlier than I expected.

 

[GreenZombie]

The power per fuel rod block of big reactors, given a coolant is suprisingly consistent.

If you do want the reallty smallest possible br then make a 3x3x3 with no coolant at all. Even that outputs 200RF/t. You can then ramp up effiency and thus power by rebuilding it as a 5x3x5 and adding coolant around the core.

A 6x5 would add an extra core and still run quite cool.

Then to the 2x2 core which you could initially build as a 6x3x6 but would probably get value from expanding out to an 8x8. I.e. with the core surrounded by 2 blocks of coolant.

 

[Pyure]

The power per fuel rod block of big reactors, given a coolant is suprisingly consistent.

If you do want the reallty smallest possible br then make a 3x3x3 with no coolant at all. Even that outputs 200RF/t. You can then ramp up effiency and thus power by rebuilding it as a 5x3x5 and adding coolant around the core.

A 6x5 would add an extra core and still run quite cool.

Then to the 2x2 core which you could initially build as a 6x3x6 but would probably get value from expanding out to an 8x8. I.e. with the core surrounded by 2 blocks of coolant.

This is perfect advice, thanks.

I will likely do exactly this. For my fledgling operation, 200RF/t, pitiful as it is, is still a very useful sum.

I've seen many threads indicating the top-end powers I can get, but for now I just need to get my feet in the water

 

[Ieldra]

Occurs to me I accidentally ignored part of your response.
This is the thread. Its FTB 3rd-Party. But, again, going by my massive knowledge (sarcmark) of your likes and dislikes, I suspect it won't be to your taste.[DOUBLEPOST=1404747403][/DOUBLEPOST]

I may dip in to see if it is. But....how exactly do you install this? I also don't see a download link, or am I blind?

 

[Pyure]

I may dip in to see if it is. But....how exactly do you install this? I also don't see a download link, or am I blind?

I forget the exact name, but there's a field or button in your FTB launcher than allows you to enter a "private pack" code or some such.

The code is found on the first post of that thread provided. Once you enter that code, it will add the mod to your launcher similar to the "real" FTB mods.

 

[Pyure]

The code is found on the first post of that thread provided.

164infinity

Don't say I didn't warn you. Massive grinding, annoying recipes, rare resources...lots of great stuff

 

[Ieldra]

164infinity

Don't say I didn't warn you. Massive grinding, annoying recipes, rare resources...lots of great stuff

Well...one of the nice things about playing games is that you can stop at any time if it isn't fun. So many packs, so little time. I'm also going to try Agrarian Skies at some point.

Regarding this pack, I've always wanted to try GregTech because of some of the late game stuff it adds, and if I get fed up with one particular aspect I can always cheat.

 

[Pyure]

Well...one of the nice things about playing games is that you can stop at any time if it isn't fun. So many packs, so little time. I'm also going to try Agrarian Skies at some point.

Regarding this pack, I've always wanted to try GregTech because of some of the late game stuff it adds, and if I get fed up with one particular aspect I can always cheat.

The nice thing about minecraft modding these days is that minetweaker gives you an ability to sort of cheat-without-cheating.

For instance, I cannot stand packs that don't provide some sort of slimeball recipe. So if I want to, I can add a recipe of, say, cactus-green surrounded by diamond-dust = slimeballs if I want to.

 

[Ieldra]

The nice thing about minecraft modding these days is that minetweaker gives you an ability to sort of cheat-without-cheating.

For instance, I cannot stand packs that don't provide some sort of slimeball recipe. So if I want to, I can add a recipe of, say, cactus-green surrounded by diamond-dust = slimeballs if I want to.

Yeah, I see no Extra Bees in that pack, which means no Sticky Bee. Also, I can see that mining will be the big issue for me. No RoC boring machine, no Digital Miner, that's what makes mining bearable for me. Does GregTech add anything to help with mining?

Edit...and here is why I built my Big Reactor: I just emptied two Resonant Energy cells using the Digital Miner to mine 2500 nether quartz ore with Silk Touch in about 15 minutes. 8 KRF/tick fully upgraded, with maximum range and using Silk Touch. Regular ores that don't profit from Silk Touch cost 1/6 of that.

 

[Pyure]

I know of the following mining-assists so far:
The Original: BC's Quarry (destroys landscapes)
The Barely-useful: IC's Miner
The Marginally-better: IC2's Advanced Miner
The Extremely-Cool-And-Hopefully-Useful: Pneumaticraft Drones. If you haven't seen it already...

Edit: Gregtech itself adds nothing that I know of.

 

[Ieldra]

Thanks, that's interesting. I haven't tries anything with Pneumaticraft yet.

 

[GreenZombie]

This is perfect advice, thanks.

I will likely do exactly this. For my fledgling operation, 200RF/t, pitiful as it is, is still a very useful sum.

You havnt made it clear what coolant you have available in this resource constrained pack. I am hoping resonant ender or gelid cryotheum. But with these micro reactors you can slum it with iron blocks. Keep away from water however: a 5x3x5 with a water buffer performs significantly worse than a 3x3x3.

The other interesting thing you will need to deal with with micro reactors is they are refueled 1 ingot at a time. This means a 1 core reactor will be at 75% of its fuel capacity before resetting to full output. This can cause wide swings in power output over the 30odd minutes most micro's take to burn an ingot.

 

[Pyure]

You havnt made it clear what coolant you have available in this resource constrained pack. I am hoping resonant ender or gelid cryotheum. But with these micro reactors you can slum it with iron blocks. Keep away from water however: a 5x3x5 with a water buffer performs significantly worse than a 3x3x3.

The other interesting thing you will need to deal with with micro reactors is they are refueled 1 ingot at a time. This means a 1 core reactor will be at 75% of its fuel capacity before resetting to full output. This can cause wide swings in power output over the 30odd minutes most micro's take to burn an ingot.

Thanks for the warnings.

Regarding coolants: its possible I'm limited to native BR + vanilla, I'm not sure yet. There's no thermal expansion(!!), and I'm not sure what other mods "melt" ender pearls and such.

 

[GreenZombie]

Without TE? That makes things interesting for sure.

Tic can melt enderpearls. Dont know if it can melt redstone. Other than graphite, diamond gold or iron are going to have to be the considered coolants.

 

[rhn]

Read this and the link I link to therein:
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/thr...and-guide-collection.42664/page-9#post-656896
That should you allow you to grasp the basic mechanics and design your own reactors.

Start small and inefficient. You need to burn some yellorium to get cyanite to progress into turbines etc.

I know Chris Becke recommends this, but I would strongly recommend against placing fuel rods against each other in a large block. By covering 1-3 sides on each fuel rod you are dramatically reducing the heat transfer from that rod to the outer shell(this transfer is what produces most of the power). Design your reactors with 1 block gap between fuel rods for coolant, but still have the rods orthogonal in line with each other so they irradiate each other.

Another rather important thing I think everyone need to realise when playing with Big Reactor, is that it is better to build bigger reactors with more cores than you might need the power/steam from and they set the control rods high. It feels a bit counter intuitive as you feel like you build this big reactor and then you arent even using it to its fullest. But reality is that if you build it smaller you would get dramatically lower efficiency.

For coolant materials you can get by with many vanilla materials if you dont have access to the liquids:
DONT USE THIS LIST! IT IS OUT OF DATE!

Diamond is a really good alternative(although fricking expensive) to cooling between fuel rods. And you could probably use gold as the outer layer with decent result.

 

[GreenZombie]

My recomendation on dense cores is based on theory and experiment. The additional fertilization more than makes up for the obscured heat flow. I have a world with now about 100 reactors in it that shows this consistently.

Next. @rhn. Where did you obtain that table? It does not agree with the numbers I pulled from the .3.3A github source.

Block        Absor Eff%  Mod   Cond
Iron         0.50  0.75  1.40  0.60
Gold         0.52  0.80  1.45  2.00
Diamond      0.55  0.85  1.50  3.00
Emerald      0.55  0.85  1.50  2.50
Graphite     0.10  0.50  2.00  2.00
Glass        0.20  0.25  1.10  0.30
Ice          0.33  0.33  1.15  0.10
Snow         0.15  0.33  1.05  0.05
Copper       0.50  0.75  1.40  1.00
Osmium       0.51  0.77  1.41  1.00
Brass        0.51  0.77  1.41  1.00
Bronze       0.51  0.77  1.41  1.00
Aluminium    0.50  0.78  1.42  0.60
Steel        0.50  0.78  1.42  0.60
Invar        0.50  0.79  1.43  0.60
Silver       0.51  0.79  1.43  1.50
Electrum     0.53  0.82  1.47  2.20
ElectrumFlux 0.54  0.83  1.48  2.40
Platinum     0.57  0.86  1.58  2.50
Titanium     0.58  0.87  1.59  2.50
Enderium     0.60  0.88  1.60  3.00
Water        0.33  0.50  1.33  0.10
Redstone     0.75  0.55  1.60  2.50
Glowstone    0.20  0.60  1.75  1.00
Cyrotheum    0.66  0.95  6.00  3.00
Ender        0.90  0.75  2.00  2.00
Pyrotheum    0.66  0.90  1.00  0.60
Life Essence 0.70  0.55  1.75  2.00
Air          0.10  0.25  1.10  0.05

Absorb = Absorbption - the factor of non-hard radiation that is converted into energy.
Eff% = Heat Effiency - the factor of the above energy amount, that is converted to RF (The rest is just heat).
Mod = Moderation. next blocks hard radiation = hard radiation * 1 / moderation.
Cond = Conductivity. Diamond, Gelid Cyrotheum and Enderium (a block of ender ingots) are best at 3.0.

How is your wiki editing ability? Between the two of us we need to decide who'se table is more correct (mine! ) and get it on a wiki.

An online reference. hosted on my talk page on techincwiki (The "official" Big Reactors wiki).
http://wiki.technicpack.net/User_talk:Farproc

 

[rhn]

Next. @rhn. Where did you obtain that table? It does not agree with the numbers I pulled from the .3.3A github source.

It is the one being thrown around on reddit(I don't know the source of it, but seen it crop up several places).
http://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeas...eactors_efficiency_speculation_and_questions/
Doubt it is recent fully up to date(as I mentions in the link I posted) but it seems to hold true in the BigReactor versions in Monster etc.

 

[Ieldra]

@rhn:
How do the parameters in the table affect a reactor's efficiency? I take it for cooling between rods you want high neutron permeability combined with high thermal conductivity, right? But what is "moderation" and "heating"?

 

[rhn]

@rhn:
How do the parameters in the table affect a reactor's efficiency? I take it for cooling between rods you want high neutron permeability combined with high thermal conductivity, right? But what is "moderation" and "heating"?

Conductivity is the heat tranfer capability of the medium. Higher the better as power is produced by heat being transferred from rods to reactor casing.

Permeability is the inverse of ability to block particles. So high permeability allows lot of particles through, where as low permeability will reduce the radiation by a percentage per block.

Mederation is the chance that Fast radiation is decayed to slow radiation(which can be absorbed to heat to increase power production.).

Heating is mentioned as a scaling factor for the power generation in the source where I found the table. Not quite sure about this one.

But looking back at the dates of the reddit thread etc. the table I posted might be horrible outdated. Dunno.