How can I figure out what is sucking the power out of my Redstone Energy Cell?

[PierceSG]

Edit: Removed my post, looks really inflammatory after reading it again myself.

 

[Zarkov]

Personally I think idle drain can make sense, when you have machines that isn't really idle, like the induction furnace that keeps the temperature up for 1 eu/t.

But if you can circumvent the idle drain by using gates / RECs without any consequences to the machines function (i.e. no warm-up period), then the idle drain doesn't makes sense and should be removed IMHO.

A good example would be lasers. I have a setup with 103 lasers, which draw a total of 0 MJ/t when idle because they get their power through 5 RECs that are controlled by rednet cable via a basic gate looking at the "scheduled work" state on the assembly table. Still, they function exactly as if they had been allowed to pull ~50 MJ/t in idle power.

 

[zilvarwolf]

Laser drain does seem funny. I ended up using the tablet thing from Thaumic Tinker that could use a wrench on my energy conduit every redstone pulse, which works to great effect.

You know, now that other people are mentioning it, I had a similar problem with stored energy drain that I couldn't solve..but in retrospect it went away after I removed my laser from the network.

I had a REC with 4 gate controlled (emit when can store power) engines outputting a combined 16 mj/t. I'd fire up the laser and go do other stuff then log off. There were..8, maybe other machines on the network that could have contributed to a constant drain. At that level, 2 of my engines should have been able to keep up easily, but I would login the next morning and the cell would be totally drained, engines screaming at full tilt, and unable to catch up with nothing processing at all.

I just started turning off the cell at night, just in case, but never did figure it out.

 

[danidas]

To me the reason behind the energy drain is to prevent idle engines from over loading due to nothing using the energy they are producing. Which is a feature of a lot of the lower end engines and normally results in the engine shutting down or in other cases exploding. In the past this was addressed by having the conduits bleed off energy that is not needed back in the early days of build craft. Later on in the mods life they changed this mechanic to the famous exploding conduits and transferred the responsibility to bleed off excess power to the machines. Currently they took this approach to the next level with the new conduits and the added flexibility they afford.

Look at it this way, If you have a engine that is constantly running at full tilt and you take away the thing it is powering that engine is going to run into issues. Just like if your in a car and suddenly hit a patch of ice, your engines RPMs and temp will sky rocket unless you take your foot off the gas.

 

[Zenthon_127]

To me the reason behind the energy drain is to prevent idle engines from over loading due to nothing using the energy they are producing. Which is a feature of a lot of the lower end engines and normally results in the engine shutting down or in other cases exploding. In the past this was addressed by having the conduits bleed off energy that is not needed back in the early days of build craft. Later on in the mods life they changed this mechanic to the famous exploding conduits and transferred the responsibility to bleed off excess power to the machines. Currently they took this approach to the next level with the new conduits and the added flexibility they afford.

In 1.6 they also added a gate function to only turn on engines when needed. Which kinda renders the entire point of constant energy drain moot and just turns it into a waste of power for no reason whatsoever.

 

[Golrith]

In 1.6 they also added a gate function to only turn on engines when needed. Which kinda renders the entire point of constant energy drain moot and just turns it into a waste of power for no reason whatsoever.

It just forces you to build a laser system to build gates. A horribly expensive system to build and power, with slow crafting times, unless you add more lasers (more expensive/power). It's other aim is to give more reason to use that crafting system.

 

[Norfgarb]

it's sort of redundant thought, the only frequently used buildcraft machines (at least for me) that require a lot of power are the laser systems and quarries. so the majority of BC will be building power to build lasers to build power to build lasers.

 

[Enigmius1]

I don't normally link videos outside the youtuber section but this one is directly relevant to the conversation:

 

[MigukNamja]

it's sort of redundant thought, the only frequently used buildcraft machines (at least for me) that require a lot of power are the laser systems and quarries. so the majority of BC will be building power to build lasers to build power to build lasers.

You don't *need* to build a massive number of lasers. You can build 1 laser with 3 tables, schedule/queue different work for each table, walk way/log out, and when you come back, the work is done. But, most of us like instant, big power, big build stuff, so 1 laser is puny.

As for other big MJ consumers, ExtraBees is a big consumer as are MFR Lasers. Not sure if ExtraBees machines draw power when idle.

As for idle power drain, I agree it's annoying and not fun. There are many ways of bypassing this mechanic, but it's an annoying mechanic that serves no purpose. While "always on power" is one philosophy with boilers as the common example of this, it's not the only one. Options are a good thing.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Having one laser is like eating one bite of steak. It's good but leaves you wanting more. MORE!

 

[WTFFFS]

Typically I really don't care about a constant power draw from anything (apart from extreme draws such as the Thermionic Fab which could easily shut down your machine line) since I typically build my power supply to provide maximum power to everything whenever it is in use and if I need more, I build more producers. The piddly draw of standby power? meh fuckit from my point of view.

I build systems to allow for enough power at all times and enough renewable power at that, via whatever system I can come up with be it Golem farms\MFR, Steves Tree farms\lava pumping\oil, biofuel\nuclear\solar and so on. For me that is the fun part creating a fully automated constantly renewing (or very very large volume) source of fuel for my power systems, which I do typically leave on since they are designed (by me) to be "set and forget"

 

[casilleroatr]

How much power exactly is the Thermionic Fabricator capable of draining? I have looked around and only found out that the minimum amount of MJ required is 2

 

[zorn]

I think this issue is indicative of what happens when mod devs who don't understand balance make unilateral changes in response to what someone else is doing in a different mod. This is a stab directly at early-game, because as you point out, by the time you're established with boilers and MJ for days you don't care about a persistent drain. In the early game it means you're chained to your machines, because you don't dare walk away from a machine that will happily keep draining energy once it's finished its assigned task. And all of this with no benefit whatsoever. The whole idea for me in using things like redstone energy cells as buffers is to reduce the micromanagement and reduce the need to closely monitor my machines. There's too much to do in these mod packs for any one mod to be assuming I've got nothing better to do than sit around and babysit that one mod's stuff. Novice devs just keep piling on penalties and consequences and costs with nothing given in return. It usually kills the project at some point if they don't come to their senses with the quickness. Why does everyone use TE engines and machines in the early game? Because there's a benefit for every cost, and because King Lemming doesn't throw down arbitrary consequences for no good reason. BC and IC devs who don't take note of this might be in for a shock.

they use TE machines early game because they are another exmaple of reducing cost and increasing benefit, and making your items more appealing. TE has no consequences.

BC and IC2 = exploding power cables, exploding machines. Complicated setups. Different voltages. compare an aqueous accumulator to a buildcraft pump, and run combustion engines. Now tell me that the Accumulator gave more benefit, but at an increased cost, like your Electric furnace to an induction furnace.

What TE did was increase the benefits... and not increase the costs. So his items were easier, stronger, simpler.

An aqueous accumulator is a no brainer solution. If you run a buildcraft pump to a bunch of engines using waterproof pipes, you run into a host of problems and challenges. Liquiducts and AA's? hook them up, forget about them. For NO REAL INCREASE IN COST. This is balance?

the mod devs are using power creep to draw in players, beacuse they want a mod that people play. mod devs are basically heroes in the community, if you can make a decently fun and creative mod and offer items that are a bit better than what is currently being used, people will gravitate to them and then call the old options obsolete.

they key is that a buildcraft pump is not inherently better than an AA, but the increase in benefits has to stop somewhere, or in a year people will be saying "did you hear the X mod dev now wants us to actdually craft engines to power our furnaces? Eveyrone knows you just craft a solar furnace for 9 iron and it will run all day for you. the internal battery is perfectly balanced so that it will hold enough energy to keep you going 24/7, now this upstart wants to increase costs, with no benefit?!? And make us craft machines just to RUN our machines? Im not playing this game to sit at the crafting table all day!"

its really that ridiculous. Everything is relative, to vanilla players, EVERY mod is overpowered and imbalanced. Power creep gets us closer to Creative mode all the time, which just equals boredom, and a loss of players in the end.

 

[RedBoss]

they use TE machines early game because they are another exmaple of reducing cost and increasing benefit, and making your items more appealing. TE has no consequences.

People use TE because the machines get out of your way and let you play the game. It's a great option for people who hate explosions and don't like monitoring machines. It's a great option and it's there for people who like options.

The "power creep" concept will not discourage anyone from playing. If anything it shows how boring this energy draw thing is. It basically forces you to get a boiler as fast as possible so you don't have to worry about what draws power. It then leads to boiler spam. How boring is constantly "building tree farm, make, charcoal/Biofuel, spam boilers"? Bioler spam is boring. You don't even need gates if you're using renewable farms for fuel. Just spam boilers and forget it.

 

[snooder]

Compare that to BC machines that consume power while idle with absolutely no benefit. I decided I wanted to start setting up liquid storage in my Unleashed wolrld and literally within the last couple of hours found out about this power drain with the rolling machine I set up and connected to my power grid. It's an added layer of micro-management that does nothing at all to enhance the player experience. It's much more reminiscent of GregT's philosophy of "make it suck and call it better." Sort of how I've got the game running in the background running coke ovens and a blast furnace because I'm waiting on the steel before I put the rolling machine back to make the plates for tank blocks. Respect the player's time? Fuck no. That's for professional game devs, not modders.

Just a tip, in case you may not have heard of it. You don't need blast furnaces to make steel in Unleashed. You can make steel dust with 1 iron and coal in a cross shape, and then smelt the steel dust into steel. Never again will I deal with slow and space-wasting coke ovens or blast furnaces. Now I can just make enough blocks for a max-size railcraft tank from raw iron in a minute or so. As opposed to several days.

And yes, I DO consider that perfectly balanced. Because the goal of making steel isn't to design and build a nifty multiblock arrangement to create that steel. The goal (for me anyway) is to have steel ready at hand to build with. Waiting for the frankly obscene length of time it takes steel to cook is a major drag that forces me to stop playing the game and go do something else. At which point, why not just stop playing entirely and go do that other, more interesting, thing instead of wasting time and energy flipping back and forth to check on my steel?

 

[Golrith]

TE is actually very expensive to get started with. You finally need all that redstone and obsidian that just sits in your storage systems, plus it can be a bit heavy on gold usage. All 3 are resources that are not easy to get at the start. I actually find TE recipes to be a good balance between expense and complexity and where other mods offer TE alternative recipes, I always enable them instead of using the default.

In the mod environment though you'll often find that the new shiny toys will be "overpowered", just to get people back interested in that mod, then it'll get "nerfed" to how it should have been in the first place (or in some cases, over-nerfed), but then people get used to that "overpowered" concept and whine.

ALL mods that offer power generation all suffer from the same problem. It's easy to generate a ton of power, but there's nothing that needs all that power. But that problem originates with vanilla minecraft, with the insanely fast growing times of renewable organic resources.

 

[Enigmius1]

they use TE machines early game because they are another exmaple of reducing cost and increasing benefit, and making your items more appealing. TE has no consequences.

BC and IC2 = exploding power cables, exploding machines. Complicated setups. Different voltages. compare an aqueous accumulator to a buildcraft pump, and run combustion engines. Now tell me that the Accumulator gave more benefit, but at an increased cost, like your Electric furnace to an induction furnace.

You know what works really well if you want a ready supply of water? Standing next to a 3x3 water source with a bucket. So when we talk about automating the accumulation of an infinite resource with a 3x3 footprint, the accumulator fits the bill pretty well. It doesn't cost a lot to make and it doesn't cost anything to run, but it's not doing anything so tedious or outlandish that it needs to carry a heavy initial cost or ongoing consumption of resources. If you want to run a buildcraft pump on combustion engines for the sole purpose of accumulating water, that's on you. It's a bit like disciplining a toddler with a revolver.

they key is that a buildcraft pump is not inherently better than an AA, but the increase in benefits has to stop somewhere, or in a year people will be saying "did you hear the X mod dev now wants us to actdually craft engines to power our furnaces? Eveyrone knows you just craft a solar furnace for 9 iron and it will run all day for you. the internal battery is perfectly balanced so that it will hold enough energy to keep you going 24/7, now this upstart wants to increase costs, with no benefit?!? And make us craft machines just to RUN our machines? Im not playing this game to sit at the crafting table all day!"

its really that ridiculous. Everything is relative, to vanilla players, EVERY mod is overpowered and imbalanced. Power creep gets us closer to Creative mode all the time, which just equals boredom, and a loss of players in the end.

Ya, I already know your view on this stuff. You're wrong, but you'll fight tooth and nail with awful arguments and accusations of 'bullying' to avoid the facts, so I'm about done here.

 

[zorn]

You know what works really well if you want a ready supply of water? Standing next to a 3x3 water source with a bucket. So when we talk about automating the accumulation of an infinite resource with a 3x3 footprint, the accumulator fits the bill pretty well. It doesn't cost a lot to make and it doesn't cost anything to run, but it's not doing anything so tedious or outlandish that it needs to carry a heavy initial cost or ongoing consumption of resources. If you want to run a buildcraft pump on combustion engines for the sole purpose of accumulating water, that's on you. It's a bit like disciplining a toddler with a revolver.

Ya, I already know your view on this stuff. You're wrong, but you'll fight tooth and nail with awful arguments and accusations of 'bullying' to avoid the facts, so I'm about done here.

Yes you're the picture perfect image of an open minded debater. 0_o

You said that TE offered a good balance, giving benefits, but at a cost, and when adding more cost (like the lasers) giving us more benefits. First, there is no baseline. You could use EE2 as a baseline, guess what, every mod is under powered compared to them, or use Gregtech and every mod appears OP. So the point is that a simple nerf or buff is not wrong.

Second, TE added, compared to BC and Ic2, a bunch of buffs... with no added cost involved. It completely breaks the rules you claim are ideal, and your response is to call me stubborn and run away with your tail between your legs. And most importantly... the BC pump is also NOT the baseline to measure other items by! Some might think so, others might think that struggling to provide water to engines that blow up is too much of a challenge. If so, that's ok.

Just don't claim that good mods offer increased costs to offset rewards, then cite a mod that offered ONLY rewards compared to the status quo as proof of your claim.

I also think covertjaguar (railcraft and buildcraft dev?) has the right idea. Railcraft is a great, great mod. Steves carts is a great mod, forestry (without extra bees apparently) is a great mod. These newer mods offer all upsides, and no downsides. If the mod devs see this, please for the love of god dont think that Enigmius1 is the only opinion out there. Some of us like having to make sure we have enough steel to replace turbines, and don't consider it to be tedium. Its a challenge! exploding boilers are fun! Well except with an Aqueous Accumulator... then its a no brainer! the accumulator should be more expensive or AT LEAST require power! And make it require more power than a Pump, to offset the simplicity of it.

That would fit into Enigmius1's theory... but sadly TE did not set things up like that at all. He gave us superior options, with no drawbacks whatsoever.

 

[snooder]

zorn, enigmius1, could you please not go farther into this one? We're all pretty certain what your stances are already, and I'd like the thread not to get locked before someone else has a chance to say something possibly new and interesting on the subject.

Also, since CovertJaguar is apparently in this thread, I'm really, really interested in the thought process behind the design decision to have machines always draining power. Doesn't mean I have to like it, agree with it, or use the machines, but I'm just kinda curious as to what sort of playstyle the BC devs are intending or expecting out of their players.

 

[Enigmius1]

Just don't claim that good mods offer increased costs to offset rewards,

I didn't, and I no longer argue with people who can't interpret simple English without butchering it into their own misshapen version of things.