Efficient ways to transfer power across mods? (noob question)

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PoisonWolf

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Jul 29, 2019
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Did you know that this reaction actually has visibile (via MRI and fMRI) characteristics in your brain? Everyone has a bit of discomfort, but profound sufferers can be utterly debilitated by it. It's called Trypophobia. A jokey but semi-serious test: can you stare at this page for more than a few seconds?


I f**king hate you. THAT was GROSS. OMG. GOOSEBUMPS WHY THE F**K DID I CLICK. ugh

Holy shit my whole body is flushed

(dont really hate you but shit the first picture was enough to make me close the tab)
 

SpitefulFox

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Jul 29, 2019
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(dont really hate you but shit the first picture was enough to make me close the tab)

It's the only picture there. I'll go ahead and quote the rest for you so you don't have to go there:

Trypophobia is an intense fear of the following things, which results in an all-over itchy feeling and general uneasyness. Lotus seed pods, Crumpets, Pumice, Cavities in teeth, the Ampullae of Lorenzini in Sharks, Holes in concrete, Bug tunnels in wood, Enlarged pores of the skin, Aero Bars, Holes in walls caused by bullets, Bone marrow, Wasps' nest, Honeycomb, Bubbles in Dough, Ant holes, Veins in meat, Clusters of holes.
 
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namiasdf

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That solar mirror set up looks really cool actually. If you design your base around have 4-8 of those in geographically/architecturally symmetric locations, it could be pretty awesome looking.
 

schyman

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Since you have so much EU, the easiest way by far to start providing MJ is not to convert the power but just to make a tree farm and use your free EU to make charcoal and put that into banks of cheap stirling engines or thermal expansion steam engines. It is very easy to produce a lot of MJ this way and you can power your farm off your EU.
Steam Engines are from Railcraft I believe.

But yeah, that is the path I'd recommend, because it's FUN! :3
 

Jakeb

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Well, apparently I have Trypophobia because I closed that page after half a second of looking at the picture.[DOUBLEPOST=1375060954][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, in addition to using an oil fabricator and refining the oil into fuel to power a boiler, you could just use an lava fabricator to feed a few magmatic engines.
 

malicious_bloke

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Jul 28, 2013
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Firstly, thanks for all the responses :)

Secondly, I was originally using buildcraft stirling engines but the output there is even worse. 1mj/t is pretty poo for a bank of machines that managed to eat its way through the entire chest(s) of coal provided by my quarry.

Also maybe efficiency was the wrong word to use in the situation. I have an inexhaustible supply of EU so the amount of MJ I can convert it into per unit of EU is really irrelevant. The main issue is more like: the MFSU can output up to 512 EU/t, a redstone power cell can output up to 100MJ/t and accept up to 100MJ/t input. The three electrical engines I'm using per cell have a mixture of bronze and tin electron tubes and they each output like 14MJ/t while using a tiny fraction of the EU from the MFSU.

Logically if I want to have an output coming from the power cell I can only have 5 engines pumping MJ into it directly, so that'll add up to 70MJ/t...ie not enough considering some of my machines eat up 100MJ/t.
 

PoisonWolf

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Firstly, thanks for all the responses :)

Secondly, I was originally using buildcraft stirling engines but the output there is even worse. 1mj/t is pretty poo for a bank of machines that managed to eat its way through the entire chest(s) of coal provided by my quarry.

Also maybe efficiency was the wrong word to use in the situation. I have an inexhaustible supply of EU so the amount of MJ I can convert it into per unit of EU is really irrelevant. The main issue is more like: the MFSU can output up to 512 EU/t, a redstone power cell can output up to 100MJ/t and accept up to 100MJ/t input. The three electrical engines I'm using per cell have a mixture of bronze and tin electron tubes and they each output like 14MJ/t while using a tiny fraction of the EU from the MFSU.

Logically if I want to have an output coming from the power cell I can only have 5 engines pumping MJ into it directly, so that'll add up to 70MJ/t...ie not enough considering some of my machines eat up 100MJ/t.


This is the setup that I use for my EU to MJ conversion. Make 2 of these and you have yourself 150 mj/t. Simply make more if you need more. (Something I discussed a while back, link here).
 

The_Enemys

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Jul 29, 2019
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Logically if I want to have an output coming from the power cell I can only have 5 engines pumping MJ into it directly, so that'll add up to 70MJ/t...ie not enough considering some of my machines eat up 100MJ/t.

Engines don't need to be attached directly to a cell, so with even 1 side free for input you can run a conduit/conductive pipes into the side of the cell and put however many engines you want on the conduit, as long as you set the connections to the appropriate settings.
 

malicious_bloke

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Engines don't need to be attached directly to a cell, so with even 1 side free for input you can run a conduit/conductive pipes into the side of the cell and put however many engines you want on the conduit, as long as you set the connections to the appropriate settings.

Ah ha! Now that makes more sense. Cheers, imma go play about with some conduits now :)
 

The_Enemys

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No problem :)
For reference sake, the energy cell is entirely optional and engines will also happily output direct or via pipes/conduits straight into machines if you plan to use the energy as fast as you make it, such as a dedicated quarry engine bank.
 

Bibble

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Just as a quick note on the theory behind the energy systems, and why they seem to be so incompatible (at this point I really need to find a static page to link to, but I'll type it out again).

In the early days (yay! story time!), before gates, and before TE became popular, MJ and EU were fundamentally different in both use and concept.

EU generation was typically done to a storage medium (Batbox, MFE, MFSU), and power would be used on a per-operation, burst basis. When the storage block got low enough, a burst of fuel would be put in to top the storage up a bit.

MJ was intended to be generated continuously. The engines may not have major penalties for being used in a start-stop fashion, but the machines were constant-draws (quarries, farms, etc.). Used for relatively large projects where the generation was matched to the use, and it leant itself to continuous and stable systems.

The big change came when TE rose to prominence (it was around for a while, but became really popular when Gregtech began to be included in packs by default, as it added cheaper game start methods). TE changed MJ in two ways. First was the redstone energy cell, allowing MJ to be stored and moved. This meant that you could set up on-demand generation and use it for small operations, which leads me onto the second way TE changed things. It offered processing methods. The pulveriser, powered furnace and induction smelter were different to most other MJ-consuming machines in that they were intended for small operations (i.e. processing a single ore, or stack of ores). It was possible to automate them, but the philosophy behind it was small periods of activity, and long periods of idle-ness.

This lead to MJ and EU approaching the same point, and many mods began using them interchangeably (MFR, AE, etc.), but the generation remained more or less the same. most engines are still intended for constant use. The addition of gates means that things like combustion and biogas engines can stop-start, but the theory is the same.

Recent changes to BC show a return to the previous mentality. Machines lose energy over time, meaning that they become less feasible to leave running constantly. You are better off setting up a system whereby it's always running, and balancing the input and output.


So, in summary, the energies are intended to be different and separate. You are not supposed to be able to use a solar panel to power a quarry (you can, but there are losses). You are better off going out and finding an oil spout and powering it on fuel. Or setting up a boiler and powering it from there. The generation methods work in fundamentally different ways. Also, I have to say that I would like to see a nuclear reactor with similar principles to boilers (LONG startup and shutdown times, taking care of a base energy demand).
 
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schyman

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^That was a good summary. Note though that even far before TE rose we had power converters and people using MJ to get EU and vice versa.