getting started with Thermal Expansion?

[Vovk]

I know this post is almost a month old and I wish I'd seen it then as this is my first foray into TE (and I'm really loving it). I thought I'd point out, though, for beginners that, as I understand it, a tick is actually 1/20 of a second rather than 20 seconds.

So now I am making a ton of power. What do people typically do with it. I am mostly just charging Redstone Energy Cells and having those power quarries and such.

gah such a bad typo. Changed, and thank you

as for the power, you could use it for lava/obsidian gen - feed the obsidian into a crusher and get the obs dust needed for blastproof rails.

personally I use it for obsidian gen + builder to create modular mage towers though I really wanna start using more xychordite for those things nowadays. Quarry is always a useful thing, so are basically all the forestry machines.

 

[MFINN23]

Engine listing. I am calling any object with an inventory a machine. 20 seconds to a tick. Sometimes this value fluctuates due to server lag, but if B is displayed in seconds and A is displayed in ticks, then A is always 20x faster than B. Unless marked with a *, none of these engines will explode unless you plug one into the back of another for long periods of time OR if you output directly into a full machine without going through a pipe or conduit first.

Buildcraft:
Redstone Engine - produces 1 MJ per second. Only really useful for drawing items into pipes from machines
Stirling Engine - produces 1 MJ per tick. Requires any fuel that would burn in a furnace.
Combustion Engine* - produces 1 MJ per tick on lava, 3 MJ per tick on oil, 5 MJ per tick on biofuel and 6 MJ per tick on fuel. A bucket of fuel will produce 600,000 MJ. Yes this is 100,000 ticks, which is 5000 seconds which is around an hour and a half. This engine will explode if it runs out of water at green heat or above.

Thermal Expansion:
Steam Engine - produces 2 MJ per tick, runs on any fuel, requires constant supply of water to operate (use an aqueous accumulator). Will shut down instead of exploding. can be run without a redstone signal.
Magmatic Engine - produces 4 MJ per tick, runs only on lava, will shut down instead of exploding. can be run without a redstone signal.
Redstone Energy Cell - not a true engine, but worth mentioning. Stores up to 500,000 MJ with configurable input and output ranging from 0 to 125 MJ/tick. Can run a quarry to bedrock from layer 70 off 6 MJ/tick output.

Forestry:
Peat Fired Engine - produces 1 MJ per tick up to 5000 MJ on peat or 2 MJ per tick to 12000 MJ on bituminous peat. Will constantly build up ash at a slow rate which must be removed once 256 are built up. Runs for hours on a single stack of peat.
Biogas Engine - requires lava to start from a cold stop. does not require lava to continue running once started. produces 1 MJ/t off water but constantly burns its lava to do so. 1 MJ/tick off honey and 1MJ/tick off milk - the milk lasts longer. 3 MJ/tick off seed oil, 5 MJ/tick off biomas. Does not run off biofuel.
Electric Engine - produces 2 MJ per tick off 6 Industrialcraft EU per tick. Can be upgraded by using a soldering iron's right click interface to attach electron tubes to circuit boards.

Forestry Electric Engine Upgrades:
Type of tubeEffect (Max stack)Change in input EUChange in output MJ
Copper Choke(1) -2 EU/t -1 MJ/t
Tin Boost I(2) +7 EU/t +2 MJ/t
Bronze Boost II(2) +15 EU/t +4 MJ/t
Iron Efficiency(1) -1 EU/t No change

Railcraft:
Steam Boilers* - boilers can be low or high pressure and can be liquid or solid fueled. boilers above 100C will constantly output steam at the same rate of 10 steam/tick off low pressure boilers per tank and 20 steam/tick off high pressure boilers per tank. Low pressure boilers take less fuel to heat up, but also cool down faster. High pressure boilers take more fuel to heat up and cool down slower. Boilers are meant to run 24/7 - the hotter a boiler runs, the more fuel efficient it becomes. Boilers don't need to have fuel in them to produce steam, they just need their temperature level to be above 100C. You can pipe the steam into whatever machine needs it OR stick machines directly onto the side of the boiler. Due to the nature of steam as a fluid, you can store it in tanks - however you'll find that you will never be able to build a big enough tank to hold any supply of steam for any length of time. It takes up too much room, is produced too quickly and is used just as quickly. Railcraft engines running off steam have godlike fuel efficiency at top tiers. A single bucket of buildcraft fuel can last 5 minutes in a 36H liquid boiler. It will essentially power all machines taking steam from that boiler at once, up to 720 steam per tick. Energy can be gained at a rate of 1 steam/tick to 0.2 MJ/tick OR 1 steam/tick to 1.25 EU/tick. That is 144 MJ/tick for 5 minutes off a bucket of fuel or 200 EU per tick for 5 minutes off a bucket of fuel. The EU only comes in packets of 50, and the MJ comes in 2, 4 or 8 as shown below. Boilers will run forever off just fuel but will only output steam if they have water. Putting cold water into a boiler that has become dry and hot can be.... exciting.

Hobbyist Steam Engine*- Has its own internal boiler and can run off any fuel + water source at 1.6 MJ/tick . You can pipe 10 steam/tick into it from an external boiler to achieve 2 MJ/tick
Commercial Steam Engine - 4 MJ/tick off 20 Steam/tick piped in externally.
Industrial Steam Engine - 8 MJ/tick off 40 Steam/tick piped in externally.

Cobblestone waterproof pipes hold 10 liquid per tick
Golden waterproof pipes hold 40 liquid per tick

Any machine that requires steam can be sat right next to a boiler without piping. So far these machines are the hobbyist steam engine, the commercial steam engine, the industrial steam engine and the steam turbine.



And that's all the ways to generate power in buildcraft

Please feel free to correct me if you see anything wrong or if I am missing something

Eloraam is also adding a bluelectric engine in Red Power that will allow a conversion from bluelectric solar, wind and thermal into BC energy, which will be quite nice for machines that need small trickles of 1/2 MJ constantly and who don't feel like making a blasphemous industrialcraft solar panel


PS: Just to underscore the fuel efficiency of a 36H steam boiler (36 high pressure, the max output and size of a steam boiler)

1 Bucket of fuel in a combustion engine is 600,000 MJ over the course of an hour and a half.
1 Bucket of fuel in a 36H boiler is 864,000 MJ over the course of 5 minutes.

PPS: Boilers are hella inefficient when they are cold, however. a 36H boiler will heat up or cool down in around 6 hours or so. at 100C it will use 8x as much fuel as usual. at 500C it will use around 2x as much. etc etc. Note that the cooldown period is long as well, so a boiler with water but no fuel can run for quite some time before grinding to a halt.

PPPS: Thanks for the peat correction. Tested and added new info.

Based on this info I'd gather the best thing to do is to run a boiler super hot for a while and fill up redstone cells with industrial steam engines at a rapid rate for use later.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Based on this info I'd gather the best thing to do is to run a boiler super hot for a while and fill up redstone cells with industrial steam engines at a rapid rate for use later.

You can also pipe steam out to do things like power a Hobbyist Steam Engine to keep your Forestry Arboretum and Logger (both) running on steam, meaning the entire Peat Bog's production can go right into the Boiler.

 

[Vovk]

You can also pipe steam out to do things like power a Hobbyist Steam Engine to keep your Forestry Arboretum and Logger (both) running on steam, meaning the entire Peat Bog's production can go right into the Boiler.

piping steam out is a nice non-lossy way of distributing your energy, however it plays havoc on your sanity and the extensibility/modularity of your base design. Having to move engines or build separate engines in different places where you need MJ can get much more expensive than just putting all your steam engines directly onto or next to your boiler and piping the energy out using conduits. The energy loss of a conduit system is almost negligible when you're dealing with the 144 MJ/tick output of a boiler.

The cool thing about the conduit system is that you can also stick extra engines of different types anywhere in the system you wish and be assured that power is reaching all of your vital machines. Currently running tests and it seems like redstone conduit can transport over 2000 MJ/tick (testing with 20 energy cells all outputting to 20 empty cells at max, matching the charge rate of 1 cell to 1 cell)

edit: test list:

1 cell to 1 cell, 2 conduits, 1 MJ per tick - pending, total time of completion 166 minutes

1 cell to 1 cell, 2 conduits. 25 MJ per tick - 5% loss

1 cell to 1 cell, 2 conduits, 50 MJ per tick - 5% loss

1 cell to 1 cell, 2 conduits 100 MJ per tick - 5% loss

1 cell to 1 cell, 50 conduits 100 MJ per tick - 5% loss

1 cell to 1 cell, 50 conduits, 100 MJ per tick, conduits form loops everywhere (5 stacks of 10 conduits) - 5% loss

1 cell to 1 cell, 11 conduits 100 MJ per tick - 5% loss

10 cells to 10 cells, 11 conduits 100 MJ per tick each - 5% loss

20 cells to 20 cells, 11 conduits 100 MJ per tick each - 5% loss

it seems as if the length of conduit doesn't matter, but the time to complete the transfer might. Will know upon completion of tests.

energy loss always seems to be 5%. cobble conductive pipe loses 1% per pipe block, golden loses 0.1% per pipe block. This seems to show that it is always better to use golden pipe when you are running a system of less than 50 pipes and your system has no loops (you might need to make a loop for a compact build, if so - a conduit is required)


Conduits cannot have gates attached to them, but a cell on a conduit will stop outputting MJ when there is nowhere for it to go, so a system less than 50 long working with gold pipes and storage cells must have a gate on the cell attached to every machine in the system in order to conserve power. Alternately, if you were using the gates for some other purpose and required one on your conduit system, you'd need to run structure pipes which means 2x as much wiring in order to get the same effect as gold pipes.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

piping steam out is a nice non-lossy way of distributing your energy, however it plays havoc on your sanity and the extensibility/modularity of your base design. Having to move engines or build separate engines in different places where you need MJ can get much more expensive than just putting all your steam engines directly onto or next to your boiler and piping the energy out using conduits. The energy loss of a conduit system is almost negligible when you're dealing with the 144 MJ/tick output of a boiler.

Fair point, however if you are just powering the infrastructure, it's fire and forget. Installation might be an issue, sure, but once you have it installed (running it in the middle of your walls, under your lawn, and otherwise out of sight) it runs itself.

As far as extensibility/modularity, I wouldn't say that, at least not if you take your future piping into consideration when laying out how your modules are put together. After all, you are still having to run your power lines, so you'll be digging everything up anyways.

Considering Liquiducts can run about a third of the total steam from your setup (up to 48 MJ/t worth of Steam), you might end up laying less line down in the long run by running steam to sub-plants more locally to the power requirements.

It's a matter of personal preference, I suppose.

 

[Daemonblue]

Don't know where you're getting the 48 mj worth of steam on liquiducts. So far the only limitations I've noticed on those is the boilers themselves - a single liquiduct can easily handle enough steam to remove the 720 steam from a 36HP setup. In fact, I know it can handle at least two more. I actually plan on testing how many boilers one pipe can support - basically have two boilers 1 block apart and in that area connect them to liquiducts, channel all the steam into one pipe and use that single pipe and see how many engines it can run. The bonus is this system is extendable fairly easily so, given enough time for the boilers to heat up, it shouldn't take long to see their throughput.

 

[Vovk]

I will have to test this again. Last I checked, 1 liquiduct on a 36H boiler gave enough steam for 2 industrial engines (16 MJ/tick)

This may have changed in a TE update though... I seem to remember something in the changelog about liquid viscosities being fixed.

PS: @ shneeky I suppose the perosnal preference is a big factor. I like the fact that conduit redistribute power where it's needed, but the aesthetic of running steam everywhere and the ability to designate a dedicated set of engines for a specific machine set is always nice.

Edit: just finished the test. 1 36H boiler, 1 liquiduct line coming out, 2 industrial steam engines run at full power 8 MJ per tick each, 3 engines run at 5.4 each... how in the hell are you getting over a boiler's worth of steam per tick into 1 duct?

Edit2: aah I get it. minecraft pressure physics don't really line up with actual physics on this one cover the boiler in liquiducts and pipe all into 1 like daemonblue says... that's definitely a weird effect and wondering if it's an intentional thing or not.

 

[Cronos988]

So, does anything apart from boilers have increased fuel efficiency?
Is there a point to using steam engines (the TE ones) instead of Stirling engines other than a more compact setup?

 

[Hydra]

The TE steam engines give 2MJ/t, stirling engines only give 1 MJ/t, so that's a rather nice benefit.

@Vovk: only when drawing out of a boiler there is a limitation in the amount of steam you're getting out. If you connect 1 liquiduct to 9 spots on a boiler you'll get all the steam out (in the case of a 36HP boiler). So yes, you can connect 18 industrial engines to 1 liquiduct, that liquiduct just has to have 9 connections to the boiler.

 

[Vovk]

yay 2 month necro.

yep in my last edit I did realize that property of steam boilers. thanks though