Early AE?

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PonyKuu

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Jul 29, 2019
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I was watching DW20 spotlight on AE, and there is an idea... Those chests from AE don't seem very expensive. What about using them instead of barrels in RP-based sorting system? Just preformat some disks and hook a bunch of chests to a tube - BAM! Autosorting is done! Has anypony done something like that?
 

Eyamaz

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Jul 29, 2019
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You still need a decent power infrastructure set up to deal with ae. I've gone as first and found its easier to wait. Though it is possible if you rush a sc farm and can produce enough charcoal for several sterling engines.

Practical? Not really.

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PonyKuu

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Jul 29, 2019
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Who needs stirling engines when there are Hobbyist Steam Engines?
And I'm not talking about "as early as possible", I'm talking about the time when you have some power going, some energy cells and you want to make a decent sorting system. It's just an improved version of "tube with barrels" type of system. After that you may replace tube with ME-cable and add a controller to it.

BTW, is there any way to force certain items go to the certain disks. Like... You have a formatted disk for redstone in an ME chest and non-formatted one in a disk array, and you want redstone to fill disk in the chest first and then go to the big storage
 

Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hmmm. Well, I don't know about early game... but I certainly like this. I'm using Iron Chests mod right now for my main storage, but I kind of like this alternative. The main thing I didn't like about barrels was the fact that you could only store one item, and this seems to dissolve that problem.

However, barrels still may be necessary for mass storage. Maybe, maybe not. I'm very much unfamiliar with this mod, and will have to look into it more.

But yeah, the major downside I'm seeing is a necessity for a pre-existing power system, which won't be available early game.
 

PonyKuu

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I'm not familiar too, that's why I'm asking that. AE is definitely a cool mod, and it might even be the best storage option ever. When I realized that you can use chests without a controller, I just thought that it may be also a good early-middle game solution
 

Mash

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Well, if you can get a power system for it, then hell yeah. This looks awesome, the more I delve into it.

I might still use barrels for some things, but this mod looks quite sweet.
 

PonyKuu

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yeah, but it requires 4 hobbyist steam engines to keep up with 8 chests (tested it a bit)
That might be too much, so, it's more for that stage when you have something like biogas engines with a good supply of biomass
 

Chocorate

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I can't wait to see someone use RP2 computers and AE together. It'd be pretty cool seeing a crafting/storage system that uses the computers to switch out the storage drives and stuff.
 

PonyKuu

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Hmm, that's a bit strange... I put 10 chests and EnergyCell is still full, and it's powered by 4 hobbyiist engines... I put 20 of them, and cell is full... But with 3 engines and 6 chests energy level was going down... Maybe they warm up a bit longer than I thought...
 

Saice

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Jul 29, 2019
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The two big things that keep me away form AE right now.

1) to many people reporting lost items. Or needed to reboot their AE ever few hours to keep this from happening.
2) To me it still feels a little unblanced and is to acceable to early. But that is just my own playstyle issue.
 

Milaha

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Jul 29, 2019
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If you want to go with super barels your better option is the deep storage chest from MFR. Holds a lot more, configurable sidedness, no power required, can be moved without spilling contents. It beats both AE and barrels for storing large amounts of single items. Once you do move to AE they also work well when connected to storage buses. It also hits that price point where the cost is non-trivial, but not too expensive (unless you have both an ender and blaze farm, but in that case most things sans GT are probably trivial for cost for you)
 
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PonyKuu

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well it's not a super barrel, it's more like a chest with built-in filter. One possibility for RP2 sorting system is to make a bunch of chests sitting on filters with correct items, and ME-chests with preformatted disks could act exactly by the same way. I'm not sure if I want to use this idea, but maybe I'll try it once I have a stable power supply.
 

PonyKuu

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Jul 29, 2019
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Meh, tubes don't work well with those chests. So, basic ME setup is a input->ME import bus->controller->bunch of chests with preformatted disks.
 

CodaPDX

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Jul 29, 2019
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ME Chests are actually kind of inefficient in multiples. If you have multiple disks, it's probably better to just go with an ME Drive. Also, a Wireless Access Point is well worth the investment.
 
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whythisname

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well I like it really early, before even getting beyond wooden chests I get one ME chest running and swap unformatted 1K cells. It'll give you plenty of storage early on and you can easily have a chest with cells you just swap around. If you separate common and valuable stuff you should very easi

In mid game (which would be more what this topic is about, I think) I dunno, but I would probably get an ME Disk with a small system going and just power it on demand, just like I would early game with the chest. If you have something like a boiler and/or tree farm running at this point you should be able to spare the power to use the system on demand.

Late game, well I don't think I need to tell you that's a system that can do pretty much everything.

As for formatting disks, I think it's mostly late game that that's really needed, to double the amount of space you have for really abundant stuff. Though if something is so abundant you need a formated cell you might need to ask if you really need that much in storage of such an abundant material.
 
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Mash

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Jul 29, 2019
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I like having an abundant amount of something.

Not for any particular reason, but I like having a large buffer with anything I do. Do I need my 20 thousand buckets of biofuel? Probably not. It would take my boilers weeks to use them all.

But I have them regardless. ;)
 

budge

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Jul 29, 2019
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I set up a tiny AE network for my friend that is only active when he stands on a pressure plate in front of the terminal. If I remember correctly, I also set up a buildcraft gate that would turn the network on whenever his ore processing machines inserted something into the interface. His network was extremely efficient that way.
 

CodaPDX

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Barrels actually synergize quite well with AE. I highly recommend using them to store things like cobble and dirt early on, then hook up your barrels to your network via an interface bus once you get some infrastructure set up.
 

Peppe

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hobbyist engines with no energy loss should power 2 and 2/3 chests per engine... unless the chests use more than their base 3 power units when not connected to a controller.

With a controller using disc drives becomes rapidly more efficient. Each hobbyist engine can power a drive and 10 1k discs on its own.

ME Chests use 1 unit empty and 3 units with a disc in.

ME drive uses 2 unit of power and a scaling amount for each disk it holds. Amount is .5, 1, 1.5, and 2 AE units per disk relative to its size (1k, 4k, 16k, 64k).

1 MJ = 5 AE power units.

A drive with 10 1k discs, access terminal, and controller is 14 AE units ~ 2.8 MJ/t. So two hobbyist engines could run the network. Each disc can hold 65-127 stacks of items... Pretty good storage running on early game power.

On resources, ME Drive actually looks cheaper than a chest. But you also need a controller and interface to make use of a drive... but you will need those things eventually anyway. Chests have a use, but in most cases drives are the way to go.