Gregtech Survival Guide

[asb3pe]

So glad you mentioned that the Thermal Centrifuge data is actually to be found in the IC2 wiki... 48EU/t required, which explains a lot. 32v and 1a is not good enough, it needs 32v and 2a. Now I can go thru the entire IC2 roster and see what I can discover! It's like a whole new world. I was literally trying my best to avoid IC2, and for the life of me I can't understand why I was taking that attitude.

Is there a tool or some way to see how many volts/amps is running thru a GT power cable? Like a GT voltmeter/ammeter? Sure would help a lot (I think) but I didn't see it. 94 pages of GT stuff in my NEI, so maybe I missed it.

 

[Someone Else 37]

I know GT adds a portable scanner of some sort (search "tricorder" in NEI and you should find it), but I don't know off the top of my head if it works on cables.

 

[Pyrolusite]

Is there a tool or some way to see how many volts/amps is running thru a GT power cable? Like a GT voltmeter/ammeter? Sure would help a lot (I think) but I didn't see it. 94 pages of GT stuff in my NEI, so maybe I missed it.

GT Portable Scanner (craftable in survival) or GT Debug Scanner (creative mode only).

Seriously, GT is so incomplete for energy production, you should not ignore what IC2 has to offer, if you get bored of steam.

 

[asb3pe]

Yeah I've always been a lava and oil/fuel user, I was never much into steam power even tho a lot of people seem to think it is the best power source (probably because tree farms are easy to make and easy to scale up to your charcoal requirements, etc). In fact, I just explored some more of my world and I discovered a large ocean, so I made a boat and went around the entire thing and I discovered at least six huge oil geysers... which makes me a very happy camper indeed.

Thanks for the Scanner info, I can't make it yet but I did just discover what may be the most critical ore vein in all of GregTech... Garnierite (Nickel) Ore, which will soon allow me to be in the MV age. Yay!

Let me add a few links here to stuff I've "accumulated" over time. Good resource material. For all I know, this could have been made by someone in the thread (OP?).

Pickaxe material spreadsheet
Sword material spreadsheet

Right now I'm using a Cobalt pickaxe but I'm looking to step up to something better, except the Level 4 materials list is a total mystery to me right now. I have no idea what any of them are, but I guess that's the fun of GT - figuring it all out.

 

[tedyhere]

Gonna ask here since this is GT Central. Is the issue with GT ores appearing as stone for just a brief second and sync issue and not a tick rate issue? We are trying to find the source of lag on our server and it's being a bit tough to track down. We get spikes of 100tps that last for 3 to 5 seconds and can't pin it down

 

[asb3pe]

So I'm finally making my Electric Blast Furnace... but can anyone explain the different "tiers" for all the hatches, the muffler, etc? They aren't called "tiers" in NEI, but each block has four different varieties - a LV, MV, EV, etc. There's even "ULV" tier for some reason?

Are we supposed to make the highest tier block that we can for these multiblock structures? The EBF is clearly an "MV" multiblock, but I can't make the "MV" tier of hatches or muffler yet because it requires aluminium. So I guess I go with the "LV" tier for now? How will that impact the performance of my EBF? Is it possible my multiblock won't work if I use the incorrect tier of hatches?

 

[tedyhere]

Well according to the survival guide you will need three LV Hatches to input enough power to make aluminum to make a MV Hatch, Also buffers and really good power gen to keep up with making the aluminum. As far as I can tell you can mix and match the blocks as long as you have the required 2 rings of Coils a muffler on top, controller bottom front, all required hatches so one of each hatch. I believe you can mix LV MV HV and everything else

 

[asb3pe]

Well according to the survival guide you will need three LV Hatches to input enough power to make aluminum to make a MV Hatch, Also buffers and really good power gen to keep up with making the aluminum. As far as I can tell you can mix and match the blocks as long as you have the required 2 rings of Coils a muffler on top, controller bottom front, all required hatches so one of each hatch. I believe you can mix LV MV HV and everything else

Thanks tedyhere, I've read the Guide at least 10 times and yet it still doesn't sink in until I actually try to make the darn thing. I don't think I've seen the latest updates to it tho - a Q&A page has been added for the EBF! Very very good!!

So I thought I was getting really close, but I see I had an incorrect vision of where I was headed - I cannot just put 4 steam turbines into a GT transformer, get a 128v-1a output and connect it to the EBF... because I can't make the MV input hatch.

All I can say is what the BeyondReality random-tip-of-the-day says... "Why, Greg, WHY?" GT is awesome.

Wow, the OP's Guide certainly has expanded lately, I just read thru it again. Fabulous stuff indeed guys.

 

[tedyhere]

Thanks tedyhere, I've read the Guide at least 10 times and yet it still doesn't sink in until I actually try to make the darn thing. I don't think I've seen the latest updates to it tho - a Q&A page has been added for the EBF! Very very good!!

So I thought I was getting really close, but I see I had an incorrect vision of where I was headed - I cannot just put 4 steam turbines into a GT transformer, get a 128v-1a output and connect it to the EBF... because I can't make the MV input hatch.

All I can say is what the BeyondReality random-tip-of-the-day says... "Why, Greg, WHY?" GT is awesome.

I am currently building up 3 4 slot buffers and batteries to help so I can make a MV Hatch lol. Next up will be getting the next tier of coils and building another blast furnace with those.. Plan is one of each tier of furnace to cook whatever I need

 

[asb3pe]

I don't understand why 3 LV Energy Hatches are necessary for the EBF - that would be 3 amps at 32v. Why wouldn't it be 4 LV Energy Hatches? Then we'd be inputting the equivalent of 32v and 4a, or if you "step it up" (like a transformer), that's equal to 128v and 1a. So 3 hatches only seems to provide 3/4'ths of the required power?

But you're talking about 4-slot buffer boxes, so that means you're "injecting" 32v and 4a into each of the three LV Energy Hatches? In that case, that's way more than 128v and 1a equivalent. It's actually three times that much power - are we trying to "inject" 128v and 3a into this EBF, is that the deal here? Prob makes more sense than my "128v/1a" idea.

It sure would be a lot easier firing up a creative test world and figuring it all out by experimenting... but nah, why would I do that? LOL

 

[tedyhere]

I think 1 buffer with 9 slots with 8 LV batteries will work fine on two hatches after looking at the math

 

[asb3pe]

I think 1 buffer with 9 slots with 8 LV batteries will work fine on two hatches after looking at the math

Ah well, I just made my three 4-slot buffers and I have 12 full sodium batteries. I'm really close now, I only need to make 3 steam turbines but I ran out of iron and had to go mine some more. Will report back if and when I get it all up and running. And then at that point, yeah, I'll prob experiment with less turbines/buffers infrastructure and see how much we can cut it down. Things are getting pretty darn crowded now in my base.

I guess one of the key questions here is, how many amps can the Energy Hatches accept? The Guide says "Max amps for a machine is normally 2 but some can use 3" so I wonder if that applies to the Energy Hatch blocks? If you're using one Buffer outputting 8 amps total into 2 Energy Hatches... I guess we'll have our answer shortly.

Oops I see I've got my terminology incorrect again... it's not how many amps the Energy Hatch will "accept", it's how many amps the Energy Hatch "draws". We're not pushing the energy into a machine, but rather the machine is pulling the energy in. The amperage of each Energy Hatch makes a difference in which cable we can use, obv. Right now I'm planning to use 4x tin cable since a 4-slot Buffer can transmit up to 4 amps.

 

[asb3pe]

The Electric Blast Furnace is an odd multiblock. I think I've got it up and running, but I put an Aluminium dust in the Input Bus and it just disappeared. There's no indication that anything is happening. It doesn't make any noise and all the display tells me is that I have that darned burned out circuit. I guess I was expecting a fireworks display or something?! LOL But just like it says in NEI, approx 85 seconds later, I've got my very first Aluminium ingot in the Outlet Bus!

Thanks to all for the assistance in helping me getting to this point. It does appear that my setup with the three 4-slot LV Battery Buffers is quite a bit of overkill, power-wise. I have 12 sodium batteries, and 4 of them didn't even move from their starting value of 50K EU. The other 8 batteries only lost 5K! Anyhow, overkill or not, it does appear to be working and I am thrilled that I can now progress into MV era.

Right away I've got a problem, I swear I put 4 dusts in and I only got 3 ingots out. It appears to have eaten one of my dusts. It doesn't seem to be "stuck" due to insufficient power. In fact, it shut itself off. So I turned it back on and put one more dust in and I got one ingot out. So I lost a dust which obv isn't a big deal but it has me wondering what is going on. Maybe I didn't put 4 dusts in, I dunno. Or maybe I'm losing my mind. haha Nope, I just put 4 more dusts in, and I only got 3 ingots out. Can anyone explain what's happening? I guess I must be running out of power in the middle of an operation and it's eating the dust. I just put four more dusts in. I got 2 ingots out, it left one ingot in the Input bus, and the fourth dust is gone. I guess I'll have to just do one dust->ingot at a time. This is gonna be an agonizing grind having to babysit this big dummy. LOL

 

[Pyrolusite]

I guess I must be running out of power in the middle of an operation and it's eating the dust.

^ this. Don't forget the efficiency penality because of the "burnt circuitry".

 

[asb3pe]

^ this. Don't forget the efficiency penality because of the "burnt circuitry".

Thanks Pyro. I wish Greg would add some kind of sound effect to indicate what's happening... such as when an LV machine runs out of power, you get a very distinctive noise and you immediately know what is occurring. For the EBF, there's nothing and I find it very odd. You would think a "Blast Furnace" would be a very loud block indeed, and it surprises me that Greg (who's a real stickler for realism obv) made it completely deaf dumb and mute.

I also want to re-iterate that even tho the Guide says we will need three Energy Hatches, my EBF refuses to access the third Hatch. The 4-battery Buffer connected to that Hatch just sits there unused, the EBF will not pull energy from it. So I would say the "Q&A" section in the Guide has an error when it says we will need three Hatches.

 

[MDoN]

Anyone wanna play DW20? I can host the server!

 

[asb3pe]

^ this. Don't forget the efficiency penality because of the "burnt circuitry".

P.S. Duct tape has been mentioned a few times. It's really not difficult to make (raw carbon mesh just requires an Electrolyzer to turn Dark Ashes into Carbon), except for one thing... I refuse to make a "Packager" machine that I'm only gonna use once or twice (only to make the duct tape). Screw that. I'll creative-mode the duct tape instead, in fact I'm gonna go do it right now, thanks for the reminder.

 

[asb3pe]

So I finally built this magical "Assembling Machine", and I began to page thru the 1152 pages of recipes for it... yeah. Right. 1152 pages will take me at least 1152*3 seconds per page = almost 3600 seconds = 60 minutes = 1 hour. LOL

Have any of you gone thru all 1152 recipes one-by-one to see if there's anything really good hidden in there? Seems like most anything I put together on a vanilla crafting table could have an Assembler recipe... but looking them all up is pretty tedious.

 

[Someone Else 37]

So I finally built this magical "Assembling Machine", and I began to page thru the 1152 pages of recipes for it... yeah. Right. 1152 pages will take me at least 1152*3 seconds per page = almost 3600 seconds = 60 minutes = 1 hour. LOL

Have any of you gone thru all 1152 recipes one-by-one to see if there's anything really good hidden in there? Seems like most anything I put together on a vanilla crafting table could have an Assembler recipe... but looking them all up is pretty tedious.

I guess whenever you go to make something, particularly circuits and other electronic components, look through all the machines that can produce it in NEI. I know most of the circuits have alternate recipes that use molten tin, lead, or soldering alloy in the Assembler, although I don't know if these are actually cheaper than the crafting table recipes.

 

[asb3pe]

I guess whenever you go to make something, particularly circuits and other electronic components, look through all the machines that can produce it in NEI. I know most of the circuits have alternate recipes that use molten tin, lead, or soldering alloy in the Assembler, although I don't know if these are actually cheaper than the crafting table recipes.

It's a bit cheaper for sure, but it's more the ease of making them I think (once I also built the Fluid Extractor, which as you noted is required for the molten metal part). The Assembler is apparently the only way to make the "Good Circuit" for the MV Steam Turbine, so it's a "must-make" machine in order to get to MV. I prob should have made it sooner, but I sure do have a nice row of machines lined up now. Of course, as soon as I got here, now I'm gonna have to replace em all, one by one with the MV version... and then do it again with the HV versions... fun fun fun!