Getting the most out of your ME Network

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AlanEsh

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Is it really necessary? It has all of the documentation in-game.
True, but the interplay between the different materials parts and materials is pretty much guesswork. However, there are a couple of decent threads that cover this info so I don't suppose TiCo is in that much need of more coverage.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Have you written on Mekanism? I think I recall you saying you were planning something like that. I am getting gateway timeouts on your website at the moment so I haven't checked.
Yes I did. I'm getting the same problem. Site must be down.
I would prefer an in depth guide on Buildcraft's item transport system.
Umm... they're called pipes. They move things around. Use a wooden one with a redstone engine or autarchic gate to pull stuff out of an inventory. They don't like intersections, and will go randomly. Cobble and Stone pipes won't connect, for more compact builds. Gold accelerates things. Iron will accept any side input but only has one output side. Diamond sorts things. Oh, and Emerald is basically a more intelligent wooden pipe.

There's... not really much depth to it.
 

AlanEsh

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* Before you use a Bus, ask yourself this: Can an ME Interface do this just as well or better?

* You don't always need an ME Interface on every machine in a multi-task process


Along these lines I wanted to point out a block that is very useful paired with the ME Interface, and that's MFR's Item Router (not to be confused with Factorization's Router...). These blocks act much like a diamond pipe, but they are more reliable, they don't try to connect to everything they touch, and they have a nice "reject unmapped items yes/no" option. Here's an example of how I use them for filling Energy Conduits:

ME Interface
vvv
Item Router #1 ==> Magma Cruicible
vvv
Item Router #2 ==> Liquid Transposer

The pattern is: Empty Energy Conduit + 2 Redstone = Filled Energy conduit.
When I request conduit the ME Interface drops an empty Conduit and 2 Redstone into the top of Item Router #1. The Router's filter shunts the Redstone into the Magma Crucible, and sends the Conduit down to the second Item Router. Item Router #2 then shunts the Conduit into the Liquid Transposer.
The Liquid transposer sends the finished product via BC pipe to a common chest with an Import Bus attached to it (serving several machine clusters).

Hope that example helps with the whole "minimal AE blocks" movement :)
 
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Dorque

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Which mod would you like me to cover next?
I think I need more RedNet lessons =P

Aside from that, there's very little out there on the new MFFS and I'm just starting to learn how incredibly versatile it is. I don't think many people have explored its potential yet.
 

khorozm

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Yes I did. I'm getting the same problem. Site must be down.
Yes yue mechanics
Umm... they're called pipes. They move things around. Use a wooden one with a redstone engine or autarchic gate to pull stuff out of an inventory. They don't like intersections, and will go randomly. Cobble and Stone pipes won't connect, for more compact builds. Gold accelerates things. Iron will accept any side input but only has one output side. Diamond sorts things. Oh, and Emerald is basically a more intelligent wooden pipe.

There's... not really much depth to it.
It is like saying Redstone doesn't have a lot of depth to it. There are actually many tips and tricks you can do with buildcraft pipes, and many wiring pratice due to the limitations of Buildcraft pipes.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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It is like saying Redstone doesn't have a lot of depth to it. There are actually many tips and tricks you can do with buildcraft pipes, and many wiring pratice due to the limitations of Buildcraft pipes.
I would rather strongly disagree. The goal of pipes is to get items from Point A to Point B, generally in as efficient a manner as possible. Crude sorting can be done with diamond pipes, channeling can be done with iron, and you want gold every so often to maintain velocity. From there, it's just basic trajectory geometry crossed with aesthetic requirements to determine pathfinding algorithm.
 

Larmonade

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Jul 29, 2019
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Here's a question I've recently come across...

So I know that ME networks exclude processing of liquids by design. But if I wanted to hook my fermenters up to my network with an interface, 1) since the process requires both fertilizer AND saplings, is the interface going to know where both of these go, or do I need two interfaces or a combination of interfaces and busses? And 2) how do I "tell" the network to make biomass? Is it something that can only be done manually by going and switching on the machine, so that the network doesn't expect some output that's never coming?

A second, related question - in the case of machines and processes that have multiple components going into multiple slots, what's the protocol for not mucking that all up? Multiple interfaces? Interfaces and busses? Luck?
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Here's a question I've recently come across...

So I know that ME networks exclude processing of liquids by design. But if I wanted to hook my fermenters up to my network with an interface, 1) since the process requires both fertilizer AND saplings, is the interface going to know where both of these go, or do I need two interfaces or a combination of interfaces and busses? And 2) how do I "tell" the network to make biomass? Is it something that can only be done manually by going and switching on the machine, so that the network doesn't expect some output that's never coming?
Mmm... this gets a bit tricky, but long story short: Nope, not in the way you think it can.

You can have a bus to cram in both saplings and fertilizer. It's smart enough to put them both in the proper slots. However, you won't be able to program the ME Network to craft it on demand, unless you want to do something like have it send wax capsules to a Liquid Transposer connected to the fermentor and request the biomass capsules.

Having said that, if you just want it to produce biomass until it gets full, then a fuzzy export bus is more than sufficient to keep both slots full.

A second, related question - in the case of machines and processes that have multiple components going into multiple slots, what's the protocol for not mucking that all up? Multiple interfaces? Interfaces and busses? Luck?
Depends on the machine. Some of them are pretty intelligent about the routing. Others are less so.This depends more on how the machine handles it than anything else
 
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Dorque

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Mmm... this gets a bit tricky, but long story short: Nope, not in the way you think it can.

You can have a bus to cram in both saplings and fertilizer. It's smart enough to put them both in the proper slots. However, you won't be able to program the ME Network to craft it on demand, unless you want to do something like have it send wax capsules to a Liquid Transposer connected to the fermentor and request the biomass capsules.

Having said that, if you just want it to produce biomass until it gets full, then a fuzzy export bus is more than sufficient to keep both slots full.

Depends on the machine. Some of them are pretty intelligent about the routing. Others are less so.This depends more on how the machine handles it than anything else
So here's a fun question.

Say I programmed a pattern to indicate that it could send one fertilizer and 8 oak saplings to a fermenter, it would create.... oh, I dunno, a zombie head.

If I then requested a zombie head from the MAC, would it create biomass?
 

GPuzzle

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Shneekey, excuse me, could you cover Engineer's Toolbox next? It seems interesting, but I think most people need something to get into it.
 
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Larmonade

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Thanks Shneekey!


So here's a fun question.

Say I programmed a pattern to indicate that it could send one fertilizer and 8 oak saplings to a fermenter, it would create.... oh, I dunno, a zombie head.

If I then requested a zombie head from the MAC, would it create biomass?

I think it would, but since it would never detect the zombie head entering the network, it would never "complete" the action, so it would be on your work queue until you removed it manually, is m guess.

I originally had planned to simply have all compressed Plantballs auttomatcally sent to be fermented, and then by requesting compressed Plantballs to be created, I could be assured that they would be immediately used to create biomass...but turning saplings into Plantballs to be made into biomass is not nearly as efficient as just using the saplings directly, so I scrapped that plan :(
 
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casilleroatr

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I know that changing part of an ME network resets all crafting jobs. What if the same thing happened with dark cable switching states. You could have x saplings equals a zombie head and then the fermenter fills up a buildcraft tank. When the tank is full a gate trigger flips the dark cable, resetting all crafts. If that doesn't work, the same gate trigger could trigger a block breaker, deployer combo (turtle) to break and replace an me cable. You can do whatever you want with the liquid x after that. Why are we crafting it on demand though? Isn't it better to have that sort of thing just run continuously until you run out of tank space?
 

Larmonade

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I know that changing part of an ME network resets all crafting jobs. What if the same thing happened with dark cable switching states. You could have x saplings equals a zombie head and then the fermenter fills up a buildcraft tank. When the tank is full a gate trigger flips the dark cable, resetting all crafts. If that doesn't work, the same gate trigger could trigger a block breaker, deployer combo (turtle) to break and replace an me cable. You can do whatever you want with the liquid x after that. Why are we crafting it on demand though? Isn't it better to have that sort of thing just run continuously until you run out of tank space?

I'd like some sort of system wherein you can set up "commands" in addition to crafting requests. Like setting one of those redstone emitters to turn on/off when you select the assigned command or turning off/on sub-networks or dark cable. That way, you can just set up (for example) a bio-mass factory, and then tell the system "biomass" or "biomass on" or "biomass=1" or "hammertime" and the ME network knows to power up that part of the network or to flip the redstone signal or whatnot. And I imagine folks could find other uses for it as well.
 

WTFFFS

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I'd like some sort of system wherein you can set up "commands" in addition to crafting requests. Like setting one of those redstone emitters to turn on/off when you select the assigned command or turning off/on sub-networks or dark cable. That way, you can just set up (for example) a bio-mass factory, and then tell the system "biomass" or "biomass on" or "biomass=1" or "hammertime" and the ME network knows to power up that part of the network or to flip the redstone signal or whatnot. And I imagine folks could find other uses for it as well.

Levers and wireless redstone?
Which is how I tend to utilise my AE system, I work to have a small footprint for the system itself, bulk storage I try to avoid, working on just in time principles (create a small sub-network\pipes\logistics network to provide materials on demand), bulk processing I handle the same way input doesn't hit the AE system until processed, quarries, farms etc. So I try to minimise the "work" the AE system needs to do to purely auto-crafting and minimised storage of processed items. It's one way I keep a level of interest in the game creating a small very flexible system that can provide whatever I need on demand.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Shneekey, excuse me, could you cover Engineer's Toolbox next? It seems interesting, but I think most people need something to get into it.
Can do. In fact, I'm going to be doing a Mod Spotlight for ET as soon as I can get my recording software to stop fighting with me.

Also, for whomever wanted it, my blog is back online and my Mekanism For Newbies is found here.