Efficient EU Production?

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Zjarek_S

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Jul 29, 2019
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The only problem with mass Generators is packet lag\item lag I had 45 odd setup with a sawmill turning wood from a SC2 treefarm into planks, whenever it kicked on due to a powerdrain somewhere in the system I could watch my framerate drop that was even before the items started flowing around when they started moving in large quantities it got worse (RP2 tubes, which aren't especially bad)

How many items you had in tubes. With so many available inventories you could have a lot of items back stuffed, which probably caused lag. For generators router seem to be best, it has a lot less overhead in comparison to pipes or tubes. Another option would be to use carts, you have one entity for 27 stacks of items without any overflow.
 

hotblack desiato

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Jul 29, 2019
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Not really it's a solid 39% extra fuel output, this includes refining and power lost with Conduits of course using the 36 sized boilers HP is the fastest way to need about 220+ buckets of fuel to "jump start" the positive feedback loop. People don't like these power generations though as it's "cheating" power even though it's does cost more space and resources to get it going and 4.5 buckets of fuel per hour isn't a whole lot from a single huge HP boiler.

yes... I did not calculate it, I just did a small estimation. and 39% and 50% isn't that far apart. and I knew, it's lower than 50%.

the point is, some people would consider it cheating, I'd consider it exploiting a cross mod balance issue (and I don't exploit that), but others live perfectly well with that.

actually, it's the same thing with soulshard-spawners. there is a block, that miraculous generates mobs, which drop things. for example, I want to have a fusion reactor, it takes ages to gather enough berryllium, but with an enderman spawner, I just sit next to it and watch it generating enough enderpearls for me. I'd consider that cheating too...
 

brujon

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Jul 29, 2019
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I don't believe it's cheating, honestly. Modpacks all have this problem, there's no way you can balance every mod against every other mod, it's bound to have these kinds of things, especially if the authors don't develop the mods together. Thing is, every mod is only balanced against itself, and against the mod it adds stuff to, in some cases. Well, you can't help but introduce some kinks when you jam all those mods together in a single mod pack right?

But that's the thing. Part of the fun in playing such a modpack with a lot of mods, is to find the most efficient way of doing something, and doing it that way. What i considered cheating, is when a mod specifically prohibits you from doing something, but another mod breaks that restriction and enables you to do it somehow. A good example would be Drills and Uncrafting Tables. Using Uncrafting Tables you can apply enchanments to IC2 Drills. This was never intended, as you cannot add enchantments onto it using books & anvil, or an enchantment table.

When a mod simply makes it so that you can, eventually, produce a certain resource with less work than you normally would, then that's not cheating. How many Endermen do you have to kill before you can get your Endermen Spawner? It's just a reward for all your work.
 

Summit

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Jul 29, 2019
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I don't believe it's cheating, honestly. Modpacks all have this problem, there's no way you can balance every mod against every other mod, it's bound to have these kinds of things, especially if the authors don't develop the mods together. Thing is, every mod is only balanced against itself, and against the mod it adds stuff to, in some cases. Well, you can't help but introduce some kinks when you jam all those mods together in a single mod pack right?

But that's the thing. Part of the fun in playing such a modpack with a lot of mods, is to find the most efficient way of doing something, and doing it that way. What i considered cheating, is when a mod specifically prohibits you from doing something, but another mod breaks that restriction and enables you to do it somehow. A good example would be Drills and Uncrafting Tables. Using Uncrafting Tables you can apply enchanments to IC2 Drills. This was never intended, as you cannot add enchantments onto it using books & anvil, or an enchantment table.

When a mod simply makes it so that you can, eventually, produce a certain resource with less work than you normally would, then that's not cheating. How many Endermen do you have to kill before you can get your Endermen Spawner? It's just a reward for all your work.
Well, actually you CAN enchant a drill on an anvil. As far as I know that is the only way to do it. And last time I checked you only have to Kill one Enderman to get a Tier 5 Enderman Shard but I think that is a REALLY cheaty bug and I'm not going to discuss how it works.
 

brujon

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Jul 29, 2019
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I know how it works... You keep combining Tier 0 Cow or whatever shards to get a T5 shard of any kind, and combine it in an anvil with a Tier 0 shard of the mob you want, and place both in the Anvil with the T0 of the mob you want first and bam, instant T5.

I also know this will probably be fixed in the next version. Most likely. Like someone else said in another thread, it still takes a lot of diamonds to do, so maybe it's not as broken.
 

brujon

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Jul 29, 2019
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Lol, copper is an easy UU matter recipe, and it's extremely abundant if you mine above Layer 45. Want to get simply stupid amounts of copper? Go to any Extreme Hills biome and set your quarry to mine at about Y 70. STUPID amounts of copper. Also a couple of emeralds, which is always nice.

I see myself having more Tin problems than Copper problems, usually.. One of the better ways to automatically mine copper is, amusingly enough, Tunnel Bores. They're usually not terrific, but since copper spawns in large veins around layers 45~50, making a huge tunnel about that height is generally better than running quarries for Copper. Arcane bore or turtles digging tunnels works out even better. Steve's Carts does an splendid job if you take the time to configure a mining cart properly, and get a good drill. Either Galgadorian or the one before that. They go fast... Really fast.
 

Byte Templar

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Jul 29, 2019
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The only problem with mass Generators is packet lag\item lag I had 45 odd setup with a sawmill turning wood from a SC2 treefarm into planks, whenever it kicked on due to a powerdrain somewhere in the system I could watch my framerate drop that was even before the items started flowing around when they started moving in large quantities it got worse (RP2 tubes, which aren't especially bad)
I swapped that setup out for a Thermal Gen setup 32 fueled with Netherlava (Geothermals if you don't have Gregtech) and my lag when a powerdrain hit dropped to almost nothing.

Few routers to feed Generators with charcoal is also lag free, and compact to make.
 

Domek

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Jul 29, 2019
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If anyones still looking for their answer a simple (yet longer to achieve) way to farm coal is to create soul shards, kill a wither skeleton, and combine 9 other soul shards with that shard in an anvil, until it is tier five. Put the shard in a soul cage and either use quick sand, or other methods to auto kill them. The best choice would to use iron golems because it counts as a player killing them, so you can even collect wither skeleton skulls and minium shards. Create a mechanism under their death spots and use obsidian piping to pick up the items and shoot them into your chests. Wither skeletons drop coal on death, within maybe one minecraft day i have gotten 1 1/2 stacks of coal, and a CRAPLOAD of bones.
 

RavynousHunter

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Jul 29, 2019
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Depending on the size of the room, you'd probably be better-served using RP2 transposers, a timer, and some insulated wire to suck up the mob drops and store 'em however you want.
 

Gun_Shy

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Jul 29, 2019
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Diamonds. *scoff* If it took copper, then it might be something serious.


HAHAHA! Yes! I find myself missing copper, tin and dirt the most. I'm producing UU-Matter like crazy though. Just built my first Ultimate Hybrid Solar Panel last night.

But, addressing OP:
Don't be afraid to branch out to BuildCraft! If you still want to use EU energy sources, you can build electrical engines that convert EU to MJ. I would suggest using a pulverizer rather than a macerator for...everything except silk-touched redstone ore and silk-touched coal (and I could be missing something. Just check NEI whenever you plan on grinding something to see what yields most). And if you aren't silk-touching your redstone, I would suggest doing that from now on. Pulverizers have a chance of a bonus output for certain ground materials, and I'm pretty sure they work faster than macerators. Plus the input/output configuration on BC machines is fantastic. And then you can build an Induction Smelter (also BC), and get the same ingot output that you get with grinding/smelting, but with the added bonus of occasionally producing rich slag, which will triple your ingot production (I suggest saving your rich slag for gold, and sometimes copper and tin when in dire need). But really, don't be intimidated by it. BuildCraft is fantastic (especially with Thermal Expansion), and it's not too hard to master.

The way I got enough fuel for my fires (before I made my tree farm), was growing giant jungle trees. I would spend about 3 straight Minecraft days just growing, chopping and burning jungle logs. It's tedious, but you'll have plenty of fuel before you know it (especially with both of you working on it), and you can use that time to set up a more reliable, efficient means of creating energy. And don't rule out the use of water/windmills. They are low yield, but...free energy is always fantastic, and it can definitely supplement your coal needs and reduce the amount of time you spend harvesting coal. And by the way, if you're trying to build a good solar array, STOP BURNING YOUR COAL. You'll need lots of coal dust. And if you have silk-touch, start mining coal that way and macerating it, as that will yield 2 coal dust per ore.

One of the reasons I'm telling you to get into BuildCraft is the presence of the Tesseract. And if you're trying to power a thermal generator, a Liquid Tesseract can be used to teleport lava from a source of your choosing. No more elaborate pipe jobs. Put a pump, liquid tesseract, and chunkloader in the Nether, and you have an infinite geothermal generator.

The best thing you can do is to figure out how you can play these mods off one another to your advantage. If I can do it, you guys can do it. TRUST ME. My house was pretty gnarly looking for a while. Lots of naked machinery and craziness. I guess that hasn't changed, but...Now there's MORE naked machinery, and it all works better :D
 

Boccob

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Jul 29, 2019
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Everytime I think of getting lava from the nether I can't get over the fact that I'll eventually have to move the pump.

I decided to use fiendish bees instead. Hive->Centrifuge->squeezer->Geothermal. On top of the geothermal is a macerator and igneous extruder pumping sand into the squeezer for the lava production. If you need more lava you can setup several hives pointed into the centrifuge.

For the MJ production it's steam from oily bees. Using pretty much the same Hive/Cent/Sqz setup.

Once it's automated you won't have to touch it again.
 

Hydra

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Jul 29, 2019
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You might want to refine these oily bees further to distilled and refined. Distilled really ups the amount of oil combs they produce and refined produces the same amount of oil combs and some biofuel combs in addition.
 

Sudocomm

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Jul 29, 2019
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One thing that you can do if you are still looking for early-game power generation is watch this video its probably the best Ive seen for early power generation. You don't necessarily have to keep this if you want to branch out into the other mods power generation capabilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7RmWxNHL5c
The first one is pretty much what I am going to be going after for early power generation.
 

RavynousHunter

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Jul 29, 2019
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If you're running one of the packs with Power Converters, with default configs, I've run some numbers and found something interesting... To put it simply: Thermal Expansion engines are better at making EU than their IC2 counterparts.

Now, math time!

The formula for energy conversion in Power Converters goes like this: outputPower = inputPower ( inputScale / outputScale ); where EU has a scale of 1800 and MJ has a scale of 4375.

The TE magmatic engine makes 18,000 MJ per bucket of lava, and the IC2 geothermal generator makes 20,000 EU per bucket. Running the numbers, we get...

Magmatic to EU: 18000 ( 4375 / 1800 ) = 43,750 EU
GeoGen to MJ: 20000 ( 1800 / 4375 ) = 8,299 MJ

This is, of course, using all default configs for TE, IC2, and Power Converters. A single magmatic engine makes more than twice the EU per bucket of lava as a geothermal generator does, and nearly double that of a GT thermal generator. Sooooooo...it may cost a bit more in terms of resources, but once converted over, TE is better at supplying IC2 power than IC2 is, apart from nuclear power, and whatever solars, lightning rods, or fusion reactors you may have. Quite an interesting little nugget, no?
 

theblueboss11

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Jul 29, 2019
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You could set up a grinder at a blaze spawner, then burn the rods and produce reliable power (assuming you play on easy or higher
 

PhilHibbs

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To put it simply: Thermal Expansion engines are better at making EU than their IC2 counterparts
To put it more simply, Power Converters has got its ratios wrong? Or, more likely, if the IC2 ratio of coal to lava is different from the TE ratio of coal to lava, then a single ratio of IC2 to TE is impossible. It certainly isn't anything to do with TE being "better" than IC2 at making EU. If PC takes the midpoint of the TE and IC2 coal-to-lava ratio, then you will find that IC2 coal-fired Generators are "better" than TE at making MJ.
 

Siro

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Jul 29, 2019
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This is, of course, using all default configs for TE, IC2, and Power Converters. A single magmatic engine makes more than twice the EU per bucket of lava as a geothermal generator does, and nearly double that of a GT thermal generator. Sooooooo...it may cost a bit more in terms of resources, but once converted over, TE is better at supplying IC2 power than IC2 is, apart from nuclear power, and whatever solars, lightning rods, or fusion reactors you may have. Quite an interesting little nugget, no?

Well it kinda depends on if you're looking for overall efficiency of eu/fuel unit or efficiency in eu/t/number of generator blocks. The thermal generator is 24 eu/t. A magmatic is 4 mj/t, which is only a bit over 9 eu/t. So to get the same energy throughput, you'd need 3 thermal generators or 8 magmatic engines connected to power converters. Yeah your lava will last longer, but you'll eat up more space and cpu.
 

Loufmier

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Jul 29, 2019
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if you have resources, the most efficient way is gregtech fusion reactor, which is capable to produce eu with energy conversion efficiency more than 1(which is bullisht, but gergtech doesnt mix with logic and irel laws), if fuel supply is set correctly
 

RavynousHunter

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well it kinda depends on if you're looking for overall efficiency of eu/fuel unit or efficiency in eu/t/number of generator blocks. The thermal generator is 24 eu/t. A magmatic is 4 mj/t, which is only a bit over 9 eu/t. So to get the same energy throughput, you'd need 3 thermal generators or 8 magmatic engines connected to power converters. Yeah your lava will last longer, but you'll eat up more space and cpu.
From what I remember, though, I believe King Lemming said that a lot of TE was designed to be as CPU-friendly as humanly possible. That said, I'm not sure about the exact performance stats of generators vs engines...specially since both require wiring to use/store the energy, anyway.