Hello, I'd like to share with you all how storing energy in BuildCraft works.

[snooder]

But that's just it. Potential energy is just as much energy as electricity is. Energy can be defined as the the capacity for work. Even if you don't like that, you must remember that batteries themselves represent potential energy. So regardless of how, when you store energy for later use it becomes potential.

But, and this is important, people aren't concerned with whether it is theoretically possible to get from one storage into useful energy eventually. What they are concerned with is whether you can take a block of that storage, connect it directly to a power transport system and connect that directly to a machine without any intervening machine to convert the energy from the storage medium into the form that the machine can use.

And no, Buildcraft doesn't have that (unless you could the kinesis pipe loop). Which is fine. The Devs intend the mod to work that way, and don't want to be able to store MJ energy in a way that can be directly transferred to machines. But you sound like a zealot when you try to convince people that there really IS a storage method for MJs.

Personally, I don't like that design for several reasons. First, because not having even static power storage makes any sort of portable power storage completely non-workable. Second, because it makes having a distributed power system more difficult. One of the nice things about having power storage is that you can put a power cell next to outflung elements of your base that aren't used very often and only supply a trickle of power to that cell. Then if you need power for that item, you drain the power cell temporarily and let it build back up over time. Without that storage you need to have enough engines to run that single isolated item connected directly to it. Which means either having a bunch of engines all the way out there, or a massive trunk line to feed it. And third, because having to perform work to convert from non-useful storage into directly useful energy can be problematic. Either if the work requires a jumpstart (like needing energy to convert oil in a refinery), or takes time to spool up (like a boiler needing to heat up to make steam), or is lossy (like leaving engines constantly running connected to a tank of fuel). The Buildcraft team apparently feels that these obstacles make the game more challenging, I just find personally that it gets in the way of what I want to do and frustrates what should be an otherwise fun experience.

 

[SlightlyVisible]

But, and this is important, people aren't concerned with whether it is theoretically possible to get from one storage into useful energy eventually. What they are concerned with is whether you can take a block of that storage, connect it directly to a power transport system and connect that directly to a machine without any intervening machine to convert the energy from the storage medium into the form that the machine can use.

And no, Buildcraft doesn't have that (unless you could the kinesis pipe loop). Which is fine. The Devs intend the mod to work that way, and don't want to be able to store MJ energy in a way that can be directly transferred to machines. But you sound like a zealot when you try to convince people that there really IS a storage method for MJs.

I have not once stated there is a storage method for MJs.

 

[Yosomith]

I have not once stated there is a storage method for MJs.

You have stated that there is energy storage in BC, in the form of fuel. Some people will equate that with MJ storage. They may be wrong, but some people wont learn or don't want to learn no matter how much you tell them otherwise. And snooder is correct that most people really only care about what they have access to in-game, not the science or terminology behind it. What people want is MJ storage, since BC doesn't have this (which is in no way a bad thing) they turn to other mods (also not a bad thing).

 

[Queue]

I seem to be seeing alot of unrest on both these forums and FTB reddit about a lack of native BuildCraft energy storage (within the buildcraft family), so I thought I'd post a little something to show you all that there is.

So as you can all see BuildCraft does in fact provide us with energy storage

Just don't expect to treat it like electricity

Just posted about this, thank you for putting it into a picture.[DOUBLEPOST=1389229508][/DOUBLEPOST]

Hey kids! This is Minecraft's wooden chest filled with coal. Coal can be used in various generators to produce energy. This means Minecraft provide us with energy storage! Despite the fact that Minecraft provide no energy generation and doesn't even have it's own type of energy... Well yeah...

Hey kids! This is Steve. Steve can wind up Clockwork Engine. This makes Steve infinite energy storage for kinetic energy! Well, good luck punching Steve to make him wind up that engine for you...

joke aside, people just want to store MJs, in form of MJs. Not in form of fuel, coal, lava, biomass or any other liquidy-gooey form.

You totally missed the point. I agree that is what people want but you completely missed the point.

 

[SlightlyVisible]

You have stated that there is energy storage in BC, in the form of fuel. Some people will equate that with MJ storage. They may be wrong, but some people wont learn or don't want to learn no matter how much you tell them otherwise. And snooder is correct that most people really only care about what they have access to in-game, not the science or terminology behind it. What people want is MJ storage, since BC doesn't have this (which is in no way a bad thing) they turn to other mods (also not a bad thing).

I agree, it is a wonderful thing that we have mods that offer different methods of using technology. In regards to buildcraft energy storage, I only wish for people to understand it does in fact exist in game, however it requires a different sort of play style then IC2 stye networks.

 

[immibis]

I see that a big problem here is that there's no standard definition of "energy".

Some people define "energy" as "that which is transferred by a power network," in which case, fuel is not a type of energy.
Some people define "energy" more closely to the real life definition, in which case, fuel is a type of energy that is not always directly usable.

You could argue both ways. Using the first definition means "energy" is defined very strictly - it's easy to see what is and isn't energy. Sometimes this is nonsensical - according to this definition, vanilla furnaces don't use energy, because no power network is involved? It could still be ambiguous - if I have a pipe network carrying heatstones[1] around, is that energy? This makes

Using the second definition, it's less obvious which things are energy. When a villager walks around, is it generating energy which is then dissipated? Probably not, but then piezoelectric generators[2] are magic. It seems like a more useful definition than the first one, even though it's more vague, because "power" or "MJ/EU/RF/UE/Charge/Blutricity"

[1] The Heatstone Mod was a mod where you could smelt cobblestone into heatstones, and then heatstones could each be used to smelt one item.
[2] Piezoelectric Generators are from Engineer's Toolbox, and create energy when mobs walk on them.


Now, regardless of whether fuel is energy (because it's just a word), how is this different from MJ storage?
I see these differences:

• You can't extract the energy very quickly. This is a big difference, possibly the biggest! If I have 5 combustion engines and a TE2 redstone energy cell, I can make 30 MJ/t on average, but bursts of up to 130 MJ/t. If I have 5 combustion engines and a fuel tank, I can make up to 30 MJ/t. Period.
• You can't connect it to another source of MJ to fill it up. However this works with most sources of MJ. It doesn't work with redstone engines, clockwork engines, or hypothetical solar engines, but it works with all engines that use fuel (even solid fuel, but replace the tank with a chest)
• You can't put one in the middle of a power network. Related to above - if you have a machine that normally uses 1 MJ/t but sometimes uses 100 MJ/t then you need to go to your engine room, and build enough engines to supply 100 MJ/t. You can put a (TE2) redstone energy cell next to the machine to smooth out power draw, but you can't do that with a tank of fuel.
  
  If BC had a "fuel fabricator" block, you could build an energy storage next to the machine - but it would always be more expensive than just upgrading your engine room.
  
• If you generate MJ using steam boilers, you have to store the steam in a tank to get the same effect, not the fuel. That is much less compact.
• On the other hand, if you're not using steam so you can store fuel, this setup in 1.5 (because of TE2, and because I don't know the new values after the fuel nerf) this was over 32 times as compact as a bank of redstone energy cells.

 

[Loufmier]

You still don't get it. That's the point. Buildcraft uses fuel as an equivalent to IC2's EU. Pipes, and what we call MJ, are just extensions of the engines which we feed fuel too. Like I stated before engines and the machines they run act as one. Just as one car is made of both an engine and its moving parts.

i didn't know that... no i lied.
anyway, we have exactly same situation with IC2, Mekanism, TE3 and pretty much any other mod that has blocks for power generation and consumption. all those mods have block to store energy converted from fuel, which means all those mods have more options to store energy.
and people look at those mods and say "this is good. can we have such options for BC?".

the key to this issue is that BC has conductive, or whatever they've been renamed to, pipes. people see them, and think "this is a equivalent of IC2 cables, so it'd be nice to have a equivalent of a batbox". if we remove those buggers, and engines with them altogether, and leave only item and liquid transport for machines that runs directly on fuel, then people will start calling tanks energy storage without thinking they are calling it wrong word.

You totally missed the point. I agree that is what people want but you completely missed the point.

care to explain where did i go "wrong"?

 

[Bellaabzug21]

This is actually how it works in real life. I like it.

 

[immibis]

the key to this issue is that BC has conductive, or whatever they've been renamed to, pipes. people see them, and think "this is a equivalent of IC2 cables, so it'd be nice to have a equivalent of a batbox". if we remove those buggers, and engines with them altogether, and leave only item and liquid transport for machines that runs directly on fuel, then people will start calling tanks energy storage without thinking they are calling it wrong word.

It actually used to be that way - if you had more than one machine connected to a conductive pipe network, power would usually go the wrong way (connect a quarry and a pump, and almost all the power goes to the quarry no matter what, even if it's already running at full speed). So the only use of conductive pipes was to connect many engines to one machine, or to several of the same type of machine (which would always split power evenly).

 

[Queue]

i didn't know that... no i lied.
anyway, we have exactly same situation with IC2, Mekanism, TE3 and pretty much any other mod that has blocks for power generation and consumption. all those mods have block to store energy converted from fuel, which means all those mods have more options to store energy.
and people look at those mods and say "this is good. can we have such options for BC?".

the key to this issue is that BC has conductive, or whatever they've been renamed to, pipes. people see them, and think "this is a equivalent of IC2 cables, so it'd be nice to have a equivalent of a batbox". if we remove those buggers, and engines with them altogether, and leave only item and liquid transport for machines that runs directly on fuel, then people will start calling tanks energy storage without thinking they are calling it wrong word.



care to explain where did i go "wrong"?

Sorry, I came out kind of like an asshole. What I meant was that you were focused on the idea that BC power generation was wrong and that in itself was wrong, that because other mods add power storage that BC should follow the leader... that whole idea is very common and not incorrect but a bit narrow in your thinking.

 

[Loufmier]

Sorry, I came out kind of like an asshole. What I meant was that you were focused on the idea that BC power generation was wrong and that in itself was wrong, that because other mods add power storage that BC should follow the leader... that whole idea is very common and not incorrect but a bit narrow in your thinking.

i wonder where your's opinion of me came from. i can't remember saying that BC power gen is wrong or they should add some sort of a batbox.
i only said that people want BC MJ batbox because they used to it in another mod. however people wanting stuff added to the mod doesn't mean that mod actually needs that stuff.

 

[Crumbology]

So the entire basis of this thread is that kinetic energy cannot be stored? I guess you never heard of flywheels.

 

[SynfulChaot]

So the entire basis of this thread is that kinetic energy cannot be stored? I guess you never heard of flywheels.

Flywheels are the exact method that RotaryCraft, a mod with more direct kinetic energy (rotational) than BuildCraft, uses.

 

[immibis]

So the entire basis of this thread is that kinetic energy cannot be stored? I guess you never heard of flywheels.

The entire basis of this thread is that MJ cannot be stored, but if you are trying to store MJ, you are thinking in entirely the wrong direction.

 

[Algester]

So the entire basis of this thread is that kinetic energy cannot be stored? I guess you never heard of flywheels.

first you have to understand BC doesnt use kinetic energy it uses pneumatic energy (hence the engine "pumping" and pistons in the recipe) and these 2 energies are very very different

 

[SandGrainOne]

It's not impossible that BuildCraft get energy buffering of some kind. It'll probably be leaky as hell, but with the capability of smoothing out power production in systems with spiking demand. This is not a trivial thing though, so I'm not sure were we stand on this right now.

 

[immibis]

Don't Buildcraft pipes already have some sort of energy buffering?

 

[casilleroatr]

A long time ago, I read Omicron say that he had taken to using commercial steam engines over industrial ones, leading to needing twice the number of wooden pipes. Wooden pipes have a very large energy buffer so having more in a system was useful for smoothing out spiking demand.

 

[DREVL]

I seem to be seeing alot of unrest on both these forums and FTB reddit about a lack of native BuildCraft energy storage (within the buildcraft family), so I thought I'd post a little something to show you all that there is.

So as you can all see BuildCraft does in fact provide us with energy storage

Just don't expect to treat it like electricity

These are all facts. There is an flaw in the association of energy storage though in this example. BC and Forestry are the only mods that have consumption blocks that run and draw power regardless if they are doing anything or not. BC gates are cool, but even a quarry or a still will continue to draw power even if they aren't doing anything regardless if the gate is set for "work to be done". So there is in fact not a auto shutoff for BC and Forestry.

 

[DREVL]

What you're telling me is you don't understand. Let me see if I can better explain.

1) When a IC2 machine receives electricity it may (from a logical point of view) use it to internally convert to kinetic energy to complete a task (such as grinding ore). Build-craft is different where that task has been split into two different machines. The engine which requires fuel to move gears, and the machine which has the gears which require moving.

2) You can't store kinetic energy unless you convert it to potential energy.

3) This is the native way of storing energy for build-craft as it is in its potential form. You must not understand that it's not electricity.

IC2 stores kinetic energy

Just pointing out - the OP is absolutely right. That *is* energy storage. It's a bit inconvenient, but that's part of the intent of Buildcraft (that is not meant as a slight). Energy is part of the puzzle, as SandGrainOne has pointed out.

The justification in TE 2.x was this - you hit redstone ore with a pickaxe, it glows. It is piezoelectric and therefore enabled kinetic storage. And, say what you will, but when TE 2 came out, BC went from being on the way out to being a viable mod again. And I'm not saying that to be mean - I'd wager even a lot of the current BC devs would agree with that assessment. That was a major purpose of TE 2 - I liked BC a lot and it kinda saddened me to see people abandoning it since the power system sucked.

We had this discussion to death last night, but the fact is that BC is a very viable mod and it's improved quite a bit from those 3.0 transition days. Absolutely worth using.

^^^. In TE2, I didn't want any of the TE engines. It gave me the ability to facilitate more BC and RC into my game play. I don't think I would have given BC or RC a second look if it wasn't for TE2. That being said, TE3 dynamos kinda wash out all other mjish power though. The dynamos are much easier to automate too. That being said, there are many tools that I will always use now with the quarry and the filler. I will always use the pipes for those applications and some with MFR. Am I correct that the TE3 itemducts don't work with BC equipment? They haven't for me.[DOUBLEPOST=1390428304][/DOUBLEPOST]

This is actually how it works in real life. I like it.

No. Not really.... If your lights are off, do they still drain power?