Gates and Pipe Wire

[ShameWillFollow]

Basically, I'm trying to set up a chest -> fermenter setup with gates and buildcraft pipes. I'm trying to use the gates so that the only time an item should be pumped out of the chest is if there is space in the inventory of the fermenter. I'm quite new to gates so what I came up with doesn't seem to work, but I don't know why.

I have an autarchic gate on the pipe adjacent to the fermenter set to "if space in inventory then redstone on". The autarchic gate on the pipe adjacent to the chest is set to "if redstone signal on then energy pulse". I then have red pipe wire connecting these 2 gates. In my mind, this seems perfect. The gate on the fermenter pipe works fine (it does output a redstone signal when the inventory of the fermenter is empty), but either there's something wrong with the pipe wire or the gate on the chest, because items never get pumped out of the chest.

Any info on the subject would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[MilConDoin]

Fermenter side: No need for autarchic, normal is enough
Interaction with pipe wire only for iron gates upwards (choose red pipe signal instead of redstone).
If you want to keep your current gates, put a line of redstone from the fermenter-gate to the chest-gate.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

Ahhh that clears that up nicely. Thanks.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

I've now run into another problem though. It seems as though "if space in inventory" becomes false when there are only 3 pieces of sugar cane in the fermenter. The chest above has at least 5 stacks, but as soon as there are 3 in the fermenter, it turns the pipe wire signal off and it stops pumping items.

I guess this wouldn't be a problem if I ran the fermenter constantly, but that wasn't my original plan, though I could deal with that.

EDIT: Also is there a way to increase the speed of the energy pulse? Do the higher level gates like gold and diamond pulse faster than the iron?

 

[MilConDoin]

Switch to "Resources < 25%" instead of "Space in Inventory".
The energy pulse is like a redstone engine, slow at the beginning and getting faster when run continuously.

 

[Vilmos]

Also is there a way to increase the speed of the energy pulse? Do the higher level gates like gold and diamond pulse faster than the iron?

You have a good idea there, if you are paying with gold or diamonds those energy pulses should resemble upgraded engines. I might even use them then!

 

[Icarus White]

But for reference, the current difference with higher level gates is that they can handle more conditions, and can be connected to more colors of pipewire.
(And can be substituted for higher level circuits in GT, but that's neither here nor there.)

 

[ShameWillFollow]

Switch to "Resources < 25%" instead of "Space in Inventory".
The energy pulse is like a redstone engine, slow at the beginning and getting faster when run continuously.

I did discover the "resources < 25%" option, but I was unaware that the energy pulse functions like a redstone engine. It was running so painfully slow in the beginning I was beginning to get frustrated, but I guess I'll just let it go run for a while.

 

[ThemsAllTook]

The energy pulse is like a redstone engine, slow at the beginning and getting faster when run continuously.

...shoot, I didn't know that. I have a couple of machines set up that rely on it running at a constant speed. I guess I just haven't run any of them long enough to see it speed up and cause me any trouble. Good to know they work like that! Yay for Buildcraft being open source so I can check the exact mechanics of it...

 

[Abdiel]

Autarchic Gates take longer to "heat up" than Redstone Engines, but when they do they pull items slightly faster. The material of the gate has no effect on speed.

Shame, I don't know if this is just a typing error, but pipe wires don't use redstone signals. You need to set/check red pipe wire signals (red + / - icons).

The "space in inventory" condition with an iron gate is true only if there is space for any possible item to be added - i.e. at least one empty space. If you want to check whether you can add one specific item (i.e. there is an incomplete stack of that item), you need to use golden or diamond gates with the item in the condition. Similarly with "inventory full".

 

[Saice]

The gate pump slow thing I have found can be overcomed with using a gate to send a redstone single and just slaping a engine there.

 

[Vilmos]

It would still be nice if higher gates gave a faster pulse. I mean the idea of autarchic gates is to save space. Since you can only have one there having a faster option would be useful in certain situations.

 

[Abdiel]

I've not yet come across a realistic situation where one fully charged gate wouldn't be enough. If so, you can use a RP filter on a one tick timer. Or attach several pipes to the same machine/chest.

 

[Democretes]

I believe at one point the current makers of buildcraft were going to make autarchic gates not have any kind of warmup time. Has anyone herad anything contradicting this?

 

[Vilmos]

Oh I have a simple realistic situation. A Quarry going into an ender chest, and the one on the other side can not keep up with one fully charged gate. Especially as all the other systems also dump into this chest, as well as me when I am out adventuring. I am playing the magic pack so no RP2. Currently 3 redstone engines can barely keep up.

Adding more pipes and more gates is not a solution, in that case the 3 engines are equivalent.

 

[Saice]

I find my gates actully pull to much. I have them on autocrafters and even a short redstone pluse I get two items instead of one.

 

[Abdiel]

Oh I have a simple realistic situation. A Quarry going into an ender chest, and the one on the other side can not keep up with one fully charged gate. Especially as all the other systems also dump into this chest, as well as me when I am out adventuring. I am playing the magic pack so no RP2. Currently 3 redstone engines can barely keep up.

Adding more pipes and more gates is not a solution, in that case the 3 engines are equivalent.

Diamond pipe on the quarry side automatically discarding cobble/dirt/gravel/etc. into a void pipe before it reaches the enderchest.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

What's the approximate warmup time for a gate? My iron autarchic has been running for quite a while and is still chugging along like a minimum speed redstone engine.

 

[ThemsAllTook]

What's the approximate warmup time for a gate? My iron autarchic has been running for quite a while and is still chugging along like a minimum speed redstone engine.

Relevant source code: https://github.com/SirSengir/BuildCraft/blob/master/common/buildcraft/transport/EnergyPulser.java

Looks like it doubles its speed every 250 pulses, up to a maximum of 8x speed. The starting speed is 5 seconds per pulse, so if my math is right, it takes 5 * 250 + 2.5 * 250 + 1.25 * 250 (2187.5) seconds, or 36.458333 minutes to reach full speed (0.625 seconds per pulse).

 

[ThemsAllTook]

...must've gotten something wrong, or I'm missing something in my reading of the code, because I've had an autarchic gate running for well over an hour now and it's still 5 seconds per pulse. Has anyone observed them speeding up firsthand?