Big Reactors: getting one's feet wet

[Golrith]

Scarce ores really makes a gameplay change, I personally use 4x less ore generation, but I've also recently added in "poor" ores, that smelt to nuggets only. 9x the fuel cost to get an ingot and no doubling from them. Really makes you think about what you use your resources on, and alternative ways to generate those resources. Also I feel a greater sense of achievement and promotes more experimentation in other mods.

 

[rhn]

Ironically, silver is one of my most scarce resources. I have more diamonds and gold than silver.

There's no native silver ore. For the most part I have to find Galena ore, which seems to be pretty scarce (I haven't found any in days)

I'm also desperately trying to develop an IC2 argentia crop to mitigate the problem.

Ahh right. Well Gold is ofc great! but I guess that is scarce too. Next up stuff like Bronze/brass and Copper I guess.

Graphite might be excellent between the fuel rods later when you build bigger due to low absorption.

 

[Golrith]

Makes me wonder if Big Reactors needs to add it's own fluid reactor coolant fluid that's somewhere between the best solid and the best fluid from TE? Otherwise things are a bit harsh for packs without Thermal Expansion.

 

[rhn]

Makes me wonder if Big Reactors needs to add it's own fluid reactor coolant fluid that's somewhere between the best solid and the best fluid from TE? Otherwise things are a bit harsh for packs without Thermal Expansion.

Honestly don't think that is necessary as vanilla Gold performs really well(higher than medium really) in both cooling material and turbine coils.

 

[GreenZombie]

I personally think that water should simply be a better coolant than solid blocks. You might argue the balance of that, but to me balance at some point has to give way to "realisim".

And I want to qualify realisim: I don't mean that Minecraft needs to actually be realistic. I have children, 7 and 9. And while I don't expect Minecraft to be an accurate model of realisim - what with its voxel based world and trees that don't fall down. I would rather not it teaches them things that are grossly incorrect when it has the opportunity not to. And nuclear reactors, for the most part, use coolant *liquids* in preference to any kind of solid thing.

 

[Pyure]

Scarce ores really makes a gameplay change, I personally use 4x less ore generation, but I've also recently added in "poor" ores, that smelt to nuggets only. 9x the fuel cost to get an ingot and no doubling from them. Really makes you think about what you use your resources on, and alternative ways to generate those resources. Also I feel a greater sense of achievement and promotes more experimentation in other mods.

Agreed and I love the challenge.
Poor ores: minetweaked yourself, or found a mod for this? Looks really tempting.

Ahh right. Well Gold is ofc great! but I guess that is scarce too. Next up stuff like Bronze/brass and Copper I guess.

Graphite might be excellent between the fuel rods later when you build bigger due to low absorption.

Gold's not too bad; I get it as a byproduct of grinding copper, and I have tons of copper. If gold is better than iron, steel, water, etc, then that's what I'll use.

If diamond is better than gold, I can consider using that. I can create diamonds from coal via the compressor if necessary.

Graphite would be simple as things stand (1coal=1graphite), but I'm planning on nerfing it to push back BR in the tiering a bit. At which point I'll be desperate for it.

I personally think that water should simply be a better coolant than solid blocks. You might argue the balance of that, but to me balance at some point has to give way to "realisim".

And I want to qualify realisim: I don't mean that Minecraft needs to actually be realistic. I have children, 7 and 9. And while I don't expect Minecraft to be an accurate model of realisim - what with its voxel based world and trees that don't fall down. I would rather not it teaches them things that are grossly incorrect when it has the opportunity not to. And nuclear reactors, for the most part, use coolant *liquids* in preference to any kind of solid thing.

If it helps at all with your immersion, you can make an argument in favour of metals.

 

[GreenZombie]

yeah. *liquid* metals

 

[Pyure]

yeah. *liquid* metals

The heat from the reactor melts it into liquid?

I think its fair to permit a bit of abstraction; the BR, compared to ReC, are already abstracted out to a silly degree, but boy are they nice and easy to use.

 

[rhn]

Gold's not too bad; I get it as a byproduct of grinding copper, and I have tons of copper. If gold is better than iron, steel, water, etc, then that's what I'll use.

If diamond is better than gold, I can consider using that. I can create diamonds from coal via the compressor if necessary.

Graphite would be simple as things stand (1coal=1graphite), but I'm planning on nerfing it to push back BR in the tiering a bit. At which point I'll be desperate for it.

Diamond is hands down the best material you can get when not counting the TE liquids. At least for transferring heat out to the reactor casing. It might be better to use a material with lower absorbtion between fuel rods to allow the radiation to "irradiate the core" and increase efficiency. Graphite springs out here with high stats but low absorption. But you will need to experiment with this to see if it is worth the loss in stats from diamond to graphite(graphite has poor efficiency % and lower conductivity) for the increased core irradiation.

Gold is right there second on the list unless you have Platinum and Titanium. There is a large step down from diamond but gold should be much more affordable.

I personally think that water should simply be a better coolant than solid blocks. You might argue the balance of that, but to me balance at some point has to give way to "realisim".

And I want to qualify realisim: I don't mean that Minecraft needs to actually be realistic. I have children, 7 and 9. And while I don't expect Minecraft to be an accurate model of realisim - what with its voxel based world and trees that don't fall down. I would rather not it teaches them things that are grossly incorrect when it has the opportunity not to. And nuclear reactors, for the most part, use coolant *liquids* in preference to any kind of solid thing.

Liquids are only really useful as cooling materials compared to metals as long as you have forced convection. The big reactors seem to resemble a large vat more than anything, so that might explain why water performs so poorly And the TE3 liquids are after all "magical" liquids so that might explain why they perform so well despite the poor circumstances

 

[Golrith]

Agreed and I love the challenge.
Poor ores: minetweaked yourself, or found a mod for this? Looks really tempting.

King Lemming kindly made a mod called Tabula Rasa for me which adds 16 blank blocks and up to 32k items. Using those, combined with MineTweaker, CoFHworld gen and my own textures I could then make them into Poor ores with a furnace recipe, add in any missing nuggets, and get them into the world.
Other things I'm considering are a way of recycling TE3 Slag into ore dusts, highly inefficient and power hungry, but a good way to get rid of it instead of using it for Rockwool or just chucking it in the Trash. I hate voiding stuff, I'd rather there be some use for it.
Plus a similar concept for extracting out of moon and mars rocks trace minerals, so it would be possible to have big mining operations on those rocks and produce resources that GC doesn't add to the generation.

Graphite would be simple as things stand (1coal=1graphite), but I'm planning on nerfing it to push back BR in the tiering a bit. At which point I'll be desperate for it.

I was thinking the same thing. I was considering the steel/grapite bars being replaced with "reactor plating" which is a crafting recipe using the plates from Galacitcraft, combined with a mesh of graphite and a hint of lead. Gives it an almost IC2 feel to the crafting recipe. The coal, steel and bit of Yellorium does feel too cheap for what the reactor can produce.

 

[Pyure]

King Lemming kindly made a mod called Tabula Rasa for me which adds 16 blank blocks and up to 32k items. Using those, combined with MineTweaker, CoFHworld gen and my own textures I could then make them into Poor ores with a furnace recipe, add in any missing nuggets, and get them into the world.
Other things I'm considering are a way of recycling TE3 Slag into ore dusts, highly inefficient and power hungry, but a good way to get rid of it instead of using it for Rockwool or just chucking it in the Trash. I hate voiding stuff, I'd rather there be some use for it.
Plus a similar concept for extracting out of moon and mars rocks trace minerals, so it would be possible to have big mining operations on those rocks and produce resources that GC doesn't add to the generation.


I was thinking the same thing. I was considering the steel/grapite bars being replaced with "reactor plating" which is a crafting recipe using the plates from Galacitcraft, combined with a mesh of graphite and a hint of lead. Gives it an almost IC2 feel to the crafting recipe. The coal, steel and bit of Yellorium does feel too cheap for what the reactor can produce.

Agree basically 100% with everything ^^.

And rockwool is silly if you are as aesthetically inept as I am.

 

[GreenZombie]

If it helps at all with your immersion, you can make an argument in favour of metals.

1. That article I think could serve as a good list of feature requests for future Big Reactor versions. i.e. Liquid sodium as Big Reactors "native" coolant.

2. Ironically, I love the discussion on the moderation and absorption characteristics of ideal coolants where they run entirely counter to what is good in a Big Reactor. Ofc this is expected in passively cooled Big Reactors as they directly generate RF in the interior from radiation and in real reactors, generating heat in the core is 100% of how they produce their energy.

 

[Pyure]

1. That article I think could serve as a good list of feature requests for future Big Reactor versions. i.e. Liquid sodium as Big Reactors "native" coolant.

2. Ironically, I love the discussion on the moderation and absorption characteristics of ideal coolants where they run entirely counter to what is good in a Big Reactor. Ofc this is expected in passively cooled Big Reactors as they directly generate RF in the interior from radiation and in real reactors, generating heat in the core is 100% of how they produce their energy.

Agreed.

Personally I don't mind if the fission rules on Minecraftia are totally different than earth, so long as they're consistent.

One of the things that totally drives me nuts with ReC is that "heat creates steam" and "1500C destroys a boiler", but if you put a water boiler beside a 100C breeder reactor, you get a magical explosion. Argh @ inconsistency merely for attempting to simulate Earth machines (not earth physics...machines)

BTW, disclaimer; I rode Reika pretty hard on this one, and its very possible it's changed in v25, although to what degree I'm not certain.
Disclaimer2: I forget if it happens at 100C or 300C or what. Definitely not 1500C though.

 

[Golrith]

Agree basically 100% with everything ^^.

And rockwool is silly if you are as aesthetically inept as I am.

Just a quick note that in the Tabula Rasa topic I've posted instructions on how to replicate Poor Ores, pretty easy to do.

 

[Pyure]

1. Your BR in Infitech seems to be using non default settings. At the default power multiplier (1x) your reactor should produce approx 250RF/t, down to 180 as it fills with waste.

I'm a bit surprised at that and will have a look in the configs. Its not in the modpack's nature to give us nice things. If I find an inflated multiplier, I'll tone it down.

Confirmed; set to x2.

I was about to nerf it down to 1.0, when I noticed the fuel-consumption multiplier was set to 4.0. Is this default?
1.0 might be a bit low if I'm consuming fuel 4x faster than normal.

general {
B:enableComedy=true
B:enableMetallurgyFantasyMetalsInTurbines=false
D:fuelUsageMultiplier=4.0
I:maxReactorHeight=32
I:maxReactorSize=16
I:maxTurbineHeight=32
I:maxTurbineSize=16
D: PowerProductionMultiplier=2.0
B:registerCreativeMultiblockParts=true
I:ticksPerRedstoneUpdate=20
}

 

[rhn]

Confirmed; set to x2.

I was about to nerf it down to 1.0, when I noticed the fuel-consumption multiplier was set to 4.0. Is this default?
1.0 might be a bit low if I'm consuming fuel 4x faster than normal.

general {
B:enableComedy=true
B:enableMetallurgyFantasyMetalsInTurbines=false
D:fuelUsageMultiplier=4.0
I:maxReactorHeight=32
I:maxReactorSize=16
I:maxTurbineHeight=32
I:maxTurbineSize=16
D: PowerProductionMultiplier=2.0
B:registerCreativeMultiblockParts=true
I:ticksPerRedstoneUpdate=20
}

I would say those config changes actually make sense. Have several times stepped back and looked at the physical footprint of a reactor and all its infrastructure compared to other solutions and with default settings the "power produced/space used" is rather low. So buffing the power while making it significantly more expensive to run sounds reasonable.

 

[Pyure]

I would say those config changes actually make sense. Have several times stepped back and looked at the physical footprint of a reactor and all its infrastructure compared to other solutions and with default settings the "power produced/space used" is rather low. So buffing the power while making it significantly more expensive to run sounds reasonable.

Neat, thx for the input sir.

 

[GreenZombie]

A 3x3x3 Big Reactor constitutes 27 blocks. With the 2x multiplier, each block is contributing 14RF/t. Most normal engines produce 40RF/t per block so that is a rather poor showing .

 

[Pyure]

A 3x3x3 Big Reactor constitutes 27 blocks. With the 2x multiplier, each block is contributing 14RF/t. Most normal engines produce 40RF/t per block so that is a rather poor showing .

If you're saying my pitiful reactor is crap, I have no argument against that

The nice thing is the fuel consumption. Even at x4, I still have a 3-4 stacks of yellorium ingots ready to drop in there. Most of my other industry is driven off of coal coke (limited supply), creosote oil (crap output), and lava (ethically opposed to using it but I've caved due to desperation). So having a large supply of fuel that isn't needed elsewhere is convenient.

 

[rhn]

A 3x3x3 Big Reactor constitutes 27 blocks. With the 2x multiplier, each block is contributing 14RF/t. Most normal engines produce 40RF/t per block so that is a rather poor showing .

Yeah I mostly compared the reactors to for example a RC boiler and engines in my head and realised how much space the reactors were taking up in comparison. But then again the boiler usually requires additional infrastructure(like woodfarms or ethanol production). So might not be totally different. But still if you compared the boiler running on coal compared to a reactor, power/space density is horrible. But is is damn easy to run in comparison.