Getting the most out of your ME Network

[Golrith]

Question, can an AE system identify the difference between enchanted and unenchanted items? My mob grinder will eventually be dropping random enchanted items, which I'd like to route them to MFR disenchanters to turn into enchanting books.

Likewise, can I get the AE system to grab 2 damaged iron swords (for example), and combine to eventually produce a fully repaired iron sword? This I'd then dump into a smelter to regain some iron.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

MFR has en Enchantment Router (http://ftbwiki.org/Enchantment_Router) you can feed FROM your grinder. And as soon as there are no enchantments on the items you can sent them to AE.

 

[khorozm]

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.

Not really, if you only have buildcraft pipes the routing will be much more deeper. It is the same that vanilla Redstone is just a recipe component when you have Red alloy wire and Rednet.
I agree with you Buildcraft pipes doesnt have much usage (compared if you dont have AE and other transporting mods).

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Not really, if you only have buildcraft pipes the routing will be much more deeper. It is the same that vanilla Redstone is just a recipe component when you have Red alloy wire and Rednet.
I agree with you Buildcraft pipes doesnt have much usage (compared if you dont have AE and other transporting mods).

Could you please provide an example, because I'm still not seeing it. Even back in beta, before AE ever existed, pipes were still 'get items from Point A to Point B'.

 

[Greyed]

However, for you to expand, you'd need to make the disk drive, you'd need to make the terminal, you'd need to then rip out the chest, replace the automation around the chest with an ME Interface, find another place to stash said disk drive, and everything else. Can it be done? Certainly. But now you've got a now worthless ME Chest sitting around, forever gathering dust.

This is slightly misleading. For your build you need to make the disk drive, the terminal, find a place to stash said disk drive and everything else. Those are common to both builds so are not a negative to Miguk's build without also being a negative to yours. As for the ME chest, the same could be said for your initial ME build as well, except with all the standard chests you've made.

Difference is that I am like Miguk, I start with a basic ME chest and the build up from there. The chest isn't "sitting around forever, gathering dust." It gets relegated to other tasks. For example when I want to move things between cells by hand having an ME chest comes in handy. Also when setting up a distance base or automation of some sort it is far easier to pack up 1 engine, 1 cell, 1 me chest and fuel for the engine than to lug around the dozens of items needed *and* the chests to store them once at the remote location.

 

[AlanEsh]

I don't understand why you'd use an ME Chest in a network. The wiki says it requires power, so why not just build an ME Drive and put your storage cell in that? Is it simply because of how cheap it is to make the chest?

 

[Omegatron]

I don't understand why you'd use an ME Chest in a network. The wiki says it requires power, so why not just build an ME Drive and put your storage cell in that? Is it simply because of how cheap it is to make the chest?

It can be powered by the network and uses the same amount of energy as a drive. And of course there are the uses that Greyed said.

 

[AlanEsh]

I understand you can pick the chest up and move it (and a power source and fuel) to a remote location and "easily" access a storage disk; I just don't get why the Chest would be the choice to build into an early-game AE network. The ME Drive is much more expandable and will never be relegated to "when i need to move a pile of steam engines over to the mining age" duty, so the ME Drive seems like a much more logical choice when building your initial ME network.
I built a few ME Chests the first couple of times I bootstrapped an ME network, but haven't gone that route in months.

 

[Staxed]

I understand you can pick the chest up and move it (and a power source and fuel) to a remote location and "easily" access a storage disk; I just don't get why the Chest would be the choice to build into an early-game AE network. The ME Drive is much more expandable and will never be relegated to "when i need to move a pile of steam engines over to the mining age" duty, so the ME Drive seems like a much more logical choice when building your initial ME network.
I built a few ME Chests the first couple of times I bootstrapped an ME network, but haven't gone that route in months.

I have a rather large network (heya Alan ) and I still use ME Chests. Mainly to see what each specific drive in it and determine if I want to add another DSU. For example, yesterday I noticed one of my 64K drives was full, but only had 20ish item types in it...so I pulled it out of the drive, stuck it in the interface, and realized that it had thousands of oreberries in it that I forgot to put into a DSU.

If i didn't have the chest, I wouldn't have been able to tell exactly what was in the drive, but since I did I was able to add a DSU for the oreberry, and then throw the disk into the I/O Port to route them to the DSU.

 

[snooder]

Could you please provide an example, because I'm still not seeing it. Even back in beta, before AE ever existed, pipes were still 'get items from Point A to Point B'.

I'll bite.

There are some nifty things that can be done with BC pipes. For example, not many people know about looping an iron pipe on the end of a BC pipe line to keep items from falling out. Also, I don't think many guides have delved into the uses of structure pipes or plugs to separate networks. And then there's the incredibly complex functionality of gates (which require BC pipes).

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I'll bite.

There are some nifty things that can be done with BC pipes. For example, not many people know about looping an iron pipe on the end of a BC pipe line to keep items from falling out. Also, I don't think many guides have delved into the uses of structure pipes or plugs to separate networks. And then there's the incredibly complex functionality of gates (which require BC pipes).

Looping can also crash yourself if you get too many items looping.

Gates are a guide unto themselves. Plugs and structure pipes are fairly obvious in use.

 

[Greyed]

so the ME Drive seems like a much more logical choice when building your initial ME network.

You are the best kind of person who asks a question.

I built a few ME Chests the first couple of times I bootstrapped an ME network, but haven't gone that route in months.

As you answered your own question. An ME chest is cheaper than a drive. To access a chest you just need the chest. For the drive you need a chest, a controller, a terminal. The rest is needed for both.

Just a quick calc, might be off a quartz or two....
ME Chest: 9 iron, 8 wood, 2 sand, 1.3 nether, 1.3 cetus, 1 gold, 2 redstone.
Drive, Controller, Terminal: 16 iron, 5 sand, 8 wood, 6 cetus, 6 nether, 10 redstone, 3 gold, 1 diamond

Getting a butt-ton of storage pre-diamond for super cheap mats is nothing to sneeze at, especially for people who have eschewed iron chests since AE is in their world.

 

[Staxed]

You are the best kind of person who asks a question.




As you answered your own question. An ME chest is cheaper than a drive. To access a chest you just need the chest. For the drive you need a chest, a controller, a terminal. The rest is needed for both.

Just a quick calc, might be off a quartz or two....
ME Chest: 9 iron, 8 wood, 2 sand, 1.3 nether, 1.3 cetus, 1 gold, 2 redstone.
Drive, Controller, Terminal: 16 iron, 5 sand, 8 wood, 6 cetus, 6 nether, 10 redstone, 3 gold, 1 diamond

Getting a butt-ton of storage pre-diamond for super cheap mats is nothing to sneeze at, especially for people who have eschewed iron chests since AE is in their world.

His question had nothing to do with the cost of either item, so that really has nothing to do with an answer...

You also failed to noticed he said "to include in a network", therefore that assumes he already has a controller and a terminal. He didn't answer his own question at all.

 

[AlanEsh]

So, while we're getting the most out of our ME Networks, someone care to fill me in on the best way to keep a constant supply of, say, 64 Redstone Conduits in an ME system?
Here's what I've been considering:
Export Bus >redstone> Magma Crucible >liquidredstone> Liquid Transposer
Export Bus >emptyconduits> Liquid Transposer >> Import Bus

The Export Buses keep the machines stocked with redstone and empty conduits.
A Dark ME Cable and Redstone Emitter on the cable run for the Import Bus break that connection when there are 64 Redstone Conduits in the ME Network.

This is a nice setup in that it keeps another 64 "backup" conduits full and ready to go in the Liquid Transposer's outbound inventory. When I pull conduits from my Terminal and my inentory drops below 64, the Emitter turns on and immediately replenishes the difference. Then over the next couple of minutes the Transposer refills its outbound inventory.
The big negative here is that I have tied up 64 empty conduits and 64 filled conduits inside my Liquid Transposer.

Is there a more efficient way to handle this? I'm not interested in an "on demand" system that has to melt the redstone on the fly.

 

[casilleroatr]

<snip>

You could set up the crafting pattern on an ME interface , one empty conduit ---> one redstone conduit. Don't include the redstone in the pattern. Instead just keep redstone stocked in the magma crucible and liquid transposer. You could do this by changing your current setup very little (assuming the TE machines are adjacent). Replace the export bus that is connected to your transposer with an interface and place the pattern in there. To keep the crucible stocked you have three main options. The most simple but the most wasteful is to just export bus redstone into the crucible. You are tying up a stack of redstone but at least you aren't tying up a stack of conduits. If you have a logistics pipes network already, you can use a supplier pipe on the crucible to keep one redstone stocked at all times. My preferred option though is to put a translocator on the ME interface and the crucible. You can keep one redstone stocked in the interface and one in the crucible with a diamond nugget translocator.

By doing that I think you can craft almost a stack before you have to start waiting on the magma crucible.

When you have that set up, set a precision export bus to export/craft into an inventory (do interfaces that are within the same network work?) and take it back into the network. Use a level emitter to control the export bus to your specifications

 

[Staxed]

So, while we're getting the most out of our ME Networks, someone care to fill me in on the best way to keep a constant supply of, say, 64 Redstone Conduits in an ME system?
Here's what I've been considering:
Export Bus >redstone> Magma Crucible >liquidredstone> Liquid Transposer
Export Bus >emptyconduits> Liquid Transposer >> Import Bus

The Export Buses keep the machines stocked with redstone and empty conduits.
A Dark ME Cable and Redstone Emitter on the cable run for the Import Bus break that connection when there are 64 Redstone Conduits in the ME Network.

This is a nice setup in that it keeps another 64 "backup" conduits full and ready to go in the Liquid Transposer's outbound inventory. When I pull conduits from my Terminal and my inentory drops below 64, the Emitter turns on and immediately replenishes the difference. Then over the next couple of minutes the Transposer refills its outbound inventory.
The big negative here is that I have tied up 64 empty conduits and 64 filled conduits inside my Liquid Transposer.

Is there a more efficient way to handle this? I'm not interested in an "on demand" system that has to melt the redstone on the fly.

Export bus to magma crucible, magma crucible feeding into the liquid transposer...this will make sure there is always liquid redstone, as it will fill up the transposer and then the crucible itself, so plenty of buffer

Precision Export bus set to work without a redstone signal, exporting conduits into transposer, point a level emitter at that export bus set to 64 redstone conduits. Import bus on export face of transposer. You'll need to automated keeping 64 empty conduits in your system though, or else it'll craft them as it needs them if you have that recipe in MAC

 

[AlanEsh]

Thanks but not interested in learning logic pipes at this time; next? [DOUBLEPOST=1380318860][/DOUBLEPOST]

Export bus to magma crucible, magma crucible feeding into the liquid transposer...this will make sure there is always liquid redstone, as it will fill up the transposer and then the crucible itself, so plenty of buffer

Precision Export bus set to work without a redstone signal, exporting conduits into transposer, point a level emitter at that export bus set to 64 redstone conduits. Import bus on export face of transposer. You'll need to automated keeping 64 empty conduits in your system though, or else it'll craft them as it needs them if you have that recipe in MAC

That's essentially what I have, but with the red stone emitter on the input rather than the output. Precision bus is a better idea than the dark cable though.

 

[casilleroatr]

Thanks but not interested in learning logic pipes at this time; next? [DOUBLEPOST=1380318860][/DOUBLEPOST]
That's essentially what I have, but with the red stone emitter on the input rather than the output. Precision bus is a better idea than the dark cable though.

Only one of the three options I presented had anything to do with pipes. Besides, if you do it my way, with pipes or translocators, you don't have to keep any empty conduits in sunk into your crafting system never to be used for anything else, and you only have to keep at most two redstone in your crafting system. Besides, this isn't a pageant. A couple of people have come here to offer an idea or several to solve your problem. Winking notwithstanding, just saying "next?" is a bit rude.

 

[AlanEsh]

Only one of the three options I presented had anything to do with pipes. Besides, if you do it my way, with pipes or translocators, you don't have to keep any empty conduits in sunk into your crafting system never to be used for anything else, and you only have to keep at most two redstone in your crafting system. Besides, this isn't a pageant. A couple of people have come here to offer an idea or several to solve your problem. Winking notwithstanding, just saying "next?" is a bit rude.

I should have stated I'm looking for a purely (or nearly so) AE solution -- i.e. better ways to use the ME Interface, Buses, and in particular the "craft only" features. So thank you for your contribution, but I'm more interested in nifty tips and tricks hiding in the AE mod itself. Forgive my brief "winkie" reply, I was on my phone and don't care to type long messages on it.

 

[GPuzzle]

While AE is better than LP in crafting stuff and storing stuff, LP is much better at inventory manipulating. My favorite tatic is to use the AE-connector-thing that allows for stuff like normal chests to be used for storage at the output of the farms. The chest is connected to a small LP system that, for example, always keeps 10 saplings in the MFR treefarm.
INTERMOD CONNECTION FTW!