Copper cables,refined iron cables or gold cables? Whats better?
- Thread starter Luigilow
- Start date
-
The FTB Forum is now read-only, and is here as an archive. To participate in our community discussions, please join our Discord! https://ftb.team/discord
That was a mistake. Gold Cables can handle higher voltage, but they're too lossy to be worth using other than as a crafting component. Glass Fibre Cable is the cable of choice. Up to high voltage with the same range as tin cable before there's any loss.
There's nothing preventing you from putting those gold cables to use making MFEs and the like though.
There's nothing preventing you from putting those gold cables to use making MFEs and the like though.
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
Generally Copper < Gold < Glass fibre
Gold is mid tier, not perfect- but a hell of a lot better than copper.
Glass fibre is the one to aim for.
Exceptions;
playing with extreme voltage use the refined iron/HV cable. You get a little tingle if you touch the uninsulated version
Tin cable is ultra-low voltage, it'll take a few basic solars/wind turbines/watermills. I think it cant go above 4Eu/t
Superconductor is stupidly expensive and looks ugly. for what its worth- dont bother using it.
Gold is mid tier, not perfect- but a hell of a lot better than copper.
Glass fibre is the one to aim for.
Exceptions;
playing with extreme voltage use the refined iron/HV cable. You get a little tingle if you touch the uninsulated version
Tin cable is ultra-low voltage, it'll take a few basic solars/wind turbines/watermills. I think it cant go above 4Eu/t
Superconductor is stupidly expensive and looks ugly. for what its worth- dont bother using it.
Glass Fiber Cable Is pretty much your staple cable.You will use it more often than any other type . Glass fiber can go 40 blocks before eu loss . Copper cable only 4 blocks . Gold Cables are more used in a recipe to construct things , then they are used for transferring EU .
every cable can support different voltages, copper cables can support a max of 32 Eu/t (the amount the energy that a batbox releases) and gold cables can support max 128 eu/t (the amount of energy that a Mfu emits). So if you try to connect copper cables to the output of a Mfu, the cable will explode, and gold cables will work fine instead on both mfus and batboxes.
Problem is that gold cables have a higher energy loss. If you use 4xinsulated gold cables, every 2,5 blocks your gonna lose 1 Eu, with insulated copper cables you are gonna lose 1 Eu every 5 blocks.
They both have pros and cons. Everything depends on your setup and how much energy are you producing right now.
As already said, glass fibre cables are alwais the best choice, but they are a bit expensive because they require diamonds to be crafted.
Hope it helps
Problem is that gold cables have a higher energy loss. If you use 4xinsulated gold cables, every 2,5 blocks your gonna lose 1 Eu, with insulated copper cables you are gonna lose 1 Eu every 5 blocks.
They both have pros and cons. Everything depends on your setup and how much energy are you producing right now.
As already said, glass fibre cables are alwais the best choice, but they are a bit expensive because they require diamonds to be crafted.
Hope it helps
Technically that doesn't change anything, but depending on how far the cable has to travel you either want to use a transformer to run it on copper or upgrade to glass fibre cables, gold is high energy loss if it goes over the blocks needed to lose energy.
Nope. Copper Cable and Gold Cable are both used extensively in IC2 crafting. I'd much rather replace them all with Glass Fibre Cables instead as long as there are enough Diamonds and Silver for it as the only cringe worthy cost is the Diamonds... which IC2 can convert a stack of Coal into.
I would use Glass fiber all the way to your energy storage unit and to the transformer and then from the transformer using copper to your simple low voltage machines but , don't make copper more than 4 long or you loss power and if using low power machines even a little power loss can be noticed .
Hope that helps more ! Personally I would just use all glass in that case but, most would say it's over kill . So that's why I included the copper it would be ideal set up for max efficiency .
You can also extend your copper beyond 4 blocks with a transformer they are cheap to make and one every 5 blocks will let you extend copper beyond 4 blocks with no power loss.
Peace
Hope that helps more ! Personally I would just use all glass in that case but, most would say it's over kill . So that's why I included the copper it would be ideal set up for max efficiency .
You can also extend your copper beyond 4 blocks with a transformer they are cheap to make and one every 5 blocks will let you extend copper beyond 4 blocks with no power loss.
Peace
Don't waste all your diamonds on Glass Fibre cable. Sure its the easy way but with a little knowledge you can save yourself diamonds.
Insulated Copper Cable holds a max of 32EU/p and loses 1 EU every 5 blocks
Double insulated Gold Cable holds a max of 128EU/p and loses 1 EU every 2.5 blocks
At first it looks like Gold is worse but realize that you have to send 4 packets of EU on copper for every one packet on gold. This means that sending 128 EU 5 blocks will lose you 2 EU on gold but 4 EU on Copper wire. That means gold cable is twice as efficient if your using max loads.
Sure Glass Fibre is still better but you only get 4-6 per diamond depending on mods and recipes available.
Insulated Copper Cable holds a max of 32EU/p and loses 1 EU every 5 blocks
Double insulated Gold Cable holds a max of 128EU/p and loses 1 EU every 2.5 blocks
At first it looks like Gold is worse but realize that you have to send 4 packets of EU on copper for every one packet on gold. This means that sending 128 EU 5 blocks will lose you 2 EU on gold but 4 EU on Copper wire. That means gold cable is twice as efficient if your using max loads.
Sure Glass Fibre is still better but you only get 4-6 per diamond depending on mods and recipes available.
There's 5 tiers of energy in IC2. If you try to send a higher tier of energy through a lower tier cable it'll just burn up. You can send lower tiers of energy through a higher tier cable. Ultra low voltage is something like 8 EU/t and emitted by the lowest tier of solar panels 1 EU/1, windmills, and watermills. Tin cables support only ultra low voltage, can't be painted and lose 1 EU/20 blocks. Low voltage is 32EU/t and supported by copper cables which lose 1EU/5 blocks. Medium voltage is 128EU/t and supported by gold cables which lose 1EU/t depending on the amount of insulation, the more, the better. High voltage is 512EU/t and supported by glass-fibre cables which lose 1EU/40 blocks and don't require any insulation. Extreme voltage is 2048EU/t and is supported by HV cables which lose 1EU/t depending on insulation. Above 2048EU/t you need to use an HV transformer to down-convert is to extreme voltage since no cables support anything above extreme voltage.
One thing to note about cables, the max EU is per packet, it doesn't matter how many packets you send through. So in the case of Tin/ultra-low-voltage cable it can handle massive amounts of Water Mills and (regular) Solar Panels.
Though as you're using advanced panels you can't really use Tin cables.
Personally I would stick with Copper cables are they're cheap and then try to go for Glass Fiber. All the Copper cables you get back you can use in chips and other stuff. Glass Fiber can handle up to 512 EU/p, which for default IC2 is the second highest. With GregTech there are some higher voltages, but I don't think those are exactly common either (I think only lightning strikes from the lightning rod are more than any of the default voltages).
Though as you're using advanced panels you can't really use Tin cables.
Personally I would stick with Copper cables are they're cheap and then try to go for Glass Fiber. All the Copper cables you get back you can use in chips and other stuff. Glass Fiber can handle up to 512 EU/p, which for default IC2 is the second highest. With GregTech there are some higher voltages, but I don't think those are exactly common either (I think only lightning strikes from the lightning rod are more than any of the default voltages).
So, i have a set up of 12 HV cables, followed by 7 copper cables. The HV cables are hooked up to a solar panel (basic) and are 1x insulated. for some reason, my BatBox doesnt charge up from the cable line. the cable is 19 blocks long. can someone help me on this issue?
EDIT: the copper cables are also insulated
EDIT: the copper cables are also insulated
Last edited:
If I remember correctly, HV cables lose one EU every block. Since your solar panel only produces 1 EU/t, that power is entirely dissipated before it reaches the second HV cable, not to mention the other ten or the copper cables. Swap your cables out for tin or glass fiber. Either of these will carry the energy from the solar panel 20-40 blocks (I don't remember the exact number) before dissipating it.
Tin, copper, gold, and iron cables are each the most efficient cable to use, IF you run them at the maximum voltage. If you have up to 5ish EU/packet from the renewable generators (wind, water, solar, etc.), use tin. If you're running LV from a geothermal or coal-powered gen, use copper. If you're running MV from an MFE or a smallish nuke, use gold. If you have EV from a large nuke, use iron. Or, except in the last case, just use glass fiber. Expensive, yes, but much more efficient.
If you want to transfer power over a long distance using metallic cables, use transformers to step it up as far as you can go, run HV cables with maximum insulation, then step it back down. Yes, they have higher loss, but that loss is measured per packet. At higher voltages, you're sending fewer, larger packets, so while there is more loss for each one, there's less in total.
At least, this is how it all worked before the changes in IC2 Experimental. I have no idea what's going on now.
I am actually quite surprised by the amount of misinformation in this thread. No wonder everyone likes RF so much...
I think in IC2-exp cable loss and voltage are disabled completely until the e-net is finished. I don't actually play with it though so I may be incorrect.
A lot of that is probably because it is 2 years old.
Yeah there is no loss in IC2E(the 1.6 versions at least, dont know how far they have come with the 1.7 versions).
And yeah rather bad necro..
The copper/iron/gold cables are incredibly inefficient if you want to send power more than a couple of blocks, I prefer to just stick with tin and glass-fibre cable wherever possible. Power can travel for 40 blocks of tin cable without any loss (keep in mind that it only supports extremely low voltages), and it can travel even further without loss with glass fibre cable (which can handle ridiculous amounts of power without blowing up).
I tend to just keep all my EU-powered stuff tightly packed into one location, and then tesseracts can be used to transport energy over 100+ block distances without much loss.