Is there a way to avoid constant rolling machine drain?
- Thread starter kcbanner
- Start date
I think that's my biggest beef with Buildcraft powered gadgets. Coming from a pure IC2 world in 1.2.5, it's jarring to have to babysit my power grid when every machine just gobbles as much as it can get all the time, and outside of overflowing power into energy cells the engines will just go nuts until they run out of fuel or explode. Something to get used to I guess.
It doesn't seem to drain when there isn't a recipe showing in the grid. Also if you use redstone conduits you can hit the connection with a wrench and switch it so the power goes out of it while you aren't using it. Then hit it again when you want it to get power.
That is true, I guess you are supposed to set up a tree farm with the logs going into a furnace and pump that charcoal into a steam boiler. Endless energy that won't explode.
I've been running the boiler until two redstone batteries are full and then it lasts me for several days (real time) before I need to run it again. I'm pretty light on the technology though running mainly Thaumcraft this time.
I've been running the boiler until two redstone batteries are full and then it lasts me for several days (real time) before I need to run it again. I'm pretty light on the technology though running mainly Thaumcraft this time.
You can throttle most machines by putting a TE RECell on the line between your power generation and them. Just remember that each connection is throttled separately. So 1 incoming, 2 outgoing means an outbound throttle of 4MJ/t will cancel out an inbound 8MJ/t.
You could also try using gates to cut power unless the machine "Has Work".
My Rolling Machine simply has its own engine atm. I can just turn that on when I want to use the Rolling Machine. That does mean it's empty though when I want to use it, but I don't really care about that as I don't use it a lot.
Yeah, after using TE machines for a while, I was a bit surprised when I stuck a thermionic fabricator in my system and discovered it likes to "stay warmed up". I ended up disconnecting it from my energy network since I hardly ever use it and don't want to live with a constant energy drain.
I find a TE Energy Cell between power generation and the hungry machines from Forestry and Railcraft works quite well. Set the energy cell to require a redstone signal, slap a lever on it, and you have a simple on/off switch for that section of your machine room...
You can turn off the power to sections with TE then turn it on again when needed. Works great.
When using the redstone conduits when it connects to each machine you can hit that pipe with the wrench to switch the power on and off, so as long as you can see the connection you can fine-tune power for each machine.
You can also do this at the redstone battery connection to turn off a whole branch of power.
You can also do this at the redstone battery connection to turn off a whole branch of power.
I feel really stupid for not realizing that I can use the "switch between input and output with wrench" feature of redstone conduits to switch things on and off. Duh, that's so obvious
Thank you for explaining.
The best solution I found, if you want to use full conduits but miss the BC gates on pipes is to use structure pipes on the machines set to Has Work -> Redstone signal, then to run a redstone wire from these to my TE cell, which is set to only output power when it receives a redstone signal.