Buildcraft math

[MrZwij]

Turns out I'm not that great at math. I'm trying to understand this page: http://minecraftbuildcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Energy_Quick_Reference

Let's take the Refinery for instance. If I'm reading it right, the table says:

• The Refinery requires packets of 25 MJ/t in order to perform an action.
• It will only take one action per 20 ticks (let's just assume it's a perfect world and there are 20 ticks/second).
• Each action requires 12 MJ.
• Minimum "activation energy" to perform an action is 25 MJ.

It also says pipes will build up energy (power?) until they reach a packet large enough for the machine to accept.

So let me see if I have this right:

1 combustion engine running on fuel produces 6 MJ/t, which is 120 MJ/second. Does this mean the combustion engine produces the 25 MJ required in 5 ticks, and the rest goes to waste? Could one combustion engine theoretically power 4 refineries? And what is the minimum required to power a refinery? Seems to me it's roughly a Hobbyist's Steam Engine (1.6 MJ/t).

Or am I completely off base here?

 

[solidity]

I blieve it works like this:
You hook up the Combustion engine to the quarry, either via pipe or directly. The combustion engine starts putting out 6MJ/t which get stored in the 1000 MJ buffer of the Refinery. Once the Refinery has enough enough energy stored (25MJ) and the minimal time since the last action has passed, it performs said action and consumes the 12MJ necessary. So after 6 ticks, the Refinery has enough energy stored, will start working and consume 12 MJ, leaving it with 18 MJ stored. 20 ticks later it can perform the next action, will have 138 MJ stored (18 from before + 20 ticks of 6 MJ) and so on. Once the buffer is filled (1000MJ), the refinery will probably not accept any more energy and it will either be wasted or build up and lead to exploding pipes

 

[slay_mithos]

What you guys are saying is strange...

I am certain that the refinery can use up to 25MJ/t and the speed of refining depends on the energy you feed it.

 

[jnads]

All Buildcraft engines output energy on their "power" stroke.

If the engine does 6 MJ/t and does 2 strokes/sec, then energy will be output as 2 packets of 60 MJ.


The Buildcraft page highlights how many "strokes/sec" each engine does. The color temperature of the engine matters because it increases the number of "strokes/sec" as it gets hotter.

http://minecraftbuildcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Engines_-_In_Depth

Look under "Piston Speed".

 

[MilConDoin]

I think the latency number ("Min Time between Actions (ticks)") is a remnant of the time before engines. The current behaviour stems from the default config option of Sower.framework=buildcraft.energy.PneumaticPowerFramework, while the older one was just redstone current (either continuous or pulsed, depending on config).

So currently just feed a refinery with 2 combustion engines running on fuel for max speed.